Part 2

Jess drove around Hartford looking for a good pizza restaurant, somewhere that wasn't full of tea light candles and ambiance, somewhere we would have gone back in high school. We ended up driving halfway back to Stars Hollow before we found anywhere suitable. It was a small place, with old vinyl booths that where cracking from the weight of years and the patrons that had frequently sat on them, there where no candles and there was an old jukebox in the corner that had fifties music playing the whole time we were eating. Jess ordered two large pies with everything, knowing how much I could eat, even while I was upset, especially while I was upset, and convinced the server to just leave the pot of coffee, while he enjoyed a coke. It felt like old times, old and comfortable.

"Are you going to tell me about it?" Jess had long since finished eating, having polished off six pieces of pizza and two glasses of coke.

"Tell you about what?" I had been avoiding talking about anything real for the past hour, we had touched on music and movies that we where now into, and how that had changed since high school. We had even gotten in a short argument about Rand verses Hemingway, which we had long ago come to the conclusion that neither of us where going to agree with the other about, but it was still nice to have someone to talk to intelligently about literature outside of the classroom.

"Why you left school. Why you're not talking to your mom. Why you're living with your grandparents in Hartford. Pick one." He looked me right in the eye, Logan probably would have avoided asking the questions, he liked to avoid conflict, or drink it away, but if he had asked he wouldn't have looked at me while he asked. Logan would have looked at the table, the floor, his hands, anything to avoid looking at me in the eye when he asked the hard questions; Jess looked me in the eye.

"Mitchum Huntzburger told me I didn't have it." I tried to look at Jess when I said it, but now that I was talking to Jess, one of the only people who could look right through me and see everything, if felt like a flimsy, co-out excuse. "He said that I would one day make someone a great assistant, but I didn't have what it takes to become a journalist, that I don't have the drive to make it in the business."

"And you believed him? Rory, you're the girl who told me that I could be whatever I wanted to be, that I could make something of myself when everyone else was telling me that I was a loser, that I would always be a loser. I can't believe that you would let some jerk tell you that you couldn't do something." Jess sat back in his seat, looking at me in complete disbelief, and I could see the disappointment there on his face as well. I looked down at the table and picked at my nails. I didn't want to see disappointment on anyone else's face; I didn't want to be looked at that way anymore.

"He's one of the biggest names in the newspaper business, he knows what he's talking about." I knew it was a justification for an excuse that no longer seemed to hold any weight for me.

"So what, I've read your articles, you're a great writer; you have wonderful instincts and a unique way of turning a phrase. The Rory I know would have worked just that much harder to show him that he was wrong, not curled up in a ball and let him trample all over her." Again, Jess was right, the girl he knew would have shown Mitchum Huntzburger what she was made of, but I wasn't quite sure what I was made of anymore.

"What if I can't hack it?" I still couldn't look up at him, I didn't want to see the pity or anything else on his face, I wanted him to look at me with wonder again, like he used to, I wanted him to be proud of me, and at the moment there was nothing to be proud of.

"Don't be ridiculous, Rory, if anyone can make it, you can. Your one of the smartest people I know, you have worked hard at Chilton to get into Yale, and you did, you where Valedictorian of your class at the hardest college prep school in the country, you can do anything you put your mind to. And, hey, if I can write a book, you can write anything."

"You read my articles?"

"Luke sends them to me. My favorite was on the ballet, you really tore that girl a new one." He was grinning at me when I finally looked up at him and I knew he was right, I had known he was right from the beginning, but I needed him to tell me why.

"That article just won't stop following me. You know she stalked me, and threatened me after that article came out? She wrote 'Die Jerk' on my white board, and yelled at me in the cafeteria. It was horrible, and the worst part was that everyone thought that it was one of my best articles." I picked up another slice of pizza, working my way through the second pizza.

"Gilmore, I had forgotten how much you could eat, I mean, I remembered you could eat, but where do you put it all?"

"It's the Gilmore phenomenon; mom says that if we were anybody else we would weight five hundred pounds." I grinned, and poured myself another cup of coffee.

"Well, eventually they're going to want to close the place down, and we still need to go to Stars Hollow and talk to your mom."

"I know. Promise you'll hold my hand?" I really wanted to go home, I didn't like living with Grandma and Grandpa, but I was scared that mom wouldn't want me to come home, that she was still mad at me.

"I'll hold your hand, and you can hold mine when we ask if I can sleep on the couch."

"Deal." Jess paid for the pizza and drinks and followed me back out to his car.

"Do you want to go back to your grandparents and get your car?" We sat in Jess' car waiting for it to warm up, deciding which direction to go.

"No, I'll worry about that tomorrow. Tonight I just want to go see mom, because if she doesn't want me home, I'm not going to want to drive anywhere, and if I get my car, I'll have to."

"Okay, then on to Stars Hollow. Hold on tight."