A/N: Okey, so this is my first fic ever, so I'd love to get many reviews so I can do better (who would want to do worse?) in the future.

Disclaimer: I, the author of this story, do not own any of the characters associated with Gilmore Girls. That honor belongs to the wonderful Amy Sherman-Palladino.

Chapter 1: Virtually painless

"Rory?"

Jess felt like he had roamed around the building for hours, looking for her, before finally spotting her. She was sitting in a corner, reading and scribbling in a notebook. Her wavy hair had kept on falling into her face, and he could see her blue eyes rapidly scan the pages of the notebook. He had suddenly felt so unsure whether he should talk to her. There had been something final about her leaving the Truncheon after the absymal kiss and the equally abysmal talk about that dipstick Logan.

"No, come on Mariano! You've been at this for a week now." Jess thought to himself, trying to muster up the courage to approach her. Luke had told him over the phone that she was on the Obama Campaign trail, so Jess had checked the schedule, and they were going to have a two-day stop in Philly. Why shouldn't he go and say 'hello'? They were friends.

A voice in Jess' head butted in on his thoughts with a simple "For all the obvious reasons". They had had… okey, so he had had issues they never got to talk about. He had left, disappointed her. Then he came back, left again, came back yet again, and rambled on like a complete idiot asking her to more or less elope with him. Jess had lost track of his departures and comebacks, and felt like he wanted to stick a note on his back saying 'Jess Mariano, licenced to act like a moron'. Still, Rory had kept him going, she had had faith in him.

He was moving. Without the rest of Jess noticing, his feet had begun moving towards her. "Fight face on Mariano, it should be virtually painless. Band-aid level. You're Frank at the Sands." He was desperate for courage now. She hadn't done anything yet, and he was still getting weak at the knees.

"Rory?" Jess said, immediately hearing how lame that sounded.

She flinched and looked up at him, slightly taken aback.

"Jess!" she then exclaimed, getting up from her seat.

"Oh no, no hug, that will just send me down the abyss." His mental note must have gotten lost on its way to her, because the next second she flinged her arms around his neck, and he couldn't do much else than hug her back.

It could have been the longest hug in the history of hugs. She was entoxicating, he could feel the softness of her skin against his cheek, and sensed a faint trace of her perfume."Come on, Mariano, snap out of it! Fight face, Frank, get a grip!" Jess felt like he'd been trapped in her embrace for an eternity, but anyone still living in the real world would probably have rounded the hug up to two seconds, three tops.

"What are you doing here, Dodger?" Rory asked him when she let go.

He was surprised she remembered the Dodger-reference, that was ages ago. She was making it so hard for him to act casual.

"Oh," he answered, returning from what must have been Planet Moron, "An article for the Truncheon zine."

It wasn't totally untrue. They were going to do a piece on the Obama campaign, but it was not until tomorrow, and Matthew ("God help us all…" Jess thought) was gonna cover it.

"So, how's life in journalism and politics treating you? he continued.

"I love it!" she answered. "Okey, so it's not exactly Christiane Amanpour in a foxhole in some warstricken area, but it's great. I get to write about all these fascinating things and meet all these amazing people! The whole living out of a suitcase- thing could be better, I've visited more hotels than ever before, and let me tell you, all of them weren't exactly pretty. I don't think I've ever wanted to get out of a hotel this fast since the great B&B-mishap of 2001."

She was bubbling, so full of excitement. Her eyes sparkled with intense determintation, and a sincere smile was playing on her lips.

"How's… How's Logan taking it?" Jess asked, feeling a pang of angst somewhere in the region of his stomach, or was it his heart. "You know, you being on the road like this?"

He could see how the spark faded from her eyes, the smile vanished and she got this gloomy expression on her face.

"Logan and I…" she began quietly, playing nervously with her pen. "We're not together anymore."

"You broke up?"

She nodded, and Jess felt like he wanted to dance. Dipstick got what he deserved.

"Or, well, in a manner of speaking," Rory continued. "He proposed."

It seemed to Jess that all the noise suddenly died out in the room.

"Wait, he proposed?" he exclaimed, sounding more surprised than he meant to.

"…and I turned him down," she finished.

"Oh…"

Jess pondered the statement for a few seconds, before asking:

"Should I be sorry?"

"Considering you loathed him, Dodger, I'm not expecting you to be."

"Hey, I didn't 'loathe' the guy. I just… strongly disliked him. He was a total dipstick!"

Rory sat down, and Jess got the feeling that he should have left out the last part.

"Hey, I'm sorry," he said and sat down next to her. "I'm sorry that you're sorry. You know me, tact of a… of a…"

"Nazi storm trooper?" she suggested and peered at him.

"Something like that," he said with a strained laugh.

He had to fix this, or else, Jess feared, that nice feeling of having come to a good end would be gone in a heartbeat.

"Tell you what," he began and carefully put his left hand on her right shoulder. "Come over to the Truncheon tonight. I'll make dinner and you can watch as Chris and Matthew drive each other mad."

Rory looked at him, Jess found himself once again ensnared by those bright blue eyes. She seemed to contemplate his offer hard, and Jess could not resist the impulse:

"You wanna make a pro-con list?"

She smiled at him again, lightly punching him in the chest.

"Do not mock my lists!"

"The mocking has left the building," he said jokingly and put his hands up as if to surrender.

She gave him one of her heartmelting smiles, and closed her notebook.

"You know what? Throw in a movie and a hot shower and I'll be there."

"Deal. Come over by seven. Try knocking if the door is locked, and if no one answers bang a bit harder. Matt and Chris aren't the most persistent guys I know."

"I consider myself warned."

All seemed fine, until Jess stumbled into the apartment above Truncheon Books. What the hell had he agreed to? Okey, the film was a great idea, that meant he didn't have to cook, and there would be things to watch and no need for cramped up conversation. And why had he involved Matt and Chris? They weren't that hilarious. They were still going on about that bar they weren't going to call "Cedar Bar Redux" or "Devoid of Original Ideas Poser Bar", and the whole debacle always ended with doorslamming and a cramped feeling that lasted for absurdly many hours. Jess always tried to sneak away to work on what he thought was a feeble attempt to a sequel to "The Subsect", but he felt he never really got the inspiration to make something out of it, so usually he stayed up all night, reading a book from cover to cover.

Jess navigated past something that probably should've been thrown out last week. Why did she have such influence on him? All had been fine before he had approached her today. Okey, not totally fine, Jess was still disappointed because she had led him on. She had told him it was fixed, and then it wasn't. Logan was still in the picture and she wanted to go back to him even after he had cheated on her. To be frank, now that he thought about it, Jess couldn't understand where that nice resolved feeling had come from. She had hurt him and he had done a nice job trying to ignore it. And why did she keep on calling him Dodger? That Dodger-thing had been a one-time-thing, she had never called him Dodger after that. And why did she want to shower here? It screamed awkward with big neon letters against an ill-fitting backdrop! "Speaking of showers…" Jess thought, but was interrupted when the door cracked open. Matt and Chris, his co-owners and flatmates stumbles in, bickering as usual.

"Jess!" Matt exclaimed when he saw Jess standing outside his room. "Just the man we're looking for!"

"Matthew, we are not dragging him into this!" Chris protested.

"Jess, say you were to…" began Matt, ignoring Chris' attempts to silence him.

"Guys!" Jess interrupted. "I'm having a friend over for dinner, so could we, please, chuck most of the 'crazy' out the door for at least one night?"

"Okey, so we evict Matt, matter resolved," jeered Chris.

"More like we kick you and your sorry ass to wherever," Matt retorted.

Jess sighed. He had actually thought they would be reasonable.

"Hey, what friend by the way?" Matt continued, sounding somewhat surprised. "You have friends, Mariano?"

"Yeah, I do," Jess answered, looking sternly at his flatmate. "An old friend."

"Old friend?" Chris asked and peered at him.

"Yes, old friend, as in friend that isn't new," Jess replied irritably. "A girl I know from Conn…"

"A girl!" bellowed Matt, looking at Jess with a happy face that could've scared the crap out of a four-year-old. "I knew it man, you're getting laid!"

Jess felt like he wanted to drive his head through a wall.

"Matt…" he said with a strained tone of voice. "Would you mind doing a little thinking with your upstairs brain? She's an old ex, we'll watch a movie and she'll gross you both out with her insane eating habits, and by the way, if I was to get laid, don't you think I'd tell you to skip?"

"Dude, old exes are the best, trust me," Matt rambled on, as if anything Jess had just said had passed him by unnoticed.

"So… do you want us to clear out? Chris asked, ignoring Matt and his insinuations about Jess getting lucky. "You know, 'cause we can."

"Nah…" Jess answered, and steered away from Matt. "I thought you could stage a fight with doctor Freud if the movie sucks. By the way, has anyone cleared out the bathroom since…"

"Since Matt proclaimed this to the bar we're not calling 'Cedar Bar Redux', and held a grand opening? No, not really."

"Put Sex-Obsessive Maniac over there on cleaning duty, see if that gets him to pipe down a bit. I'll have to go rent a movie and get the insane amount of snacks that will get eaten tonight."

"Okey, how much are we really talking about here?" Chris asked and looked questioningly at him. "You make it sound like you need a truck to get it back here.

"Let's see…"

Jess paused to think.

"We'll only watch one movie, so I'd say two pizzas, three boxes of Chinese, some fries, a yet unknown amount of soda, and as much candy as I can carry will do."

"Dude, that chick must be huge…" Matt butted in.

Jess figured Matt had finally managed to take his mind off sex.

"Hardly," Jess answered. "She's a total food-miracle. She was here when we had the open house about a year ago."

"She was? And I missed her?" Matt grunted disappointedly.

"Yeah, didn't you ever see me talking to anyone? A girl, cute, a bit shorter than me, brown hair, bright blue eyes?"

"That was your ex?" Chris asked and looked astounded.

"Wow, what did you do to bag that beauty?" Matt taunted with a devilish grin on his face.

"Hey, I'm offended by that tone of yours," Jess answered jokingly, and then turned to Chris. "Keep him on a leash tonight."

Leaving Chris and Matt to their bickering about leashes, cleaning and the infamous bar, Jess took his wallet and headed out into the city to stock up for the evening. Rory kept haunting his mind, and every moment they had together kept popping up in his mind. The first time they met, how he pissed off Lorelai, the bid-on-a-basket where they got to know each other, the accident, God how dense could he be? The kiss at Sookies wedding, the dance marathon, the party and the fight with Dean, him skipping off to California without telling her, and the call. The "I love you" that seemed to have made some impact, and the less successful attempt to get her to run away with him. The not-so-successful meeting with Logan and the telling-off. However hard Jess tried, all of these memories lead him back to the day at Truncheon, almost a year ago. She had looked so alone, and he had been so happy when she said everthing was fixed, the kiss came naturally, and then…

"You're still with him? he had asked, not wanting to believe it.

"Yeah," she had answered, and didn't really look at him.

"I thought everything was fixed."

"Everything but him," she said, as if it was that simple.

"I hate this!"

"You should, I'm sorry."

"You came here alone, to Philadelphia!" he went on accusingly.

"He was out of town."

"I don't deserve this, Rory."

Jess tried to shrug off the memory of that conversation, but it didn't work. He could still see her leaving the bookstore, and remembered how he had trod upstairs and barricaded himself in his room. He had felt so stupid, so immensly idiotic, he should've known. Now she had turned rich boy down, she was here, she was coming over to hang out. Just hang out. Watch a movie, see who first hit the sugarcoma-state and then… And then…

He couldn't make himself finish that thought, and wandered determinedly into the nearest video/dvd renting place. Once in there, Jess had absolutely no idea what he should rent. He strolled among the shelves and stacks of dvds, picking up movies and putting them back, not really finding anything that would fit tonight.

"No luck finding anything?"

A girl, dressed in jeans and a saggy t-shirt with the renting-company's logo on it, had magically turned up by his side. Jess wondered where they came from, and how they could so annoyingly know that you had no idea what to rent.

"Uh… Yeah, but I'm still looking."

"No matter, no matter. You watching something with your friends?"

"A friend… An old… girlfriend."

"Oh," answered the girl, and looked at him as if wondering why he was going to watch a movie with an old girlfriend of all people. "Hold on."

She disappeared behind some shelves, and emerged some minutes later with a movie. Jess looked at the cover doubtingly.

"I promise," said the girl "You'll like it. Both of you."

He wasn't in a particularly good mood for moviehunting, so he rented the movie and moved on to the nearest shop. There he took a basket and loaded it with anything he could think of that might be present at a regular Gilmore-movie night. When he came as far as to paying for it all, the man behind the counter looked strangely at him, and Jess was sorely tempted to tell him he'd be back for more by supper.

Needless to say, both Matt and Chris got a shock when he came home.

"You're really gonna eat all that?" Chris asked cautiously.

"Nah, I'll just stick with the pizza, fries and some soda, and Rory'll take care of this. Hey, did anyone clean out the bathroom?"

"Sure did," muttered Matt. "It wasn't like I had any choice, mr Rottweiler over here was hovering over me, barking if I so much as missed a strain of hair."

"Hey, I told him to keep you on a leash, finally someone got the hang of it," Jess smiled and felt mildly content as he hung the plastic bag with the movie in it on a hook next to the door. "Okey, so she'll be here in about an hour, not that either of you will remember that."

Jess had found that his flatmates and co-owners seemed to have a limited short-term memory span. They could remember what they were supposed to publish and have artshows on for months ahead, but if he asked either of them to wake him up from a nap in 15 minutes he always woke up three hours later.