Rory.

Every time Jess sat down with his laptop…

Rory.

Jess closed his eyes and put his head in his hands. He's been holed up in Luke's old apartment over the diner for a full day now and it seemed smaller than usual.

Especially now that when Jess closed his eyes, he saw her. When he turned off the stereo, he heard her voice. Most of all, every time he sat down to write, she filled his thoughts, changing the way he thought about everything he wrote.

He wanted to leave.

He was afraid to see Rory again. If he saw her, he knew he would feel his heart break all over again.

But yet…

He had to see her. It drove him crazy.

So Jess had two choices: stay up in the cramped apartment, going crazy, or leave town.

But there was another option, the option Jess pushed out of his mind.

Go see her.

He had to do it. He grabbed his jacket and walked down into the empty diner, and out the door into the darkness.

Awake, unable to sleep, Rory curled up on her bed with a collection of Dorothy Parker poems. The dry feminist prose would be the best the best thing to get Jess off her mind.

But then…

A knock on the window, Rory's hand pushed back the curtain. And his face.

"Jess."

Jess said nothing. Rory opened her window, feeling oddly like a teenager again with all of this sneakiness.

Jess climbed through, barely making a sound. "What are you doing here Jess?"

Silence.

"Jess, don't do this."

"Do what?" Jess barely whispered.

"Don't do what you always do…don't stay silent, don't bury any ounce of feeling you may have inside," Rory hesitated. "Don't hurt me again."

"I won't. I won't ever again, Rory." Jess looked into Rory's blue eyes and knew that it was true. "It all went bad in the end, didn't it? I hate the way we ended."

"Yeah, me too."

There was no turning back in Jess's mind. He took a deep breath, "We were good together, Rory."

Rory looked at Jess apprehensively. His unpredictability scared her sometimes…but it was also one of her favorite things about him.

"I want to try again…I want to try us again," Jess looked at Rory with a certain nervousness she only saw in him when he was bearing his soul. Jess's mind raced, glad he had said it, but also wishing he never had.

She probably thought he was crazy.

Rory's face flooded with conflict. "This is so sudden."

"No time like the present."

"You're serious."

"As a heart attack."

Rory wanted to scream. She wanted to cry. She wanted to kiss Jess, but she also wanted to slap him. Through it all, only one answer came to mind. Only one answer had been written on her heart since that morning in the diner.

"Okay."