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Rory isn't sure what she regrets more: letting Lorelai talk her into wearing the flower crown, or not bringing a book out of what she assumed is somewhere high up in the rulebook for 'common courtesy while attending a wedding'. For what seems like the umpteenth time, she awkwardly fumbles with the thin skeleton of the makeshift crown - to her mother's credit, she successfully stripped down the originally far-more bushy version of it to a far-more Rory one, a single braided pattern with small white flowers. Babette, leaning uncomfortably into her chair to stare at Luke and Lorelai in a less-than-blatant manner, shifts her attention back to Rory due to the fidgeting and gives her a pointed look.
"You're gonna scare the thing right off your head, sugar," she grumbles, pulling Rory's hands back into her lap and giving them a tight squeeze before letting go, "We don't wanna ruin your darling hair-do, now, do we?"
With a small smile, Rory nods and tries not to reflexively move to fix her braids instead. Satisfied with this response, Babette returns to keenly watching the dopey smile on Luke's face as he watches Lorelai slowly scoop her salad into the ornamental creepers in front of her with a determined expression. Rory's watery smile widens with warmth at the sight; she’s already mentally preparing for tonight's long and winding rant from her mother about Luke's sudden boldness and preparing snack inventory for the very same session. Her eyes flicker to the right, as they have several times that evening, to Jess' hunched form as he listens to the ex-convict venting about something inane while staring intently at his dinner. Her jaw clenches in renewed discomfort, and she swallows and begins to inspect the remnants of her own food with a fork. Her brain is still helplessly zipping through every iteration of their possible interaction tonight, as it has been since she agreed to her mom's suggestion to come home for the wedding and escape a mind-numbing night of pub-crawling with strangers. Sure, a few hours of forced socialization with drunk boys was nothing she couldn't handle (plus, a book would go more easily unnoticed in such company, she laments), but she was itching for a patented Stars Hollow-shindig. She had realized at once, of course, that attending would mean seeing Jess, and the last time that had happened was not a memory she often allowed herself to dwell upon. Over the past year, she thinks, she has gotten far too good at the not-dwelling thing - at not reaching for the phone when she reads a particularly good joke in a book and her mind thinks Jess before her body can catch up to reality, at not letting her chest cave in when Paris asks who devised her stupidly genius pancakes-with-a-side-of-cereal recipe, at not seeing his beat-up car turn the curb over and over in her mind's eye while she stands paralyzed, still rooted helplessly to the ground.
She's not sure, however, if this has really helped her come to terms with the facts of the matter: he had told her he loved her. Nothing more, nothing less, with a face so naked with feeling that she couldn't help but remember his very same face at Sookie's wedding, somehow desperate and determined all at once after he announced that he was moving back. For weeks before he walked away from Kyle's party, she had wished, almost prayed, for that Jess to reappear and return to feeling like the same open book to her, his absolute certainty wrapping her in its safety, closing the yawning canyon opening between them. But a long time has passed since he made the declaration, and she has no answer for him still. In fact, she's not sure he even wanted an answer, or if that had simply been Jess' way of saying goodbye to make up for the one she hadn’t received, the long-awaited seal of their ever-elusive moment of closure. She shivers, both from the chill seeping into the night air and the thought of the unanswered I love you now ringing in her ears. While pulling her shawl over her shoulders, she almost elbows her goblet of punch into Babette's lap, but steadies it right as Miss Patty on the other side notices and lets out a loud shriek. With the music and fervor of the celebration, it goes mostly unnoticed, drawing a handful of chuckles and nothing more. Rory finds her face turning warm as she apologizes for the almost-mishap, shrinking back into her chair and pulling the shawl more tightly around herself. She throws a nervous look around to see who else noticed and sees Jess' rather pale face blinking at her once, twice, before he is jerking his gaze down to his now empty plate, and she recognizes the tension in his posture as shame rather than embarrassment. Her throat closes up for what feels like a good minute and she has to unclench her fists with some effort when she notices she is crimping the fabric.
Lorelai is at her side then, as she always seems to be when Rory feels herself coming apart, and she feels her shoulders relax a bit. From the corner of her eye, she sees Jess walking away from his seat, and she repeatedly tells herself he's just going for seconds before her mother's palm lightly pats her cheek and snaps her out of it. "Hey, kiddo, you might wanna loosen your grip a little, mommy's pretty good with the needle but I think ten finger-sized holes are gonna be a tad bit difficult to cover up, huh?"
"Won't happen again," Rory mumbles in reply, giving her a weak smile before looking towards Luke in hopes of avoiding the looming conversation. After a pause, she continues, knowing full well that they're both a little nervous tonight, "So it looks like you successfully scored a real date to a wedding who isn't me or some other piteous soul you're holding hostage! I'm glad."
Her mom doesn't miss a beat, accepting that they're not tackling the J-word issue head-on. Arching an eyebrow, she quips back, "Oh, don't worry, I've got a dagger stashed in my thigh holster if Luke gets any ideas of leaving unfashionably early."
Rory lets out a laugh in spite of herself and presses her lips into a tight smile before saying, "Happy looks good on you, mom."
Lorelai gives her a grateful look before reaching to tuck a tuft of hair behind her ear. "How are you holding up?"
Quite pathetically, really, I think I've set a new world record for how confused a person can be about their own feelings for someone who disappeared overnight, then returned to upheave any semblance of normalcy that had returned since then, and then disappeared once again. "Not too bad, really." When her mother tilts her head sadly on hearing this, she tries again, "Could be worse?"
"Aw, hon," Lorelai murmurs, folding her fingers around Rory's clammy hand, "You know, you really don't have to stay. Pick up some dessert and go on home, if you want; I think I recall you saying the DVD cabinet needs some reorganizing."
As tempting as that sounds, Rory doesn't think that would do much good, in fact, it would probably end in her sobbing on the couch rewatching An Affair to Remember and she can’t have Lorelai's night ruined by her childish misery. "No, that's okay. I think I will get some more food, though. Nothing like a sugar high to improve a party, right?"
She perks up at the last word, earning a pat on the back from Lorelai, which is equal parts sad and reassuring. “Alright, then. But send a pigeon over if you need me. For anything.”
Rory nods and quietly watches her mom make her way back to Luke’s side, suppressing a laugh at Luke as he starts violently when Lorelai places a hand on his arm in greeting. She grabs her plate and stands, taking a couple of breaths to steady herself and clear her head before heading towards the buffet. She is wary of her surroundings, and her mind automatically begins carving out a pro-con list around acknowledging Jess when she inevitably runs into him. This is still her town, but it is his mother’s wedding, after all. It seems to be an even playing field, unlike last time, when she had felt insulted to be caught off guard in her hometown and had all but marked it as her territory. She hasn’t really forgiven him for not reaching out to her for an entire year, really, but the resentment has slowly ebbed away. She has classes to keep up with, and her mom to turn to for comfort, and sometimes she allows herself to wonder if Jess has anything or anyone that keeps him afloat when he thinks about what happened. Clutching her plate a little tighter, she thinks back to all the times she wanted to call and yell at him for catching her so unawares at the firelight festival, for not bothering to send over even a single letter with some kind of apology for his abrupt departure before that, for not letting her in about his issues in school and what he was really upset about at the party. She thinks back to how every time his arm was around her she was sure they were going to figure it all out step by step, because that’s what relationships were about, right? She isn’t naive; she knows Jess never intended to hurt her this way, but she can’t help but blame him for all the things he could’ve done but didn’t do once he was gone. At the same time, she also knows the way it would’ve broken him to leave in the first place, and unlike her own, sometimes she can’t fathom an easy way to push his pain into a dark corner and pretend like it’s nothing.
She greets people on her way to the dessert counter, stopping to exchange a few pleasantries with some. The air is alive with tipsy laughter and old friends catching up like no time has passed at all, and the dull nausea in her throat soon disappears. I’ll just say hi. A hi can’t do much damage. Can it? No, probably not, not much anyway. She shushes her own brain by reminding herself that she is never going to be able to predict Jess, and maybe that was for the best right now. Her steps slow down as she spots his hair behind a bustle of guests, and they shuffle back to their tables as he turns his head towards her and slowly sets down a serving spoon half-full of baked custard. She realizes she has come to a complete halt some five feet in front of him, and that neither of them is moving. After a few excruciating seconds of this, he swallows once and then refills the spoon with custard and gestures for her plate. “I’m guessing you and your mom haven’t gotten a whiff of this yet, since there’s still a considerable amount left for the rest of us?”
Rory feels her knees begin to buckle underneath her in relief, but walks over to him anyhow, her mind a bright and blinking marquee of thank you, thank you, thank you. She holds out the plate, another hand moving to push her hair behind her ear in a movement she has repeated in front of Jess so many times it’s now simply a reflex. “Nope, but now that I’ve spotted it, I’m thinking you’d better salvage as much as you can before it’s wiped out.”
She narrows her eyes and tightly grips her plate with both hands as he finishes scooping two heapfuls onto it, and he raises his eyebrows in response, his free hand going up in mock-defeat. Disarming as ever, he musters up a smile and shrugs, “Nah, I wouldn’t wanna set off Luke’s psychic sugar sensor. He’ll be pestering me on the phone about eating healthier for weeks.”
Nodding softly, Rory decides to ignore the fact that Luke had given up on Jess’ eating habits quite early into his arrival at Stars Hollow, much like he had with the Gilmores. Jess nods back, his eyes darting around them with the controlled anxiousness he’s always had in crowds. She takes this chance to consider him properly, his slightly sunken face, his neatly combed hair that was so un-Jess it made her want to laugh out loud. His eyes come back to meet hers, and for the first time that night, she feels fear buzzing inside him, realizing how he’s been steering clear of her because he was afraid of the confrontation. He drops his eyes and picks his plate off the table - just so his hands have something to do, she suspects - tapping his fingers on its base in an offbeat rhythm. She crosses one shoe over the other and digs a chunky heel into the side of her foot to get a grip and stop swinging in place. Maybe she should’ve thought this through a little better before deciding it was a wise idea to dive in and hope for the best.
“Yale finally let go of you for the summer, then?” Jess ventures, and she’s visibly thankful for the initiative.
“Oh, yeah, I just got done with my last final today, actually. Whew.” She wipes her brow awkwardly before fiddling with her flowery headgear again, and his eyes shoot up to it.
“Nice touch,” he points at the crown as if he’s only now noticing it, “Suits the short hair.”
She laughs a hollow laugh and bites her lip to hold back from remarking upon his hair, which looks much longer now that it’s been combed down smoothly. She wonders what the process was like to get it to behave this well, but doesn’t ask. After a beat, she realizes she hasn’t responded and rushes to do so, “Um thank you, it was my mom’s idea, not mine.” He raises his eyebrows again, so she quickly adds, “The crown, I mean, not the hair. The bob was my idea, way back when, and it’s been a good friend so I keep it around, you know.”
Jess is watching her with such warmth then, she almost wishes she had the extent of her mother’s skill to ramble so that she could go on for another few minutes rather than cut herself off mid-mumble and blink helplessly at him. His eyes soften further when she opens and closes her mouth in a weak attempt to conjure something to expel the awful silence, and she can practically see him pull himself together as he leans lightly against the edge of the table and speaks again. “Well, I’m glad you decided to give it a fair chance. Must’ve done wonders for Bob’s confidence.”
She cracks a wide smile, recalling all of the Bob jokes her mom had cracked over the past year as her stomach begins to crawl with the easy familiarity that had always come with talking to Jess. She moves to his right to rest against the table so they are safely out of the way of any drunk and dessert-seeking guests, throwing him an amused look. “Ah! Is that what’s gotten your hair to settle down tonight? Confidence?”
He’s looking at her in a way that makes her heart feel like a claustrophobic bird flapping against its cage, and she waits for the sound of his laugh to send it over the edge, but it doesn’t come. Instead, Jess smiles, a small yet undeniable thing, and she feels the glassy tension in the air around them shatter, and the bird quietens at once.
“Something like that,” he says in a low tone, before shaking himself out of what looks like a dozen thoughts forming in his head at once (she knows the action all too well).
His own plate abandoned behind him, Jess points towards Rory’s custard, and she stares at it blankly for a few seconds before beginning to scoop spoonfuls into her mouth. He smiles at her again, somewhat sadder this time, and they say nothing as they turn to watch Kirk announce the newlyweds’ first dance, encouraging others to join in. Excitement flutters around the wedding party, and people flock to the area designated to be the dancefloor. Rory feels him nudge her elbow, gesturing towards their left where she now sees Luke leading Lorelai into what starts as a very flustered waltz. She laughs out loud, barely believing the sight she’s witnessing, something so incredulous and yet not the least bit out of place. She elbows Jess back, trying and failing to mask the amusement in her voice, “Luke looks like he’s been practising, you wouldn’t have something to do with that, now, would you?”
“I was up all night giving him lessons, you know, from one set of left feet to another. You caught me.” he laughs and returns to beaming at his uncle, with that twinkle in his eye that so easily flips her stomach inside-out. Rory decides in that second, to hell with it, they aren’t going to get anywhere if she doesn’t say something; he seems determined to not overstep and muck up again, and that is more than she had hoped for.
“Well, then,” she says before she swallows the words already forming in her throat, “Think you could stand to pass some of that knowledge onto someone else with absolutely no rhythm?”
She finishes the last spoon of her custard while trying to keep her hands from shaking too much, staring straight ahead before she turns to set her plate down and finally looks up expectantly at Jess. He tilts his head a little to the left, his eyebrows moving towards each other the way they do when he’s trying to figure out what she’s thinking, but she knows it’s never taken him very long to do exactly that. So he nods and wordlessly stands to face her before offering an open hand, looking as though he’s about to receive some punishment he has been anticipating for too long. Rory looks from his palm to his face, as if trying to telepathically deliver a message she can’t get herself to speak into the world, as if doing this could say please, I need to understand where we stand, I need to know where you’re coming from before I can even begin to think about my response to what you chased me down to tell me the last time I saw you. But his eyes are sombre with understanding, and as she finally takes his hand, she lets herself accept that what she shares with Jess is the closest thing to telepathy she has felt outside of her freakish friendship with her mother. His fingers hold hers gingerly as they walk to a sparse spot on the floor, and when he turns back to look at her she thinks his eyes look glazed over, but she can’t be sure it wasn’t just a trick of the light.
With a deep breath, Jess moves their already joined hands up to shoulder-level, adjusting them so that he’s now holding hers in a light grasp. She shrugs her shawl into an easier position, hoping he can’t feel the warmth under her skin when he places his other hand loosely on the middle of her back. His head is bent low this entire time, and she feels a bit cruel for inciting this awkward tangle of two not-very-graceful people already in an emotionally not-very-graceful position. She places her free hand on his upper arm, leftover instructions from Miss Patty now rising in the back of her mind. In that moment, she looks around and realizes they’re the only ones assuming a formal waltz position, as if straight out of a text-book, and she wonders if that’s where he learned it from in the first place. Jess then looks at her with questioning eyes and she realizes she’s smiling at the thought of Jess chanting instructions from a book at Luke and later repeating them to himself in the mirror once Luke falls asleep. She has to make an effort to keep from shuddering at the overwhelming (and familiar) urge to wrap him up and take him away from everything weighing on him. She squeezes his hand in reassurance and feels him caress her knuckle once in response.
“So, the box-step, then,” he breathes, failing to meet her eyes, “Do you want me to lead, or will you?”
She vividly remembers how terrible she had been at simply following someone’s lead, and gives a shaky laugh, “I suspect that would end with both of us in a hospital ward, and I don’t think the one here could handle all that excitement.”
Jess nods slightly and initiates the awkward cyclical movement slowly, Rory focusing on the imaginary and painful event of both of them falling into a heap to motivate herself to avoid making any mistakes. For a full minute or two, their full attention is focused on not tripping, and soon enough, they settle into a routine. The dancing was never going to be the difficult part, she knows, and she wishes there was an instruction book for what had always been the real challenge: saying the right words before they didn’t seem like enough anymore. She is suddenly very aware of how her heels put a dent in their small height difference, so much so that she can see his jaw clenching from up close. Now, she is suddenly hit with a gut-punching sadness, fresh in her mind as if it was from yesterday. The Stars Hollow High prom. Rather, for the two of them, the prom that never was. The dance that, in what had been their little shared bubble of experience back then, would’ve been their first one - the fairytale conclusion, some kind of sign that they had made it. She lowers her face so her hair falls to hide it, and her grip on his arm tightens as she tries to get a grip on the present, “I really wish we could’ve gone - to the prom, you know, I wish we could’ve done that before you had to go. I know we couldn’t have, but I guess I still - I just wish we could have.”
Jess’ feet falter mid-step midway through this sudden, inescapable confession, but he steadies himself before slowing the pace of their dancing. He grips her hand tighter, and she can feel his pulse under her thumb, rapid and alive. He barely meets her eyes before he tilts his face away and whispers, “Not as much as I do.”
For some reason, this makes her angry beyond understanding. She turns to look at him directly, gritting her teeth slightly. “Just as much as you do, Jess. You don’t have a monopoly over this hurt, okay? Everything you felt, it was happening to me too, still is.”
He shifts to look back at her, their feet almost motionless now. She knows if she stops to take in the utterly wrecked look on his face she’ll never be able to get this out, so she forces herself to go on. “I know you may want to think that this wasn’t as hard on me as it was on you, or-or that it was in any way lesser for me than it was for you, but that’s not how it works. I sat around wondering what I could’ve done differently, too. I sat around wishing that none of this was really happening and that you’d show up one day with some kind of explanation, with anything that could make it all make sense so that I would know what to do with myself. So it wasn’t easy for me either, Jess. Anything but. I said I wouldn’t pine, and I didn’t let myself do that, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t hurting.”
She swallows hard and tears her eyes away from him, shaking her head, both in disbelief at herself and in an effort to clear her vision from welling tears. She’s trying to be honest with him, but she can’t understand why it feels like the words are clawing their way out of her skin, why it’s so hard to say these things out loud, things she wishes she could’ve said to him months ago before he was gone again, driving away, again. Without looking up from the ground in her haze, she lets Jess tug her away from the crowd and around the corner mostly because she doesn’t want to turn into a blubbering idiot in front of the entire town anyway. She stumbles once or twice but one of his hands is on the small of her back and she can’t fall, even though she wishes the earth could swallow her up. She squeezes her eyes shut when they come to a stop, and lights dance around behind her eyelids before she lifts them to look at the grass under her feet. It takes her a second to realize Jess is saying something, and she swipes the back of one hand over her eyes quickly before she finally looks at him again. His hands are clenched tightly at his sides like he’s holding back from reaching out and enveloping her in a hug. He considers her expression carefully before he speaks again, now sure that she is listening.
“I’m sorry,” his voice is a little hoarse, but he’s looking at her so deliberately she knows it’s taking effort to continue doing so, “I swear, I didn’t mean- I never wanted to imply that this was any less of a- a total nightmare, for you, I never believed that, even if I sometimes wanted to, and I sure as hell have no right to think that way.”
Rory doesn’t know how to respond to that, but her lips still part to say something, anything, but Jess shakes his head and goes on, “I know that I wasn’t exactly a.. reliable person back then, and I know I definitely wasn’t an easy person to care about. I didn’t talk to you when I should have, even though you asked me to, and I wish that I had, god, you don’t know how much- and when I did speak up, it wasn’t even a real conversation, just another instance of me screwing up this whole communication thing, bailing after saying something that no one should spring on anyone, even if I didn’t want any kind of answer.”
He lets out a ragged breath and presses his lips into a tight line, still looking at her so intently that it hurts. He lifts his shoulders and slumps them once, almost in defeat. “It was selfish. Not just... Not just what I said, but the way I said it, and how I left afterwards, without thinking about how it was... for you.” He drops his eyes, “I- Rory, I meant it, I still do, but I never should’ve said it like that. I’m sorry.”
His voice cracks around her name, and she reaches for him out of pure muscle memory. Jess watches her close her palms around his, his eyes widening in utter surprise, and Rory feels an acute pain in her chest. She looks at the boy before her and sees the shame written all over his face, and she can hardly bear it. At that moment, all she wants to do is say it’s okay, it’s all done now. She wants to lie to him and talk him out of this guilt in any way that she can, take all of it away and toss it aside as if the past year had never happened at all. But she knows, better than most people, that that isn’t the way out. She knows that even with all of this out in the open, even with the pain fresh in her blood and the apology fresh off of his tongue, they have a lot left to trudge through. She knows that there’s no simple way to proceed from here and that it’ll still take mountains of effort for her to form the words I love you after her last failed attempt at telling him that she did. And most of all, she knows, without a doubt, that they can do it: seek out all of the loose ends, find a way to tie them up, reach back into the haphazard rubble of what was once theirs and work till their hands were aching and sore to build it up once again, if they both really wanted to. She knows her own answer even before she has to ask herself - it is hardly even a question, really - she is willing to try again, if he is willing to lend her a hand, to listen to her, to not hold anything back like he couldn’t help but do before.
Rory swallows and pulls his palms open, taking one of his with each of her own and squeezing tightly, inching a step forward. The music is flowing softly around the corner, and she thinks she spots Luke and her mom still swaying together towards the periphery of the dancefloor. Renewed with some strange hope, and slightly giddy on the lights pouring out from ahead of them, she ducks her head to find Jess' eyes and waits for him to look back at her, her heart now fluttering in her throat. When her voice comes, it is soft, almost fragile. "Hey? I understand. I do." And that much is true.
He blinks and meets her eyes, taking in her defiant smile, her quivering chin, her bright eyes, and he simply looks at her for what feels like a long minute. Then there is a small exhale, a smile widening across his face, and he is intertwining their fingers as easily as all those times before, pressing his forehead against hers gently. And she has his answer as well.