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Rory’s eyebrows go up when she realises Jess is here. Tapping her mom and Paris on the shoulders to let them know she’s leaving, she goes over to where Jess is standing a little awkwardly off the side.
“I didn’t realise you were in town for a visit.”
He huffs and turns to face her. “I should have known you’d be here for this.”
“Oh yeah,” she agrees. “There was no way I was going to miss Babette and Miss Patty’s coup. I think Taylor is in still in the soda shop having a meltdown at tradition being bucked.”
“Radical times,” Jess says.
“So, really, why are you here?” she asks. The town’s events had never been Jess’ thing and she couldn’t imagine him attending the revamped bid-on-a-bachelor-with-a-basket event for fun.
He gives a long suffering sigh and points over to where his mom and sister are standing. “They signed me up for this thing.”
Rory stares at him for half a second before she starts laughing – loud enough for those around to look over at them. “You’re kidding, right?”
“I wish.”
“That still doesn’t explain why you’re here. Surely all you needed to do was put the phone down on your mom when she told you and ignore it.”
“Liz isn’t the problem. Doula is.”
Rory has never really paid much attention to Jess’ sister. She generally tends to ignore Liz’s presence as much as possible, still angry at how she’d brought Jess up. Not that Rory actually knows very much, however, she knows just enough that she is mad on Jess’ behalf. It isn’t even that Doula looks like Liz – she probably takes after Luke more than anyone in the Danes family, which is a blessing considering TJ is her father – but Rory isn’t great with kids. Her relationship with her own sister is testament enough to that. So she’s never really thought about Jess as an older brother either. Probably because he’d been twenty-two when Doula was born and not around anyway.
“You can’t ignore Doula?”
Jess shoots her an irritated glance. “Have you met my sister? She’s impossible to ignore. She’s the most manipulative little person I’ve ever met. And I remember what I was like as a kid.”
There’s a fondness in Jess’ voice that shows just how much he loves his sister. It comes as a bit of a shock to Rory, but then again, she’s realising just how unobservant she’s been around others for most of her adult life. She has no real interest in her own much younger half-sister, so she’s assumed it would be the same for Jess. It clearly isn’t and it makes her glad, which is another surprise. Then again, Jess hadn’t had a family for the longest time so the realisation that he cares about his little sister warms her heart.
“So you’re willing to have the good citizens of Stars Hollow bid on you for your little sister’s sake?”
“Basically,” he replies with a pained look.
“You’ve turned into a softie, Jess.”
He scowls at her before he smirks a little. “No one’s going to bid on me anyway. Half this town still refers to me as a punk. My legacy lives on.”
“Oh my sweet summer child,” she says pityingly. “Have you seen your arms lately? You’re going to be the most popular item on the menu.”
Patting his shoulder consolingly, she grins at his uneasy expression and walks back to where her mom and Paris are standing.
“Is that Jess?” Paris asks.
“Yep. Doula sighed him up for the auction and he’s such a sucker now that he agreed to come.”
Lorelai snorts. “Yeah, Luke told me about that. Doula cried down the phone at him for a week solid apparently. Then when he still wouldn’t budge, she skipped school, got the bus to Philadelphia, handcuffed herself to his desk at work and said she wouldn’t leave until he agreed to be auctioned off.”
“Unsurprisingly, he left those details out,” Rory says, grinning even wider. The tendency for both brother and sister to skip town on a bus is not lost on her.
Paris tilts her head and looks at him appraisingly. “Hmm,” she muses. “I only came today to observe the yokels in their natural habit.”
“Hey!” Lorelai interjects.
“But I might actually bid on him,” Paris continues ignoring Lorelai. “He’s no longer unbelievably cute but downright sexy.”
A sickening feeling develops in Rory’s stomach at her friend’s words. She recognises what it is straight away. It’s the same leaden nausea that she remembered from the Summer Madness Fayre all those years ago, when she’d been so excited at seeing Jess again and then spotted him making out with another girl.
Jealousy.
She’s never been the best at letting old flames go, but she had thought she’d improved. Only the other month she’d bought a copy of Paris Match that had Logan and his heiress wife, Odette, on the front. She’d felt nothing then other than a small pang of guilt at how she’d snuck around this woman’s back to sleep with Logan. But there had been no feeling of longing for Logan himself.
Yet now she has to swallow down the instinctive shout of no that she wants to release. Paris isn’t allowed to bid for him. And as illogical as the idea is she cannot help but think that Jess is hers.
“Does he still worship at the altar of the Beats?” Paris asks her. “That would dampen how high I’m willing to go for him.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Rory says unusually coldly. “We haven’t discussed Kerouac recently.”
She steadily ignores the assessing look that her mom gives her. She’s aware how silly this is. She and Jess were an item years ago and for six months. He’s the one boyfriend that she never slept with and she has no claims on him now. If Paris wants to hook up with him, even date him, then it’s not as if she can veto it.
Yet, she wants to.
Looking around the people gathered waiting for the bachelor auction to start, Rory realises just how many young, attractive people there are. She’s already teased Jess about how popular he’ll be but that had been abstract then. A recognition of how hot Jess is. He always has been. Now, as Paris’ words echo around her head, making her angry at how visceral her jealous reaction is, she mentally appraises how much money she has in her purse.
No one is going to win Jess other than her.
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Jess can’t believe that he’s been roped into this crackpot town event. Somehow, Babette and Miss Patty have managed to take what is already a fairly ropey town event where men bid on a woman’s basket and made it even sketchier. And yet, here he is, about to be auctioned off like a chump.
The reason why he’s in this position bounces over; looking far chirper than she should.
“Kasey told Melissa that her older sister has come especially to bid for you.”
“What?” Jess asks.
He can feel a headache developing at the back of his skull. The slow thud making his brain feel befuddled and his eyes ache. It’s the one that usually comes on when he spends too much time around his mom or in Stars Hollow. It usually drives him back into his car and back down to Philadelphia as quickly as he can manage.
“How does she even know who I am?” he asks.
“Oh, all my friends have seen your pictures around the house and one day Ashley was picking Kasey up and she totally thought you were hot. So when I bragged about signing you up, Kasey told her and Ashely said that she wanted to win you.”
“Ugh! Are you trying to set me up?” Jess says eyeing Doula with revulsion.
“Of course!” she freely admits. “It’s been ages since you last dated. I had high hopes for Tessa, too. She was great and your kids would have been adorable.”
Jess can only stare at his little sister with horrified fascination. Although she is right. Tessa had been great, but then she’d gotten an amazing job opportunity in Seattle. They’d tried long distance for a while, but it hadn’t worked so they’d split amicably.
“I want to be an aunt. Amelia’s an aunt and she won’t stop boasting about it. It’s not fair. You’re older than her stupid brother. I should’ve been an aunt before her.”
“Not going to happen,” he says emphatically, keen to stop her train of thought before she’s turned this event into his wedding.
Doula brushes it off of course. For someone who takes after Luke more than Liz, it’s amazing just how much she smiles. And she uses that smile to good effect. He should know, it’s manipulated him more times than he’d like to count.
“Oooh!” she squeals with all the excitement only a tween can summon. “Rory’s here!”
Jess rolls his eyes. “Give it up, Doula. Rory and I were over before you were even born.”
Ever since Doula had stumbled across an old picture in the Gilmore house of him and Rory as teenagers, she’s been obsessed with them. Luckily, she’s had the sense to never mention it to Rory, but he wouldn’t put it past his bold sister to say something at some point. Unfortunately, she has no shame when it comes to him and he gets a text informing him every time Rory is back in Stars Hollow as if that will somehow induce him to come up.
Doula looks around in excitement. “I wonder if there will be a bidding war over you. I hope there will be!”
“Why?”
“Because then Tori can go suck it. Her brother, Brad, is up for auction, too, and Tori insists that he will go for the most money. But everyone knows you’re the hottest big brother. A bidding war will mean I get to laugh at Tori on Monday.”
Jess closes his eyes in physical pain. Usually, the banging of the gavel would mean an end to the anguish, but he can’t even make a sharp exit. He’s stuck in this hell.
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Rory could kill Babette and Miss Patty. If they’d auctioned off Jess at the beginning then she’s sure she would be able to resist bidding on him. But they don’t. They recognise that he’s the hottest guy up for auction and so save him for last. It’s only fair really, anyone following Jess is never going to get decent bids.
Any hope that everyone would be broke by the end and so not bid also disappears as soon as he reluctantly climbs up the gazebo steps.
“And last, but definitely not least, we have Stars Hollow’s very own Holden Caulfield, Jess Mariano,” Miss Patty all but croons at the crowd. “This bad boy is all grown up now and is a novelist who runs a successful publishing business down in Philadelphia. Yet, our reformed hoodlum still comes back home to visit his family. And just when you think he couldn’t get any more perfect, ladies, he also comes with arms like these.”
Miss Patty squeezes Jess’ biceps and he looks like he’s going to take the megaphone and bash her over the head with it.
“So if Miss Patty is found dead tonight, how long will it take for the police to arrest Jess?” her mom muses.
Paris snorts but before anyone can reply, bidding has commenced.
A determined looking redhead raises her hands and calls out, “Twenty dollars.”
Without thinking, Rory immediately counters, “Thirty!”
“Forty,” Paris jumps in.
“Fifty,” Rory says shooting Paris a venomous stare that has her friend recoiling and then looking at her with the kind of interested gleam in her eye that should have Rory heading back to New York. However, there’s no time for her to analyse just what she’s doing as the redhead isn’t waiting around.
Rory refuses to look at either her mom or Paris as she continues to face off against the redhead for Jess. She definitely does not look towards him because she’s sure he’s looking at her as if she’s lost her mind. Which is a possibility.
As the bidding reaches towards two hundred dollars, the murmurs of the crowd get louder and Rory swears as the redhead goes to two hundred and ten because she’s running out of money.
“What have you both got in your wallets?” she hisses out the side of her mouth.
“You want us to pool our money?” her mom asks incredulously.
“That redhead looks like she’s going to eat Jess for lunch.”
“Yeah, that’s what’s concerning me here,” Lorelai says dryly.
However, Paris hasn’t waited for the Gilmore exchange to end, she’s counted her money and also grabbed Lorelai’s wallet, too. “How much you got, Rory?”
“Two hundred and thirty.”
“Okay, so between us we have one thousand and eight dollars.”
“Perfect,” Rory says snatching the bills from Paris hands, waves them into the air and shouts, “One thousand and eight dollars.”
There’s a shocked silence from the crowd and Lorelai says, “Well, that was rational.”
“Going once,” Miss Patty says, banging her gavel. “Going twice. Anyone want to up Rory’s bid?”
Rory looks smugly towards the redhead, who keeps quiet, clearly not willing or able to bid that much on an afternoon date with Jess.
“Going three times,” Miss Patty says before banging the gavel for the last time. “Jess is sold to Rory, which is a very interesting development.”
It’s only then that Rory allows herself to meet Jess’ gaze. He’s looking at her with an eyebrow quirked as if to ask if she’s lost her mind. Her cheeks redden as her adrenalin slips away and she realises exactly what this looks like.
“Erm…thanks,” she says in a subdued voice to her mom and Paris.
Paris looks like she wants to study Rory under a microscope. “You know, you could have said that you planned on bidding for him. I wouldn’t have made a bid if I’d known.”
“I didn’t…I…,” she flounders. “I didn’t plan that, okay.”
“No kidding,” her mom says, clearly amused. “Better go and collect your boy-toy.”
Clutching the bills in her hand, Rory is aware of just how much attention she’s getting as she walks up to the gazebo. The realisation that she can still feel jealous over Jess has knocked her for six. It also puts their interactions over the last couple of months in perspective. She’s been concentrating so hard on writing her book and keeping her personal life quiet that she hasn’t realised just how they’ve fallen back into old habits. He’s the one she calls when she hits a snag with writing, despite the fact that he’s not her editor. She has also taken to texting him on a regular basis about nothing in particular, just things she’s found funny, stupid shows she’s watching or books that she’s really liked. He’s up there with her mom, Lane and Paris in her recent contacts and has been since the wedding in November.
Her reanimated feelings for him seems to have snuck up on her without her noticing until today and she’s not sure how to deal with them.
“Never a dull minute with you two, doll,” Babette says as she hands over the money. “Just like when you were teenagers.”
Rory murmurs something non-committal in response.
“He’s all yours,” Miss Patty says waggling her eyebrows. “Make sure you get your money’s worth.”
She wants nothing more than the ground to open up and swallow her. She looks everywhere but at Jess’ face. She’s made a complete fool out of herself. In front of him. She can’t even imagine what he must be thinking.
“Where to?” Jess asks clearly amused.
“Oh God, I don’t know. Let’s just get out of here.”
“Sure thing,” he says and she follows behind him, her head ducked
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Jess leads her to the bridge. It’s always been the place he enjoys most in Stars Hollow. Plus, the fact that she’s bid an insane amount on him means the little wooden bridge seems like the perfect parallel to the last auction he’d attended in this tiny town.
Rory’s quiet behind him. She’s had that rabbit in the headlights look that she specialises in when she acts impulsively. He fully believes that she had no intention on actually bidding for him before the auction started and he’s curious to find out what changed. But it’s Rory. If you push her too fast too quick then she ends up fleeing in the opposite direction.
“Here?” she asks when she finally looks up from the ground long enough to see where they are.
“Why not?” he asks, putting the basket down. “Feels like a tradition now.”
He sits down and dangles his feet over the wooden ledge and she follows suit. Silence falls between them again, but he does nothing to challenge it. She’ll talk when she’s sorted out whatever she’s no doubt over analysing in her head. Besides, a lack of conversation has never bothered him.
“God!” she finally says minutes later, bringing her hands up to cover her face. “What was I thinking?”
“Don’t know. You didn’t have to pay over a thousand dollars to spend the afternoon with me, though. Pretty sure we’ve done this enough times without money involved for it to happen again. Although, no doubt Doula’s really pleased. You’re possibly her favourite person at the moment.”
Her hands drop then and she finally looks at him. Her face is flushed with embarrassment but he can’t help but think it suits her. She’s looks soft and warm and so pretty. He mentally shakes his head. Spending time in this town has clearly gotten to him and it’s a road that he really doesn’t need to go down again.
Although a voice in his head reminds him that she did just make a ridiculous bid on him, so perhaps he’s not the only one affected.
“What? Why would I be your sister’s favourite person?”
“Well, it seems I’ve given her the bragging rights at school on Monday. Another girl had a brother in the auction and your bid kind of blew his winning bid out of the water.”
The panicked look disappears of her face and she smiles instead. He’s happy to see it. He’s not too fond of freaked out Rory.
“At least someone will be pleased. My mom thinks I’ve lost my mind and Paris looks like she wants to use her therapist qualifications on me. Plus, I think that redhead might murder me in my sleep.”
“Ah Ashley.”
“You know her?”
“Not personally. I believe she’s an older sister to one of Doula’s friends and planned on winning me.”
“This conversation is bringing back some horrible Middle School flashbacks.”
“I know more about the Stars Hollow Middle School politics than I never knew about my own Middle Schools.”
“Doula?”
“Yeah,” he replies with a grimace.
“It’s sweet that you came up here for her.”
“I didn’t have much choice.”
She grins then. “Yeah, Mom told me about her trip to Philly.”
“I should have capitulated on the phone. I never thought she’d pull a stunt like that.”
“She is your sister.”
He lets out a bark of laughter at that. “Oh yeah. Good job she actually doesn’t mind school or Liz would be two for two on kids who never graduated.”
Rory knocks his shoulder playfully with her own. “Never held you back.”
“Meeting Matt and Chris was a lucky break.”
“You’d have made it anyway,” she says, looking at him with such faith in her blue eyes.
It has been a while since Jess has been on the receiving end of that look, and he’s forgotten how good it makes him feel. No one has ever really had his back as unconditionally as Rory, certainly not back when he was punk kid making all the wrong decisions. His first instinct is still to brush her comment aside. He has never quite known what to do with her belief in him, especially not when he had first encountered it as a teenager when he had been so low on self-esteem.
But he’s older now and more confident at his place in the world. Content and happy with the life he’s built himself so he just says, “Thanks.”
She gives him on her big smiles. The one that has always made his heart beat a little faster and for once he doesn’t ignore his reaction, curious as to just where this is going.
“So I have it on good authority that this basket was not packed by Liz or a Gilmore so there’s very little chance of food poisoning or scary leftovers out of a fridge.”
Giggling at his pointed remark regarding the last time they’d had basket between them, Rory opens it and peeks inside. Her laughter increases when she pulls out a twinkie.
“I take it Doula packed it.”
“Oh yeah,” he said. “I’m sure everything in there comes in a packet and has sugar of some kind. She’s the bane of Luke’s life, although I’m pretty sure Lorelai aides and abets her.”
Rory’s still riffling through the basket, eyes shining at all the junk Doula has no doubt packed. “She’s a girl after my own heart,” she says, coming out with a packet of oreos and mallomars.
As usual, the mood between them begins to mellow now she’s relaxed. They’ve never had a problem just talking to each other. And sitting as they are is like taking a look back at the past; how things were between them when they were good. Yet, it’s completely different at the same time. For a start, Jess no longer feels as if he’s living on borrowed time. That everything is going to go pear shaped at any moment because that’s how it always went down for him. As they sit with Rory demolishing the basket of junk food and discussing books, he begins to wonder if something is still there between them. He hasn’t been pining away for Rory. After her disastrous trip down for Truncheon’s opening night, he’d put all thought of her romantically aside. She had moved on and it had been time that he did the same. However, none of his relationships have stuck for one reason or another and maybe it’s because everything was leading to this moment. Back to Rory somehow.
She looks at him quizzically. “Have you heard anything I’ve just said about the book I’m reading on the Silk Road?”
Jess looks at her sheepishly. “Honestly, no. It’s sounds fascinating though if you want to start again. I keep trying to introduce a non-fiction section at Truncheon but both Matt and Chris keep voting me down.”
“They’re idiots then,” she says with a soft smile. “They should trust your instincts when it comes to literature. I’ve never met anyone with better ones.”
There it is again, the unshakeable faith she has in him. And he has in her if he’s honest with himself. He knows things have been bumpy for Rory recently. That she hasn’t felt as if she’s been fulfilling her potential and has fallen short of the plans she made for herself as a teenager, but if anyone can bounce back from a set down it’s her.
“Do you ever wonder what might have been?” he asks, putting caution of the wind.
“What might have been about what?”
“Us.”
Rory freezes for a moment with a red vine halfway to her mouth. It would be funny if his heart wasn’t beating so fast. However, her answer matters and this afternoon has kind of reemphasised that to him.
She puts the red vine down, looks at him, and says sincerely, “Yeah, I wonder about it.”
“Just wonder or…?” he prods.
“I think today is kind of a giveaway. I’m not sure I actively knew there was anything there. Not until Paris was talking about you being sexy and bidding on you. And that redhead. But then I suddenly couldn’t escape the feeling. That no one else should win you. It should be me. It was always meant to be me.”
Her eyes remain locked on his and there’s a pleading in them for him to reciprocate. For her not to have just blurted this all out and for it to mean nothing. It reminds him of another time on this bridge, early in the morning when she’d been crying and scared of her feelings. He had almost bailed then. Afraid of just what a relationship with Rory Gilmore would mean. Teenage Jess hadn’t been ready for that. He hadn’t been able to be the kind of boy she wanted then. But he had wanted to be.
Now, he has no such issues. He’s spent a decade in a healthy place and had a couple of serious relationships. He has nothing to prove to himself or this town.
His hand reaches out and grasps her hand where it rests listlessly on the wood. “I think it was always meant to be you, too.”
A blinding smile breaks out on her face and he’s forgotten just how breath-taking Rory could be when she smiles that brightly. She scoots closer to him, pulling her hand out his and leaning up to twist it in his hair and tug him down to her. He cups her jaw and presses his lips against hers. They’re as soft as he remembered and inspire the same drugging sense of passion they always have. Angling his head a little, he deepens the kiss, licking along the seam of her lips and turning it wet and dirty when she opens up.
She’s straddling his lap by the time they pull away from each other. His presses his forehead against hers and says, “If we get any more carried away, Taylor might kick us out of town for indecency.”
“It’d be worth it.”
“C’mon,” he says, depositing her off his lap and rising to his feet. “We have more traditions to uphold.”
She gives him a confused look.
“Pizza and books.”
She grins then as she stands. “If I get into a fight about you with my mom later, then I’m blaming you for trying to recreate this day so faithfully.”
Reaching out to hold her hand, he pulls her against him, kisses her softy and says, “We’re not following everything correctly.”
“Thank goodness,” she says, swinging their hands a little and looking happier than he’s seen her in a while.