"Rory, stop!" Alessandra pleads, tugging her arm away from Rory's grasp.

They're just outside of the house now, and the girls bend over to catch their breath. Rory feels like her heart is going to explode. She can't tell if it's from a panic attack at seeing her ex-boyfriend halfway across the world or because she'd just run the most now than she had since the last time she'd run away from him. Either way, a cramp lets her know that her body hates her.

"I have an ache," Alessandra whines, putting a hand on her side. She looks up at Rory next to her and gives her a pained look.

"I'm," Rory breathes, coughing, "I'm so out of shape."

The girls exchange glances and giggle, and Rory's just glad that Alessandra isn't too upset to laugh with her.

"Will you tell me?" Alessandra tries, pushing off her own thighs to lift her torso. Rory frowns and does the same, hugging her sides.

"Alessandra," she begins, biting her lip. What was a tactful way to explain the Olympic run they'd just participated in?

She looks warily at the end of the street. For the first time, she becomes painstakingly aware that not only is Jess in Isola, but he's living next door to her. And, she realizes wide-eyed, that he is both unavoidable and might be heading home to clear his own head after such a chance meeting. At this, Rory grabs Alessandra's arm again and pulls her toward the front door.

"I'll tell you inside," Rory promises, taking a deep breath.

Alessandra looks troubled but she nods, pushing through into the house. This wasn't quite how she had thought the morning would go. Rory had looked like she'd seen a ghost, and she had been speaking so fast to the guy that Alessandra hadn't been able to understand much. The one thing she had caught on to was that he had known Rory's name, and that could either be good or bad for Alessandra. Based on the reaction Rory had had, she was leaning more on the bad and her heart sinks at this.

The girls are quiet as they enter the house. Alessandra grabs Rory's hand from in front of her and leads them back to the end of the house and stops outside of her bedroom.

She turns to Rory, watching as her face changes expressions rapidly in mere seconds. Alessandra bites her lip, something that Rory realizes she also does when she's conflicted, and looks at her door.

"Do you want to talk later?" She asks softly.

Rory could cry. She nods slowly, giving Alessandra a look that was a mixture of relief and gratefulness. Alessandra smiles and pats Rory's hand and opens the door to her room.

As Rory turns to go upstairs so she can mull things over, she hears Alessandra's door creak and she turns around.

"Lo conosci?" She asks, looking quizzically at Rory.

Rory nods slowly, glad that Alessandra hadn't asked about a more personal kind of knowing. Alessandra nods back, a thoughtful expression on her face. She smiles.

"Ciao, Rory," she calls softly.

Rory smiles and waves, turning quickly on her heel to run upstairs to her bedroom.

"Michel," Lorelai asks, dragging out his name as she pops up behind the desk next to him.

"Yes, Lorelai?" he returns boredly, double checking reservations in a thick binder.

"Did you forget to tell me something?" She asks, leaning on the desk.

"If by forget to tell you something you mean how much I hate our guests and their stupid clucking alarm clocks, then yes, I have," he drolls, eying her with his usual lack of enthusiasm.

"Michel, it's a rooster alarm," Lorelai points out.

"And?"

"Roosters don't cluck. They cockadoodledoo."

"Whatever," he spits, throwing down his pencil. "It is annoying and they do not wake up to the first or second alarm and I hate them!"

Lorelai looks at him with exasperation. He didn't look unlike a spoiled child, with the way he was whining, but that wasn't unusual for him either. She sighs; this isn't really why she'd come to talk to him.

"Okay, Michel, I will ask them to change it to a nice sheep baa," she consoles, patting him on the shoulder. He glares at her, but she takes it in stride and continues.

"Sookie told me Rory called," she continues, narrowing her eyes at him.

"Yes, she called," Michel admits, returning to his duties.

"Why did Sookie know before I knew?"

"You were busy with that scruffy man of yours," he waves dismissively. Lorelai crosses her arms over her chest.

"I'm never too busy to talk to my daughter!"

"She told me to give you the message."

"Which was?"

"That she called."

"You're impossible!" Lorelai throws up her hands. "Did you at least get her prepaid phone number?"

Michel hands over a sticky note with a phone number and a name scribbled on it. Lorelai narrows her eyes and gives Michel her best angry look.

"You did not ask me if she left a number when you started talking to me Lorelai," he says pointedly, anticipating her next verbal spew. She sighs, realizing she isn't winning this one, and turns to leave the room, pulling out her cell phone.

"What's this name?" She asks curiously, turning back around. Sometimes it was impossible trying to read his writing.

"Tess? Bess? I don't know," he shrugs dismissively.

Her eyes widen. "Jess?!" She exclaims, looking incredulously at Michel.

"Perhaps."

"Rory said this name? She said Jess?"

"I don't remember!"

"Gah! Useless!" Lorelai bellows and stalks out of the room to return Rory's call. Rory picks up on the second ring.

"Mom!" Rory yells into the other line.

"Rory!" Lorelai shrieks back.

"Jess!"

"Jess what!"

"He's here," Rory gasps into the phone.

"In Italy?!"

"He's my next door neighbor."

"..."

"Mom?"

"Sorry, I think I had an aneurism."

Jess flicks his pen in his fingers. His leg is tapping a mile a minute and he can't concentrate at all. What the hell was Rory doing here? In Italy? In Isola?

This had to be some cruel joke from the universe. He hadn't seen or heard from Rory in two years. They weren't on bad terms, per se, but the last time she'd been around, she'd used him to get back at her boyfriend for cheating on her.

Jess hadn't regretted that she'd come, and he had told her that. After all, she had always been that one person who, against his better convictions, could render him senseless. He wasn't proud of how quickly he moved when she beckoned, but he resigned himself to believing it would just be that way until another woman wowed him. But even so, there were more favorable conditions under which he could have seen her last.

He hasn't thought of her for at least a year. He had seen her on TV once, when she was following Obama's campaign. It made him happy to see her doing bigger things, but it was also hard. He had shared his first book with her, but she hadn't shared her first big journalism assignment with him.

Jess was in no way still in love with her; at least, that's what he told himself. At the very least he wasn't pining after her anymore, which was completely true. She was more of a sweet and tender memory than anything else, and he had finally become okay with that after her visit.

And yet here he is, distracted and unable to focus on his writing. All he can do is think about her and how fast she had run out of the coffee place. For all of the running he had done when they were younger, she seemed to be doing her fair share in their twenties.

He sips his coffee, grimacing when he realizes that it's grown cold.

He closes his laptop, annoyed, and crosses his arms over his chest, staring out the window. And who had been the girl she'd grabbed? He contemplates, itching for a cigarette.

He frowns and sighs, digging into his bookbag. He had been trying to quit.

He finds his pack and lighter and steps outside, leaving his items in the shop. He lights the cigarette and takes a long drag, slowly blowing out the smoke. An older woman passing by gives him a dirty look and he stares at her blankly, flicking ash from cigarette. She huffs and moves along. He chuckles and stares at the ground.

He thinks about Rory, which he's been doing the last hour. He notes that her hair hasn't changed much since he'd seen her, but that her body has been filling out more. More into her adult self. And then he thinks to the younger girl.

He furrows his eyebrows. It wasn't unusual that Rory would have friends there. He did too, contrary to what his neighbors thought. But he couldn't shake feeling like he knew the girl, and that feeling of knowing made it more troublesome simply because Rory was now involved.

It wasn't impossible that she just looked like somebody he knew. It wasn't as if the girls around him were drastically different in their features - olive skin, bright eyes, dark hair. The one thing that he couldn't shake was how green her eyes had been, something he didn't see very often around him.

Suddenly, his brain processes something that Rory had said. It hits him almost like lightning.

"...you can be in Milan if you want to, in the coffee shop ten minutes away from where I'm staying…"

He abandons his cigarette on the ground to go inside to grab his things. He stalks past his cigarette, still emitting smoke, determined to get home.

He knows why the girl looks so familiar.

AN: Sorry for the delay :) This chapter was originally a lot longer, but I decided to move a bunch of stuff to chapter seven. It was fun adding more perspectives into the story instead of just focusing on Rory. Reviews are appreciated!

P.S. I'm infatuated with my newest fanfiction, Taming Hemingway, which is an AU lining up with canon events in seasons 2/3. I'd love for you to check it out and let me know what you think :) I still adore this fanfiction, but that's quickly becoming my favourite.