Title: The Things a Book Can Do

Author: Celia Caws

Genre: romance, angst

Rating: there's some minor language use, but come on. PG 13, if you must.

A/N: Thanks to everyone that reviewed my last story. It was good to know I could draw a decent Rory. This one is from Jess's point of view, looking back on his first encounters with Rory and coming to Stars Hollow. Some of it is my own speculation about his dark past, but I left him as mysterious as I could. Please let me know what you think and consider this a pairing with Storybook Crimes, if not a sequel.

I've never felt so tired in my life. I've learned that nothing wears you out as much as dissappointment. Especially when your whole world hangs in the balance—your hopes are futile and you know it and you let yourself hope anyway. I thought when I came to that hole-in-the-ground town that I'd taught myself how not to let myself get attached to things. I read Wuthering Heights and The Great Gatsby—wonderful horror stories about what girls do to you, by the way—and I took every man gone to hell over broken promises or love as another proof: let yourself care, and you're in for it.

Not that I didn't know when I was a kid that I wasn't ever going to be Mr. Commited Marriage Material Guy. Lizzie…she went through hell after hell. I watched those guys go through her like it was nothing. When they left, my mom was wrecked—each and every time.

The reactions varied. Sometimes it was my fault, my bad attitude. Sometimes I didn't exist. I lived on Campbell's soup and rice krispies for a week after Ted Marshall walked out. I must've been ten or so. And I knew, every time I saw her punch a mirror in when she saw she gained ten pounds or stay in bed sobbing, that I would never be her. We were blood, we were nothing more. Being doomed, it didn't get passed down genetically. People can learn, change where they're going.

Not that I didn't get girls. There were lots of girls, just waiting to get used. They looked at me and they saw the guy that wouldn't be buying candy and flowers. They saw trouble, and they wanted to go slumming. I never blamed myself, not once, when a girl called me up at night telling me I was scum for breaking up. I never made promises. If they thought they could change me that was on them. I was seventeen, and I'd had as many girls, not one whose full name I could remember. I thought I was so smart, so numb, so safe. Then along comes Rory…

Lizzie was never much for goodbyes. She had me on that bus so fast, the same day she decided Stars Hollow, i.e. Pleasantville, USA, was my only shot at redemption, I was on my way. She wanted to walk me to the busstop, she said, as she applied too many coats of black mascara (why? It always came off, she cried so much) but she was supposed to go to a job interview. She really thought she has a shot. She was going to make it. We were both on our way up, not to worry. No, she'd be fine without me. Why did I need so much stuff? Just pack a few changes of clothes and a toothbrush, she yelled; slamming the door as she went, Luke has everything you need.

The really sad thing is she believed it.

So I threw in whatever was probably clean, my best c.d.'s, cigarettes and a toothbrush. I chainsmoked the last ten cigarettes I had in my opened pack on the bus. A girl across from me wearing a little skirt crossed her legs and stared at me. I don't remember her face, but she had some legs on her. You know, I'm not even goodlooking. But some girls, they wait around, they're heart set on finding a guy to break them. They look at me and they know I'm not a worth a damn, nothing temporary. So I looked at her legs and thought about making her number eighteen. Maybe if I ran out of cigarettes before Stars Hollow.

The first person I met, besides Luke who I did have some vague memories of from like four Christmases ago, (who looked pale just thinking about us rooming together) was Lorelai Gilmore. If I knew how much that woman responded to the 'awh shucks, ma'am, I'm just as good as can be' routine and that her opinion at some point would actually affect me, I might've made an effort. But I just got kicked out of my latest matress on the floor of Lizzie's latest two bedroom hellhole. It hadn't been that great, but I had my friends, my books, my city. Now I was in a place that had such a high demand for porcelain unicorns, I'd seen at least three selling nothing but just walking from the busstop to Luke's.

Now I was in a diner that smelled like union rings, surrounded by bumpkins and I've got Luke and this woman looking at me like they expect me to get down on my knees, so grateful to be in their happy little community. The sooner Luke got that there was nothing to save, the sooner he'd send me the hell back to the city. Lizzie'd be calm by then and in a year; I could escape and be on my own finally. Free from every blood relation that had DOOMED FOR UNHAPPINESS tattood across their foreheads.

But like I said, I hadn't counted on meeting Rory at dinner that night. One minute I was standing in Lorelai's living room, listening to all the polite chitchat I could stand and the next I noticed a picture of a girl so beautiful I did a double-take. Her eyes were so big and blue; they just shone right out of her face—her skin shined, her cheeks pink, the shyest smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. You could tell right off she didn't like being photographed, didn't know she was pretty. She definitely wasn't the kind of girl who'd want anything to do with me.

I've always liked the chase.

So I waited around, hands in pockets, trying to avoid having to discuss the finer points of lemons with the psychos in the kitchen, when I saw her. She was in her room, writing. I walked in, thinking she was bound to be a dissappointment. Everything always had been, after all. Girls that looked special weren't always special. Girls that looked innocent could be the wildest girls around. With that in mind, I went in, thinking I'd have something to do before I got my ass back in New York City.

But there were her bookshelves—all my favorite novels, authors I'd read like God's own voice, characters I'd pretended to be and wished so hard were real, I could taste it. Okay, so she was smart. She turned around in her chair, eyes just as big and blue as you could imagine. Pictures don't do her justice—nine-tenths of what makes Rory so…Rory, is in her expression. Have you ever met anybody that just kind of radiates goodness?

She was the first person I could remember in ages that smiled at me like she was happy to see me, like she was actually listening. She caught me off guard and I didn't like it.

Nobody's incorruptible. I knew this. She asked me if I read a lot, and I stiffened. As a rule, I don't like to tell anyone anything more than what they needed to know. "Not much," I lied, and barely heard her ask me if I wanted to borrow the book I not only read before, but had carried in my pocket for a good year. I shook my head. My body was buzzing. I had this insane urge to touch her hair.

"Well, if you change your mind…"

That was it. I looked at her, and felt whatever I was going to say catch me up. She looked at me…not just friendly. Social workers had given me friendly smiles. She looked like she believed I was—

Look, I don't know how to explain it, allright? If you ever met her, you'd know, and if you don't, you never will. There's only one of her. That much I knew, even then.

And I wanted her. More than anything though, I wanted to find out she wasn't so perfect. I wanted to prove she'd take my crap and get bored, have sex and dump me, like anybody else. I didn't want to follow this feeling. I didn't want to start believing in some goddamn fairy tale, like Lizzie. Just because someone looks like a princess doesn't mean she is one.

So I invited her out. I invited her to be bad, give it a try. She didn't bite. But she didn't give me the cold shoulder, either; she smiled and assured me I'd have a good time. I didn't have the heart to tell her there wasn't a place on earth where it was less likely.

She cocked her head to the side, her hair falling to the side—my chest contracted, my hands spasmodically clenched. A voice in my head was yelling for me to get the hell out while going was good, before I did something stupid and made her stop giving me that look.

"Don't I look trustworthy?" I thought of Daisy Buchannon in The Great Gatsby, with her voice that men fell in love with. I tried to focus on what happened to men that fell in love with her.

"Maybe," I said.

I followed her out, watching her. I felt myself take notice of things I never did: the bracelet on her wrist, the chipped pink nailpolish on her nails—how small her hands were. Beyond her, I could see Luke setting the table. She turned and her eyes got me again. Shit, what was wrong with me? Why did her eyes matter? Why did she? I need something to numb the senses. Seeing a beer in the fridge, I grabbed it: cold to the touch. I'd drink it fast, forget about this night…

Lorelai, her mother, followed me.

Fifteen minutes later, Luke and I were out of there. He was silent, so was I. I wondered how much Lorelai had told him and decided I didn't care. Not caring—it was my catch phrase, my whole way of life.

It just figured that Rory would twist me around and make me care the first day I ever met her. I presented her with the book I borrowed from her room that same night—hey, she offered, didn't she? I'd written in the margins, all my thoughts spilling out.

I wanted her to know things. After years of pretending I was a waste of government funding, I wanted her to know I wasn't stupid. We had things in common—I read, I loved the books she loved, and I could tell she loved them from the way she dogeared pages, from the finger prints permanently made on page ninety-one. I could see her, reading the same page I'd read, again and again because the words were worth savoring. Why did she dogear the same page I'd ripped out and taped to my wall at home? Because the people in the book didn't exist in real life? Because even the dumbest mistakes can be made to sound meaningful in prose?

Because we were the same?

I didn't know. All I knew was that I was going to be around awhile. As long as it took to show her she wouldn't be just another girl to me. As long as it took to show her that I could be good, I could be worth the trouble.

Years of telling myself I wasn't Lizzie—and there I stood on that street corner, and I believed all the lies she believed in. I believed we could make it this time.