Disclaimer: Don't own the girls or this boy.
A/N: Don't know what I was on, probably large amounts of angst. Blame Amy. Jess' PoV, Post-Show, Lit implied. Read, enjoy, let me know what you think
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Jess does not start stories with once upon a time.
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He's tempted to. Really. Because the golden rule is 'write what you know' and that's what he wrote in his first book. He poured out his anger and his sadness and his failings, lined them up in Times New Roman, front size ten. So later, after walking away from her three times—after she walks away from him once—he thinks that he could write about them. They make a good story, he thinks. Classic with a hint of improbability, the sugar-sweet girl who falls for the reckless rebel, all set in a small town where everyone knows everyone and the odds are against them. They'd make a good story because she's college bound and he doesn't even get out of high school, just out of town. They make a good story because he learns from his mistakes and goes back. Because she turns him away.
They'd make a good story because ultimately, always, they fail, time and again, but they really love each other. Really.
And wasn't that just the kind of story people ate up?
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He doesn't write it.
Because she would read it—she reads everything, searches his name out in among the millions of spines—and then she would know. Everything.
She would know about how his stomach knotted whenever she was mad at him. She would know that he still remembers what chap stick she used and the feeling of poly-cotton blend beneath his hands, those impossibly bright afternoons on his uncle's couch. She would know that he called a dozen and a half times from California and how close he was to almost talking. She would know that he'd never said I love you before he'd shouted it across a street and that he'd never hated himself more than when he did.
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She asks him once, kinda drunk and kinda lonely, if he's ever going to write something based on his life and change all the names. "Just don't call me Lory. That would be tacky." Her voice is wobbly over bad cell phone reception and he has to tilt his head 45 degrees to catch her.
She doesn't seem to notice the white noise though and keeps going, "I was so terrible to you. When you came back. Everyone will probably think your character is all wounded and in need of compassion and I just hurt you more. Make sure you mention that you hurt me first."
There's a hiccup—maybe a sob—and then her voice tiny and barely audible, "Let them be happy."
He takes it as a blessing.
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He writes. It takes him seven months of late nights and early mornings and notes scrawled in the margins of the books she recommends whenever they talk. It turns into 180 pages, his story of a girl and a boy who met when they were too young and too stupid for it to ever work. Because of destiny and townies were against them. Because mothers and old boyfriends and the future were against them (because they were against them). He writes about how the only thing that really held them together as long as they managed was nothing but books and margins.
And in the end (after running and falling and stumbling back and being pushed away) the boy walks up the girl's drive—the book in his back pocket pulled out and pressed into her hand—and asks her to dinner and she says yes. The End.
He rewrites the ending seven times.
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Jess does not end stories with happily ever after.
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The End
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Feedback is Love