About six weeks into his latest shot at being a boyfriend, Lindsay gets in a car accident. She calls him from the ER, babbling a little and clearly in pain, not making a whole lot of sense. Jess experiences what he's sure must be a miniature heart attack before he convinces her to put a nurse on the line instead, and is informed of her condition by someone with an extremely comforting, bullshit-free bedside manner.

"A concussion," Jess says, on speaker with Matt as he runs as many red lights as he dares on his way to the hospital. "Two 'lacerations' on her face, but they don't need stitches so I'm assuming they're not that serious - and she sprained her wrist. But nothing life threatening, and they're not keeping her overnight, provided she goes home with somebody who will stay with her."

"Jesus," Matthew says, blowing out a tense breath that fills the line briefly with static. "Well. Guess I'm cancelling my date tonight."

Jess barks out a laugh. "Don't try and cheer me up."

"What do you mean? She's obviously going to want me there in her time of need," Matt continues, "it's the least I can do. Do you think she'll want a massage?"

"Fuck you," Jess says, laughing a little despite himself. "Listen, can you tell Chris? And don't let it spread around the office yet."

"Of course," Matt replies, instantly letting the humor drop. He is, despite his tendency of acting like a vulgar asshole, a stand up guy, and excellent in a crisis. Chris would've just freaked out and made Jess feel worse, if he'd called him instead. "I'll cover for her with Martina today."

"I don't know if she has anything important on her schedule this week," Jess says, "she probably had her planner with her in the car - fuck. Maybe check her computer? I do know she was going to call Abigail King to finalize the flights for her tour, somebody needs to do that. And check her email, too, she kept saying she was waiting to hear back on the background check for the new hire - "

"Jess, man," Matt interrupts, "I got it. We'll take care of it. Get off the phone and drive."

Jess squeezes the steering wheel, flexing his arms and then releasing the tension slowly, letting the anxiety swell and then release, like a wave breaking against the shore. It helps, a little. "Yeah, okay."

"Text us when you see her. And call her parents," Matt adds. "Wait - does she get along with her parents?"

"Eh," Jess says.

"You should wait to let her do it, then," Matt says. "Call your sister instead."

"Better idea," Jess says.

Lindsay seems more like herself when Jess arrives, sitting up in a hospital bed, her eye makeup smudged from tears but otherwise dry-eyed. Her face crumples a little when she sees him in the doorway, but beyond a few sniffles and an extra-clingy hug, she doesn't lose her composure. Atta girl, Jess thinks.

"The guy in the other car, the doctor told me he was okay too," Lindsay tells him, "he lost control as we were turning and slammed right into me. Thank God nobody was sitting in the passenger seat."

"He just - hit you? How do you just lose control like that, out of nowhere?"

"The cop who was in the ambulance with me said it looked like something was wrong with his truck," Lindsay explains, and Jess has to sit down for a second, feeling a little lightheaded. Ambulance. Jesus. "It was right as I was getting off I-76, the Washington Street exit. I was in the left hand turning lane, and he was right next to me in the right hand one, making the same turn. I didn't even have time to react; he hit the side of my car and sort of pushed me sideways - I slammed right into the street light right there on the edge of the sidewalk. There wasn't anybody standing there, either - God, I don't know what I would've done if I'd hurt somebody."

"You didn't," Jess says, reaching up to smooth her hair away from her cheek. The cuts on her face are ugly and swollen, but they don't look very deep. She's got smaller cuts on her hands too, but they're more like scratches. The driver's side window shattered on impact, the nurse had told him on the phone. She was lucky she'd been wearing long sleeves - just lucky all around, really. It could've been much worse. "Did they give you something for pain?"

"Yeah, but just ibuprofen," Lindsay says with a grimace. Her wrist is already encased in a brace, and she's holding it carefully against her chest, wincing every time she has to move it. "He said I should just start with that, and if it really gets to be too much, my GP can write me a prescription for something else. But I got the impression he didn't think I needed it."

"Bullshit," Jess mutters. He wants to keep touching her, has this urge to wrap his arms around her and just smother her until his heart stops beating so fast, but she looks so banged up and tired he's afraid he'll just hurt her worse. "Gimme twenty minutes, I've got like eight different people in my phone I can call. A hundred bucks and you're set."

Lindsay sputters a little as she laughs. "Keep your voice down, tough guy, there's like three cops standing right outside."

"Whatever, I bet they've got twice as many in their phones," Jess says, reaching up to touch her face again, unable to stop himself. She leans into his palm, her eyes fluttering shut, and gives a shuddery sigh. "What do you need me to do? Who should I call first?"

"Nobody," Lindsay says. She frowns. "Wait - did you call work?"

"Yeah, Matt's taking care of everything. Don't worry."

"I'm supposed to call Abigail King! And I had like a million emails to return - "

"Quit it," Jess says, squeezing her uninjured hand. "It's okay, someone will do it. Do you need me to call your parents?"

Lindsay pauses, thinking about it for a long moment. "No. My mom will just freak out on you. I'll call them in a few days."

"Okay," Jess says, taking it at face value. "What do you need from your apartment? Give me a list and I can have Matt or Chris stop by and meet us at my place."

"Oh God, you don't have to go to any trouble for me," Lindsay says plaintively, "it's enough to just let me stay with you, Jess, really - "

"Quit it," Jess says again, and leans in for a kiss. Lindsay sighs a little against his mouth, a little puff of air, and there's the faintly metallic taste of blood from where she'd bitten through her lip. His heart twists as he pulls away. "You'll be doing me a favor. I'll be up all night pacing otherwise."

"Sorry I scared you," she says softly.

"It wasn't your fault."

"I'm still sorry," she says, "if for no other reason than the fact that Peanut is probably going to piss on everything you own in the next three days."

Jess snorts. "And just last week you were bragging about how well he did in those obedience classes you took him to when he was a puppy."

"He pees when he's stressed," Lindsay explains apologetically. "Also when he's in new places. Like until he gets used to it - think of it as him claiming his new territory, maybe."

"Oh, can't wait," Jess says.

They've been taking it slow, which is a new concept for Jess. He's spent the night at her place a few times, here and there, when he was too drunk to drive home, but for the most part it's all been very high school: holding hands at lunch, going out to the movies on Fridays, hello and goodbye kisses in the hallways. Sex doesn't feel like an urgent thing they need to rush into - rather it feels more like a pleasant inevitability, a thing for Jess to feel quietly excited about. When he thinks about it - about her - it's with a sense of warm anticipation, instead of the frenzied impatience he's used to.

The closest they came was after a book launch in Brooklyn, late at night on the train back into Manhattan. She'd been wearing this amazing dress, her legs and shoulders bare, her hair loose around her shoulders. It was growing long, and the ends of it would brush against his forearm as she leaned against his shoulder in the seat. They missed their stop the first time because they could barely keep their hands off each other - they had to switch trains and backtrack, and then they missed it again because Lindsay had decided that her seat was no good, she'd rather sit on his lap, thank you very much, and Jess' entire brain skipped and ran off the track, not to be heard from again until an hour later when they finally stumbled back to their hotel, punch-drunk and half-drenched from the rainstorm that caught up to them halfway down 55th Street. By the time they got up to their room, the mood was gone - instead, they stayed up all night watching shitty action movies on HBO and working their way through a bag of Jolly Ranchers Lindsay bought from the desk in the lobby. To this day, it's still the best date Jess has ever had.

Still, he isn't half as excited about having sex with her as he is about sleeping in the same bed with her, which is probably a sign of extremely sappy feelings also - the few times they've shared a bed, it hit him somewhere deep to roll over and see her lying there, curled around a pillow or reaching out sleepily to take his hand. When he catches himself spacing out, thinking about it - he's not thinking about her naked, he's thinking about what her pajamas look like. He pictures her brushing her teeth at his bathroom sink, sitting next to him with her phone as he reads at night - bumming around his apartment on Sunday mornings in her sweatpants. It's all terribly mushy; Jess is sort of embarrassed of himself, honestly.

This is not exactly what he'd pictured; Lindsay isn't allowed to sleep through the night, and Jess feels like a piece of shit shaking her awake every two hours. By the time the sun breaks through the smog, he's exhausted and she's grumpy, and Peanut has indeed pissed all over the apartment.

She's obviously still in pain, wincing every time the sunlight hits her face, and when Peanut barks suddenly at a bird that's landed on the windowsill, she makes an audible sound of distress, curling into herself at the kitchen table. Jess bullies her back into bed, makes her take more Advil and calls his sister.

"Jesus, is she okay?" Lily asks, sounding alarmed and half-asleep still.

"Just a concussion," Jess says, trying to keep his voice down. The balcony off the living room is the reason his apartment is a tad overpriced, but it's worth it in the winter, not to have to walk all the way downstairs to smoke. Peanut's curled up against his feet, unbothered by the cigarette smoke, but Jess still tries to exhale into the wind, his head angled in the opposite direction. "I was more freaked out than she was, I think. She sprained her wrist, too, and they wouldn't give her any actual pain meds, so she's pretty miserable right now."

"Jesus," Lily says again. "That's so scary. Do you remember the wreck Dad got into that one time, when you were living with us?"

"Sort of," Jess says. He frowns, trying to remember. He'd been sort of a shithead when he lived in California - scorched and bruised from Stars Hollow, unused to people who actually wanted him around, it'd taken him almost a year to allow himself to settle into it. "Not when he totaled the Explorer...?"

"No, that was later," Lily says, "when he got his license taken away."

"Right," Jess says. Jimmy is a notoriously reckless driver. Jess is honestly surprised the government gave him back a license at all. "He didn't get hurt, did he?"

"No, but the cops called us right after it happened, and we didn't know if he was okay until we got to the hospital," Lily says. "You missed that part - you were out with your friends, or something. You met us at the ER."

Jess remembers it vaguely. He'd been dating this older girl at the time - mostly because she had a car, and a liberal definition of "third base" - not to mention good hookups and plenty of cash to spare. He'd been pretty fucked up when he got to the hospital, in more than one sense of the phrase. "I remember him bitching about the car the whole time. Your mom was sitting there crying, and he wouldn't shut up about his stupid bumper."

"It's his way of deflecting," Lily says fondly. She always sounds fond when she talks about their dad - all of the things that used to hurt Jess' feelings seem like fun quirks to her, somehow. "How's Lindsay's, by the way?"

"Totaled," Jess says. "Honestly that's probably part of why she's so upset. She's had that shitty thing for almost ten years."

"Oh yeah - you kept trying to convince her to get a new one, right? The alignment was off or something."

"Everything was off," Jess says. The A/C didn't work, the bumper was rusted through. There were three different sensors that needed replacing, and the fuel efficiency was so low Jess had been convinced there was something wrong with her engine. She'd been refusing to take it in to a mechanic for weeks, with the air of someone putting off a bad answer they didn't want to hear. "She loved it, though. She bought it right after her divorce - you know how it is."

"Yeah," Lily says sadly. "Cars are important. They carry us place to place."

"That's a nice way of putting it."

"But now you can help her find a new one," Lily says cheerfully. "Car shopping's fun."

"I was planning on letting her mourn for a little bit first," Jess says. He already feels calmer, having talked to Lily. The low-grade panic that had sort of wedged its way into the space behind his throat now feels more like exhaustion. "I'll tell her you said 'hi.'"

"Yeah, and also tell her that Mom and I are gonna send her some tea," Lily insists. "We found this shop that carries a bunch of different herbal blends and there's like two or three of them that have really been helping her with the nausea and headaches and stuff."

Jess crushes his cigarette in the ashtray, reaching down to scratch at Peanut's ears absently. The dog whines a little when he stops, hitching his head up higher against Jess' knee. "That's really nice of you - you don't have to."

"I want to," Lily says. "Mom will want to, too. She's been meaning to call you back, by the way - but she's been feeling pretty sick the last few days."

Jess swallows hard. "Don't worry about it - tell her to take her time. It wasn't a big deal anyway, I just wanted to catch up."

"Okay." Lily sighs forlornly. "I wish we lived around the corner from you. Then we could come over and fuss over you guys in person."

"Move to Philly, then. The weather's great," Jess says dryly, squinting up at the mud-grey sky.

"Dream on," Lily says. She pauses for a short moment. "Hey. Take a breath, Jess. She's alright."

"Yeah, okay." Jess does so. The cigarette had helped too, but this is better.

"Good," Lily says warmly, after another longer moment. "Love you."

"Love you back," Jess says grudgingly, still feeling weird about it, even after years of training himself to say it. He can hear Lily laughing at him as he hangs up.

In the dark bedroom, Jess can only just make out the shape of Lindsay's body in the bed, so he uses the light of his phone to navigate, not wanting to accidentally bump her wrist. Peanut shuffles his way into the bed along with him, circling around a few times at the foot before flopping down a little too hard, ignoring completely Jess' irritated whisper to get down.

"Leave it," Lindsay mumbles, rolling over in the dark. "He's as stubborn as you are."

Jess presses his leg against hers tentatively, and she sighs, rolling closer and pressing her cheek against his arm. Her wrist brace is wedged somewhat awkwardly between his arm and her chest, and Jess reaches down to gently tap her cheek, nudging her in the other direction. "Your wrist, baby - turn over."

She grumbles a little, but rolls over, grabbing a pillow and propping up her wrist carefully. "My whole body hurts," she says, with a quiet groan as she settles her head carefully against the crook of his elbow.

"I know," Jess says, sliding his other arm around her waist. The room is cool, a breeze running through from the open window, but her skin is flushed, almost like she's feverish. Jess presses his forehead against the back of her neck and tries not to overthink it. "Try to sleep some more. When you wake up you'll feel better."

"I'm gonna hold you to that," Lindsay mumbles.

Jess flexes his arm against her stomach, in the soft spot beneath her breasts where she's extremely ticklish. He's rewarded with a quiet laugh. "Feel free to hold me to anything you like."

"'Kay," she says, a smile still in her voice. Behind the curtains, the sun is finally breaking through the morning gloom, casting long beams of light on the foot of the bed. "Hey - you're a good boyfriend."

"Thanks," Jess says. "I've been trying."

"Your curtains are really ugly though," she observes.

"Go to sleep," Jess says.

Jess has an interview with Poets & Writers the next day, which he does over the phone while walking Peanut around the neighborhood - a surprisingly calming task, as it turns out. Normally he gets all twitchy when he has to do this sort of thing, but wrestling the dog away from trash cans and keeping him from tangling up his leash on lamp poles as he answers the reporter's questions turns out to be just the trick.

"I could take him with me on the tour," Jess says, dutifully wiping off the dog's feet by the front door as Lindsay fondly watches from the kitchen. "You know, at those talks they're making me do - I could eat up like half the time just by introducing him. People always lose their shit over dogs - it's foolproof."

"Don't pretend like you're not excited," Lindsay chastises. "You get to go hang out with other cool, smart literary people, and talk about writing all day. You can't wait."

"I hang out with cool, smart literary people all the time. It's literally my job."

"It's different and you know it," Lindsay replies. She's making some kind of soup, and Jess leans over her shoulder to look. The color is a somewhat off-putting reddish orange, but it smells fucking incredible. "It's almost done. Just needs to simmer for a little bit longer."

"I'm not telling you to stop cooking or anything," Jess says, wrapping an arm around her waist, "but you don't have to cook for me. Like as a 'thank you,' or whatever. I feel like I should say that for the record."

"I'm not. I just like it," Lindsay says. She beams. "I used to be really bad at it. It was sort of a thing, when I was with Dean. My mom would try to teach me, and then I'd go home and fuck it up, and he'd pretend like he wasn't annoyed, and I'd feel bad and guilty and gross, and then the next day we'd do it all over again."

The more Lindsay spills about her marriage, the more it sounds like stories from another life, a completely different person who barely resembles the one standing in front of him. But then again, Lindsay probably thinks the same thing, when he talks about his time in California. People are capable of so many things. "But you learned eventually."

"Turns out," Lindsay says dryly, "the problem was that I was miserable, not that I didn't know how to cook. Here - try some."

The first bite almost makes Jess' eyes water. "It's spicy," he says in surprise.

"Chipotle potato soup," she says, licking the back of the spoon herself. "There's bell peppers and I'm gonna add cheese at the end, too. Do you like it?"

"Are you kidding? Yes. Holy shit." She laughs. "What do you need me to do - toast bread, set the table, what?"

"I thought we could eat in bed while we finish the rest of The Young Pope," Lindsay says.

"Amazing," Jess says earnestly.

This is where Jess is, when the finished manuscript for Gilmore Girls lands in his inbox: eating spicy soup with Lindsay and her dog as they watch Jude Law deliver a truly batshit monologue while wearing a papal tiara. Jess picks up his phone to look at the notification, and almost drops it.

"What?" Lindsay asks, seeing the look on his face. "Is it work?"

"Uh, yes, sort of," Jess says, and angles the phone screen so she can see. "I told you Rory was writing a book. Didn't I?"

"Yeah." Her expression suddenly subdued, Lindsay pauses the TV and sets her half-empty bowl aside. She doesn't move to take the phone, though. "Is she sending it to you because she wants your opinion, or does she want Truncheon to publish it?"

"Both," Jess says with a grimace. About a year ago, right before Lindsay started at the office, he'd met Rory for drinks at a bar in Manhattan, which was the last time he's seen her in person. She talked mostly about her daughter, but they'd ended the night on her book, which at the time had still only been a rough outline. She'd started writing some of it, but her pregnancy had forced her to put it on hold, and she'd also had some trouble keeping an agent, for reasons she was somewhat vague about. Jess hadn't really wanted to know the full story, since a lot of the names she mentioned were people he knew professionally and it seemed like an awkward middle ground to be in, but Rory is Rory, and he'll always have a soft spot for her, despite everything. So he promised to read it - both as a friend, and as the acquisition editor for Truncheon. "Do you want to read the email?"

She frowns. "Thank you for offering, but no. I trust you."

"I know you do," Jess says. "I mean, you'd have every reason not to, just saying. But that's not why I offered."

"Of course I have reason to trust you, I'm dating you," Lindsay says, her frown deepening. "My history with Rory has nothing to do with you, Jess. Either you believe me when I say it doesn't bother me, or you don't."

Jess sighs, and lets the phone drop between them, in the rustle of blankets between their legs. "I'm not trying to say anything here, Lindsay, and I know you don't want to put me in the middle, but look at your hands right now."

Lindsay looks down, startled, at her clenched fists. She releases them with a tense breath. "Sorry."

"Don't apologize." Jess reaches out and smooths her hair away from her cheek, careful to avoid the cuts, which are still a little swollen. They're taking longer to heal, Jess suspects, because Lindsay has been sleeping on her side, with her injured cheek smushed up against a pillow. "Listen. I know it bothers you, okay? I appreciate that you're trying to be cool about it for my sake, but I can see it bothering you. You don't have to lie."

"I don't want it to bother me!" Lindsay says in frustration. "I don't want to be that kind of girlfriend, okay, like reading your emails and texts because I'm jealous - that's so gross, Jess."

"You're not breaking into my phone while I sleep, Jesus," he says, with an incredulous laugh. "I'm offering because this specific email is from an ex-girlfriend of mine who once did something really fucking hurtful to you. Okay? I want you to read it. Because I don't want to like..." he shakes his head, struggling for words. "It's important to me that we do things the right way. Talk about this kind of stuff. Do you know what I mean?"

Lindsay pinches her bottom lip with two fingers while she thinks, her face creased, shoulders hunched up around her chin defensively. "It just feels weird. Like I understand what you're trying to say, but telling me to read it to make me feel better...it's weird, Jess."

"Okay." Jess nods. "You don't have to read it. I just thought - "

"I know."

"I just want you to know that I understand, that's all. Like if anyone would be justified...it'd be you."

"I'm not going to ask you to stop talking to her, Jess," Lindsay says. She looks a little calmer now, and there's even the hint of a smile lurking at the corner of her mouth. "Like when Emily asked Ross to stop being friends with Rachel? We all know how that storyline ends."

"I wouldn't say that Rory and I are friends," Jess corrects. Lindsay just scoffs a little. "I'm serious, I'm not just saying that to make you feel better. I see her once or twice a year, at most."

"That doesn't mean you're not friends."

"It means something," Jess insists. He hadn't meant to push her to this conversation so quickly, but it has to happen eventually, and he's not a fan of putting off the big shit just because it's uncomfortable. "Can I just be clear about something? I'm not pining away for her. Okay? I have a lot of respect for her, and I care about her, because she was my first real girlfriend and now she's my uncle's stepdaughter, which makes her a pretty big part of my family whether we like it or not. But she's not really part of my life. That's the God's honest truth."

Lindsay smiles gently. "Okay. I believe you, Jess. Thank you."

His shoulders relax, just a little. "Am I being weird about this?"

"I think we're both being weird about a really weird situation, yes," Lindsay concludes. She reaches out and takes one of his hands in both of her own, folding them together on top of her knee. "I really like you a lot, Jess."

"Well, that's a relief," Jess says.

She laughs a little. "I appreciate that you're trying so hard, and that you're taking it so seriously, but really...you can't like, indulge me about this all the time, and I really mean that. She is part of your family, and if we're serious about this…" she shrugs. "I'll just have to get over it. And I want to get over it, Jess. So you can't be bending over backwards, letting me read her emails, reassuring me all the time...it's not gonna help."

"Are you asking me to show you some tough love?"

"I'm asking you to let me handle it on my own," Lindsay says. "Let me manage how I feel about her. I'm not gonna let it interfere with you and me, okay? I'm gonna be a fucking grown up, and handle this with maturity and grace, god damn it. I swear to God I am." She squeezes his hand. "But you're a real sweetheart for offering. Just so you know."

Jess wrinkles his nose. "That's not a word that has ever been applied to me before. Not even by my mother."

"Well, you are a sweetheart," Lindsay says. "I can't believe I'm the first one to have noticed. Maybe nobody's told you because they were afraid you'd make fun of them."

"Well, nobody's ever cooked me spicy soup before," Jess says. "And your shorts are very short. That helps too."

"I knew that would win you over," Lindsay says.

Rory's book is good, because of course it is. Jess sends it to Chris, who skims the first few chapters and gives his go ahead too. Lindsay still hasn't come back to work - they've all threatened to send her straight back home if she dares to show her face before Monday - and Jess thinks about waiting to make the call, but if she'd meant it about letting her handle it then she'd probably be offended if he did. It's sort of a sign of trust, isn't it, when you take someone at their word? Jess really hopes he's got it right.

"You really don't have to flatter me," Rory tells him, sounding as earnest and cute as she ever does, even with the distinctive sounds of a babbling toddler in the background of the call. "You've got good instincts, and I trust you. If you think there are issues, I want to hear them. Gimme the issues, Jess."

"I told you I'd read it, not edit it," Jess jokes. "I don't get paid to do that plebeian shit anymore. Save your humble brags for your editor."

"I thought you were my editor!"

"Yeah, no," Jess says. He's decided to be blunt, if for no other reason than to get it over with quicker. "Rory, you shouldn't publish this with us. You need a real book deal for this, and a real agent."

"Oh, come on, Jess, it's not - "

"No, quit it," Jess interrupts. "You know it's good. If all you wanted was an ego boost, then here it is: it's good. And you knew it was good when you sent it to me. Don't play games."

Rory sighs reluctantly. "Easy for you to say. Remember when I bragged about how easy it'd be to write a memoir, and how it wouldn't be that different from what I did at The Atlantic? I was an idiot. Just for the record."

"I don't remember any bragging," Jess says. "Maybe a hyperbole or two, some shit-talking here and there. But no bragging."

"I definitely bragged, but thanks," Rory says. "Look, I can't work with Jacqueline anymore, and I'm running out of agents who are willing to humor me. This isn't something I'm trying to get famous off of, Jess - it's just something I want to do. If Truncheon doesn't want it, that's fine, but you don't need to spare my feelings by saying it's like, a favor you're doing me - "

"That's not the issue," Jess interrupts. "Of course we'll publish it. I read it, I liked it - that's all the vetting you need to go through with us. But it's a serious book, Rory. And you're a serious journalist. Do you know what kinds of books we publish?"

"Good ones," Rory insists, kindly. "Novelists and poets who push boundaries, who - who take risks!"

"Oh please," Jess interrupts with a laugh. "The word you're looking for is 'weird,' Rory. You can say it."

Rory huffs, a stubborn sort of sound. "You publish through Truncheon. And you're out there winning awards. I got the ARC for your new one in the mail yesterday, by the way - it looks amazing. I can't wait to read it."

The genuine excitement in her voice makes Jess squirm a little - some weird kind of guilt that is strange to even be feeling. "Thanks," he says, "but I'm sort of the exception, and you know it. At least in terms of what I write."

"I think you're being too hard on yourself."

"I'm not! Listen, I started this company, I know better than you what it is, I think," Jess counters, with another laugh. He hears her laugh too, a frustrated sort of giggle that he remembers from back in the day, when they'd go back and forth for hours, arguing about a novel they disagreed about. "We've carved out this little niche here, with all our post-post-modernists, but Rory - our biggest writer right now is a woman from Seattle who writes merman erotica."

"I've read her stuff," Rory argues. "It's subversive!"

"Yeah, but it's also real fuckin' strange," Jess says. "We don't publish people who write books with mass appeal, and that's why we've been able to survive this long. We don't have even a fraction of the resources that the Big Five do, and we can't compete with them when it comes to scoring writers who are good enough to get a normal book deal. So we narrowed our focus, and made space for people who still deserved to get their voice out there - but who weren't conventional enough - or whatever word you want to use - to go with a bigger name." What Jess doesn't say, mostly because it would be a real douchey thing to acknowledge it out loud, is that his own rising career has also made Truncheon's survival possible. He knows very well that things like the O. Henry prize give the company a veneer of respectability, which gets them a lot further than Jess is comfortable with.

"Are you saying my book's not weird enough for you?" Rory says, with an incredulous laugh.

"No, I'm telling you that you could do better," Jess says bluntly. "You could get a better deal than what we could offer you, if you went the conventional route. Because you're a lot of things, Rory, but 'avant-garde' isn't one of them."

"I think that's a compliment," Rory says, "and if so, I think I'm grateful for the advice. But I wouldn't have sent it to you at all if I weren't hoping that Truncheon would publish it. If all I needed an ego boost, I would talk to my mom, Jess."

"And why us?" Jess challenges. "Is it because you really think we're the best place for this book? This incredibly personal memoir about you and your mother? Or is it because you're too scared to try doing it the regular way?"

Rory falls into a brief silence, broken only by Nori's little voice, rambling in endearing baby talk somewhere below the phone. Jess pictures Rory in that apartment above the diner - it's still strange to picture them living there, but it suits Rory, in a way - sitting at the same window that Jess used to sit at and read. Laptop on her knees, phone to her ear, and her baby at her elbow: the image is easy to conjure.

"You're so good at seeing through my bullshit," she finally says quietly. "You always have been. I keep expecting that you'll fall out of practice."

"It's my job to be good at that," Jess replies. "You're not the exception, trust me."

"Well that's sort of comforting," Rory says, with another frustrated little laugh. "Okay, I hear you. I do. Thank you. Can I take a few days to think about it?"

"Of course."

"And I still want to know the issues," she insists, "whether you publish it or not. I know you found some. That's the other reason I sent it to you."

"Your transitions could use some work," Jess admits. "And you write like a journalist. Which isn't a bad thing, but whatever editor you end up with is going to make you slow it down quite a bit. Take your time with some of the more intense chapters. Fair warning."

"I can live with that," Rory says happily. "If I end up with some fancy book deal, can I put in the extra chapter about you? The story about the swan would make a nice epilogue."

"You do that and I'll write an essay about how many deer you've murdered and get it in the New Yorker," Jess says. "I know a guy. I'll make it a metaphor for something."

"I didn't mean to murder them! For an East Coast driver I have had a perfectly normal number of deer-related car accidents, thank you very much."

The mention of car accidents makes Jess think of Lindsay, who is still at his apartment, white-knuckling it through the last few days of her convalescence. That weird guilt rises up again - this time that he'd started to enjoy talking to Rory again, falling back into the old pattern of back and forth that they never lost their knack for. It's not like he's done anything wrong, or anything that would hurt Lindsay, but...well. It feels different now. "Yeah, well, I appreciate you censoring me out as it is. You didn't have to."

"I censored out all of it," Rory says. "I'm saving my love life for the next memoir. You know - 'Rory Gilmore: The Sequel.' That's where it'll get really sordid."

That hits Jess the wrong way, and he finds himself irritated. It would be an asshole move to take it out on her, though, so he tries to keep it out of his voice. "I assume you'll spare me the experience of editing that one."

"It's only fair," Rory says with a laugh. "How are you, anyway? It's been ages since we've caught up."

"Oh, you know. Enjoying my mid-thirties. The existential crises, plaguing feelings of self-doubt - the usual."

"Well, try doing that with an eighteen-month-old," Rory says with a laugh. "My mom made it look easy."

"Your mom makes everything look easy," Jess points out, with enough fondness that it doesn't sound mean.

"Are you seeing anybody?" Rory asks, somewhat out of the blue. She has a tendency to do that when they talk - ask who he's dating, and how it's going - and she rarely means anything by it. Jess learned the hard way that she really doesn't mean to make a hint - it's just her way of checking up on him. "April mentioned that you were, but you haven't said anything to Luke yet, so I assume it's not serious."

"It's," Jess says, and pauses, at a momentary loss. "It's getting there. We're sort of taking it slow."

"That's nice! She's not another poet, is she?"

He laughs. "No," he says wryly, "no, the opposite of a poet. She's actually not a writer at all - unless you count Truncheon's Twitter account."

"Oh, she works with you?"

"Yeah." Now would be the best time to bring it up, to say it casually so that Rory puts the pieces together on her own. He could say, 'you might have known her, actually - she's from Stars Hollow,' feign ignorance about the Dean connection, and allow Rory the dignity of reacting to it in private. Or he could just come out and say it: 'Rory, her name is Lindsay Lister, and she used to be married to Dean. Weird coincidence, I know, but I swear I didn't do it on purpose.' But he doesn't want to do that, either.

He doesn't want Rory to know at all, he realizes, in the crystallized moment of indecision while she waits for an answer. He wants Rory to remain entirely separate from this part of his life - the universe of Philadelphia, of their rough-around-the-edges office, his crass, lovable friends, the career and community that he's built here, painstakingly and with dozens of false starts. Jess has gotten used to keeping his life separated into compartments: California and his dad's family, Connecticut and his mother's. Philly, by consequence, is its own world too, and Lindsay is a new, precious part of it that he's not really ready to share.

Also, for the same reason that nobody has come out and told Jess who Nori's father is: because it's none of his fucking business. It goes both ways, in this instance. Does Rory really need to know?

"Is that weird?" Rory asks guilelessly. "When your office is so small? I can't imagine dating somebody at the Gazette. And not just because I only have three employees, and two of them are my grandmother's age."

"We're actually a lot bigger now," Jess says. "We've hired a lot more full-time staff recently. So we've avoided a lot of the problems so far. Listen - my mom still doesn't know, and neither does Luke. I'm trying to spare her the full Danes experience until she's deep enough in that she won't dump me on the spot. Do you think you could…"

"Oh yeah, of course," Rory says immediately. "I won't say anything. April's kind of a blabbermouth, though."

She is and she isn't, Jess thinks wryly. She'd made it clear to Rory, for example, that he was off limits, but she still didn't tell Rory who it was that had taken him off the market. The kid is too devious for her own good, sometimes. "I appreciate it."

"Did you really like it?" Rory asks, somehow making the sudden, blatant vulnerability sound charming. It's one of her most annoying and endearing qualities, in Jess' opinion. "Be honest."

"I did, Rory," Jess says. He wouldn't say that he enjoyed reading it, exactly, but his reasons for being uncomfortable had nothing to do with the actual writing, which was approachable and warm, full of the easy humor and careful attention that Rory has always excelled at. She might not have been able to make it long term as a political journalist, but it wasn't because she was a bad writer, that's for certain. "Have you let your mom read it yet?"

"No," Rory says bashfully. "I guess I'm nervous. There's some stuff in there that will embarrass her, I'm sure."

"Show her," Jess says firmly. "Do it right away. Trust me."

"Because it'll help with the nerves?" Rory asks.

"No, because she deserves to read it," Jess says. Certainly she deserved to read it before he did, but what's done is done. "Duh."

"Oh yeah," Rory says with a laugh. "You're probably right, huh?"

"Sometimes, but only on accident," Jess says.

Jess is, as a boyfriend, a bit of a worrywart. Not overprotective, exactly - although he can be possessive, sometimes, under the right conditions - but overly anxious sometimes. Lindsay indulges it quite a bit more than anyone else he's ever been with - definitely more than Letty, who'd cited it as one of the several dozen reasons she was dumping him. With this car accident thing, Jess figures he's got at least a month to fret as much as he likes, until she starts to get annoyed with him.

well, I'm not seeing double and my memory seems fine, Lindsay texts mid-day, obliging his request to keep him updated on the status of her headache. I don't think your welcome mat's going to make it, though. Peanut got to it again before I noticed.

How many fucking times a day does that damn dog need to piss? Jess is sure it's some sort of medical condition. I am less attached to the welcome mat than I am to your half-tenderized brain, LL.

Lindsay sends him a selfie in response; a picture of her tired, pretty face, creased in an exaggerated frown. Peanut is on her lap, also staring balefully at the camera.

come home soon we're making brownies, is the caption. Jess' heart actually skips a beat.

"You look like you've just been hit by a truck too," Chris comments, stopping by his office on his way out to lunch. "Go home early, why don't you? It's Friday, and your girlfriend just got out of the hospital. Get the fuck outta here."

"I am," Jess says, "I just need to finish up a couple things. Is that for Lindsay?"

Chris nods, carefully placing a Get Well card on the desk, signed and embellished by everyone else in the office. With it is a little package of band-aids with Thomas the Tank Engine on them. "We tried to find car-themed ones, but this was the closest they had at the pharmacy," Chris explains, shaking the box.

"Funny."

"Yeah, we thought so." Plopping down in the opposite chair, Chris clasps his hands together over his knees, considering Jess seriously. "So. Rory Gilmore, huh."

"Yeah." Jess rubs the bridge of his nose. The almost-sleepless night has been on the verge of catching up to him all day. "Lindsay already knows. We talked about it last night."

"That's good, but it wasn't what I was gonna ask," Chris says. "It's not what we normally publish, man."

"I'm aware," Jess says scornfully, "given that I'm the one who chooses what we publish, Christopher. I told her the same exact thing twenty minutes ago. She's going to think about it over the weekend and let us know."

"You tried to talk her out of it?"

"Well yeah," Jess says. "Wouldn't you?"

Chris shrugs, laughing. "Considering the most serious relationship I've ever had is this stupid fuck-buddy thing with Adrian? I have no idea."

"You could have one if you actually wanted one," Jess says lightly, not wanting to make a thing out of it but unable to let the moment pass without saying it. "It's not like you're defective."

"Whatever you say." Chris sighs. "I just...from a business perspective, of course I think it's a good idea. She's good, she's marketable, and she comes from money, obviously, so she'll have resources other authors don't to promote herself - not to mention whatever contacts she's got already as a journalist. Working on her book will be a walk in the park by comparison. But Jess, man…"

"What?"

"She's just gonna twist you up in knots, and then leave again," Chris says bluntly. "It's what she always does. I'm sick of watching it happen, and I really don't want to see you fuck things up for yourself with Lindsay. That's all I wanted to say."

Jess taps a pen against the side of his laptop, considering the weight of his loyalty to Lindsay, against his friendship with Chris. It's a tricky question. "Would you mind shutting the door, Chris?"

Chris raises an eyebrow, but leans back in the chair and pushes the office door shut, closing off the noise from the rest of the floor with a heavy thud.

"This doesn't leave this room and I mean it," Jess says. "You know Lindsay and I went to high school together."

"Yeah," Chris says cautiously.

"Her ex-husband, Dean? The one who cheated on her?" Jess grimaces. "Rory was the person he cheated with. They used to date, in high school - he's actually the guy Rory broke up with so she could date me." Jess laughs a little, at the gobsmacked look on Chris' face. "Yeah. Small towns, dude - I'm telling you."

"You're fucking kidding me," Chris says, leaning forward on his knees again. "Your ex-girlfriend was the one who broke up her marriage? That's fucking nuts."

"I know," Jess says, pained. "So - it's complicated, is what I'm saying. Lindsay and I - we've been talking about it, trying to be, you know, open about everything, but I can't help but - " he pauses, looking at the screen of his laptop, still open to Rory's email. "If we publish her book, she's going to be around a lot. On the phone, emails, doing readings - we'll have to send her on a tour, arrange press for her - everything. She'll be a big deal for us - we'll need to put a lot of resources into her." Jess grimaces. "What kind of shitty fucking boyfriend would I be to make Lindsay deal with that? A really shitty one."

Chris' face is grim. "Did you tell Lindsay you were going to publish the book? Or did you just tell her she emailed you?"

"Both. She insisted that it didn't bother her. But I'm not sure she really thought it all the way through - what it would mean."

"Well," Chris says, "she has a concussion, dude. So."

"Yeah." He shakes his head. "Obviously we all could use the weekend to think it over. But man - it also feels bullshit to turn away a good opportunity - a professional opportunity - for a personal reason. Isn't that inappropriate too? To discriminate against Rory because I want Lindsay to like me?"

"Isn't that what you already did? By trying to talk Rory out of it?" Chris laughs a little. "If you hadn't met Lindsay, would you have done the same thing?"

The bitch of it is, Jess isn't really sure. A year ago, in that bar - he'd thought about it. Making a move. Rory would've been receptive, probably - she was sending him the right signals, flirting just as much as he was. He'd decided against it in the end - convinced he was imagining things, not wanting to go down a path that had burned them both before, wary of opening up a can of worms neither of them were prepared to deal with. But if Lindsay hadn't dropped into his life, not even a month later - would he have kept to that conviction? He honestly doesn't know.

"I care about Lindsay," Jess says firmly, looking Chris in the eye. "I wouldn't have started anything if I wasn't serious about her."

"I know you are," Chris says placatingly, "I know. We can all see it, Jess. It's a good thing that you guys have going. You both deserve it." He shrugs helplessly. "This? This...is a really weird situation, no doubt about it. I think you should talk to what's his name, first of all - Michael, Mitch - "

"The new HR guy?" Jess asks incredulously. "His name is Elijah. Where the hell did you get Michael?"

"Whatever," Chris says, waving his hand. "Talk to him. And then go home and take care of Lindsay. Make her dinner, rub her shoulders, watch bad movies with her. And on Sunday, when her headache's gone, you fucking talk to her about this, and you don't let her brush it off again. Because if you wanna make it last, then you have to figure the Rory thing out now. That's not something you can put off, man. Not even a little bit."

He's right. Jess knows he's right. It's the reason why he always goes to Chris first, no matter what the problem is. "For a guy who's never had a serious relationship, you are pretty smart about them."

"I read a lot of romance novels," Chris says, deadpan.

"No you fucking don't."

"Don't be snobby, Jess," Chris says, rising to his feet. "And stop for flowers on your way home."

"Right," Jess says grimly.

The entire apartment smells like chocolate, when Jess gets back, juggling his bulging messenger bag with a bag of food and Lindsay's Get Well card, which was so delicately constructed with glitter and little pop-up things, he was afraid to shove it in his bag. Peanut runs up to him at the door and practically throws himself against Jess' legs, which almost makes him drop all of it right then and there. "Hello, Peanut. Glad to see you've made yourself at home."

"Jess! Let me help." Lindsay rushes over, relieving him of a few of the burdens, shooing Peanut away with her foot. "Oh my God, did you stop at the deli? I told you I was making brownies!"

"Right, dessert," Jess says, "this is dinner."

"Oh my God," Lindsay says again, burying her face in the bag. She's got a fervent, almost obsessive love for Zaidy's sturgeon BLT. "Is this the honeymoon period? Instead of sex we just feed each other until we explode?"

"I'm alright with it," Jess says, dumping the rest of his stuff on the couch and grabbing her waist. Lindsay squeaks, holding the food up the air, out of the way as they kiss. "I'd be alright with the other thing, too. When we get to it."

"Eventually," Lindsay teases, her cheeks flushed. "When I'm not concussed and all."

"We're making our way down the to-do list," Jess replies, kissing the side of her neck softly as he lets her go. He can feel her shiver a little as she pulls away, and she bites her lip against another giddy smile as she pads back into his kitchen. "The card's for you too, in case you were wondering."

"So sweet," Lindsay says, plopping down at the table with the food and the card held possessively in both hands. "And so glittery."

"Whoever keeps buying the glitter paint markers is on thin ice," Jess says, joining her at the table. "As soon as I figure out who it is, anyway."

"It's me," Lindsay says instantly. "I thought the office could use a little glam-up."

"No, it's not. You're a terrible liar."

"Am not," Lindsay lies again, terribly, while unwrapping the food. The deli on the corner, run by an older gay couple who absolutely love to give Jess shit, has a gigantic menu of bagels and bagel sandwiches, all of which contain some sort of fish. Jess has lived in this building for three years, and he still hasn't tried everything - but Lindsay, in her extreme and eager curiosity, has been working her way through it enthusiastically. "Ooh, they gave you some strudel too."

"I told Bagel Joe you were infirmed," Jess says. "He was very upset."

"Wait - his name is Bagel Joe? The tall one or the blonde one?"

"The tall one," Jess says. "And yes, that's his name. They call him that because he makes the bagels, Lindsay."

"Well that makes sense," Lindsay says, hitching one of her legs up across Jess' knees, underneath the table. Stretched out in the chair with a lapful of food, wearing one of his old sweaters, she looks like some kind of domestic wet dream come to life. "So how was your day, honey? Did you publish any books?"

"One or two," Jess says, reaching out to pull her chair a little closer. Lindsay smiles, hitching her other leg up too, so she's halfway into his lap, her bare feet peeking out on the other side of the table. "And what did you do to keep yourself busy? Other than cook and clean and do my laundry, you absolute weirdo - "

"I know you told me I didn't have to, but it was sitting right there and I felt like it was polite!" Lindsay laughs, squirming away from his hand as he reaches out to poke her ribcage. "And I didn't clean that much. Only the kitchen, because I was the one who made the mess with dinner last night."

"I can't handle you sometimes," Jess says fondly, brushing her hair back over her shoulder. "How's your brain feel? Still banged up?"

"Better than yesterday. So like halfway to normal, practically." Lindsay pulls her sandwich apart, picking up one half of the bagel for herself and pushing the other one towards Jess. "Here. We'll split both. I wanna try yours."

"It's just the same thing I always get - the one with the salmon."

"Well, I haven't tried it yet."

"Sure," Jess says with another laugh, happily resigned to letting her do whatever she wants to do. She's fastidious about food, he's discovered - when she cooks she follows the recipe obsessively, and will throw the whole bowl out and start from scratch if she thinks she's made a mistake. A few weeks ago, he spent an entire Saturday on her couch with a Donna Tartt novel, listening to her struggle with a complicated cheesecake recipe in the kitchen. It had an oddly calming effect. "So hey - I know you said only a few days, but I was thinking - did you have plans this weekend?"

Lindsay shrugs. "I need to do something about a car," she says glumly. "It's a twenty minute walk from my place to the nearest bus stop."

"You can ride with me."

"My apartment's like, twenty minutes in the opposite direction," Lindsay protests. She smiles at him. "I mean, maybe every once in awhile, but come on, Jess."

Jess shrugs. He really wouldn't mind - the drive's not that bad, between her place and his. But pressing the issue feels like a mistake. "My uncle knows a guy who could get you a deal," he says. "Used, but I assume that's what you were looking for? He's in Stamford. I bought my truck from him."

"What kind of deal?"

"A deal is a deal, I don't know," Jess says. "He knocked two grand off the price for me, and he didn't charge me any dealer fees. Luke's known the guy for years - they went to high school together, I think."

"Does he have a website?" Lindsay asks, sounding interested.

"Probably. I'll call Luke later and get the guy's name - I don't remember off the top of my head."

"Thanks," Lindsay says warmly. "Stamford - that's what, three hours away? Maybe four with traffic. That's not bad. Were you thinking we could drive up there this weekend?"

"No," Jess says, "I was actually thinking that you could stay here for a few more days, and let me cook for you, for a change."

"What, this doesn't count?" Lindsay asks, holding up her bagel.

"Unless you're dating Bagel Joe - no."

"Well, he's already taken, so I guess I'll stick with you," Lindsay says, shaking her head sadly, a smile lurking at the corner of her mouth. "What are you gonna make me?"

"Well, I have two specialties," Jess explains, "pasta and steak. On occasion, I combine them."

"Hm," Lindsay says, nodding and chewing thoughtfully.

"I have also been known to scramble eggs," Jess continues. "And I can't make an omelet, exactly, but I can put stuff in the eggs, and it ends up being sort of close."

"All that restaurant experience," Lindsay marvels, "truly has made you an expert."

"Well, I never actually cooked at Luke's," Jess says. "There's no way in hell that Luke and Cesar would've let me anywhere near the actual food. I carried food, sometimes. But mostly all he'd let me do was pour coffee and clean."

Lindsay laughs. "Did he actually pay you, or was that just child labor, out in plain sight?"

"A combination of both," Jess says with a laugh. "He did pay me. Just not very much." He's profoundly uninterested in his own sandwich, at the moment, content to sit there and watch Lindsay eat hers, which he hopes isn't the beginning of some sort of kink. But honestly, he likes to watch her do lots of stuff - she's very cute. He's not too worried. "What was the minimum wage in 2001? Five bucks? I think I made five bucks an hour there. Jesus Christ."

"I think that's what I made too, at my first job," Lindsay says. "I worked at a gas station just outside of town for like, two months. I quit after it got robbed."

"What the fuck - were you there?"

"No, it was on a day I wasn't working. My mom still made me quit, though."

"Nobody ever got robbed in Stars Hollow. It's because you crossed the town line," Jess says sagely. "You left the snowglobe - that was your mistake."

Lindsay throws her head back with a laugh. "Snowglobe - I like that. That's exactly what it was."

"Although, I used to shoplift from Doose's all the time," Jess confesses. "I never told anybody but - "

Lindsay tilts her head at his sudden stop. "You can talk about her," she says.

"I was gonna say Luke, actually, but I'm pretty sure he always thought I was joking when I told him," Jess says. "I never would've told Rory that. She would've turned me in."

Lindsay laughs - a little more subdued than before, but just as genuine. "Did you talk to her today? About the book?"

"Yeah. We should publish it." Jess reaches up and touches her injured cheek gently with the backs of his fingers, tracing the edges of where her skin is still a little swollen. "I read it. It's good, and relatable, and funny. It could be a hit, if we marketed it the right way. And frankly - we could use a hit."

She nods, popping the last of her sandwich in her mouth. "Okay."

"Lindsay," Jess says soberly, "look at me."

She does, and her expression goes impossibly soft. "Jess, it really is okay."

"You keep saying that, and I'm not saying I don't believe you, but baby - you're gonna have to work with her," Jess says. "Think about this. You'll be booking her flights, managing her press. Talking to her on the phone, emailing her. For a year, maybe longer, while we work on her book."

Lindsay takes a deep breath, brushing the crumbs from her hands. "I've been thinking about it all day," she says. "And I can do it. I know I can. It's not going to be very fun, but it's not going to be…painful, either. Like it would've been five years ago. You know what I mean?" She grabs his hand, still hovering near her face, and kisses his knuckles. "Does she know about me?"

"No," Jess confesses. "No, I didn't tell her. I wasn't sure if you wanted me to, and also...I didn't really know how to say it."

"Then that's the next step," Lindsay determines. "Because she's the one who wrote the damn thing, right? It's her prerogative as to who gets to publish it. She doesn't have an agent, right?"

"She doesn't really seem to want one," Jess replies, skeptically.

"Then it really is up to her," Lindsay says with a determined little nod. "I can do it, if you like. I'll email her, or something. But she should know that I work for Truncheon, and what my role would be in the process, before she actually signs anything. It's a delicate situation for her too, you know - especially since her book is so personal. She might not want me to be involved at all. And if that's the case, then - well, it solves all our problems, right?"

"We wouldn't let her make a demand like that," Jess says, frowning. "I mean, she could make it, but we wouldn't accommodate it. Unless you didn't want to work on her book, in which case - "

"I'm thirty-three years old, Jess," Lindsay interrupts. "I'm not going to ask my colleagues to rearrange my entire job so I don't have to talk to somebody I don't like."

Jess shakes his head, smiling to himself. "You are, hands down, the most professional person I've ever met. It's actually kind of sexy."

"Thank you," Lindsay replies primly.

Jess takes a deep breath. "I did tell Chris," he says. "About Dean and Rory. I'm really sorry if you didn't want him to know, but...I needed to ask his advice."

Lindsay blinks at him for a moment, clearly taken aback, but then she shakes her head, scoffing. "We should've told him already, probably. Did he tell you to talk to Elijah?"

"Yeah."

"Yeah, we should do that," Lindsay agrees. "On Monday - we'll go in and sit down with him. It could get complicated really quickly, especially with...you and me."

Jess wraps his palm around one of her ankles, still propped up on his lap, and squeezes. He can feel her shiver a little at the contact of his palm against her bare skin. "Yeah, the you and me part," he says carefully, trying not to think of all the ways she could take this the wrong way. "That part's none of Rory's business. I don't think we need to tell her."

"Alright," Lindsay says, just as cautiously. "If you think so."

"It's not because - I don't want you to think I care about what she thinks, or - "

"I know," Lindsay interrupts with a little laugh. "Yeah. I know."

"It's just," Jess says weakly, trying to arrange his feelings into a sentence. It hasn't gotten any easier over the years, despite how much better he's gotten at relationships in general. "It doesn't belong to her. Or any of them, back in Stars Hollow. This, right here - it's yours and mine, and nobody else's. Does that make sense?"

Lindsay's face is impossibly soft. "Yes," she says, leaning in to press a gentle kiss against his cheekbone. "It makes perfect sense, Jess."

"I don't want to keep you a secret," Jess murmurs, squeezing her leg again. "I just don't want her to be part of it, that's all."

"I don't think I want her to know either," Lindsay replies solemnly. "Like, part of what still makes me uncomfortable about her is that...I don't want her to know things about me. What bothered me the most about her and Dean was that he probably...talked to her about me. About the private stuff in our marriage. That stuck with me more than anything else - that he might have told her all these really intimate details that I didn't give her permission to know."

"I won't do that," Jess promises, knowing that he means it. It's a promise he knows he can keep, too. "I won't ever talk to her about you, or tell her anything unless you want me to. No matter what my relationship is to her, or to her mother and Luke - I'll always clear it with you first. I promise."

"Thank you," Lindsay says, sincerely, and with an air of relief. He can see her shoulders slump a little. "God, we really are making this into a big deal, aren't we? I mean, it's not like she's moving in next door or anything - "

"It is a big deal," Jess interrupts gently, reaching over to take her hand. "It is, and you know it."

Lindsay makes a lazy sound of agreement, leaning back against the railing of her chair. She falls into a thoughtful silence, looking absently around his kitchen, chewing on her bottom lip.

"You should tell her that I work for Truncheon," she finally says. "If it comes from me, it'll seem like you deliberately withheld the information from her."

"Which I did," Jess says.

"Right, but we don't have to be mean about it," Lindsay replies. "Next time you talk to her - tell her that I work there. Tell her what I do, and how much I'd be involved with her book. Or I guess you could email her, if that's easier." She shrugs. "If you put it off any longer it'll only look worse."

"Sure." Jess shakes his head. "For the record, I really didn't expect her to want to publish with us, when she first told me about the book."

"Murphy's Law," Lindsay says wryly. "If it can be complicated, it will be."

"Good thing we're trying to head it off at the pass, then," Jess says.

"Yeah," she agrees with a smile, and squeezes his hand. "I think we've got our eyes open."

Their plan to have a meeting with Elijah is derailed when the guy doesn't show up for work Monday morning, which Jess doesn't even realize until he heads over to talk to him mid-morning. His desk is empty, his computer screen dark, and nobody he asks has heard anything about him calling in sick.

"Oh shit," Chris says, when Jess asks him about it, "I didn't even notice."

"Do you have his number?" Jess prompts. They're not all that strict with people about things like attendance and punctuality, since most of their people are salaried - other than the receptionists, whose hours are tracked through a computer system that's fairly tamper proof and hands off. But a no call no show is a cause for concern, even if it's not something they'd necessarily fire somebody for.

"Somewhere," Chris says, rummaging through his desk. "I'll call him and see what's up."

Elijah doesn't answer his phone, and he doesn't respond to emails, either. By late afternoon, the whole office is gossiping about it - he's a charming guy, mid-twenties, pretty handsome. Everybody likes him. So far, anyway.

"Figures," Lindsay says, over a late lunch in Jess' office. "The first time we really need to talk to him, he plays hooky."

"You don't really think he's gonna ghost us?" Jess asks. "I mean, his resume was crazy good, and he's been like, the most professional person we've hired so far - other than you."

"People can surprise you," Lindsay replies with a shrug. "It might be something explainable - hopefully nothing happened, like an emergency or something. Let's wait and see."

He doesn't show up on Tuesday or Wednesday either, and on Thursday morning they finally get a Dear John email: he's found another job, thank you for the opportunity, feel free to keep anything he'd left at the office. Since the only personal effects he'd left behind are a couple of fancy pens and a bunch of Vitamin Water in the breakroom, nobody is all that impressed.

"It's a curse," Matthew says, at the bar that weekend. "An HR curse. Like the Defense Against the Dark Arts job at Hogwarts."

"Now that you've said that out loud, it really will be a curse," Lindsay chastises. "For one, I'm not all that surprised. He was a little too impressive. You know what I mean?"

"I only heard back from one of his references," Chris confesses. "The other two he gave us didn't return any of my voicemails. I should've been more diligent."

"You're a trusting guy, Christopher! It's what we love about you," Matt replies exuberantly. Chris snorts.

"It's a good job," Jess says, the voice of reason. "Good pay, benefits. And we're not asking for anything unreasonable as far as qualifications. We'll find someone decent."

"I could ask my old boss at MetLife," Lindsay offers. "She's in Connecticut, obviously, but she might know somebody."

"Yeah, sure," Chris says, "or Adrian might - "

The entire table erupts in loud groans, and Matt and Jess both reach out to shove him at the same time, resulting in short scuffle that almost claims Lindsay's martini as a casualty.

"Fine!" Chris exclaims, pushing them both away. His hair is ruffled comically, the collar of his shirt turned inside out. "Fine! It's not like we need an HR person or anything, what with our acquisitions editor dating our office manager. And the love triangle between those goth kids in distribution. And Matt's ex-girlfriend writing us checks every month - "

"It's her dad writing us checks," Matt interrupts. "He likes to support the arts."

"We'll find somebody," Lindsay says reassuringly, grinning at Jess from across the table, rolling her eyes a little when the other two aren't looking. "Don't worry, Chris. It's a good job, like Jess said."

"And we'll be on our best behavior in the meantime," Jess promises.

"Ew," Matt says.

Bad timing, for sure. Rory calls him back the following Monday - late in the afternoon, when Jess is gathering his files together, getting ready to leave. Lindsay's sitting in his desk chair, waiting on him - they're splurging tonight on the good Indian place, across town. For all her protests, catching rides with him has actually worked out fine so far - and it's actually been pretty nice, leaving together every night. Jess is trying not to get ahead of himself about it.

"It's Rory," Jess says, stopping short in the middle of the room. He turns his cell phone so she can see the display, and her eyebrows shoot up.

"Well, answer it."

"Right now?" Jess asks dumbly. Lindsay snorts a laugh at him. "I mean, obviously she's calling right now, but I could let her leave a voicemail and call her back tomorrow - "

"We're not gonna put it off, remember?" Lindsay says with a smile. "Just answer it. Come on - she's gonna hang up."

Jess gives her a look, but Lindsay just shrugs, flapping one of her hands at him. He's still eyeing her as he answers. "Hello?"

"Hey, Dodger," comes Rory's voice, warm and friendly. "Been a minute. Sorry it took me so long to get back to you - this last week has been crazy."

Lindsay has risen from the chair, pointing at the hallway. I'll wait outside, she mouths. Jess snags her hand and motions for her to stay, but she shakes her head, determined. She presses a kiss against his cheek as she leaves. "It's alright. It's been busy here too."

"Publishers have big news weeks too?" Rory asks. Jess is only half listening, watching Lindsay leave. "Because here in Stars Hollow, we had a real shake up, as they say. The teaching staff at the junior high went on strike."

"Good for them," Jess says. "What are they asking for?"

"More water fountains," Rory says, absurdly. "And school uniforms for the students."

"Ah," Jess says, with a snort. "For a second I forgot that you live in an alternate universe."

"Just on the other side of the veil," Rory says, with a comically dreamy lilt to her voice, "there lives a land of flower stands and town festivals."

"Is the veil I-84?"

"You always ruin the magic," Rory says with a laugh. "So. I did what you said."

"The thing I said about taking a few days to think about it, or the thing about letting your mom read it?" Jess asks, leaning against the side of his desk.

"Both. She loved it, by the way. It made her cry like eight times. She kept count."

"Of course she did," Jess says. "What about Luke?"

"He hasn't read it yet."

"Uh huh," Jess says wryly. "Well, don't take it personally. Pretty sure he never made it through my books, either."

"He tries," Rory says earnestly, "he makes it about five pages a night before he falls asleep. I found him once on the couch, using your second novel as a pillow."

"Well, at this rate he'll make it through my second by the time my fourth comes out," Jess says with a laugh. "So what about the other thing?"

"The other thing," Rory says, with that determined bent to her voice, "yeah. That other thing."

"Go ahead, hit me."

"Well," Rory says, suddenly a lot more serious than she'd been before. "I was thinking about it all week, and you know Jess...I think I really want you to be the one who does it. Like regardless of everything else - including where you apparently think I can just waltz into the lobby of Penguin Random House and snatch myself a six-figure deal - "

"Well," Jess interrupts dryly, "I was thinking you could just send an email, but whatever."

" - anyway," Rory says pointedly, "aside from that dream - I think I want you to publish it. You know? It feels right. I trust you, I trust your taste and your instincts, and I know you're a phenomenal writer. And I also know you'll treat the story with respect, which is almost more important to me than the money or the rights or whether it ends up on the bestseller list or not. So - if you're still willing...then I am too," she finishes, her voice lifting up optimistically. "And that's the other thing."

"Yeah, well okay," Jess says. He shakes his head at the ceiling, cursing inside his head. Of fucking course he wasn't going to just get out of it so easily. "I mean - thanks, thank you, first of all. That's quite a compliment."

"You're welcome," Rory says grandly.

"I'll, uh," Jess says, running a hand through his hair and trying to gather his thoughts. "Okay, I'll send you some paperwork to look over. And our legal person - Diana - will get in touch soon. She does the actual contracts - if you have your own lawyer, though, it's a good idea to get them involved as early as possible."

"Right," Rory says succinctly, like she's taking notes. She probably is. "Wow, this is exciting. Contracts and lawyers - it's like we're on The Good Wife."

"Well, it's about to get a lot less exciting," Jess warns her. "Optimistically speaking, we're looking at a release in spring of next year, and that's only if everything goes perfectly."

"I'm not gonna let you ruin the magic for this moment," Rory teases. "I'm about to be a published author, Jess. Come on!"

"Yeah, you are," Jess says, allowing himself to smile. A part of him will always root for her, no matter what else happens between them. They could end up hating each other bitterly and Jess would still wish for her success, in a tiny little teenaged corner of his heart. "It's a good manuscript, Rory. It'll be a good book. It's gonna work."

"Thank you," Rory says warmly. "You're gonna edit it then, right? I'd like your help."

"I - maybe," Jess says. He looks over at the cracked-open door, wondering if Lindsay is just hanging out in the hallway, listening. She's too classy for that, though. She probably wandered over to the break room, or - more likely - back to her desk, to the whirlpool of work that's forever threatening to overwhelm her. Chris has offered - a dozen different times, at least - to hire her an assistant, but she's too stubborn. She hasn't given in yet. "Look, Rory - I need to tell you something, before we make anything official."

"Yeah?" Rory asks curiously. "That sounds ominous."

"It isn't," Jess says. "I mean - it's just sort of a...weird, awkward thing. I don't know." He sounds nervous, he realizes, and curses at himself in his head again. "Look, uh - there's no way to say this without it coming off like I was trying to pull one over on you, so I hope you believe me when I say that was never my intention, but - "

"Now I'm really nervous," Rory interrupts. "Are you pregnant?"

Jess snorts. "No." He laughs again, grateful for her courtesy as always, her skill for putting everyone at ease in conversation, even at her own expense. "No. Rory, Lindsay Lister works for us. She's our office manager and social media director, and she's been working for us for about a year now."

A long silence ensues, which Jess refuses to break, allowing her the space to digest. Then, a delicate clearing of her throat. "Lindsay...Lister of Stars Hollow, Lindsay Lister?"

"Yes."

"Dean's ex-wife, Lindsay Lister," Rory says.

"Yes," Jess says, wincing. "Look, I thought you should know before we move forward. I wasn't hiding it from you - there just wasn't - "

"A good reason to tell me?" Rory says sharply, and then immediately clears her throat again. "Sorry, that came out wrong. I'm not angry, I'm just - wow, Lindsay Lister."

"She didn't know who I was, when she applied for the job," Jess says, feeling weird about it, as if he's defending something that doesn't need defending. But it feels wrong not to explain, too. "We didn't figure it out until after she'd already been working here for a few weeks...we didn't really know each other in Stars Hollow, after all. It took me ages to place where I recognized her from."

"I knew she'd moved somewhere far away, but I didn't know where," Rory says faintly. "Wow. That's...a hell of a coincidence."

"Every big city is just a small town with bad traffic," Jess jokes. "It's true everywhere you go. Trust me."

"I guess," Rory says, still sounding shell-shocked. "Would she...be involved with my book, is that what you're warning me about?"

"Yes. Fairly heavily," Jess tells her bluntly. "Lindsay's in charge of the practical side of pretty much everything, so most of your interaction with her would be later on, when we're setting up events and stuff for you. You know, she books signings, sets up your flights and your hotels, that sort of thing. But she works pretty closely with our marketing director, since she does all the Facebook and Instagram stuff - so it might be sooner than that. It just depends."

"I - okay," Rory says, sounding taken aback. "Back up a second. It's just. Isn't she a nurse?"

"What?" Jess blinks. "No. What?"

"I mean - the rumor around town back then - you know, when she and Dean got divorced - was that she moved to Hartford to go to nursing school."

"Well if that's what she did, she didn't finish," Jess says, thrown for a loop. "Why the hell would we hire a nurse to be our office manager?"

"Well, I don't know!" Rory replies, sounding flustered. "I'm processing, Jess!"

"Okay," he says evenly, rolling his head back on his neck and blinking at the ceiling. "That's fine. She's not a nurse, though."

"Right. Got that, now." Rory makes a little noise, almost like a cross between a scoff and a sigh. "Does she know about me? I mean, about my book?"

"Yes. She was the one who wanted me to tell you, because she knew it might make you...uncomfortable." Jess winces again. "She's...very professional. If that helps. She doesn't want you to feel uh - unwelcome."

"Well, that's - uh, nice," Rory stammers. "Tell her 'thank you,' I guess. I mean."

"Uh huh."

"Yeah," Rory says, with a little incredulous laugh. "Not how I expected this phone call to end. To be honest."

"Sorry," Jess says. "I know it's weird - Lindsay and I weren't sure how to approach it either, at first - you should've seen how awkward it was, the night we realized how we knew each other - "

"Oh my good God," Rory interrupts, "she's the one you're dating, isn't she?"

"Um," Jess says.

"Oh my good gracious God," Rory says, and then hangs up abruptly. Jess rips the phone away from his ear and stares at it in incredulous surprise.

He stands there for a second, half expecting her to call him right back, thinking that she might have dropped the phone, or something. But she doesn't, and when Jess tentatively calls her, it goes straight to voicemail.

Outside, Lindsay is indeed back at her desk, furiously typing a long email. She looks up at Jess' approach and blinks, as if remembering the reason why she'd left his office in the first place.

"Powell's is trying to reschedule Melissa's signing," she says in explanation, "I just got a voicemail from Rick Hanover. How'd it go?"

"Um," Jess says again.

"Oh great," Lindsay says, and clears off a space on her desk for him to sit. Jess tosses his cell phone next to hers on the desk, deciding right then and there to be done with it for the rest of the night, no exceptions. "Did she yell? Freak out?"

"No. Not really," Jess says. "Did you go to nursing school?"

Lindsay blinks again. "No," she says. "Is that rumor still going around?" Jess shrugs. "I didn't really tell anybody that, but there was this one time - this was right after the separation, the divorce wasn't even official yet - Babette cornered me on the square at one of the festivals and she kept going on and on about her cousin's daughter who was a nurse and what good money it was, et cetera, and I guess I must've said something polite, or something that sounded like I thought it was a good idea anyway, and the next thing I know everyone thinks it's my life's greatest ambition." Lindsay sighs, still typing as she talks. "It was a much nicer rumor than what I was expecting people to say about me though, so I guess I didn't fight it too hard."

"Huh," Jess says. "You do sort of have the nurse look. It's because you're so wholesome."

"Shut up," Lindsay says with a snort. She finishes her email and sends it off with a little flourish of her wrist, and then swivels around in her chair. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah." Jess shrugs again. "It went pretty well up until the end. She was definitely taken aback, but she didn't seem to be angry or anything, but then she guessed that we were dating, and then she hung up on me."

"She guessed?"

"April had told her I was seeing someone, and I think she made it seem like we've been together a lot longer than we have," Jess explains. "She does that a lot with Rory. Kind of warns her off in a subtle way. It's kind of sweet. Weird, but sweet."

"Hm," Lindsay says. She glances around at the office, which is mostly empty this late in the afternoon. The receptionists are still there, though, and a couple people lingering in the breakroom, so she's sly about it, when she takes his hand. "I'm sorry. I know you didn't want to tell her."

"It's fine. I was being naive that she wouldn't figure it out, I guess."

"She'll tell her mom, though. And her mom will tell Luke, and then your mom will find out…"

"Yeah, get ready for that," Jess says. "You think my dad's family is quirky? Buckle up, sweetheart."

"I can handle my fair share of quirk," Lindsay says. She bites her lip for a second, looking momentarily unsure. "Come on. Let's get out of here - we can talk more at dinner."

"Fine, but you don't get to order for me this time," Jess says, picking up the big tote bag she uses as a briefcase before she can get to it. "I'm emotionally distressed and I want to choose my own curry."

"But I thought we were gonna do the tasting menu!"

"They never give you enough food, though, and I'm starving."

"Fine," Lindsay capitulates, "but I'm gonna bake something for dessert then, and you don't get any input."

"Deal," Jess replies, satisfied. Her revenge always involves dark chocolate. It's not like it's a burden.

Two more weeks pass before Jess hears anything else from the alternate universe of Stars Hollow; Rory doesn't even respond to the careful email he sends the next morning, politely asking whether or not she'd like him to put her in touch with Diana. Chris asks him once, a few days later, whether or not to move forward with the manuscript, and Jess tells him it's a "work in progress" and he must come off looking a little stressed out about it, because nobody brings it up to him again.

It's Luke who finally breaks the weird non-silence silence, who calls to invite him to Doula's twelfth birthday party, which Jess has several good excuses lined up for. He always has to come up with backups, because Luke's pretty good at torpedoing his first and second efforts.

"She's your sister, and she's twelve, and she misses you," Luke says bluntly. "Come up for the weekend, Lorelai's offered to comp you a room at the inn. Buy her a video game and hug your mother and you'll earn enough goodwill to get you out of the next year's worth of parties, at least."

"She doesn't miss me, get real," Jess says irritably. "She doesn't even like me."

"That's not true!"

"It is true," Jess says with an incredulous laugh. "TJ tells her all kinds of weird shit about me. The last time I talked to her, she asked me why I was in jail."

Luke snorts. "That could've come from anybody around here, Jess. Not necessarily TJ."

"Oh, thanks a lot."

"Still," he continues, "it's not going to get better if you don't try, Jess. You know that."

Jess isn't really super interested in making his relationship with Doula better, for the same reasons he's not interested in repairing the cracks between himself and his mother, or the passive-aggressive tolerance he has with TJ. He loves them, sure - well, he loves his mom, really, TJ and Doula are sort of accessories that Jess has a much more distant affection for, but anyway - Jess is of the opinion that he can't forgive somebody for something that they've never admitted to doing in the first place. He can manage his relationship with them just fine when he's far away, but when they get up close to each other - that's when the volcano starts erupting again. Best to steer clear whenever possible. "Look, she's twelve, okay? The best thing I can do to stay on her good side is send her awesome presents and not bug her, which is what I'm already doing. When she's a bit older, maybe she'll be interested in getting to know me, but right now she's gonna believe what her parents tell her, which is fine. I'm fine with it."

"Your mom isn't talking shit about you to her seventh-grader, Jess," Luke says irritably. "You always just assume the worst, which is half of why you don't get along - "

"I don't wanna fight, Luke," Jess interrupts. "I'm not mad. It is what it is. But I don't need to hear you tell me what you think Liz does and doesn't do, okay? We've established already that we're never going to agree."

"Fine," Luke grumbles. This is the thing about Luke that always gets to Jess, even after all these years: he's just as critical of Liz as Jess is, and he knows that Luke's on his side, as far as what her parenting approach was like, back in the day. But he can never just come out and say that to Jess - could never just tell him, hey. You're right to be mad. I get it. The loyalty he has to his sister somehow means that he could never just be real about it, and to this day it still hurts Jess' feelings, in a way that's very hard for him to admit, even to himself. "You could still come up to visit. Not for the party, maybe, but it's been almost a year since I've seen you. April's coming to stay for most of the summer while she applies to PhD programs, and I know she'd much rather hang out with you than with me and Lorelai."

Jess tactfully decides not to mention that April's already made plans to come stay with him in Philadelphia for a couple weeks before she goes to Stars Hollow. It feels sort of mean to bring it up, somehow. "Sure, yeah, I can do that. Or you could come down here, you know. You're always welcome."

"Yeah, I got the invitation to your thing. Your book thing. I'm gonna try and make it, but I've got to hire a couple more people first before I can leave the diner for that long," Luke says. "And Rory says your new book is great."

"You don't have to read it," Jess says with a smirk.

"No, I'm gonna read it."

"Honestly, I could just summarize it for you - "

"I'm gonna read it," Luke says stubbornly. "Just gimme some time. That's all I need - I'm a slow reader. I like to appreciate what I read - not like you do, reading an entire novel in like two hours. Do you even finish every page? I know you skim a little, admit it."

"Okay," Jess says, laughing. "Sure, Uncle Luke. Take all the time you need."

"And uh," Luke says, clearing his throat, "you could bring your girl. You know, if you're ready. Rory wanted me to let you know that it won't be a problem."

Jess sighs, letting his forehead fall into his palm. "Oh she did, huh?"

"Yeah. I mean - small world. Are you kidding me?" Luke snorts. "I had a coupla mean-spirited jokes about Dean Forrester saved up, but I figured you wouldn't appreciate them."

"I'm guessing Lorelai is still more than willing to trade mean-spirited jokes about me, Luke," Jess says archly. "It wasn't deliberate. And it's got nothing to do with Dean Forrester."

"Ah, come on, kid, I know that, I was just joking with you - "

"You know what's even funnier, is that I didn't even tell Rory this," Jess continues. "She just guessed, and as usual the gossip is mightier than the sword."

"April confirmed it," Luke says. "You know how it is, Jess. They don't mean anything by it."

"Uh huh." Jess shakes his head, suddenly very tired. Tired of all of it. "No offense, Luke, but you understand why I'm not planning on bringing her home anytime soon, don't you?"

"I mean, sure," Luke says. "It was a long time ago, though."

"Still."

"Rory doesn't seem too upset," Luke says, naively. "She was really nice about it, when she told me to call you."

"She told you to call?"

"Well, not in so many words, but - "

"Jesus, Luke," Jess says, shaking his head incredulously. He hates that it still gets to him like this. Just hates it. "You always say the quiet part out loud. All of you do. You know that?"

"Is that a compliment or an insult? I couldn't tell," Luke says.

"It was both," Jess says. "What do you want to know? What should I tell you that would answer everyone's questions?"

"Come on," Luke says, but Jess waits him out, and after a beat of silence, he hears a resigned sigh. "Is it serious?"

"Yes," Jess says firmly.

"Really?"

"Yes, really," Jess says. "I've known her for a year, we've only been dating for two and a half months but yes, it's serious. She didn't know who I was and I didn't know her when she applied at Truncheon. She's very good at her job, and we're not planning on firing her anytime soon. I'm not her boss and work isn't an issue. She's trying really hard to work through her issues with Rory for my sake, and I'm trying to respect that by not rubbing it in her face. April likes her, and Sasha and Lily think she walks on water. She gets along like a house on fire with Chris and Matt, and so I'm trying really hard not to fuck it up. Anything else?"

"Damn," Luke says, "I don't think I've ever heard you say that many words at one time before. Even when you were yelling at me."

"Shut up," Jess grumbles.

"Well, I can't say I've got a dog in this fight, but I'm happy for ya," Luke says. "Lorelai said she was a real 'Donna Reed type', whatever that means."

Jess snorts. "I mean, she is, but she isn't. She's more like…" Jess thinks about it for a second. "Do you remember that lady who used to sell you those homemade pies? The really good ones. We always sold out by like eleven o'clock."

"Valentina," Luke supplies. "She went back to Miami about five years ago. She was great - always gave me a good deal."

"She probably made more money off of you, since you got everyone hooked on her strawberry rhubarb. You kept her in business," Jess says. "Anyway - she was the sweetest lady ever. Like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth. She used to bring me one of those small hand pies every time she made a delivery, and even when I was rude to her, she kept doing it. She'd sit there and talk my ear off like we were best friends, and nothing I said phased her. And she was like that to everybody - remember that time Taylor tried to get her shut down because she didn't have a business license?"

"Oh yeah," Luke says. "Jackson and I stuck up for her. Plus Taylor knew he'd be run out of town if he shut the pie lady down. He was just flapping his mouth like he always does, trying to feel important."

"And she wasn't even mad," Jess marvels. "She still treated him the same way, didn't hold a grudge."

"Yeah, she was a real nice lady," Luke says. "What's your point, Jess?"

"My point is nobody fucked with her," Jess says. "As nice as she was - she didn't mince words, either. One time - you weren't there - she dressed down Kirk at the diner, in the middle of a Saturday lunch rush. She caught him complaining about the service, and she cut him down bad, gave him a guilt trip like you wouldn't believe. Everyone heard it - I'm surprised he didn't burst into tears. He looked like he was about to."

Luke guffaws. "Yeah, I heard about her doing that a few times. She was great."

"That's Lindsay," Jess says definitively. "She's nice, but for her own sake, not anyone else's. And she doesn't take shit from anybody." He hears himself slipping into a tone of voice that he would've been embarrassed by, a few months ago. But he's been coming around to this idea lately, about showing his cards, putting his money where his mouth is. It's a terrifying sort of gamble, but he's getting used to it, bit by bit. "So yeah, sure. Donna Reed works, I guess."

"Hell, Donna Reed wasn't so bad," Luke says. "Alma in From Here to Eternity? And she played a femme fatale in this Alan Ladd movie my dad really liked. She wasn't all aprons and pot roasts."

"Very nuanced thinking, Luke - April would approve."

"You could bring her with you," Luke says. "If you wanted."

"And cause a big thing with Rory? No."

"Rory can deal," Luke says firmly, which strikes Jess so abruptly that he stops breathing for a second. "You're not doing anything wrong, and neither is Lindsay. We'd figure it out. You're family, kid. Come on."

Jess leans his forehead against his fist, blinking hard down at his desk. He has to clear his throat a couple times before he can reply. "That's - thanks, Luke. Thanks for saying that."

"Well." Suddenly bashful, Luke's voice goes gruff. "It's stupid I have to say it."

"Sure, well you know me. Slow on the uptake." Jess laughs to himself, incredulous and feeling a little guilty about being so surprised. "If it's all the same, maybe you better visit here first, before I do a whole 'meet the family' thing. It's still pretty new for us, after all."

"Well, okay - I'll try to make June work then," Luke says. "And I am going to read your book."

"You don't have to like it," Jess says magnanimously. "I'm telling you in advance, it's okay if you think it's pretentious."

"Oh, shut up," Luke says, and Jess can almost hear the eye roll.

Lindsay picks out a zippy little Nissan Versa at the dealership in Stamford, which surprises Jess since she'd actually been looking at SUVs on the website. But it suits her - much more than the ugly, mud-brown Buick she had before.

"It's blue," Lindsay says happily, "I've never had a nice color car before."

"And everything works," Jess points out. "You can do all the things normal people do in their cars now, Lindsay - charge your phone. Listen to the radio. Not sweat to death in the summer because the air conditioner works properly - "

"And you don't have to turn a crank to open the windows!" Lindsay finishes, clapping her hands in excitement. "Peanut's gonna love it."

"Well, if he likes it," Jess says, kissing her forehead. Lindsay leans into his chest with a sigh, still grinning.

They make a weekend out of it, stopping overnight in New York, at an old friend of Jess' who's been offering his couch for months. Julien, who works some fancy Wall Street job now, is effusively welcoming, cooks them dinner and oohs and ahhs over the Versa like it's the best subcompact sedan he's ever seen. The hospitality is slightly soured, however, when he pulls out a bag of coke right there at the dinner table.

"Um, no thanks," Lindsay says, without even flinching. "I'm on a diet." Jess bites his lip viciously to keep the laugh in.

"It's good for losing weight though," Julien says eagerly, but Lindsay just flashes him her Mona Lisa smile and shakes her head. "Jess, you want a bump? Come on - just like old times."

"No, I'm done with that, man," Jess says, shaking his head. He reaches out and snags Lindsay's hand under the table. "Thanks, though. You go ahead if you want, though."

"Nah, you're responsible adults - so am I then, just for tonight," Julien says, tucking the bag away, but Jess catches him rubbing his nose about an hour later, coming out of the kitchen with a plateful of garlic bread. For the sake of old times, Jess doesn't call him on it.

"Sorry about that," Jess tells Lindsay later, as they wander around the old neighborhood. It looks completely different from what it was when Jess was growing up here, of course - nothing ever stands still in New York. Still, he'd recognize these streetlights and alleyways anywhere. "I didn't know he was still on that shit - I kind of assumed he'd straightened out, what with his job."

"It's fine," Lindsay says. "Amanda used to do a lot of coke. And E, too. When we lived together in Hartford she was always bringing her weird clubbing friends over, so it's not like I'm not used to it."

"I only did it here and there," Jess says. Feeling an odd sort of bravery, he keeps talking. "Mostly I liked pills. Painkillers and shit. But I never let it get out of control - my mom never even found out about it." He pauses in the middle of the sidewalk, and he and Lindsay move to the side to allow an elderly woman with a walker room to get by. She smiles at them both in gratitude, an absurd gesture from the universe, considering the topic of their conversation.

"Somehow," Lindsay says, once the woman is far enough away not to hear, "that doesn't surprise me about you. No offense."

"And it wouldn't surprise me to hear that you've never touched a drug harder than ibuprofen in your life," Jess says. Lindsay smiles and shrugs. "Right?"

"Never really tempted me," Lindsay says. "But, you know - being so close to Amanda - I could understand it. Sort of, anyway. I tried not to get too self-righteous about it, because I knew she had her reasons."

"Everyone has reasons," Jess says, thinking about his mom. "But even the good ones don't make it healthy."

Lindsay steps closer, and threads her arm through his elbow. Her hair, long enough to reach her elbows now, tumbles down between their shoulders, the ends of it snagged against the open collar of his jacket.

"Being back here always fucks with my head," he says after a minute. "Sorry to ruin the mood."

"You're not ruining anything," Lindsay says kindly. "He's an old friend - of course you're worried about him."

"Yeah, well - people do what they do. You can't talk them out of it," Jess says. "My mom wants me to come to Doula's twelfth birthday. Did I tell you? That's why Luke called me the other day."

"Are you gonna go?"

"No." Jess shakes his head. "I'm currently trying to limit the negative influences in my life. That's why I've been spending so much time with you, you see."

Lindsay laughs. "I'm flattered," she says, squeezing his arm, "but don't say 'no' for my sake."

"Oh, I'm not, trust me."

"And don't say 'no' because you're scared, either," Lindsay says. "Say 'no' for good reasons, Jess."

"Hm." Jess thinks about that for a minute. She's always surprising him like that. "I think mine are good. Something something boundaries, something something toxic relationships. You know what I mean."

"I do," Lindsay says, smiling up at him gently. "I'm proud of you, by the way. For saying no to Julien in there. Is that cheesy?"

"Yes," Jess says, his heart in his throat. "But I get it."

"I don't mean it to be condescending either," Lindsay says. "I just mean that I know you were tempted. I could tell."

"I'm always tempted to take the easy way out," Jess says, pulling her to a stop in the middle of the sidewalk. The block is mostly empty, this late at night, but the street is brightly lit by a neon marquee above their heads, which is casting red shadows on her honey-blonde hair. He could write a poem about this moment, probably. "But I don't think I want a way out anymore. Not from where I'm at now. With you, but also with everything else. Does that make sense?"

Lindsay's face does something complicated, her grip loosening on his arm. "Yes, it does."

They hang in silence for a moment, just looking at each other. Jess takes a deep breath and pulls her hand to his mouth for a kiss, thinking about what he'd said to Luke on the phone - about how he always says the quiet part out loud. He hadn't meant it as a compliment, but it wasn't exactly an insult, either. Jess was never brave enough to approach the world like Luke did - brazenly, with his heart on his sleeve, and very little impulse control. It's something he's always admired, in a weird, resentful way.

"D'you wanna see where I went to elementary school?" Jess asks. Lindsay's smile lights up her face as she nods. "P.S. 89. It's only a few blocks from here."

"That would be adorable, yes," Lindsay says. "Your accent's back, by the way. Ever since we got to Julien's. I wasn't going to say anything, but just then when you said 'blocks from here' - "

"Shaddup," Jess says with a laugh, tugging her back down the sidewalk.

"No, I'm saying I think it's sexy!"

"Now you're being condescending," says Jess.

He doesn't hear from Rory again for a long while. Jess emails her one more time, to make it clear that the door is still open, but she doesn't reply to that either, so he shelves it. The manuscript for Gilmore Girls goes in his TBD folder, Lindsay breathes a sigh of relief that's much more obvious than she thinks it is, and Jess mostly forgets about it for a few months.

His own novel comes out, which is distracting enough; his agent had made friends with Lindsay and they've booked him an ostentatious author tour designed to drive him up the wall, he's pretty sure. He's giving talks at schools and shit. Even a couple TV things. Jess hates every goddamn minute.

"You looked so good on Good Morning Atlanta, though - see, I told you the suit jacket was the way to go," Lindsay tells him. "Don't worry, I emailed the producer and got him to send me a tape of it. That way aaaaall your friends and family can enjoy it, too."

"I'm leaving you for this woman I just met," Jess informs her. "Her name is Daisy and she's much nicer to me than you are."

"Is Daisy the name of that ferret you sent me a picture of this morning?" Lindsay asks patiently. "Your AirBnb host's beloved pet?"

"I don't see what that has to do with her being nice to me," Jess says.

"Just don't get rabies, you've got three more weeks left," Lindsay tells him.

Luke reads it, and likes it (or so he claims, Jess is skeptical). April texts them several pictures of him asleep on the couch with the book laying open in various positions on his face and chest, and each time it seems to be open to a different page, so he's making progress at least. His mom sends him several effusive emails, which is actually kind of nice. And Lily sends him a video of Sasha crying her eyes out when she first sees the dedication page. Jimmy's in the background crying too, although he denies it when Jess tries to tease him about it.

"Honey, I don't even know what to say," Sasha tells him, over a weak Skype connection, as Jess is sitting in a hotel room in Austin, Texas. "You didn't have to do this. Wait - did you dedicate it to me just because I might die? Because fuck you, if so."

"No," Jess says, laughing. "I dedicated it to you because you're one of my favorite people, you ungrateful hippie."

"Aw," Sasha says. She's been in the hospital for a few days, on her second round of chemo, but she looks good on the video - her eyes are bright and alert, there's color in her face. Lily's been sending him daily updates, so Jess knows everyone's spirits are good, that the doctors are hopeful. "Still, you didn't have to. I hope it won't cause any problems with your mom."

Sasha's always been gentle and careful about Liz, to the point where it used to annoy Jess a little when he was living with her. He'd wanted to be angry, to be allowed to stew and sulk about it, but Sasha was always defending Liz, which was the only thing about her that used to piss him off. "It won't. I mean - she hasn't said anything, and I'm sure she's read it by now. So that means she's probably just gonna ignore it."

"She probably knows by now," Sasha agrees. "About me having cancer, I mean. So maybe she's trying to be courteous."

"Yeah, maybe," Jess says, noncommittally. "But I don't care. What she thinks, I mean. I did this because I wanted to, and it's not my problem how she feels about it. You deserve every word, Sash. You and Lily both - I wouldn't be half the writer I am if it hadn't been for you."

He can see her tearing up again, and trying to hide it - ducking her head away from the camera, letting her scarf fall into her face. Jess lets her have the moment. "All we did was encourage you - we didn't give you your talent. Or your dedication, honey - that was all you."

"No," Jess says, shaking his head. "There are people who come into your life who kick you in the right direction. And you gave me the right kick - that's what I mean. All of you did." He waits for a moment, while she gathers herself, grinning at the screen as she lets out a watery laugh, wiping tears off her cheekbones. "Besides, I'm not planning on stopping anytime soon. I'll have plenty of books to dedicate to everyone else by the time I'm done."

"That's the spirit," Sasha says, still wobbly with tears. "I love you, babe. You're one of my favorite people, too."

"Ah, yeah," Jess says, swallowing thickly. "Thanks. I mean - I love you too. That's what I probably should've said first, instead of the 'kick' thing."

"Oh, I knew what you meant," Sasha says, laughing.

He almost loses the email, when it finally comes - everything gets jumbled up when he's traveling, constantly in a state of messy transit - including his thoughts, emotions, and email inbox. In an Uber to the University of Michigan campus, where he's meant to have "a conversation" with a creative writing professor for the benefit of forty-odd Humanities undergrads, Jess finds Rory's email, a few days old, with a link to a podcast he was featured on attached.

I find it funny how you claim not to be a post-postmodernist and yet still here you are on a trendy podcast, discussing post-ironic nihilism with David Naimon.

Jess laughs out loud, and sends back, when did I claim not to be a post-postmodernist? As if anyone's come up with a good definition of what that is, anyway.

I could've sworn you said it once. And post-postmodernism is anything written after the invention of iPods, duh.

"Touche," Jess says out loud, drawing the wary attention of the driver. With a strange sense of relief, though, releasing a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding, he finds that he doesn't really care.

First of all, I want to apologize, says the email Rory sends later that night - a long one, with a few long rambling paragraphs that Jess reads several times just to understand. She sounds like she might've been a little tipsy when she wrote it, which Jess can understand. It was unprofessional to just ghost you like I did, but then again that's sort of my thing, isn't it? Being kind of unprofessional - not ghosting. I don't usually ghost people, but especially you - one of my oldest and dearest friends, which I mean in a sincere way, not a passive-aggressive, Victorian way.

"Okay," Jess says with a snort, reading that line twice. She can be so charmingly pretentious sometimes, it still drives him crazy, how much he likes it.

I've done a lot of thinking over the past few months - helped along by your novel, which of course was brilliant and sad and surprisingly romantic, good job! As usual! - and the conclusion I came to was sort of ugly, but I feel like I owe it to you, to confess. I was upset and jealous about Lindsay, which you probably already figured out - and no, not because of Dean, or because of the history there. I was jealous because in the back of my mind, I had held you in a specific moment, and even after all these years, all the times that I've seen you in person and witnessed how you've changed and grown - really, in my heart, you were still nineteen, walking up to me on the street in Stars Hollow. I think you know what I'm talking about, and I hope you won't make me say it - I'm not thatbrave, unfortunately.

That's not to say that I'm asking you to drop everything in your life and elope with me (we'd kill each other in a week! Or maybe we'd make it two. We're both in therapy now, after all) or even telling you that I'm still in love with you, which I'm not (sorry), because I think we both know what we have now is much kinder, gentler, and infinitely more beautiful than what we were trying to build together back then. I do love you, because of course I do - but friendship is, I've come to believe, a much richer and more precious thing than romance (at least the version of it that I've always found myself attracted to). I trust you, and I know you trust me, and while our lives might be very separate now, I think you know that I would drop it all if you ever needed anything from me. In a 'ride or die, I'm the only living soul who knows the swan story' sort of way.

Anyway. What I'm trying to tell you is that a) I'm sorry, and b) what I want more than anything else for you, more than success or money or Booker Prizes, is happiness. And if what you have now, with Lindsay or with anyone else, brings you that, then of course I approve. Of course I'm not angry. OF COURSE YOU CAN BRING HER HOME, YOU IDIOT. We're adults and also, sort of stepsiblings? Whatever. I love you, is the point.

And you're still the only one I want to publish the book. If you're still willing to, that is - warts and all. It wouldn't have a home with anyone else, Jess. You're the only person in the whole world that I would ever trust with it, and that's the truth.

Jess almost doesn't see the postscript, several lines of space down, at the bottom, as overwhelmed as he is by those paragraphs: P.S. please give Lindsay my number. Tell her when she's ready that she can call or text me, whatever she's comfortable with. It's time to grow up.

Attached to this message is a picture of her daughter - Nori, as she's affectionately named - holding the galley of his novel that Jess had sent to Rory. She's cute, obviously, but what touches Jess more than anything else is that Rory had sent the picture at all - she's never done that before, sent him photos of her baby. It feels like a gesture, somehow - a realignment. She's always been sort of tactful about talking about herself - her relationships and her emotions, her daughter and her mother - perhaps for obvious reasons. But now, here's this picture of Lorelai the third, sitting up in her bouncy chair, holding his book. You see? she's saying. Welcome to my life. Let's get to know each other again. It should be fun.

Jess takes a deep breath, and calls Lindsay. He can't think of anything else that he could possibly want to do, in the face of an email like this.

"I'm forwarding you an email and you have to promise me you'll read it," Jess says, before she even says hello. "Shit, did I wake you up?"

"No, I just got back from the bar," Lindsay says. She sounds a little drunk, but not overly so. "Chris and Matt say hi. What email?"

"From Rory," Jess says, already sending it. "Please read it."

"Okay," Lindsay says cautiously. "Like right now?"

"No. Just - when you want to. Like when you're ready. It's intense."

"Okay," Lindsay says again. He can hear her shuffling around and pictures her in her apartment, shrugging out of her jacket, tossing her purse and keys on the table. She's got the funniest way of moving around her apartment - she never does it at work, it's like all her energy gets toned down, stuffed into a jacket when she's at the office - but at home she stomps around, flailing her arms, knocking her shins and knees against every surface. When she cooks she's like a tornado - splattering chocolate and flour everywhere, tossing spoons aside the second they get dirty. Walking around her living room on Sunday afternoons, she moves like a linebacker - shoving furniture out of the way with her foot, knocking things off of tables. It's like she's so impatient to get from point A to point B that she can't even contain herself. "Are you okay? You sound a little upset."

"I'm fine, I think," Jess says. "Mostly I just wanted to talk to you. Because I feel sort of weird, having read this, and not having you read it too. So like - I'm not sending it to you to reassure you, or so that you won't get jealous, or anything like that. I just need you to read it because it's...intense for me. Does that make sense?"

"Sure," Lindsay says. He hears Peanut bark once or twice in the background, and Lindsay pulls the phone away from her mouth momentarily to shush him. "Sorry. Yeah, I get it. I'll read it in the morning, though - I'm not sure I can concentrate on it right now."

"Of course."

"How was the UMich thing?" she asks. "Not to change the subject or anything, if you need to keep talking about Rory. I mean - sorry, I'm having trouble focusing right now. There were a lot of martinis happening."

"It's okay," Jess says with a laugh. "We can talk about it later. UMich was fine. The guy was sort of a douche, but I'd heard that about him, so I was prepared. I met a lot of the students, they did a sort of coffee-and-snacks reception thing afterward."

"That's cool. Were they undergrads, or was it mostly people from the creative writing program there?"

"A mixture of both," Jess replies, thinking of one girl who had stood out - big round glasses with bright red frames, dreadlocks wrapped up in a round bun on top of her head. She'd cornered Jess by the coffee pot and asked him blunt questions about publishing - how long it took, if a pen name that sounded whiter would improve her chances, which agents did he think she had a shot with. He asked her for her email at the end, and she'd blinked at him in blank surprise for a full second before she grinned and produced a business card from her purse. "You know, sometimes I regret not going to college. I think I would've been good at it."

"Of course you would've been good at it," Lindsay says with a scoff. "You're like, crazy freaking smart. Sometimes when you talk about literature it makes me kind of nervous, because I don't really know how to keep up with you."

"Oh, come on."

"It's true! I actually wasn't planning on ever telling you that, but I'm kind of drunk," Lindsay says. "I'm not saying it makes me feel bad or anything, but you know. It just stands out to me sometimes, how sharp you are. That's all."

"You're just as smart as I am, just about different things," Jess says. "It's an interest that I've spent most of my life working on, and I picked up a lot of lingo along the way. Half of sounding smart is knowing the right words, you know - it's not like I'm saying anything particularly original or groundbreaking, most of the time."

"Well, I think you're wrong about that, but whatever," Lindsay says. "You could still do it, you know. Go to college. There are writing programs you could get into, I bet. With the literary clout under your belt, I bet you could get into an MFA without an undergrad degree, even."

Jess shudders. "No thanks."

"You're the one who brought it up!"

"I just meant - I would've been good at it," Jess says. "When I was a twenty-year-old douchebag. I would've killed it, probably. I thought I knew everything."

"Every twenty-year-old thinks they know everything."

"Right, but it's when you combine that arrogance with an extensive knowledge of Beat literature that a guy starts to get dangerous," Jess says. "I would've been insufferable. Made all sorts of enemies."

Lindsay laughs. "I can picture you somewhere like - Columbia or NYU. Smoking cloves in Central Park."

"Please," Jess says. "I smoked real cigarettes, Lindsay. Like a man."

"Oh, my mistake," Lindsay replies, still giggling. "Or maybe you could've gone to UCLA. Wearing your leather jacket to the beach every day."

"You're making fun of me, but I actually did that when I lived there, my dad used to give me so much shit," Jess says. "T.C. Boyle teaches at USC. I've always wanted to meet him."

"Give him a call! You're a contemporary, now."

"Yeah right," Jess says with a laugh. "I'm not that good."

"Yes you are," Lindsay replies, suddenly earnest. "You are, baby. Believe it for once, why don't you? You're on the bestseller list, for God's sake. And all these prestigious events we got for you - half of them called us, you know."

Jess rubs his jaw, the email from Rory still open on his laptop. The text blurs a little, in the contrast between the bright white screen and the almost-dark dimness of his hotel room. "I believe I'm good, I just don't think I'm as good as you say I am, because you're influenced by how handsome and sexy I am. Admit it."

"I'm very biased, and you are very, very good," Lindsay says. "I cried when I read the book. You saw me."

"You cry at commercials, sweetheart."

"Only when I'm on PMS! And I cried at the end of your book because it's brilliant, stop arguing with me," Lindsay continues stridently, rising her voice over the sound of his laughter. "I hate that you're so far away. If you were here right now I'd sit on you until you believed me."

"You can sit on me when I get home," Jess says, with just enough innuendo that she makes a weird noise, somewhere between a laugh and a squeak. "I'll be looking forward to that."

"Shut up," she says, sounding sort of embarrassed, which makes him laugh again - she's just so cute all the time, he can't stand it. He doesn't know how anybody else can make it through a single conversation with her without losing it like he does on a regular basis. "I do miss you. Next time I set up a tour for you it's gonna be way shorter."

"Next time you can come with me," Jess says, feeling brave. He closes his eyes and pictures her face, thinks about the next few months of his life, laid out so clearly in front of him: the big reading in Philly, the one Luke will be at. April on his couch for a couple weeks in late June. Lindsay's parents visiting in August, an event that she's already started to stress out about. Rory's book. Sasha in remission - a desperate, fervent hope, but one that he feels optimistic about. Stars Hollow, maybe. The future is a bright, undeniable thing, an open window that for the first time in his life, he isn't scared of. "Can I tell you something? You don't have to say anything back."

"Uh oh," Lindsay jokes.

"It's not bad. Unless I've really been reading this wrong."

"If you're gonna ask me to have phone sex the answer's no, I'm wearing these really uncomfortable jeans and my feet hurt from my heels, I've never felt less sexy," Lindsay says.

Jess snorts. "No. I wanted to tell you that I love you, that's all."

Lindsay takes one surprised breath, and then lets it out slowly. "Oh my God, I love you too."

She sounds so surprised by it, he has to laugh. "You really didn't have to say it back. I know you're drunk, it's okay - "

"No, I love you. I love you," she says, kind of marveling at it, like she's testing it out. "I do. Wow, that's so cool."

He laughs again. "Go to sleep, wasted face. I'll call you in the morning."

"Okay," Lindsay agrees sleepily. "Say it again, though."

"I love you," Jess says, feeling every syllable in his joints, like the words are rattling down to his bones and making them vibrate.

"Very cool," Lindsay says. And Jess is still smiling, long after he hangs up.

"So, I get the next book, right?" April asks.

"Dream on," Jess says. Peanut twitches a little in his sleep, curled up happily in her lap. There's an episode of This American Life playing on her phone, but neither of them are really listening to it. "Do something amazing for me, and then I'll dedicate a book to you."

"I've done plenty of amazing things for you," April says, rubbing Peanut's forehead. "You just don't appreciate them."

"Name one."

"I bring light into your life," April says, "I run interference for you with the Gilmore Girls, I defend you when Luke says you don't call enough - "

"Okay, but I don't call enough."

"And I ate this brownie so you didn't have to," April says. "Thanks again, Lindsay! I'm still floating, oh my God. Dark chocolate cloud nine."

"You're welcome!" Lindsay calls from the kitchen. Jess had made her promise to leave the dishes for them to do, but she keeps sneaking back in to keep loading the dishwasher. He's about given up on trying. "Any time!"

"I love her," April says solemnly. "Is she moving in?"

"Maybe. We've been talking about it." Jess has never been this excited about commitment, ever. It's a new and surprising state of being, on all fronts. "Her lease isn't up for another five months, so we have a good chunk of time to think about it."

"What's to think about? She's amazing," April says. "She's gonna help me write my statement of purpose tomorrow."

"I thought you already finished it."

"I did, but only for NYU," April says. "The joint JD in law at Boston College needs to be a little different, and Lindsay's the closest person to an expert I know, so."

"I keep forgetting she was gonna be a lawyer once upon a time," Jess muses. "It freaks me out a little."

"But in a sexy way, right?"

"Don't say 'sexy,' you're too young," Jess says. April snorts. "You know why she changed her major? Because she didn't think she wanted to work in an office." April laughs out loud. "I know, right? She wanted to start her own business. Something 'outdoorsy,' she told me."

"Which is why she ended up working for an insurance company for eight years, I'm guessing?"

"Pretty much. Although I still think she could pull it off, if she wanted to. Don't tell her I said that, though - we need her too much."

"Are you guys making fun of me?" Lindsay calls from the kitchen, over the telltale sounds of running water. "I heard my name!"

"Yes," Jess yells back. April grins and switches to scratching Peanut's stomach, who immediately starts thumping his tail in doggy bliss. "Come sit down with us, we're bored!"

"As soon as I finish not doing the dishes, I will!"

"Ugh, she's the worst," Jess says, grinning. April just keeps snickering, leaning heavily against the couch, with Peanut falling to pieces in her lap. "You're coming with us to the thing, right?"

"If I'm not 'too young,'" April says, with the air quotes and everything.

"Did I say that? Nah. You're what - thirty? Thirty-five now?"

"I'm twenty-five!"

"Whatever, you're so old," Jess says, reaching out to kick her foot. She yanks it back, making a face at him. "You can come to the stupid bar with us. Just don't go home with anybody - I'm serious about that one."

"Ugh. Dating," April says with a shudder. "No thanks. I'm too smart for that, thank you very much." Jess surprises himself, with how loud he laughs. "Besides, I'm too busy. If I'm going to be a professor then I have to buckle down - really dedicate myself, you know? Then who knows where I'll end up - I'll have to move where the job is. It could be anywhere - I can't guarantee that there will even be a position open at any of the schools on the East Coast."

"If you end up in some podunk town in the middle of Wyoming or something, then you'll never find a husband, you know," Jess says.

"Like I want a husband. Don't be heteronormative, Jess."

"Or a wife. Whatever." Jess shrugs. "Hell, don't marry anybody - find a soulmate and just live with them forever. Like Willa Cather and Edith Lewis."

"Well, they didn't get married because it was illegal back then, Jess."

"I could see you with like, a sophisticated companion," Jess says, blithely ignoring her interjection. "An artist, maybe a painter. Or a slam poet - somebody who would lighten you up a little, get you out and about. Walking hand in hand through the Village, going to the opera, or whatever."

"Am I living in 1935, in this fantasy?" April asks with a laugh. "Besides, I hate slam poetry."

"Why? What'd they ever do to you?"

"Nothing, it's just so pretentious!"

"What's so pretentious?" Lindsay asks, breezing into the room. The front of her shirt is wet from dishwater, and Jess frowns at her as she flops down into his lap, shoving his feet off the coffee table so she can get comfortable.

"Slam poetry," April says.

"What is this, what are you doing to me," Jess complains, realizing that her hands are still wet too. "Ugh, you're killing me, doing my dishes, tracking water everywhere, what's wrong with you - "

"Sorry, am I bothering you?" Lindsay says, wiping her hands dry on his shirt. Jess shoots her a look of disgust that only serves to make her laugh. "You need to wash your dish towels, by the way. I got brownie batter on all of them. Sorry."

"Unbelievable," Jess says, yanking her legs up higher on his lap so he can put his feet back up. She squeaks, sliding down a little until he steadies her with one arm around her back. "April, I see you. I see what you're doing, and don't even think about it - "

"Too late," April says, snapping a photo. "Instagram story."

"Goddamn it," Jess says.

"You guys are disgusting," April says cheerfully. "Absolutely detestable."

"Did you just actually just use the word 'detestable' in real life? You're such a philosophy major," Jess complains.

"Hey," Lindsay says, "I was a philosophy major for a while, you know."

"What, for like a week?"

"It was a month, thank you very much."

"Double El, if there's a single thing in academia that you didn't try to major in at one point, I'd like to know what it is," Jess says.

Lindsay thinks about it for a moment. "Sports medicine."

April cackles. "She's got you there," she says.

Lindsay beams at them both. "Tomorrow will be fun," she chirps. "April's never met Matt, has she?"

"No, and that was a deliberate choice we were making as a family," Jess says pointedly.

"I've talked to him on the phone. He can't be as bad as you say he is, I think you're just trying to scare me off so I won't tell embarrassing stories about you."

"You don't know embarrassing stories about me."

"I know the swan story," April says wickedly, and Jess almost dumps Lindsay right onto the floor. He quashes his fight-or-flight instinct at the very last second, though. "Yup. Rory got really drunk at the Spring Flower Festival and told me. Don't worry, though - Luke and Lorelai were all the way across town. I'm positive nobody heard."

"How positive?" Jess demands.

"Fairly positive. Almost certainly positive?"

"What's the swan story?" Lindsay asks, sounding intrigued.

"No. No fucking way," Jess says. April just grins at him. "April, I will kill you. I will push you right off the balcony right now."

"Lindsay," April says slowly, rubbing Peanut's head slowly. She looks like Dr. Evil, swiveling in the leather chair with the hairless cat. "We should talk later. One one one. You know - girl stuff."

"Lindsay, you're forbidden from talking to April," Jess says immediately. "For the rest of our lives."

"Oh we totally should," Lindsay says, as if he hadn't even spoken. "Really get to know each other. It's past time we had a really intimate talk."

"I hate," Jess says, and thinks for a second about how to end that sentence. There's just so much about this conversation that he hates. "...swans. I really hate them. I hate them so much, you guys."

April is almost in spasms, laughing, but Lindsay just leans in and tenderly kisses his cheek. "I cannot wait to hear this story."

"You're the worst," Jess lies, pulling her in close.

"Yeah, I'm detestable," Lindsay agrees.