Chapter Two: Letters

Rory tried to regain some composure. "Jess?" she repeated, as memories raced through her mind like a video on fast-forward.

Melinda looked down, she didn't have the nerve to look Rory in the eye, "Yeah Ror, I'm sorry but I saw everything: the ring, the necklace, the letters."

Rory opened her mouth to speak, but no works came out.

"Rory, I'm sorry," Melinda kept saying. "I just- I was looking through the boxes and I thought they would be vintage shoes so I opened it, and," she paused and for some reason began to whisper, "I just had no idea." Melinda glanced up, only to face Rory's back.

"It was- we were-," she hesitated, not sure if she could speak of him without crying. "It's just nothing, okay?" Rory sniffled.

Melinda scooted over to her friend's side. "Ror, I saw the letter," she said, looking her in the eye, "it was signed 'A lifetime would not be enough…' with a dot,dot, dot."

Rory smiled, only Melinda would think there was meaning behind a "dot, dot, dot."

"Rory," she hesitated, but curiosity got the best of her, "who's Jess?" she finally asked.

Rory turned her body so she was facing towards the closet. As she studied Melinda's face, her eyes drifted down to the shoebox and what lay inside it. As tears began to well up in her eyes, Rory silently cursed herself for getting emotional. She thought she was done with him. She thought she was past this. Obviously not.

Rory took a deep breath, her eyes flicking back up to Melinda. "Jess was a teenage romance."

Melinda blinked and then looked down at the box in her lap. As she fingered through the letters and jewelry, she began to speak.

"Rory, this looks to me like a little more than just a 'teenage romance.' This looks to me like it was real," she finished, holding the mysterious ring in the air, as if to show her. "Looks to me like it was young love."

Rory bit her lip, thinking it would keep the tears back. She promised herself she would never cry over him again. Too many tears were already spent on him.

Melinda placed the ring back in its rightful place. "Rory, please talk to me. You're obviously hurting or else you wouldn't be upset. Please," she looked up with pleading eyes.

Rory nodded and wiped at her face with her sleeve. "We were engaged, and he left."

"He left?" Melinda's jaw dropped. "Rory, I had no idea." She took a minute, tucking her hair behind her ears, wondering if she should dare ask the question on the tip of her tongue. She did anyway. "Why?"

Rory shook her head from side to side, sniffling and biting her lip once again. "I really don't know. I haven't spoken to him since. All I've gotten were letters with no return address. The only way I knew where he was staying was by the postage sta-amp." Rory's voice cracked with the word stamp, and that was it, she had lost. Tears streamed down her face as she tried to continue.

"I loved him, Melinda," she sniffed. "He was the only boy I ever loved-ed." With each word she said, Rory become all the more hysterical. Soon words turned into sobbing studders and deep breaths.

Melinda moved closer to her friend and enveloped her in a tight hug. "Awe Ror, I'm so sorry," she whispered into her hair. "Shh, shh. It's okay hun, you're gonna be okay," she consoled while rubbing her back.

After Rory's breathing steadied, she got up and knocked everything off her bed. She sniffed for the millionth time that night, as her nose was still runny. "I'm just going to go to bed," she said, her voice low.

"Alright," Melinda nodded. "I think I'm going to stay here," she said, more to herself than to Rory. "Yeah, I'm going to go sleep out on the couch, okay?"

"Mmmhmmm." Rory replied, already curled in a ball beneath her blankets.

Melinda fixed Rory's pillows before leaving the room. "I'm only a few steps away if you need me," she said and turned out the lights behind her.

After Melinda left, Rory scanned the room. They had left everything out: the shoes, the clothes, all the contents of her nightstand. It was as if they just threw in the towel and called it quits for the night. Rory's gaze stopped at the stack of boxes by the closet, more importantly, the one that lay on top.

As Rory snuggled back into her pillow, her thoughts drifted to the night he left. Her eyes watered just picturing the lone envelope on the table. It was a white business size envelope with 'My Lorelai' scribbled across the front. She could literally feel her heart breaking as she picked up that envelope.

Rory cried herself to sleep that night, as she had countless nights before.

She cried thinking of how he was different from anyone she had ever known. She cried remembering how he insisted on calling her Lorelai when everyone else called her Rory. She cried remembering his hand writing in the margins of her books, and how it had mysteriously gotten there when she didn't even lend him the book. She cried remembering of a time when he was hers, and more importantly, when she was his.