"Shit, you're studying, I didn't -" he said when she opened her bedroom window. "Look, I'll see you tomorrow maybe, so -"

Already turning away and she hadn't said a word. It couldn't be more than an hour since she left the diner.

"Jess?"

He wasn't sure how he got there because it seemed like a stupid thing to do about a second after he knocked. Knocking on glass sounded wrong somehow. Maybe that's what woke him up from whateverthehell Dostoyevsky fugue state he'd been in. And it was only now, turning around to leave, that he noticed Lorelai's Jeep tracks.

No Jeep.

If that was a sign, he didn't want to know who it was from. One stupid idea quickly became a different, very bad idea. Too often no Lorelai meant imminent Lorelai.

"Jess, what's going on?"

"Nothing. I should …" he thumbed back where the driveway opened onto the street.

Not turning, but backing away this time, and it was so annoying.

"Stop it," she said. "Stop leaving. Are you coming in?"

He didn't answer but looked over his shoulder at the Jeep tracks and away from Babette's other front yard gnomes. Gnomes he was pretty sure had names, but if his brain ever betrayed him enough to remember one of them, he'd check himself straight into the nuthouse.

"Or am I coming out?" Rory continued. "Because don't think you're going anywhere without telling me what happened to make you look -" she swirled her open hand at him, "like that. And she's not home by the way, so you can either get in here or use the front door like a normal person, or I'm -"

"Like I said." The shrug. "It's nothing. Really," he stressed. "So -"

The window hefted up another foot, so although he didn't see the determined look on her face as she squinted up at the catch, he knew it was there.

"Don't do - -Rory -" Plunked down on the frame, she had thrown a leg over. "You're gonna break something."

"Very. Possibly." Effort added punctuation as she ducked, straightened, then reached out her hand. He grabbed her by the forearm instead and a web of shoulder muscles sang. Worse than yesterday somehow.

"You're serious?" he said, watching her dust her hands together then push hair behind both ears.

"Seems like it," she said, a shoulder rising. Something puckish at the corners of her mouth. "So, where to?"

His turn to shrug, closing his mouth to frown out the surprised look.

"Alright," she put her hands in her pockets, "then I guess I know somewhere."

And she left him standing, staring after her with his head on one side. Two jogged steps caught him up as she headed towards the porch stairs.

"Here?"

"Why not?" she replied, having sat down heavily on gray floral upholstery, graying darker with use every year.

"You're kidding."

"Sit."

She had walked right past the steps, and six paces more brought them to the sagging canework couch that Lorelai could never decide whether it belonged out front or not. For her birthday the month before, Luke said it was the last time he was moving the damn thing, she was nuts, and who makes something this huge with no casters for crying out loud? And then moved it again until it was centered between the windows because she did the face.

Babette and Morey's house was dark as Jess looked over, thumbnail drawn to the place above his eye where the bruise unaccountably hadn't bloomed.

"At the wake, I bet," Rory said, making him turn back. "Miss Patty probably begged Morey to play piano, so he usually starts with 'Always' and everybody cries." She drew her knees up beneath her chin and hugged them, then smiled. "But they get around to the show tunes pretty quickly after that. He's a pro."

"Huh."

"Jess," she said pointedly.

He sighed and dropped beside her on the couch, saying, "This thing better not be damp."

"So, what happened?"

"Nothing."

"No, uh-uh, we're beyond this already, Jess." She swivelled, unfolding to sit cross-legged and face him. Or his profile at least, because he was looking down at his hands, bent at the couch edge with forearms on spread knees. "So talk."

Friday's souvenir scab on his second knuckle was drying and lifting unpleasantly as he flexed his hand. Stiff-feeling still. Familiar.

It was a pause she couldn't help but fill.

"Really? Nothing? After everything, and the other night, and you still won't talk to me? After you said I could call you at two a.m? Fine, maybe you were joking, but it didn't seem that way. I think you meant it. Or something like it anyway. And I liked that you said it because it made me think you knew the same goes for me. That I want to know when you're feeling as crappy as I did last night at my grandparents' house. Crappy, and lonely, and sad, and just ..." she thought for a split second, "scared, even though it's stupid. I felt stupid. For fighting with her, for not telling her about … about everything when I said I would. I still do. And I'm scared of people dying - -After Fran, it's all so -"

The lawn in the yard was a week too long and she watched it stir under a squall, her mind rushing as the grass rippled away from her.

"I mean there's Grandpa," she went on, "but not just him, anyone. It can happen to anyone and I'm scared of it. And you," looking at him for the first time since her eyes had gone with the moving grass and sudden words. Finding him looking back with his lip dragging between his teeth.

Scared of him? That was -

"I lay there thinking about you," she said without slowing, "and how I'm different since we got together - -No, before even. Since you got here in the first place. I feel so weird, it's - -Not bad different," she clarified quickly, speeding over the bump and her glance flying up at him. "Just different. And apart from holding it together with school, and the paper, and the dumb council-Francie-Paris stuff - ugh -"

The noise was a 60/40 split of disgust and exhaustion, and came with a reflex breath. "Half the time it feels like nothing's under control anymore, and I have no idea what I'm doing, or what's happening, or - -I mean with me, or … or us. You."

Again the word brought her gaze back to him from where it had drifted, but his had fallen to the scuffed wood beneath them and didn't come up, and she didn't stop.

"The whole time I'm staring at the stupid ceiling worrying about you, and how you're not happy, and you hate it here, what if you want to leave? And I was thinking, okay, let's consider it: if you're not happy maybe you should, if it's what you want. To go back to New York. Except I love you, and I'm selfish, and I want you here, I can't help it."

Still not facing her, but listening as she went on, "But I do want you to be happy and you're not, Jess. You're not." Emphatic. "And I know verbal isn't your thing, it's my thing, but if you still can't talk to me after everything that we've - -Everything that's happened, then I don't know what I - -I'm still talking," she said, realizing self-consciously. "Which probably isn't helping my point right now, so ..." Loose fists fell on the place where her legs crossed. "I'm going to shut up."

One, two, three, four, five. Her resolve just starting to weaken with six. Seven -

"It wasn't," he said, words falling between his knees.

Waiting still with eight, nine, ten.

Still bent low at the edge of the couch, he turned to look up at her. "A joke."

"I know," she said.

Eleven, twelve - no, start over - One, two, three ...

She watched him go back to drawing his thumb over the pad of his left index finger, like he was rubbing off the fingerprint.

"This guy ..." he started, but faltered. Took another breath big enough for her to see it going in. "After you left, some guy shows up - -I've got the damn keys in my hand," he said, turning it over like they were there in his palm, "because Luke is nuts if he thinks I'm staying open another hour and a half, screw him. And screw this guy who's just standing there in the doorway and says 'You're closing?' like it's a question …

"You're closing?"

"Yup."

"Right now?"

Jess's reply was the fact he was still heading for the door.

"But the sign -"

"Is wrong."

"But ..."

So far Jess hadn't slowed his approach through the tables, but he stopped and pulled a trigger-finger. "You're the loser from the doorway."

"Well, uh ..."

"Yesterday," Jess added as the image cleared. "Whatever. Maybe you'll actually make it tomorrow, huh? Reach for those stars. Anyway, I gotta ... " he gestured at the door.

"But -"

"Look, I don't know what your problem is, but get -"

"I'm your father."

"- out of - -What?"

"Your - -Jimmy, I'm Jimmy," he said, changing tack. Then, hastily, "No one calls me James. My grandma did, but she's - -Mariano, I mean."

So much information, so many switchbacks, and Jess closed his hand on the keys that had so far swung off the loop around his middle finger.

"You're …?"

"Yeah," Jimmy said, answering sheepishly any number of unasked questions. Hands in his jacket pockets opening it out as if to add what can I tell you?

"Huh."

It emptied his lungs, and after a while something in Jess remembered to breathe.

A thought itched with Jimmy. "She, uh, she told you my name ... didn't she? Liz? She -"

"Yeah." Jess dragged his bottom lip with his thumb, thinking. "Yeah, she did."

"Okay. Good. That's … something."

"You wanna …" one shoulder lifted, "- sit?"

Jimmy pulled out a chair, saying, "Sure, I can sit. Sitting is ... good. Probably."

"You drink coffee or …?"

"Yes! Coffee," Jimmy said, relief making it too enthusiastic as he dodged a glance around Jess in the direction the teenager had swung back his arm. "Coffee's great. Thanks."

The pot was still on the warming plate from its service to Rory, their mugs on the counter. Jess laid the keys beside them to pick up two more.

"I don't know about great," he said when he came to the table, "but it's hot."

"Hot's good."

So quiet. Never quiet in the diner at closing if Jess was on his own. But the CD player was under the counter, forgotten like he'd forgotten to flip the sign when they went upstairs. And lock the door. Again.

On the porch, he turned to look at her.

"Sorry," he said. "The door thing. I didn't -"

She lifted her chin out of her hands. "It's okay."

"Oh my god! The door," she said when she saw it, remembered it, unwinding herself from him and the curtain at the bottom of the stairs.

Fuck.

"We did it again, I can't believe we - -What is wrong with us? At least last time it was late and the diner was closed and people wouldn't -"

"Rory, relax," he said, thinking Fuck again and catching her hand out of its flailing arc. Shrugged. "It's not a big deal."

"Not a big -? Jess, anyone could have just - -Kirk! What if Kirk -?"

She was being drawn nearer by the weave of fingers because the unformed tornado in her mind left her legs to their own devices. "Or, oh my god, my mom, or - -Luke! Luke could've -"

"Luke has keys," he said, flat as the fact.

"Oh," she said. Still moving toward him. "Yeah."

"Cesar has keys," he went on in the same monotone. "The whole town knows about the key on the frame because apparently no one can mind their own damn business in this place, and I'm pretty sure that includes your mom."

And if she had been more than dimly conscious of it, she would have thought of mesmerism and muscle reading and the Brownings again. The dream she'd had two nights before.

"And this," she said, just inches away, both hands in both of his, "is meant to make me feel better how?"

He shrugged again, then leaned and watched her close her eyes just before he kissed her.

"It's not like I don't get that it bothers you," he said, elbows sinking into the overstuffed cushions behind them, leaning back.

"I know."

"And before. I get it, okay? I don't want you to think I don't. I do."

"You mean," she looked puzzled, "last time?"

"No," he said. Then, "Yes. But at that thing. The party or whatever. It was shitty timing." His eyes rolled up and he shook his head slightly, as if the mental image of himself two nights ago was somewhere up there. "I was an asshole, okay?" Met her gaze again. "And not just about the door."

"Jess, come on -"

"I just wanted you to know, that's all. I can't take it back, but -"

"I know. I know you would. I'm here aren't I?"

He nodded, biting his lip.

"Okay then," she said, like that settled it. "And the thing with the door? Today, I mean. I don't know why I … I'm not ..." she paused. Regrouped. "It's new, all this. For me, you know? I don't think I'm used to it. Like, at all. Not yet, anyway. What I said before about being out of control, I … I don't know - -Mmph."

He hadn't lurched far to stop her mouth with his, but she felt all five fingers grip and steady on her thigh before the other hand touched her face. One thumb firm six inches above her knee as the other traced so lightly around her ear she shivered.

The old cane of the couch, second hand when they'd got it and now six years older, creaked as she rested her forehead against his.

"You keep doing that," she said.

"It keeps working."

"Go on," she told him. Except she shifted back. Laced their fingers on his knee. "Tell me about it. Please. I mean you don't have to, but ... "

"So," Jimmy said, opening his hands around the mug. This was as far as he'd got whenever he'd tried to plan what he might say, his brain slamming shut each time. Each night in the brown room, each minute on the bench in loving memory of Croydon Hesh, each year in the last seventeen. Eighteen.

Hours behind the grill, behind the wheel, at the winch smelling salt and dead fish on The Susan.

Sometimes he noticed, but not always. Time passing. Seconds into minutes.

Enough, finally.

"What're you doing here, Jimmy?"

"Wow, okay, straight to the point. Okay. Uh …"

Jess waited, genuinely curious to see if the guy would look up from the mug before there was another ice age, or whether he would bolt.

When Jimmy did look up, he said, "Well, I - -Boy, that is quite the frown you have there. Is that -? And it gets worse, look at that, but I guess I deserve it. Still, if looks could kill - -Okay, yes, rolling your eyes, also fair, probably."

Jess wasn't going to make it any easier.

"Alright, so, honestly? I don't know."

The inside of Jess's cheek had healed since Friday, but his molars were working on another ridge.

"And that sounds bad," Jimmy said, "obviously, I know. Don't think I don't. But I'm being honest with you here, Jess." Upturned hands came forward across the table like the line was a gift, but it sounded like another question. They retracted as he looked back at the door over his shoulder.

"And no one knows I'm here, by the way, so you could definitely kill me, dump my body, and nobody would come looking. 'Course I'd rather you didn't, but, you know," he shrugged. "You could. If you wanted. Maybe I deserve that too."

Jess swallowed, his tongue moving behind his teeth until it settled low in his jaw like an unsprung trap.

"In fact," Jimmy continued, "if Luke finds me here I'm positive he'd give you a hand, so there's that. Cut down on the heavy lifting and whatnot. I bet he's got a huge freezer in the back, right?"

The eyebrows went up and Jimmy realized he was off track. "Sorry, I just - -This place, the town, it's so …" He shrugged. "The motel is definitely straight out of a slasher movie, I can't - -It's so brown, you know? But the town. The town is weird too, right? Maybe I watched Blue Velvet one too many times ..."

Jimmy trailed off, and after a moment Jess took pity on him. "Nope," he said. "It's weird."

"You think so? Alright, good, because I was starting to wonder if - -Okay, get this, eleven - I kept count - eleven people asked me if I needed directions today. Now I'm pretty sure a couple people might do that where I live - and believe me, if it weren't for the beach there's no way I could handle the wavy gravy, can-I-help-you-find-your-chakra, I'm okay, you're okay vibe there - -Man, I do love that beach, though. But here? I mean, there's friendly and there's The Monsters Are Due On Whatever Street. I'm pretty sure those guys were all 'howdy, neighbour-'ly, right up until they weren't."

"Maple," Jess supplied levely.

"Maple Street, yeah. Can't shake the feeling I'm in Rod Serling's fever dream or something. You like it here?"

Nope.

"It's alright."

Willoughby! Willoughby! had rung loud in his mind the second he stepped out of the diner that day and saw the kiddie rides, the garlands, the twins. The guy on the train thought it was paradise, but Jess knew better, even then.

He'd said as much to Rory over the pepperoni pizza that subbed for her picnic, and she laughed around a mouthful, saying, "You're lucky you had a couple of weeks to get used to us before the dance marathon then. I'd hate for you to have lost your mind if you'd arrived the morning after when the bodies are lining the streets." She had gone on to try and convince him to watch the carnage unfold up close this time around. Strange how things turned out.

The summer without her though, the clowns and the heat and Taylor's relentless, amateur carnie-barking dredged it up again and found him tearing through the apartment, hurling more bluntly at Luke, "This town's a fucking suicide, you know that?" as he slammed the bathroom door.

"Now Sasha," Jimmy continued, "she can do the friendly thing. Me? Not so much. She knows everyone and his dog back there, fixing them casseroles, cutting hair, watching their kids - -A goldfish, a hamster, and a guinea pig once, I swear. For two weeks."

A crazy, right? grin spread on Jimmy's face and Jess swallowed.

"What are you doing here, Jimmy?"

"Wh-? Okay, I guess I haven't - -It's your birthday in a couple days, right?"

Jess nodded.

"So," said Jimmy, and resettled himself in his chair.

"So what?"

"So … I don't know, okay? I just …" he shrugged. "Seemed like it was time - -You don't think it was time?"

"Time, huh? Time for what? Time you passed on all your hard earned wisdom? You got a …" Jess's wrist flicked, sending out a blade of hand, "... maybe a watch your dad gave you, you always wanted me to have? A Mickey Mantle baseball? Time you frigging met me?"

"You wanna break my balls, fine, have at it. Go ahead."

"Ohhh, I get it." The sarcasm was thick but there was still something raw beneath it. "You came here to get yelled at, right? 'Cos this? This was only gonna go one of two ways, and either way you get to leave and feel like you did the right thing. C'mon, tell me I'm wrong."

"I … This was a bad idea." Jimmy rose quickly, his calves making the chair bark. "I should ..."

"Yeah," Jess said, "you should."

Jess heard the door ring closed a mile behind him. Jimmy didn't look back.

A/N Thanks for reading. If you have a sec for a word or two of review, I'd appreciate it. Thanks too to Andra-ggfan.

There's a second part to this chapter that I hope to get up soon. Sorry it's taken so long to get here. Thanks again for reading. Here's a taster anyway:

She had expected a monologue after the breath and the 'Screw him' and the detour about the keys being in his hand. But this wasn't about outsider art by schizophrenics in Austria and Canada, or Joe Strummer busking with a ukelele, or how Dos Passos and Hemingway used to read the Bible aloud together before they started hating each other. Lorelai liked to do voices - her mother, Luke, Heather-the-Squeaker at the laundry - and even forty second phone calls got the full treatment.

Jess wasn't Lorelai, and it had gone like this:

"And screw this guy who's just standing there in the doorway and says 'You're closing?' like it's a question when I'd say it's pretty frigging obvious, but whatever. Turns out it's Jimmy."