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When you’re sixteen, you think it will last forever. Of course you do; she is your first. First kiss, first love, first heartbreak. First everything. Then it ends, and you’re hurting, but you can’t quite believe that that is it. The End. Somehow, you know you’ll have another chance. And you are determined not to screw it up next time. Because she’s the one, she’s your one, you know it right down to your core.
*
This time, you’re twenty, and it’s wrong from the beginning.
You know it when you lean down (so far down, she’s the wrong height, so different to kissing Lindsay) to kiss her, when you thread your fingers through her hair (it’s short now, and it’s sophisticated and pretty, but it makes her different, reminds you that she’s not who she was, she’s not yours anymore), when you fall into her tiny bed and feel her even tinier body wrap around yours.
But it doesn’t matter, because this is it, this is your big moment, and you’re going to grab it with both hands, never let it go.
You’re wrong, of course. It’s not your time, not quite yet. Because she leaves, disappears for three months, jaunting across Europe with her grandmother (who does that? Who just decides at the drop of a hat that they’re going to Europe for the summer, to spend their days eating unpronouncable things and looking up the ghosts of the long-dead? It’s just another reminder that she’s never quite fit into your world, the one where you have to work three jobs just feed and clothe yourself), and you can’t help but wonder what you did wrong.
Then the letter arrives, and you’re trembling with anticipation again. She never says she doesn’t love you -- that she does is written between every line, every time she promises to take herself out of the picture so you can choose, you can have what you want, even if what you want is Lindsay. You’re still angry, and upset, but you feel hope again. You know the two of you will be together; it really is just a matter of time.
*
She shows up on your doorstep (your parents doorstep, and God, that’s humiliating, you’ve seen her dorm room at Yale, you’ve seen the affluence that surrounds her, that she takes on and off as it suits her, barely even knowing that she’s doing it) and you pull her inside. You kiss her in your bedroom, like you used to four years ago; before Lindsay and Yale and Jess, before you had to worry about anything except handing in Mr Morrison’s Algebra 3 assignment in on time. It’s a perfect moment, when she looks up at you and smiles, eyes wide and clear, and you see everything you fell (are still falling) in love with.
*
It takes a while for you to admit to yourself that it’s not going to work.
In the beginning, it’s awkward and unsure -- you feel like you have to sneak around, you don’t know where you stand with Lorelai, you hate that everyone in town knows your business, that they saw Lindsay tossing your things out the window and must know that it was because of her.
Then you have a week, just a week, where everything falls into place. She has a light study week, so you take her out on Monday night, you make her laugh, she makes you talk. You tell her you’re going back to school part-time next semester and she smiles and kisses you and tells you you’re going to be whatever you want to be. You have lunch with her and Lorelai on Wednesday, happy to just sit there and listen to them talk, six hundred words a minute, only occasionally appealing to you as an arbiter for one of their nonsensical disputes. On Friday, she skips class and the two of you run away to Hartford for the day. You pretend to get engaged at a restaurant and laugh over the free dessert, and you spend the night in a little boutique hotel (she charges it to her grandfather’s account, and you can’t help but laugh to see her do something to out-of-character, and when she turns to tell you that it’s only because she wants to spend the night with you, you kiss her because you have to.) She falls asleep on your chest, and you know that this is going to be forever.
You don’t see her at all the next week; you have six shifts at Doose’s, not to mention the random jobs Tom keeps calling you in for, and she’s got class and essays and articles. You talk on the phone every day, say how much you miss each other, declare that you have to get together the next week. You try to have phone sex once, but neither of you can stop giggling.
The next week you can only manage dinner one night, and you’re both exhausted, unable to do more than smile tiredly at each other over pizza. You drop her home and kiss her goodnight. Neither of you push for anything more.
It’s three weeks of missed phone calls, hastily-snatched lunches and silences that grow longer and longer, before you realise the truth.
It’s not working.
You tell yourself it’s because you’re both busy, the distance is too big, your schedules too complicated. You know it’s not. It’s because of the way her eyes dim slightly when you tell her you liked her last article, or the way she pauses before she says “Oh no, it’s fine, I have study to do anyway,” when you call to tell her you can’t make it to dinner. It’s because of the way she talks about the people she meets and the classes she takes, delight lacing every word, and you can’t bring yourself to care beyond the fact that they make her happy. It’s all the things she says that you don’t understand, the things that work their way into the part of your brain that’s always screamed that you’re not good enough for her.
*
When it finally ends, you’re not surprised at all. You’ve been feeling it building, feeling her slip away from you. Once again, you’re just waiting for the inevitable. It’s exactly like the last time, but there’s no dark-haired, smart-mouthed boy to blame this time. It’s just...you, and you’re inability to be what she needs. What she wants.
She staggers out of the house, tiara and dress straps crooked (tiara, she’s wearing a diamond tiara, you think hysterically, and god, that necklace she’s got on is probably worth more than everything you own put together), catcalls and cheering following her. You barely see the guys crowding the door (except from the blonde one, you notice him because of the way he’s looking at her; it makes you want to punch him, even now when everything is ending), you only really see her, eyes sparkling and cheeks rosy, so goddamn happy it makes you want to cry.
And that’s it. You’re done. You tell her you don’t belong here, and think that you never really have.
“Dean,” she says, and although her voice is pleading, she doesn’t disagree.
You drive away, and you know that she’s crying, which makes you want to drive the car into a fucking ditch, because you made her cry, something you swore to yourself you’d never, ever do.
*
A month and a half later, you’re in New York.
It’s far away enough to prevent your parents from visiting constantly, and big enough to get lost in. Which you want more than anything. Years of living in a town where everyone knows your name, your shoesize and what you ate for breakfast has grown weary, and you’re desperate for the anonymity it offers.
It’s also expensive as hell, but you find a job in a deli and when you’re on your break from making sandwiches for scary-thin women who want everything low fat on multigrain, you fill out applications for technical schools. You know what you want now, finally, after all those years of floating through school. You want to be a carpenter. You’ve always been good with you hands, and working with Tom had given you a few opportunities to test your skills. What you really want is to make furniture, gorgeous, hand-carved furniture, the kind Richard and Emily would pay thousands of dollars for without blinking, but you’re willing to start at the bottom.
It takes a while, but you find your feet. You miss home, but it’s a dull, background ache, and sometimes you go for days without thinking about it. You mostly work and study and sleep, there isn’t much time for anything else. You have a few good friends, mostly from college, and you let them drag you out for a drink every now and then. One night you get spectacularly drunk and tell them all about Rory and how beautiful she is. Ed just laughs and tells you you need to get laid. You wake up the next morning with a raging hangover and a naked woman in your bed.
You date her for a few months - her name is Laura, she’s a paralegal in a huge law firm a few blocks from where you go to school. It’s fun, even though you know it’s not going anywhere, and when you break up you really do manage to stay friends.
*
Before you’re quite aware of it, two years have passed, and, amazingly, you’re happy. It’s a kind of happiness that you’ve never quite experienced before - you’re content at a bone-deep level. For the first time, there’s nothing niggling at the back of your mind. You have worries, sure - you have a crazy landlord and student loans to pay off - but by and large you’re just...happy. It’s a novel experience.
You see your parents and Clara fairly often; they come to visit mostly and you can see it in the smiles they exchange how happy they are that you’ve sorted your life out. You tell them about your new job in a furniture shop (much better than selling sandwich meat, and you figure it’s a reasonably short step from selling furniture to making it) and Clara tells you about her new boyfriend. You look at her sternly and tell her he had better treat her right or he’ll have to answer to you. She rolls her eyes and punches your arm and you laugh together.
*
The bell tinkles over the door, and you quickly shove your assignment under the counter. It’s been a slow day in the store and you’re behind on your school work, but you know your boss wouldn’t be too keen to find you doing it on the clock.
You recognise him instantly; he looks ridiculously similar - he’s still slight, dark hair falling in his eyes, still wearing that leather jacket. You watch as he walks towards you, eyes on his phone, and to your surprise, you feel no spark of antipathy towards him. If anything, you’re happy to see him, happy to find a small piece of home here (it still is home, and the longer you’re away, the fonder you grow of it, the irritations are smoothed out by distance, and any day now you’re going to take a trip back, get coffee from Luke’s, go to the gazebo and just sit).
He starts talking without even looking up; his voice is different, a little deeper and rougher, a lot more grown up.
“Hey man, I’m looking for a new bookshelf, something nice and sturdy, but kind of...elegant, y’know? I have a picture somewhere of the kind of thing I want, I have it somewhere if I can just...”
His voice trails off when he looks up, and you watch the play of emotions across his face with amusement. Surprise and confusion, mostly, which settle into apprehension and, surprisingly, pleasure.
“Well, well, Dean Forester as I live and breathe,” he drawls. Once upon a time, his tone would have made you crazy, but now you just smile.
“In the flesh,” you reply, spreading your arms and grinning. “Here specifically to cater to your furnishing needs.”
He throws his head back and laughs, and you think with start that you’ve never seen him do that before. It shouldn’t really surprise you, all your past interactions mostly involved glowering at each other across the hall, street or room.
“Good to see you, man,” he says, utterly sincere.
“You too,” you reply. “Jess Mariano. Can’t believe I’m saying it, but you too.”
“I hear ya,” he says,still laughing. “What the hell are you doing in New York?”
“It’s a long story.”
“People always say that, and it usually isn’t. But tell you what, come out with me tonight, I’ll buy you a beer, and you can tell it to me. It had better be a good one.”
*
Jess takes you to a tiny, back-door kind of place, where the bartender knows him by name and various patrons shout a greeting to him as he passes. It’s the kind of place that used to make you uncomfortable; it’s probably full of writers and philosophers and people who are able to have endless conversations about the meaning of life while you would sit and sip your drink and try not to say anything too stupid. It doesn’t bother you now though, and it strikes you for the first time how comfortable you are in your own skin now.
You sit in a corner booth and drink the weird, foreign beer that the waitress brings over. Jess smiles and winks at her and tells her to keep ‘em coming, he’s got an old, old friend here and they have lots of catching up to do. You snort.
It’s surprising, but the conversation isn’t awkward. Jess tells you he’s been writing, that he’s got one book published and another waiting to go to print.
“It had a tiny print run,” he says with a shrug, but you can tell he’s proud of it, and you weirdly are too. “My publisher’s in Philly, but I’m up here for a few months to meet some people and talk about things, you know how it goes.”
“Not really,” you admit, and he laughs.
He’s so different from the angry, smart-ass guy you knew, but he’s still Jess; intense, funny, and smart as hell. Although you once would have denied it with your dying breath, the two of you aren’t so different now. You’ve both managed to work out what you want and how to get it, you’ve both, somehow, managed to get your shit together. Who’d’ve thought.
In exchange, you tell him everything. About Lindsay, about Rory, about New York. He listens animatedly, wincing in all the right places and groaning sympathetically when necessary. It’s the first time you’ve laid it all out there, told the whole story, and you find you can tell it with humour and aplomb, and it doesn’t hurt anything like as much as it used to.
Silence descends on the table, but you make no move to fill it. It’s comfortable, with the buzz of conversation in the background, and you watch Jess trace the rim of his glass with his index finger.
“I saw her again about six months ago,” he says finally. His eyes are still fixed on his glass, his finger never falters.
“Oh?” you say, and it feels inadequate.
“Yeah. She came to Philly for an open house for my publisher. I’d seen her about a year before that, too,” he adds. “Went to Stars Hollow to show her my book. Had to tell her I’d never have done it without her.” His confession is quiet, and you say nothing. “She’s dropped out of Yale, was dating some jerk, I have no idea what she saw in him.”
“Blond hair?” you ask. An image comes back to you. “About your height? Rich?”
“That’s the one,” he says. “Logan Huntzberger. God, what a douche.”
You smile wryly. “He was there that night. The night we broke up.”
“I’m sorry, man,” and he sounds sincere.
You shrug. “S’all right.”
“We had dinner, he was a jerk, and I told her so.”
“‘Course you did,” you mutter, and he looks up and grins at you for a second.
“Then, about a year later, she turns up at my open house. On her own. I dunno, I guess I thought, maybe...” he trails off. “She said she was in love with him. He’d cheated on her, and she was still in love with him.”
You close your eyes. Once you’d have written him off for that, for being a cheater. Except that now you know how it looks from the other side.
Jess is still staring at his glass. It’s clear to you, in a flash, what’s going on.
“You’re still in love with her.” It’s not a question.
Jess half-smiles and finally lifts his glass and takes a long draught.
“I talked to Luke yesterday,” he says, and wipes his mouth. “Apparently they broke up. He wanted to marry her, she wasn’t ready, so apparently that was it. She’s a reporter now, a proper one. Works for an online magazine, she’s been following the campaign trail.”
You feel your face split into a wide grin, you can’t help it. It’s perfect, it’s exactly what she’d always wanted. Jess catches your expression and grins himself.
“I know, right? It’s perfect for her. First job out of college, too. I hope it’s everything she hoped it would be.”
You grasp your glass. “I’ll drink to that.”
You clink your glasses together and he says, “to Rory,” and you watch the way his eyes soften when he says it.
“To Rory,” you echo, and you drink.
*
You’re twenty-four when you see her again.
She smiles softly at you when she opens the door, but she looks a little unsure. You wrap your arms around her and hug her close, and she only hesitates for a moment before pressing her face into your shoulder and squeezing you back.
“It’s so good to see you,” she says when you pull apart, nothing but sincerity written across her finely-boned features. God she looks different; hair cut short to her chin, her makeup flawless, dressed in a sharply-tailored suit. But she’s got a candy bracelet around her wrist and she’s holding a half-drunk glass of chocolate milk in one hand, and it’s reassuring to know some things never change.
“I see you’re hitting the hard stuff tonight,” you tease, gesturing to the drink in her hand.
“Ha ha, always the comedian,” she retorts, and pulls you into the apartment and shuts the door behind you. Jess sticks his head into the hallway and nods at you.
“Glad you could make it, man. Sorry you couldn’t bring Sarah.”
“She had to work,” you say, shrugging. You’re sorry, too; you’d love Rory to meet Sarah, convinced that they’d love each other.
The three of you sit in the living room and eat pizza of napkins while watching Pippi Longstocking, and Rory falls asleep on Jess’s shoulder halfway though. You watch the way he wraps his arm around her, and kisses her forehead, and how she hums contentedly and settles against him. He catches your eye over her head and you roll your eyes and mime throwing up. He just flips you off and turns back to the television, unable to quite hide his smile, and you smirk into your chocolate milk.
It’s taken a long time, but you’re twenty-four when you finally realise that you grew up. That you let go. And that you’re happy anyway.