Chapter Text
The letter had been so innocuous he almost hadn’t paid it any attention. He didn’t exactly get much mail and when he did it was usually a college brochure passed on from school or that Luke had ordered on his behalf. On the occasions where the mailman passed anything on to him at the diner he would just leave the pile on the coffee table upstairs for Luke to go through. Today, there was a thick envelope with his name on it, right on top of the pile, containing the last thing he expected. It was an acceptance letter from the Paris Review which included a cheque for a thousand dollars plus two advance copies of the fall edition and a coupon for a free subscription to the magazine. He stuffs the magazines into a space on his bookshelf, the letter in his back pocket. He carefully puts the cheque in his wallet and leaves the apartment before Luke can notice that something is amiss.
He doesn’t know what to do with himself. He had sent the story on a whim to a few literary journals, mainly because Rory had been waxing lyrical about working for her school paper and he had thought that if he could get something in print it would really impress her. He had written the drafts by hand at night on an old legal pad taking references from his battered notebooks he had been writing in since he learned how to write.
He had gone through several versions until he was happy with the draft. Then he had skipped school one day and taken a bus to the public library in Hartford (he couldn’t risk being seen in Stars Hollow) and typed them up on one of their ancient computers, printed it, proofread it, printed it again. When he dropped off the final drafts and cover letters in the mailbox, he instantly wished he could take them back. A feeling of deep self loathing had washed over him. What kind of arrogant asshole submits stories to serious literary journals when they’re failing English?
The prospect of being exposed in such a personal way had spooked him and he had consoled himself that as soon as the submissions office saw that the story had been written by a highschooler they would just throw it in the trash. They got a lot of submissions. Manuscripts were rarely successful, unsolicited manuscripts even less so, they probably wouldn’t even bother to send a reply. Then the whole car accident thing had happened and he had forgotten all about it. He had had other problems to deal with at that point, like avoiding Liz’s new boyfriend.
Only now the reply is burned onto his retinas ‘Dear Mr Mariano, We are delighted to inform you that your short story ‘Truant’ has been accepted for publication in our fall edition…’ He's going to be in print and not in some little indie zine either, the Paris Review is a respected journal, perhaps even the journal. It has a less than one percent acceptance rate. They've published work by Phillip Larkin, Jean Genet, fucking Kerouac. Publishers read it. Literary agents read it. Rory might read it! He wasn’t sure if she followed contemporary fiction as much as he did but it was a possibility. The story was mostly fictional but it had drawn upon some unpleasant experiences. It wasn’t the worst thing that had happened to him, top five at best, but it wasn’t something he really wanted anyone to know either.
He goes to the bank and cashes the cheque. The teller accepts it, no questions, no parental verifications. He now has enough money to buy the car months earlier than planned including the parts and repairs. Hell, he could probably afford a car that actually worked with that kind of money, but he ers on the side of caution and sticks to his original plan. His combined wages from the diner and Walmart should be enough to cover his gas and insurance for a while. Luke will probably ask him some awkward questions about where he got the money but he could always deflect them by fessing up to working at Walmart. He'll have a good laugh at that. For a self-proclaimed working man, Luke can be incredibly elitist.
He had taken the job shortly after the accident in a bid to earn enough money to pay off the damage on Rory's car but she had flatly refused to accept his money. Then, he had thought about fixing up the old Ambassador at Gipsy's for her as a replacement, not as stylish as the Lancer by any means but at least she'd have been able to get around. It certainly would have pissed off Dean but he had a feeling Rory wouldn't appreciate the joke. She had told him that the accident wasn't anyone's fault. It could have happened to anyone, after she had been hit by a deer once. Hit by a deer, not hit a deer, that was interesting. Still he felt wretched and if he hadn't completely blown it with Rory, he'd definitely made sure that her mom was going to hate him forever.
Then she had ditched school for him. That day in New York with Rory had been perfect, she had given him hope that he wasn’t a lost cause, that he wasn’t completely unlovable. It had been real, he had felt it. That kiss at the wedding had been real too, but she had pulled away. He didn’t like being treated that way, being sworn to secrecy as though he were a shameful mistake.
As he had started up the monotony of his second job, keeping busy so he wouldn't obsess over Rory's prolonged absence without so much as a postcard, taking the bus every day got old real fast. He was almost late to his forklift training course in Hartford. Sure, bus journeys made for valuable reading time on an otherwise busy day, but he had a bed to read on now and if he had a car he could get home quicker. He could also go anywhere he wanted, he could lock his notebooks in it for some much needed privacy. If things got really bad he could just leave town and sleep in it.
When he gets home he dares to look at one of the advanced copies. There's his story on page forty, in Baskerville on thick glossy paper, next to a moody photograph of the Brooklyn Bridge, there's his name under the title. In a few weeks it'll be on sale for anyone to read. The thought thrills and terrifies him. He can cope with strangers reading it, but if he had to talk about it with someone he knew, he doesn't know how he would cope with that. Luckily, it's unlikely anyone he knows will read it.
He considers telling Shane about it when she calls that evening. He doesn't care what she knows and she doesn't care to listen so he's accidentally told her more than most. He realizes he doesn't want to. Not this time. He tells her about the car though, and she's delighted, mainly because now she'll have someone to drive her around and they'll have a secondary place to make out when her parents are home.
He doesn't like the way Shane treats him either but at least there isn't a whole town thinking he isn't good enough for her. Luke has even gone as far as saying that he could do a lot better. Again, surprisingly elitist. Her attraction to him had been validating at first but she made it clear that she doesn't want anything serious. He is a summer fling, nothing more. All she wants to do that summer is party with her friends. All he's expected to do is buy pot for them from the guy on the deli counter at Walmart, and be available when she's bored. He lies about the deli guy's prices and pockets the difference. He calls it the Boondock Tax.
Shane had flirted with him when he had gone to buy hair gel about a month ago. She had recommended a better product, some sort of matt wax. He had seen her around Stars Hollow High last year hanging out with the stereotypical Freaks and Geeks crowd, smoking under the bleachers. It turned out she had graduated that summer and was due to start at community college soon. At that point, he had lost hope that Rory would call or write to him from Washington. There didn't seem to be any indication that she was going to break up with Dean since he wasn’t smashing up the town like King Kong, so he thought 'why not' and offered to take Shane to the movies.
The sex is good. Shane is a little older than him, a little more experienced, and he likes letting her take the lead. It's a distraction from what he's really feeling. He hates being high. It makes him feel slow and dumb and anxious all at the same time like he's trapped in his own brain. He lets Shane have the lion's share of it. He reads in bed while she watches TV. It's weirdly comforting, like how on his sixteenth birthday in a period of quasi sobriety Liz had made them her special brownies (Betty Crocker box mix with a pinch of sativa) and they had rented a bunch of movies and eaten junk food. It's a good memory, all things considered.
Shane is not unlike Liz. She's wishy washy, distracted, doesn't put much value on herself. She doesn't feel comfortable talking about serious things. She's a glimpse of what his mother might have been like at eighteen before things started to go wrong. It feels wrong but it also feels normal, easy to navigate.
He goes out and buys the car on his break the next day. Gypsy is suspicious of the amount of money he has to hand but agrees to sell him the car and the parts but some of them will take several weeks to arrive.
There's yet another bizarre town festival going on. Shane is equally baffled by it but there's ice cream and someone to laugh at it with. He catches a glimpse of Rory and her mother from across the square and his heart does a summersault. Then he realizes that she's seen him with Shane. Is she upset? She looks upset. Shit.
*
"Hey, maybe this whole end of summer festival thing is a poetic time to end this. You like that sort of thing, right?" Shane says later that day. She's right but it hurts and something horrible rises up inside him. That terrible emptiness.
"Do I like getting dumped at festivals?" he says.
"You know what I mean. I'm starting college next week so I won't be around as much. That girl you like is back from wherever. It just seems like the right time."
"Yeah she came back and right into her boyfriend's arms. How did you even know that?" Jess says accusingly. Was he that obvious?
"You've mentioned her several times." Shane says pointedly. "Rory Gilmore, right? Mom had her when she was sixteen, transferred to a fancy school, looks like she’s silently having a panic attack at all times."
"She does not."
“Please, that girl’s stiffer than an arthritic knee.” Jess wishes he had his notebook with him. Shane sometimes has an odd turn of phrase that intrigues him.
"Listen, I don't mind not seeing you as often." he says finally.
"Gee, thanks."
"I mean it's not a big deal, it doesn't mean we can’t still hang out. As friends. Friends who occasionally sleep together. And I'll be busy too, with school I mean."
Shane scoffs "Since when do you go to school? Are you trying to make her jealous? Because that's not cool."
"I’m not trying anything." Jess insists. But if she happens to get jealous, that’s a good thing, right?
"Whatever, but I'm going to be seeing other guys if the opportunity arises. Just so you know."
"Fine." It isn't fine. He doesn't even like her that much, he had specifically chosen her because he thought it wouldn't matter to him if she rejected him and yet it still hurts and he can't let it go. What the fuck was wrong with him?
*
“A true meeting of minds.” Rory had said derisively when Shane had visited the diner. It might have bothered him, but he's just excited that he’s gotten a rise out of her. He kind of likes that Rory has a mean streak. Like there 's an actual human being under all those perfect grades and meticulously color coded study notes. Besides, which one of them was going to be published in the Paris Review? He didn't want to let it go to his head but, fuck that, he's written for the same journal as Jack fucking Kerouac, even if he never does anything else for the rest of his life he'll always have this.
Jess was insecure about a lot of things but his intelligence wasn’t one of them. He had realized it when Liz had dumped him at the public library on weekends. There had been a nice lady who ran a story hour for kids his age. One week she had read Matilda and it occurred to him that reading Dickens as a six year old wasn’t normal.
They run into each other again at Doose's and she asks him about his summer in a roundabout way that meant she wants to know what the hell he was doing.
"Her name's Shane." Jess says, getting to the point after spinning her a yarn about the snow cone machine breaking.
"As in ‘come back'?" she says with disbelief. Jess tries not to laugh, he had thought the exact same thing when Shane had introduced herself.
"Are you upset about something?" he asks.
"No."
"I mean, me and Shane…"
"What about you and Shane?"
"I don't know, it didn't exactly bring a smile to your face." It's cruel of him, but after nearly a year of chasing after her while she held all the cards, it's gratifying that the shoe is on the other foot.
"Well, I'm still freaked out about the, uh, snow cone machine," she deflects.
"Okay."
"I could care less about you and Shane."
"Good."
"It just surprised me, that's all," she adds. She definitely cares.
"Why?"
"Because."
"Because why?" He's going to get a straight answer out of her if it kills him.
"Because of what happened at Sookie's wedding." She says finally.
"Ah."
"Yeah, so me coming back here and just seeing you with Shane just kind of threw me for a sec."
"I'm sorry, did I hear from you at all this summer?" Jess says. He's geared for this conversation, rehearsed it in his head for weeks. "Did I just happen to miss the thousands of phone calls you made to me, or did the postman happen to lose all those letters you wrote to me? You kiss me, you tell me not to say anything. . . very flattering, by the way. You go off to Washington. . . then nothing."
He realizes that he's beginning to sound like his uncle but it's started now and he has to say his piece.
"Then you come back here all put out because I didn't just sit around and wait for you like Dean would've done? And yeah, what about Dean? Are you still with him? 'Cause last time I checked, you were, and I haven't heard anything to the contrary. Plus, the two of you walking around the other day like some damn Andy Hardy movie. Seemed to me like you're still pretty together. I half expected you to break into a barn and put on a show."
"When did you see me with Dean?" she asks.
"At that stupid summer insanity plea the town put on." He shouldn't have mentioned Dean. He had worked hard to not seem bothered and now he had as good as admitted that he was still hung up on her.
"Oh, I'm surprised you could see anything with Shane's head plastered to your face." she replies.
The catharsis he feels after she storms out of the store is short lived. He stands by the things he said but it's obvious that Rory had only hurt him because she was afraid of hurting anyone else. He had hurt her on purpose, and it makes him feel wretched.
He realizes too late that he didn't even mention his story getting published.