present tense

pro-epilogue

Jess woke from his nap with a start. He was lying on the leather couch in the back room of the publishing house. Not even the sounds of Philadelphia could drown out the thudding coming from upstairs.

Jess walked out onto the storeroom floor to see Aaron at the counter.

"Hey," the latter shouted out, "sleeping on your break is an excellent use of your time."

"Why thank you. I was resting up for my drive later but I had a bunch of weird dreams."

"Weird dreams? What about?" Aaron asked, his curiosity piqued.

"Stars Hollow actually. And all the lovely people waiting for me there," Jess sniped, with his characteristic sarcasm. He shook the foggy dream memories from his mind.

"Well maybe you're just anxious about your return. What's it been? Six months?"

"Well yeah, the wedding was six months ago, and I haven't been back since then but I don't really feel anxious. Plus the dreams were pretty out there. Very unrealistic," Jess covered. Poorly.

"Anything is possible my friend," Aaron said just as the thudding upstairs picked up again. He continued as if he hadn't heard it, "You staying with your uncle?"

"Yeah. In the loft over his diner," Jess answered distractedly, "What is happening upstairs?"

"Hell if I know. Sounds like a job for you!"

Jess side stepped the weekend bag he had left at the foot of the stairs, and began his ascent. Once he reached the door of the only occupied room, he knocked lightly and then opened it. He walked in to find utter furniture induced chaos and Sean standing amidst it all, arms crossed, staring at the coffee table.

"What the- Sean. Buddy. What are you doing?" Jess sputtered out.

"Did you know that there is just enough space under each of these furniture pieces to lose something, but not enough space to actually stick your hand under to retrieve it? Our cleaners must despise us. I mean how do you vacuum? Maybe that's why I'm always sneezing. Because you can't vacuum," Sean said in a very conversational tone, as if he wasn't fully snowballing before Jess' eyes.

"Well did you lose something? Why is all the furniture flipped?"

"That's where I come in," said a disembodied voice from behind the overturned couch. Jess followed the sound to find, crouched on the floor, a blue eyed brunette whom he also called his wife.

In the last two years, Rory Gilmore had accomplished many things. She moved away from Stars Hollow (to Philadelphia), published her book (which sat in the front window of a certain publishing house), and (six months ago) she added a very important hyphenation to her life and became Rory Gilmore-Mariano. She and Jess even had the rings to prove it.

"My God, what goes on in these meetings? What are you doing?" Jess asked.

"I'm collecting beads," Rory replied, matter-of-factly.

"Oh sure. That would've been my guess." Jess shook his head and righted a chair so he could sit down. Sean abruptly left the room, muttering to himself.

"Yeah well I think I got them all," Rory said, standing up and doing the same, "My bracelet broke, and the beads went bouncing everywhere and I wanted to grab them all so that Lissy wasn't finding them and picking them up."

"Where is Alice?" Jess asked looking around the room.

"Sean put her in the closet."

"Sean put her in the closet?" Jess asked, immediately going to the closet.