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She wonders why she's crying. Sitting here amongst her belongings, her life packed up in boxes ready to be sent back home. In this dorm room of the empty building she sits and she cries. And she doesn't know why.
It wasn't supposed to hurt this much. Her heart feels like its being squeezed until she can't breathe anymore. Her tears are choking her but she can't stop them.
She doesn't cry. Not over him. She's never let herself.
But now she can't stop. She's trying to. She's really trying. But they won’t stop. It hurts and she can't stop it. It hurts so much that she can hardly breathe.
So, she sits there in the darkened room and lets herself cry, because God, she's needed to do this for a year. A whole fucking year.
She hates Dean. She hates him for spoiling her. For making her think that love was easy. For making her think you didn't need to try. For making her expect so much and give so little.
For making her forget that she loved Jess, and it didn't matter if he didn't call, or she got busy at school or with her family because she loved him and he needed to know that.
But she took him for granted. She let him take the easy route. Or maybe it was the hard route, because nothing about this was easy. But she let him take the route that led him straight out of her life without him ever knowing how much she loved him.
Love wasn't supposed to be hard. It was supposed to be fun and safe and stable and all the things Dean and her mother had made her believe.
But they were wrong. Because love wasn't like that. It was scary and messy. You made mistakes and you made each other cry. You said the wrong things or didn't say the right things at the right time. You hurt. And he hurt. But it doesn't matter because he gets you. He understands you better than anyone else. He's magnetic and addicting and you are pulled towards him even when he pushes you away.
She was so young. So naive when she met him. He was the darkness to her light. The bad to her good. The devil to her angel. But he was so much more than that. So much she didn't realise.
She blamed him. Everyday she spent in Europe with her mother she blamed him a little more. Why did he leave her? How could he leave her? Just like that, without a word. Did she really mean that little to him?
But they were on different paths. Maybe they always had been. But she had believed that their paths lead the same way. That some way he would find a way to be with her.
He didn't.
So, she moved on. She went to Yale and she studied and she enjoyed her life. Each day trying to forget that he should be there. He looked it up, damn it!
But he wasn't there. He wasn't coming back.
Of course she had been wrong.
He did come back. He rocked her world again and then he left. This time leaving his "I love you" to ring in her ears every time she thought about him.
She hated him. She hated him for turning up when she was trying too damn hard to forget him. He wasn't ready to talk to her. He wasn't ready to make things right. She doubted he even could. But he still came back.
And left again.
She managed to pick herself up once again after that. She was strong. She was a Gilmore after all. Gilmore's didn't cry. She didn't wallow, or pine or do anything like that. But she couldn't stop her heart from hurting a little more.
But that was nothing compared to the way it was hurting now. The sobs overtaking her. She hadn't even realised it but she was shaking. From her head to her toes she was shaking, and she just wanted to call him back.
But she couldn't.
She had hurt him. Her "No!" had hurt him, she knew it. But she was hurting too. And she couldn't do it anymore. She couldn't do this anymore. It hurt too fucking much.
A part of her was screaming at her to go after him. Tell him she lied. Tell him she still loved him. She hadn't ever stopped. Not for a second. But this was her life now, and he didn't want this. He wanted a dream. A make believe life where only they existed and as much as she loved him, she loved her mother too much to do that to her.
But God, the pain. It was physical, her whole body aching from it. She knew why. It was a years worth or anger and hurt and pain letting itself out in this moment. Because this time she had let him go.
She had told him to leave. She had done it this time. She couldn’t blame him anymore. But it didn't matter, because it was never the right time for them. Their love was raw and painful and messy and sometimes that kind of love just didn't work out.
So, when the tears finally stopped and her body stopped shaking she picked herself up and went into her room, took her shoes off and got underneath the covers pulling them over her head.
Tomorrow she would return to Stars Hollow and everything would be okay. Everything would be just fine. Because that's what everyone expected from her. And who was she to disappoint?