realist ━━ jess mariano

27| a room of one's own

"WHAT WAS I THINKING!" Rosie screeched in pure irritation of her own actions as she threw the letter to her new friend, Piper, and fell head first on the mattress. "Letters are stupid, and cliche, and desperate, and cliche!"

     "You already said that." Piper said, skimming through the letter again. "What did you tell him before you left, again?"

      Rosie cried out in embarrassment. "I think I said; Have a fun summer. I'll send you a postcard."

     "That's brutal." She snickered. "You know have a fun summer is code for you can hook up with other people while I'm gone, right?"

      "What was I supposed to say, Piper?" She said in her defence. "Hey, Jess, I know we only kissed yesterday but I'd really prefer it if you wait for me the entire summer while I'm gone?"

     Piper gave her a small shrug. "At least you didn't send this letter." She said. "But, hey, since you promised to send him a letter, how come you didn't start actually writing one 'till now."

      With a heavy sigh, she shook her head. "I wrote twenty seven letters." She admitted. "I have a whole box of them in the closet. Of course, none of them were good enough for me to send out." She groaned. "What am I gonna do? It's the last week of the internship, I have five days to come up with something."

"You know what, fuck it, just tell him how you feel next week when you see him."

"Do you not understand how terrifying that is?"

"Why not? I've asked out guys plenty of times!" Piper said too excitedly, then settled down to rethink what she just said. "This doesn't paint the best picture of me, does it? Whatever— just tell him you like him and you want to see where this goes."

Rosie straightened her back, considering the idea. "That doesn't sound too bad." She guessed. "I like you, Jess. I'd like to see how this goes." She practised to the wall. "How was that?"

"See, if the wall wasn't inanimate it totally would've said yes."

"I hate what I've turned into." She groaned.

      Her high school principal wasn't exaggerating when he said it was an internship at a small publishing company. Ink House was a small company with an ambitious character, with passionate board members Rosie loved working for.

Although they were all heading back home from their summer at the internship in five days, today was technically the last working day. Tomorrow would include their farewell party, to which everyone would leave in the evening. However, Rosie had three days to spend with her parents in Manhattan for a final summer getaway before she could start her senior year.

     Emily was, as she expected, extremely disappointed that they couldn't spend the summer vacationing together as they usually would. Richard, however, had bigger ambitions for her as he hoped the internship would impress the Yale admissions team.

      Rosie didn't know how to confront him on her mixed feelings on Yale. Over the course of the summer, the group of teenage interns would head off to New York by bus and explore a plethora of different areas. She become familiar enough with the state that she could now pinpoint her favourite neighbourhoods, arcane parks and local cafes.

     Where her trip with Jess sparked her interest in the city, this summer ignited her desire into what felt like fireworks. All she could think about when she was there was how much she'd rather spend her college years there, rather than to remain in Connecticut. But she knew it would be near impossible to convince her parents that she would rather go to Columbia than Yale.

At the last official day of the internship, she mulled over the fact that she had to go back. Of course, she missed Lorelai and Rory, and Stars Hollow as a whole. Still, she dreaded having to leave this place.

"Hey!" Another friend she made at her internship, Lucas, approached her. "Did you hear the good news?"

Standing by the buffet side, away from the crowd at the farewell party, Rosie looked over her shoulder to Lucas. "What's the good news?" She asked as she nibbled on the chips and dips at the table.

"I got an official part time job at the company." He grinned widely.

"Lucas, that's great!"

"Isn't it?" He asked smoothly. "And the new headquarters they're opening up this fall is in New York, and it's right by my college dorms."

She pictured him in his first semester at Columbia, heading off to the publishing house after classes and getting to witness books being created in real time, and felt a singe of jealousy at the idea. "I would kill to pull a Freaky Friday with you right now."

"Rosemary, I got rejected from Yale." He said. "So trust me when I say I would jump at that chance if I could."

"I didn't get accepted yet." She muttered. Applications weren't even due for weeks now.

"We both know you're getting accepted." He said. "The same way we both know that if you weren't just heading into your senior year, they would've offered you the job instead of me."

She shook her head. "That's not true."

"Yes it is." He stated matter-of-factly. "Look, I wasn't going to tell you this and risk you having an ego bigger than Piper's, but remember that short story I showed it to Mr. Bell?" He asked, receiving a nod from her. "He hated it. He said that if all my works read like this, I was never going to get published."

Rosie couldn't say she was surprised; not because Lucas was a bad writer, which he certainly wasn't, but because Mr. Bell was a harsh critic. "God, that's brutal." She said, biting down on a chip. "But I thought you said he loved it?"

"Not until I had you proofread it." He said. "When you told me to switch the narrative and have the protagonist be an unreliable narrator because the themes of the book were too straightforward, he loved it. So, really, I owe it to you"

She rolled her eyes, unconvinced. "That was all you. Your story had so much potential, you just needed a little push."

"Well, it got me the job, so thank you."

"You're welcome." She shrugged. "Oh god." She looked out at the distance.

"People are leaving already." She groaned, watching two interns take their suitcases outside of the building. She didn't want this to be over.

Lucas shrugged. "It's been two months, Rosemary." He said pointedly. "Time to go home and face some demons."