Walking towards the Independence Inn I noticed a familiar figure in front on me. It looked like they were carrying an armful of paper and god knows what else. They were speed walking as if they always had somewhere they had to be. I knew that walk.

"Paris!" I call out, walking towards her in the snow. The dark sky making it hard to see whether she turned around or not.

As I neared her I could see that she had stopped walking and waited for me. "Good, you're here." She starts before dumping what must be a whole stack of papers in my arm.

We both continue walking as I speak. "What's this? And what're you doing here?"

"This is what we need to go over for the debate next week, and I'm here to pass these to Rory." She open the doors to the inn and walks inside.

Without even bothering to take off her coat she heads straight to Rory. I shake my head at her, she should stop worrying so much. I hang up my coat and pass my luggage to the bellhop, thanking him.

I make my way towards Rory and Paris. She handed Rory whatever they needed for the newspaper. "She uses the Prince version for writing," Paris was explaining as I joined them.

Rory notices me come up behind Paris and I mouth some words to her. 'Invite her,' I mouth pointing to Paris. She takes in my suggestion before nodding slightly.

"Hey, Paris," Rory starts. "Do you have anything going on tonight?"

I make myself known as I stand next to Paris. "I'm sure she doesn't."

"What's that supposed to mean?" She asks.

I glance at Rory, encouraging her to get on with the main question. "Nothing, it's just that we're having this big dinner party and I was wondering if you would wanna join us?"

Furrowing her eyebrows, as if not understanding the invitation turns to me for conformations. "They have a ton of extra food," I try, noticing Paris still looked unsure. "We can even go over the debate tonight," I sigh as she nods at my proposal.

"Well, I'd just have to make a call," Paris grabs her cellphone from her coat.

"Good, make it." Rory looks at me with pride that we had actually got Paris to do something other than work. Well, I still had to do the debate with her but that was a minor setback.

We both turn to Paris who was talking in Portuguese to whom I assume is her nanny. She walks away to, hear her nanny better over the chattering of voices.

Looking for Rory, I see that she was engaged in conversation with Dean. I was still pretty mad at him for his whole outburst at the market. So when I caught him looking at me as if he wanted to talk I quickly avert my eyes.

Which did absolutely nothing, since he was still walking over to me. "Hey," he greets me nervously.

"You gonna yell at me again?" I cross my arms in front of the dress shirt I was wearing.

Dean let out a dry laugh. "No," he says.

I look up at him with a sigh. "Alright, say your piece."

"Listen, I'm sorry for getting mad earlier." He apologies as he recounts the events with a grim look on his face.

"You shouldn't have yelled."

"I know, and I'm sorry." He said before turning his head towards the sound of the door closing.

We both see that Jess and Luke came inside while they took off their coats. Rory and Dean's sister came up to us, noticing how annoyed Dean looked.

"Okay, I'm gonna go look for my mum," I quickly said, not want to be here when Dean had another tantrum. I said my goodbyes before heading off into the kitchen.

~~~

"Hey, everybody!"

Everyone in the dining room stopped talking and looked towards Lorelai and Sookie who stood at the front of the room.

"First of all, I would like to welcome you to the first anual and probably-never-to-be-held-again because-Sookie's-on-the-verge-of-a-nervous-breakdown-Bracebridge Dinner." Lorelai says as Sookie looks around the room as if she's gonna collapse.

Sookie waves Lorelai off. "I'm fine! Everything's fine!" She assures us quickly as everyone lets out a few small laughs.

"I also want to thank mother nature for snowing in the Trelling Paper Company in Chicago so that I could throw this great party for all my friends instead. It's a very special night. And so, since I don't get to eat unbelievably strange food every night I arranged a little surprise," Lorelai continues.

I bend towards Rory and Lane, "I hope the surprise is that she got Johnny Depp to join us." I joke as Lane and Rory smile at me.

Lorelai puts on an exited grin as she speaks. "Outside as we speak is a line of horse-drawn sleighs, and everybody gets a ride."

People cheer and clap, well most people. I see Luke and Jess sitting on one of the coffee tables. They both had the same look of despair as their eyes were trained on the floor. If only they knew how alike they were. I think if I told Jess that he was exactly like Luke he would actually cry, and vice versa.

"So, line up. Keep in order." Lorelai announced as people began to approach the door. "There's two per sleigh and no cutting in front of each other. Well, except for me."

As everyone began to head out the doors Rory came up next to me. "Hey, you wanan ride together?" She asks. "Dean is going with Clara."

I give her a nod. "Sure-" I was interrupted by Paris storming over to us.

"I need your help," she says to Rory. No doubt something for the paper.

"Paris," I object. "We were gonna go on the sleighs."

She lets out an annoyed sigh. "Fine then. Rory let's go."

Before either of us could object, Paris was pulling Rory by the arm out the door. Rory sent me an apologetic glance. I'm sure I could go on alone. I'd be able to enjoy it even more, I've never minded being alone much anyway.

Heading out the doors I look around to see that everyone had gone on the sleighs. There was only one sleigh left and I decided that was meant for me. I climbed onto the sleigh and made myself comfortable.

The driver glanced back at me curiously. "Just the one?"

I looked around to make sure no one else wanted to get on. "Yup, just me."

I felt us begin to move. I was looking at the snow and fairy lights as we passed my slowly. The town in front of me was lit up with tiny dots of yellow. My calming thoughts were interrupted by a loud clambering on the right side of the sleigh. Jess had jumped up into the sleigh and sat next to me in his yellow coloured peacoat.

"What're you doing?" I exclaim with my gaping jaw.

Jess sends me a coy smile. "Well, I heard it was two a sleigh. No more, no less."

I looked at him with knitted brows. "You could have hurt yourself," I try to reason.

"Wait a minute," he begins with a lopsided grin. "Is that concern I hear in your voice?"

I feel myself quickly glance away, not wanting him to see the red on my cheeks, before answering his question. "I just think you have enough injuries for one day, don't you think?"

His eyes flick to his now slightly less bruised knuckles as I say this. "Well, I live on the edge." He says, his head tilted back.

"How come you're not back in New York?" I tilt my head to the side.

"My mum didn't want me back."

I scoff. "That can't be true."

Jess looked at me with a teasing smile. "You calling me a liar?" He jokes.

I ignore him. "Did Luke say she didn't want you to?" I ask. I found it hard to believe that his own mother didn't want him sick for Christmas.

"Luke told me that it was his idea that I should stay," he takes a deep breath. "It wasn't his idea," he adds bitterly.

"Oh," I say quietly, not knowing how to respond to that. "Would you wanna borrow a book?" I ask, trying not to touch the subject of his mother.

He raised his eyebrows at my suggestion. "What book?"

"Harry Potter." Jess groaned and I slapped his arm playfully. "It's an amazing series!"

"It's for kids!" He protested as I sent him a dirty look. "And I thought you were gonna cut me some sack since I had a boo boo," he referred to our earlier conversation.

"Well, you look a lot better since you're talking bad about Harry Potter." I retort as Jess let's out a small chuckle.

He thinks for a while, looking out at the white covered town around us. "Fine, I'll read it," he starts as I clap my hands together in accomplishment. "But, you will have to read Hemingway." He points a finger at me, his brown eyes gleaming with delight.

"No," I protested as Jess sighed. "He was an alcoholic who wrote all of his books drunk out of his ass!" I complain.

Jess looks at me thoughtfully, with the hint of a smile on his attractive face. "You know, Ernest only has lovely things to say about you." I could feel my heart practically jump straight of my chest.

It looked like a scene straight out of a James Dean movie. The white snow on top of the buildings and trees created a beautiful scenery behind Jess who sat right next to me. The fairy lights making his face look like it had a glow to it. There was a strange feeling in my chest that I couldn't quite put my finger on.

Something in his words must have flipped a switch in my brain. "Okay, It's a deal. I'll read Hemingway if you read Harry Potter."

Jess sticks his hand out for me to shake. I move my hand to grab his but he quickly retracts his hand. "Here's the thing, Harry Potter is seven books." He tuts as I glare at him, knowing where this is going. "So, it's only fair if you read seven books as well."

I stare at him for a few moments, contemplating how I could turn this situation around. The thing is, he's right. It's only fair. With a grumble I extend my hand to him.

He smirks before taking my hand in his warm ones. "Deal." After that we just sat in comfortable silence for a few minutes as we watched the passing town.

"Hey, what do you and that guy talk about anyway?" He asks suddenly.

"What guy?"

"The one at your house the other day."

I think back to whoever was at my house and was a guy. "Tristan?" He nods suddenly interested. "That was ages ago. Why do you still remember that?"

"Just never saw him around before, let alone with you."

"Well, Tristan and I talk about a lot of things. Usually whatever homework he needed help with," I explain as I thought about the guy that was now in North Carolina somewhere. "I don't know why that would interest you tough."

He shrugs. "Just curious. So you guys don't talk about books or movies?" He continued pry as I wondered why he would be so interested in this stuff.

I shake my head at him. "Nah, it's usually you or Rory that I talk to about stuff like that."

Jess seemed satisfied with my answer. "He taking you to another one of those balls?"

"Oh god no," I quickly respond with horror. "I never want to go to another one of those things again. I felt like I had the Joker's scars on my face after all that fake smiling. Besides, he left." I tried not to let the last bit bother me.

He sat up straighter in the seat. "He left?" I responded with a small 'yes' at his question. "Oh, sorry."

"It's fine, doesn't matter anyways."

At this point, we had made a whole round of the town and had arrived back at the inn. Jess got out of the sleigh first then helped me down. It looked like everyone else had went inside, seeing as we were the last ones out.

"Shall we go in?" He asks me as I shake my head.

"I wanna play with the snow."

Jess looked at me. "You wanna play with the snow? Now?" He asked as if I was crazy but I had already walked towards where all the snowman's were.

"Come on," I call out to him with a grin. "No ones here, we'll build a snowman."

With his hands in his pockets Jess follows me towards the clearing of snow. "A snowman?"

"Yup." I had already gathered some snow to make into a ball when Jess stood in front of me, helping me roll it.

"We better win the contest."