rory tries to forget about her kiss with jess by throwing herself into her relationship with dean, but dean breaks up with her when she spends a dance marathon obsessing over jess and his girlfriend shane. rory and jess get together, and the positions are reversed when dean starts dating one of her old classmates, lindsay lister, and they become engaged. jess takes a job at wal-mart to buy a car and skips class to take extra shifts. he is told he hasn't done enough to graduate and ends up trying to sleep with rory and fighting with dean. after a visit from his estranged father jimmy, he leaves town without telling luke or rory to stay with him in california.