An Author's Long-Overdue Ramblings: Wow... it's been awhile. Way longer than I'd ever thought I'd be away from the fandom, but my passion for GG kind of waned after season six, and then the show ended, and then life... but I digress. I wrote this forever ago for the Gilmore Girls Last Author Standing competition, won my round with it, and then promptly forgot I ever wrote it until about ten minutes ago when I was going through documents on my computer to update my resume.

Now, anyone who has ever read anything I've written knows that I, without a shadow of a doubt, HATE Dean Forrester and his stupid floppy hair. I am not a Narco fan, and I really didn't care for any storyline he was a part of. (I tend to hold things that characters do against the actors who play them. Silly, I know, but I almost didn't watch Supernatural because he was starring in it... almost. I am glad that ended up watching it, and forgiving Jared Padalecki for being Dean, because Sam is so much more interesting, and who knew he was secretly buff when he was on GG? I shudder to think if 18 year old me would have been swayed to the Narco way of thinking because I saw pretty abs and wanted to touch them?) I especially did not like the whole Dean getting married plot. (Mostly because I hated Dean, but partly because I've always believed that you should be able to get drunk legally before you get hitched.) And while I love Arielle Kebbel now, my hatred for her character on GG almost ruined not only John Tucker Must Die, but also the great Hallmark Cinematic acchievement known as Bridal Wave. (God, I love a Hallmark Movie!) But back in 2005/2006, all I knew of her was Lindsay Forrester. And I thought her stupid, and shallow, and backwards, and everythng a Gilmore Girl was not supposed to be. I was glad when they divorced and we never saw her again.

But then I signed up for Last Author Standing.

The prompt was to redeem a character I hated in 1,000 words or less. And while I hated Dean the mostest, I couldn't redeem him. Plus, he was drinking demon blood at the time on Supernatural, and it wouldn't stop bleeding into the storyline. And while, as a Trory lover, I am not a fan of Jess or Logan, neither one of them deserved a redemption story. (Plus, Jess had already been redeemed. Not enough for me to like him, but enough for me not to need to dogpile on it.) Stars Hollow is filled with nice, quirky neighbors, so they were pretty much all out. I looked at characters that were polarizing, like Paris and Emily, but I love them and everything they chose to be, so they were out too. So that left someone I hated for being nothing like that characters I adored. Someone who was stupid, and shallow, and backwards.

That left Lindsay.

After watching all the clips of Lindsay, I kind of felt sorry for her. Yes, she did get married way too young, and she really should have known that her fiance was in love with his ex, but she was still a decent person, it seems, and Rory, as much as I love her, was kind of the villain in the story of Lindsay. So I wrote this story, to kind of let her give her side of things. So she could finally have her say.

I didn't expect much from this story. Especially since it had to be less than 1,000 words. I can't even make an Author's Note in less than 1,000 words, let alone a fic! But I figured it was worth a shot. So I did my best to keep it streamlined, took out like three paragraphs and any and all hopes for dialogue, and this is the result. I figured it would bomb, but it didn't, instead it won the round! (I did go on to lose the next round, and was subsequently out of the LAS running, but I still have that brief moment of triumph to look back on fondly.)

I think my author's ramblings are more rambly than usual. Pretty sure that my note is longer than my fic... oh, wel. Such is life. I guess that there is nothing left to say other than I hope you all enjoy this, and I hope that it gives you a bit more insight into a character that I think is pretty universally hated.

Happy reading!

No one ever starts a marriage planning to get a divorce.

I certainly didn't.

My wedding day was the happiest day of my life. I probably sound stupid saying that now, after the humiliating way that my marriage crashed and burned for the whole town to see. I should have seen it coming, I guess. I mean, I was the first girl he'd dated after he'd publicly dumped Rory Gilmore at the dance marathon months earlier. Everyone told me to go slow, keep it casual, but no… I had to go and fall head over heels for that tall, dark and handsome ex-husband of mine. From the first moment I saw him, I knew that I was screwed. He was so… sigh.

But I digress.

I'd been planning my wedding ever since I was a little girl, and I dragged out the album of my parents' wedding, and fell in love with white gowns and flowers and music and happiness forever and ever and always, but I'd never expected Dean to get down on one knee and propose to me so soon after we'd started dating. I'd started picturing everything in my head a few weeks prior, when he'd casually started using words like 'together' and 'future' and 'us' in the same sentences. I started putting him center stage in my fantasy white wedding, but still… to see him down on one knee, asking me to be his one and only, it was like everything I ever wanted was just falling into place. And I couldn't wait to start our life together.

Neither could he, apparently, because he didn't want to wait years until we were out of college to take the plunge. He wanted to dive right in, right way.

Maybe that should have been a clue.

It was all so fast. Almost too fast. But I was too caught up in my wedding whirlwind to really see things clearly. I mean, when everything you've ever wanted suddenly falls into your lap, you don't just say no, right?

Wrong.

I wish I had said no. I wish I had stopped things, or at least slowed them down, even just a little. Because maybe, if I had, maybe I wouldn't be sitting here today, divorced. Maybe I would have seen what everyone else knew, or at least suspected.

Like I said, nobody starts a marriage intending to get divorced.

But no one wants to stay married to a man who's in love with someone else, either.

I guess he was really good at hiding it or something, because I never even saw a hint of it before we said I do. I didn't see the glances across the town square when she was in town visiting, and I didn't notice the way his ear turned towards conversations that had her name in them. I didn't see them, until I finally did one day, and then, I couldn't stop seeing them.

It was the way that he'd look at me sometimes and not really see me. Or the strange things he'd say when we'd watch a movie, with a secret smile on his face, like there was some sort of inside joke and I was on the outside looking in.

I tried really hard to be a good wife, I did. I tried to give him all the things he said he wanted. I cut back on my college classes so that I could be home more, so that he would have a nice, clean place to live, and I tried to learn how to cook his favorites, but it always seemed like the more I tried the more he seemed dissatisfied.

My mom said that getting married was always an adjustment, and that I should give him time, and to be extra understanding when he got frustrated. And I tried, I really did. But really, how understanding are you supposed to be when your husband seems annoyed by your very presence? How do you adjust to the feeling that he doesn't even want you around? That no matter how hard you try, nothing you do will ever be good enough?

And then one day, it's all just over.

I found some stupid letter in his jacket pocket, and my entire world went up in smoke. Because while I was trying to make him happy, he was having sex with his ex-girlfriend. The very same ex-girlfriend who judged me for letting him quit college (which was his idea, after all) and mocked me for not having a job (again, his idea) and being a bitch and whatever else she deemed appropriate. Like she knew anything about me, like she hadn't hurt Dean, like she'd never made a mistake in her life.

He married me. He took vows, and she just…

And even still, even when I can't even look at either one of them without wanting to rip them to shreds, I still think that my wedding day was the happiest day of my life.

I had never felt more beautiful, or more loved, or more full of joy than that day. I danced in the arms of the man who I believed with all my heart would be the man I would love forever. I was so full of hope, that I'm surprised that I didn't just explode from it all. It was such a happy day, full of so much laughter and light and even more than that.

I got divorced before I could even legally drink my sorrows away, and still, if someone asked me what the best moment of my life would be, it would be the moment that I said I do to a man who cheated on me.

How pathetic is that?