Rory Gilmore pinched her nose momentarily in shock as she entered the makeshift hospital and tried not to gape. She had heard about the practically primeval conditions where medicine was practiced over here in Afghanistan, but that had still not prepared her to see soldiers lying on tables instead of beds in an old Taliban building with no cooling system besides kind souls with hand-powered fans. Was there a bed shortage in America now? Could they truly not even send over hospital beds for the men who were being injured and dying for their country? She swallowed her disgust to put on a business-like smile. Being an overseas journalist was not all glamorous excitement; in fact, it was hardly that at all.
She made the rounds easily, explaining her purpose to the people in charge, flashing her Huntzberger-approved press badge and asking questions, jotting things down on her yellow legal pad. Soldiers talked to her willingly, some of them hungry for a pretty civilian face that could remind them of a wife, a girlfriend, a daughter, a mother, a cousin, whomever they needed to be reminded of to feel better. She was nearly done when she spotted an oddly familiar soldier reclining on one of the few real hospital beds in the room. Even in the sweltering heat, he lay under a thin sheet, covered from the shoulders down. There was sweat on his upper lip, but otherwise, he showed no signs of discomfort. His blue eyes caught her attention from under his camouflage hat, and suddenly, she knew exactly who he was: Tristan.
She had not thought about Tristan in years. Or at least, she had not actively thought about him. But there was a time in her life when she had thought about him a lot, wondered, pondered, puzzled, and hoped. He had been the subject of much of her brain power once upon a time, some romantic and much platonic. She started walking toward him.
"Excuse me, sir," she approached, clearing her throat nervously. "Of course you won't remember me, but…"
He looked at her and chuckled. "Rory Gilmore. I remember you. I wondered how many times you'd loop this tiny room before you'd notice me."
"Why didn't you say something?" She asked. Sudden shyness overtook her, and she fiddled her hands together, too shy to look at him. The last time she had seen him was so long ago that now he was just a stranger, but still the memory of high school and their youthful flirtation made a blush rise to her cheeks. The last time she had seen him, he had been walking away for military school, back bent in defeat, and she had wanted to call out to him, to say something, anything. Now, he was lying in a hospital bed in a foreign country, razor burn on his strong jaw, and steel in his eyes that had not existed when she knew him. She wondered if he could still flip on that charmer's smile at a moment's notice. If he could, he did not do it now.
"You seemed to be working, and I've got nothing if I don't have time," he replied, shrugging slightly. His voice was not bitter or sympathy-seeking, just honest. "Pull up a chair and interview me, if you like."
She looked around and saw an overturned crate that would be serviceable. Carrying it back over, she tried to swallow her discomfort at seeing him like this. "So how have you been, Tristan? Since leaving Chilton all those years ago?" She felt the question burst out of her, and he smiled knowingly.
"Is that a normal question you would ask a person in my condition for your job?"
"No." She hated making the concession, but she did. Taking out her legal pad and pencil, she looked down at her other notes on the page. A theme, hardship and doubt versus dedication and pride, already leapt out at her from the other notes, and she knew that she was going to be able to write a really excellent piece (or two or three) from this trip overseas to the war zone. She did not need any more interviews, in theory, but more material was always better than less, and besides, every woman has one moment from their girlhood that has never made sense to her, and Tristan's departure was that moment for her. He had walked away from her, and nothing either of them had said had made the moment anything more than a schoolmate's departure. Yet she had been haunted by its memory for a long time afterward, wondering where he was, who he was, where life had taken him. She could not walk away from this rare opportunity to know.
"Tell me your name and title first, please," she said, not looking up from her paper.
"Captain Tristan DuGrey." His voice was emotionless, flat, but not unfriendly.
"Tell me about yourself, Captain DuGrey," she replied.
"I direct a unit of 120 men and women here in ground operations here in Afghanistan, but that is all I can really tell you. I am not at leisure to discuss anything more about the covert operation." She could not resist looking up now to see his eyes intently on her. "But you are not interested in that anyway."
"I'm not?" She coughed once in surprise.
"You're interested in me, and if your belief that I could be more than an arrogant playboy was right. Was Rory Gilmore a good influence on me after all – that's what you want to know."
She looked up, eyes wide, but felt that she was nodding. There was no way she could deny that he had just hit the nail on the head. "That's not good for an interview, though," she confessed slowly. "And you wanted me to treat you like any other soldier in this situation, so instead… tell me why you're here."
"I'm here to fight for my country," he replied. The reply was trite, but an unexpected smile appeared on his lips that made it clear he knew it was trite. He shrugged again, and she smiled back. She liked to hear that answer from him, even though it frustrated her when it came from other soldiers. There was nothing the Tristan from her high school years would have considered worth fighting for.
"What motivates you? The whole country? Or is there a wife at home, kids, someone you want to make the country safe for?" It was her trite response to his trite response, but she was waiting with bated breath for the answer. She had no idea how this man could affect the grown woman she had become the same way that the boy had affected her as a girl. His ability to make her hold her breath and wait on him was amazing; in a way, she wondered if she had been waiting all these years just to find out what had become of the captivating DuGrey boy.
The DuGrey man, though, looked at her intently, looking into her brown eyes as if he knew everything she was thinking. Then he averted his gaze and swallowed slowly, wetting his lips. The air between them seemed to crackle with anticipation. "You."
She choked on the spit she was swallowing when she heard the word, and he suddenly looked unbearably embarrassed. "Not you specifically, necessarily," he qualified slowly, caution in his tone. "But I'd think of you and how all across the nation, there were girls like you, smart girls curled up on benches reading their books and trying to help dumb boys like me, and I figured I could make the country safe for them. So they could keep pushing guys like me to grow up."
It was not until his voice stopped that Rory realized she was sniffling, her mouth twisted in awkward grimace as she tried not to lose her composure. She had seen soldiers reunited with their children, insurgents blown up in front of her, and editors coat her beloved writing in red ink, and none of it had made her cry since she had put on her tough girl clothes and taken her first plane to work as an overseas correspondent. Yet here she was, smiling at him weakly and trying to keep the water from falling from her eyes.
"That's a good reason," she finally managed to say, realizing she needed to write his answer down on her paper but feeling too shocked and touched to even know how to word it. He reached an arm out from under his sheet toward her, and she leaned in, drawn by invisible strings, until her cheek and his hand met. He brushed away the tear under her eye.
"Thank you, Rory. You were the chance encounter that changed my life," he said quietly. His voice was not emotional, not romantic, and the simple, matter-of-fact way he said it made it all the more honest. She smiled a watery smile.
"I always knew you were better than those idiots you hung out with," she said softly, the only thing she could think of to say. He chuckled.
"I may not have been better, but I did have someone tell me I was."
They sat for a while that way, his hand drifting down to take a hold of hers. In the comfortable silence, Rory became aware of an unspoken presence that she could not understand. He was not frowning, and his eyes were not sad or weak, but something was wrong. His gratitude to her, his kind statement, was sincere, but something had prompted it, something even greater than her unexpected appearance here. She looked around the room, at the quiet bustling, and thought of the other soldiers she had talked to. There were sprained ankles, stomach flu cases, and psychological problems that had benched the others she had spoken to, and a sudden dark premonition settled over her as she looked at Tristan, still covered by the sheet except for the one arm that he had slipped out to hold her hand. Without asking, she reached over and yanked the sheet down.
There was an empty sleeve where his other arm should have been.
She clapped a hand to her gaping mouth in shock as he looked down, shame on his face. He was missing an arm, a whole limb severed from his body. He could never have that back. She could feel his shame in the air now, visceral. He thought he was less now, not a whole man. He was wrong. She reached out, putting her curled hand under his chin and lifting it up. "Thank you for making the country safe for girls like me to root for heroes like you." She smiled, forcing the sadness from his face and eyes as she spoke.
But even as she did so, she wanted to turn away and weep for him.
X
It was the most unconventional breakfast table ever. The food itself was conventional, though plentiful with sausage, bacon, hashbrowns, croissants, sliced citrus fruits, and poached eggs. It was the table's occupants that made it so unusual. At the head of the table sat the handsome blond leader of The Huntzberger Group, sipping a cup of coffee and reading the morning paper. Logan's wife, Marianna, was sticking her small fruit fork into a slice of grapefruit and pulling out bite-sized pieces and sugaring them individually. It was common behavior for her during her current pregnancy. Next to her, there was their toddler daughter, Vivian, sitting up on a cushion, and finger-picking off of her breakfast plate. And finally, next to her, sat the Lorelai Gilmore better known as Rory eating a buttered croissant and drinking orange juice. This setup was not uncommon in the Huntzberger home, however, because as a star press agent and close family friend, Rory was always welcome.
This morning, Marianna had specifically called Rory to come over bright and early and dine with them, which was Rory's first sign that the other woman was up to something. Marianna was mischievous and frivolous but sweet as sugar, and Rory loved her. She never could have predicted that her once oh-so-serious boyfriend, the man who proposed to her upon graduation, would become a platonic friend and that she would spend time with his wife and child in their preposterously huge house all the time. It was not the life she had envisioned for herself, especially at 29, but she liked it. Except for right now while she was waiting to find out what Marianna was up to; the redhead was smiling at her grapefruit in a way that her husband obviously did not notice but her dear friend did.
"So Rory…" Marianna finally said, smirking. "I need to talk to you about something very… intriguing."
"What would that something be?" Rory asked, raising an eyebrow and taking a sip of her drink. She also gently removed Vivian's eager fingers from her croissant and noticed Logan's incredible focus as he read his paper without looking up at his family scene plus one. Suddenly, Marianna reached under the table, rather quickly for a woman who was eight months pregnant, and lifted up a copy of The New York Times from several days ago. She tapped a manicured finger on the paper.
"There was an excerpt from your upcoming book, Miss Gilmore, in the Sunday Times," Marianna waved the issue in the air as if it was scandalous and delightful. "Did you read it?"
Rory chuckled. "Better than that. I wrote it."
"Har de har har, comedy queen," the society wife was undeterred. "Let me read it to you then if you are going to refuse to acknowledge what you must know I am talking about." She fanned the paper out dramatically and cleared her throat. "Logan, dear, please try to pay attention. I am about to woefully embarrass your company's big reporter."
Logan looked up and smiled. "Mari, I always try to ignore anything that involves you embarrassing poor Rory. She's an undeserving victims of your wiles, much like myself." He did not look back down to his paper, though, instead propping himself up on his elbow and looking intently at his wife. Rory did not fail to notice the soft, loving gaze and felt a stab of jealousy. Not because it was Logan giving the gaze to another woman but because it was a man giving the gaze to a woman whose thirtieth birthday was not yet looming ahead of her. Lord, sometimes she was an awfully pathetic successful career woman.
"Let me begin," Marianna said dramatically. "'The soldier looked out at me with steely blue eyes that seemed to look straight through me, and I looked at him, solid and strong, the man between me and everything I know I should be scared of, and suddenly I felt no fear of those dangers because he was there. This soldier was there. Then I saw it: the emptiness where his left arm should be. He had given up an arm in the fight, an arm for me, and I found myself unable to ask him about it. All I could do was cry my first tears since I boarded my first plane to the Middle East while he held my hand with his good arm.' - Rory, darling, this is harlequin romance, not journalistic reporting. Tell me about this man!"
Rory looked down at her napkin, which was situated politely in her lap, and tried to pretend she had not just heard her own words, her very risky words, read aloud in a breathy voice by a dear friend. She had been mortified when she saw that the Times had chosen that one unusual, atypical segment of the book to excerpt. Much of the rest of the book was pure journalism, objective, hard-hitting, and powerful, and she knew that the book was going to be just what the Huntzberger Group wanted to begin its new publishing house with a bang. She was proud of it, too; she had never expected to turn her journalism into full length books, but now it seemed like a perfectly logical step to have taken. Or rather, it had until Marianna had just read her words aloud like that, making them seem impossibly romantic.
"He was a one-armed patient of a military hospital. What more is there to say?" Rory tried to take the easy out, knowing it wouldn't work.
"He was more than that. 'I felt no fear of dangers because he was there' or something to that effect. Rory, come on. Spill."
"You wrote about him like you knew him, Ace," Logan admitted, finally looking truly curious. "Viv, cover your ears. We're talking about Rory's love life."
"How about instead of her covering her ears, Mr. Huntzberger, you take her upstairs and read her a story before you head to the office? I want to talk to Rory just us women." Marianna put on a convincing pout, and Rory marveled at how easily the housewife got her husband to comply, scooping up his toddler and toting her upstairs to leave them alone at the kitchen table. She stole a sausage link and munched on it. "Now, Rory, spill. Please. I know how you write, and this is not typical and not detached."
Rory hesitated. No matter how much she adored Marianna, she was not sure she felt comfortable discussing Tristan with anyone. She had not mentioned it to anyone, not to her mother or Paris or Lane. No one knew that she had encountered Tristan overseas, mostly because everyone would not understand why it was such a big deal to her. To them, Tristan was just some obnoxious classmate of hers from Chilton. They could not understand the strange tension between them or the way that she had challenged him to be more right before he was sent away. They certainly did not know about the letter she had penned to him once he was gone but never sent – both because she was a coward and because she did not have an address to send it to. But Marianna knew nothing about any of it. Perhaps she was the right one to tell. Besides, the encounter was nearly eighteen months ago now; it was safe to talk about it without reliving the strange intimacy of it.
"His name is Tristan DuGrey, and I went to high school with him. He was this arrogant playboy, sort of, but we were friends… and enemies. He asked me out once, and we kissed once, and he was sent away to military school suddenly and… I'm really not doing justice to this story," she said weakly.
"So… let me get this straight. He was the arrogant playboy you had unbelievable chemistry with during high school. It had to be unaddressed feelings for him that made you date my arrogant playboy, Logan," Marianna said. She was staring intently at her friend, chin propped up on both fists.
Rory was surprised by this statement; she had never thought of it that way. Surely that wasn't the case. "I don't… think so."
"Was Tristan blond, rich, desirable?"
"Well…" Rory tried for a few frantic seconds to think of some way to deny those adjectives, but it was impossible. "…yes."
"I understand now, even if you don't. Go on."
"Well, when I was interviewing overseas, I recognized him, and we got started talking and he told me that my pushing him to be better back in high school was the catalyst for who he is today. He thanked me, and I was touched and started to cry, and we ended up holding hands and sitting there in silence instead of doing an interview."
"Rory… this… is… fantastic! Amazing! Stupendous!" Marianna seemed beside herself, leaping up in a manner that was probably not safe for an extremely pregnant woman. Rory stood up too but did not understand why they were leaping for joy. She had had a strange, emotional, unlikely encounter with a very old friend, enemy, frenemy… guy. Why was this such incredible news?
"Why exactly? And let's not jump, Mari. There's a baby in there, not a Mexican jumping bean, and Logan would kill me if he knew I was letting you jostle his precious little it." She emphasized the word "it" in an attempt to sidetrack the other woman with the hot-button topic of finding out the gender of the child in advance. Logan wanted a surprise, and Mari wanted to know, and the two had been fighting about it for months, though now the point was moot since the child would be out so soon.
"Do not call the child it. I'm not going to be distracted. This guy is The One!"
"Oh hell, really? This is where you want to go with this? I should have eaten breakfast at home," she muttered, reaching down to grab her messenger bag. "I have to get to work for the day."
"You work from home now, and I'm not dissuaded. He was the one who got away, making you carry unresolved feelings forward. Then your only other truly serious relationship of your life is a copycat relationship with a man full of similarities to the boy you lost. And now, you were reunited in a foreign country and found out he remembered you, treasured you even, all these years. This is the stuff dreams are made of. Logan and I just met at a charity function." Marianna sniffed derisively, though her eyes had that soft sparkle of happiness that showed she was perfectly happy with how they met. Rory felt a surge of anger and jealousy, anger at what was said and jealousy that she had no one to look that happy about.
"Oh shut up, Danielle Steele! This is not some romance novel, and you are being ridiculous. I'm leaving until your pregnancy hormones calm down," Rory grabbed her bag and marched out, cheeks flaming red. She brushed her bangs away from her eyes and stalked down the overly lengthy hallway to the ornate front door. She had heard her love life, or lack thereof in recent years, reduced to a lot of interesting explanations, but that was the most ridiculous by far. She had loved Logan, not simply used him as a replacement for unresolved feelings. Tristan had not even been on her mind then, at least not frequently. He had not been a constant thought or presence; instead, he had been fleeting, more of a memory that flitted through and made her wonder where he was now. She never thought of him romantically, at least not after the first year or so, or at least that was what she was going to tell herself now since she had just yelled at a dear friend for saying that.
Her car was sitting there, the same battered Prius she had been driving since high school graduation, and in ten years, in spite of her grandparents' fervent pleas, she had never wanted another vehicle. The little hybrid had personality. She loaded up and pulled out of the driveway, frowning. Nothing Marianna had said had been deserving of snapping like she had, and she looked up at herself in the rearview mirror. "Pretty is as pretty does," she muttered, knowing that her mother would be displeased to know that her daughter had just treated a pregnant friend that way. She picked up her cell phone and dialed number one on speed dial anyway.
It was a matter of seconds before her mom's chipper voice greeted, "Mother Ship to Earthling, Mother Ship to Earthling."
"Earthling just behaved like an alien. I basically told Marianna to go to hell this morning," Rory switched lanes to avoid a motorcyclist.
"I knew this charmed Huntzberger friendship had to end eventually. Did you make out with Logan in the master suite?" Lorelai's tone was teasing but concerned; she did not think it was a good idea for Rory to be friends with her ex, even after all these years.
"No, so you write to Gossip Cop immediately to dispel that rumor. But Marianna read the excerpt of my book from the New York Times, and she decided that I was in love with some soldier… and I ended up spilling to her that the soldier I was writing about was… TristanDuGreyfromhighschool," she said his name quickly like ripping off a bandaid, but she still heard her mother gasp.
"You never mentioned that," Lorelai said slowly.
"It didn't seem important. But Marianna went crazy over it and started saying he was The One, and I went postal on her. Told her I didn't want to see her again until her hormones had calmed down."
"Oh, Rory, she must be so upset… but…" There was a pause. "She did kinda deserve it."
"What?"
"All that shit about Tristan – Tristan, just some jerk from high school – being The One just because you happened to run into him again. That was ridiculous. She had no right to unleash that brand of crazy on you."
Rory had meant to call to be comforted by her mom, but something about hearing her mother call Tristan, who had lost an arm serving his country, a jerk made her blood boil. How dare her mother call anyone who served their nation bravely overseas a jerk? "She had no way to know it was crazy. She's pregnant, so she's overly emotional and romantic, but hey, did you read what I wrote? It was pretty damn romantic, too!"
"Whoa, chick, calm down."
"No! Where do you come off justifying me being a jerk to my friend just because you hated Tristan back when I was in high school? I sure didn't hate him then, and I didn't hate him when we were holding hands overseas!"
"Rory, stop yelling."
"You're pushing your opinion on me again! You think I always think the exact same thing you do, and if
I don't, you're so convinced you're right that you try to push me to think what you think," she retorted angrily, knowing even as she did so that hurling this particular, painful kernel of truth at her mother was wrong. It was the sort of statement that could hang in the air between them for years, not repeated but not forgotten.
"Okay. Wow. I'm going to talk to you… some other time. Mother dearest has to go."
Rory felt instant regret. "Mom…" But the click of the phone informed her coldly that her mom had already hung up. She pushed her foot down harder on the accelerator in anger, punching the pedal down. The Prius hummed a little louder and sped up, and she tried not to think about the two people she had just upset terribly all because of one person who did not even have a role in her life.
"Life is like a box of chocolates," she muttered drearily as she pulled into her driveway.
AN: Let me know what you think! More readers and reviewers put a story higher on my priority list for updates.