Chapter 2

Sure enough, when she woke up in the morning, there was a white Range Rover in the driveway. She liked that hers was white and his was black. Like the forces of good and evil battling it out. Lorelai rolled her eyes when she saw it. Rory wanted to act nonchalant, but she loved it. She tossed her backpack and her change of clothes for Friday night dinner into the backseat and took off for Chilton.

She called him on the way to school, testing out the hands-free system in the car.

"Are you calling to say you changed your mind, Mary?"

"Nope. I'm about five minutes outside of Hartford. Am I supposed to be getting you, or are you allowed to drive to school?"

"My dad let me drive the two miles to school. I'm just glad he didn't decide I should walk."

She laughed. "Oh, how the mighty have fallen."

"No kidding."

"So, what's our plan? Do we have a plan? Do we need a plan?"

"You tell me."

Rory pulled into the parking lot and found a parking spot. "Well, I'm guessing we don't tell people at school about this – there's no need really. And we haven't been arguing as much lately, so it shouldn't be a big deal if we," she jumped at the knock on her passenger side window. She glared at Tristan for scaring her, still holding her phone to her ear.

"If we what, Mary? And aren't you going to unlock the door?" She did, and he slid in. He looked around, "This is nice, smells new." He turned back to her, "You were saying?"

"I was saying, before you scared the shit out of me, that we can probably just act normal and no one will think anything of it. No one needs to know you have a babysitter," she made a face at him. "We've been getting along okay, so we can hang out without drawing too much attention to ourselves."

He smirked at her. That smirk used to irritate the shit out of her, but it had grown on her lately. "Okay, yes, I know you're always the center of attention, drama queen, but us hanging out shouldn't draw too much attention. Right?"

He laughed, "We won't know until we try. Let's go." He ruffled her hair as they walked in the building; she elbowed him and told him to keep his hands to himself. Yeah, she thought, no one will think anything of this.

Their first day as a duo went fine. She followed Tristan home that afternoon after school and stared slack jawed at his house as they pulled up a long winding driveway. "Welcome to my prison," he told her as he led her around the back, through a gate, and into a pool house. "Some prison," she mused, as she took in the space that was easily bigger than her house in Stars Hollow. "I mostly hang out in here. We can go into the house, if you'd rather." She dumped her backpack on the floor by the couch. "This is good." She glanced at the treadmill and then over to him. "You run on that thing?" He told her he normally ran when he got home. She looked around at the set up. "Can you run and watch TV at the same time, if we move it this way a little?" He nodded and pushed the treadmill slightly to the left to face the TV. "I usually go to Luke's when I get home for a while before doing my homework. So," she kicked around a game plan for them, "maybe you run and we watch TV for a while, and then do homework. Does that work?"

"Sure. It's your show. I'm your bitch, remember?"

"Yeah," she gave him a big smile, "it's my favorite part of this."

They had time to kill today because they were going to her grandparents' house together and that wasn't until 7:00, so he showed her to the kitchen in the main house. He introduced her to Grace, the cook and main housekeeper and formerly his nanny, knowing Grace would be excited to meet her. Grace was his confidant at the house and knew about his thing for Mary. He made sure to introduce her as Mary and watched her face light up. Rory rolled her eyes and corrected him, which made Grace smile even more. He left them to get changed, and Rory stayed and talked to Grace for a few minutes. Grace made her a bowl of popcorn and coffee and showed her how to buzz her through the house system if she needed anything else.

Rory made her way back to the pool house and was sprawled on the couch flipping through the channels when Tristan came in a few minutes later in a t-shirt, shorts, and running shoes. She'd only seen him out of his school uniform a few times, and then in jeans. These running clothes, she guessed you'd call them, made him look, hmm, athletic, she mused. His arms and legs looked lean and strong, and his shirt was tighter than the dress shirt he wore every day to school, showing his chest. She cursed the butterflies tearing around her stomach and forced herself to look away.

After a couple minutes of debate and listing what all they'd each already seen, they agreed on Ozark – crime and drugs seemed like universal themes. He walked for a minute and then jogged on the treadmill and she ate popcorn and drank coffee while they watched the first episode. She laughed at how loud the TV had to be to hear it over the sound of his feet pounding on the treadmill, but it was fine. He ran the 50 minutes for the length of show. He slowed down when it ended, covered in sweat, hair in wet spikes, and shirt mostly drenched. She watched him down a bottle of water and cursed the damn butterflies again when he pulled his shirt off on the way out the door to get cleaned up. She bit her lip. If she thought he looked good getting ready to run, he looked fucking fantastic after he ran. Oh boy.

He was back fifteen minutes later, showered and in clean shorts and t-shirt to work on homework. "This is, what, your third outfit of the day? You're kind of high maintenance, Dugrey."

"It's work looking this good, Mary." He wasn't kidding, she thought. "And, unless you tell me I can go like this to your grandparents' house, I'll have to change again."

"Yeah. No. I have to wear a dress. Welcome to my world. Thrilling Friday night at the grandparents." He smiled at her. She bit her lip, "I know you agreed to come tonight, but, seriously, your dad did say you could come with me or stay at home."

"Trying to get rid of me already?"

"No! Trying to save you."

He smiled at her again. "You already saved me once. Besides, home is boring."

"Yeah," she said sarcastically, looking around. "It would be so hard to find something to do here." She reached for the backpacks to get started.

They had all but one of their classes together. He had P.E. and she had newspaper, and she had to assume he had P.E. covered. He sure looked like he should have P.E. covered. They went through each one, with her reviewing his status in each class.

He sat on the other end of the couch and watched her as she flipped through his stuff. Watching Rory had become one of his favorite things to do. She was so serious sometimes, and then she'd say or do something ridiculous. He'd fallen hard long ago. He initially tried to play it off as his desire to hook up with the new girl, the virgin, but that was nowhere near the truth. He wanted her, and he was pretty sure he wanted her permanently. To get the ball rolling, he'd cut back on the "jackass" act, she'd been right when she told his dad that. At least she'd noticed.

Watching her face scrunch up as she looked at one of his folders, he teased, "What do you think, Mary? Can you fix me?"

She glared at him, "You're lazy. Your test scores are all good. The only reason you don't have As is because you don't turn stuff in. Why don't you turn anything in?"

"Maybe if I had the right incentive, I'd do better. Like a kiss for each assignment I manage to turn in on time."

She smiled sweetly at him, and told him, "Sure, I might be able to get Paris on board with that."

Laughing, he leaned over and tugged on her hair. "You're no fun."

They pulled in to the Gilmores that night at the same time as Lorelai. Right at 6:59 p.m. No one wanted to be a minute early. They stood on the doorstep. Tristan watched in disbelief as they fought over who had to ring the doorbell. Finally, he reached around them and rang it. "You two are insane. Let's just do this."

Lorelai eyed him. "Kid, you have no idea what you're about to walk into. Next week, you won't ring it as fast. Wait and see."

Two hours later, they stood on the doorstep again. Lorelai looked at him again, this time in awe, "Wow, you're our buffer. I guess society frowns upon chastising your offspring in front of others. You're coming every week. Woo hoo!" He laughed, amused.

Rory drove him the few blocks home. Before he got out, he turned to her, "Thanks for doing this, Rory. I promise I'll do everything I can to make this as easy on you as possible."

She smiled at him. "It's not a big deal, Tristan."

"It is. If it weren't for you, I'd probably be getting yelled at by some drill sergeant right now."

"Oh, I have no doubt. I can yell at you at regular intervals, if it'll make you more comfortable."

"It might." They grinned at each other, blue on blue eyes sparkling. "So, what's going on tomorrow?" he asked.

"I'm not sure. Other than reading, we don't have homework."

"Do you want to come over tomorrow? We can watch more of the show."

She considered it. "Yeah, maybe. I'll text you when I get up." He nodded and hopped out.

Rory thought about the day as she drove back to Stars Hollow. He was fun when he wasn't purposely annoying her. She'd go back to Hartford tomorrow, but she'd eventually have to incorporate him into her Stars Hollow life, too. And she'd have to deal with Dean. She wasn't looking forward to that, because Tristan was right. Dean hated Tristan.

Lorelai was in the kitchen making coffee when Rory got home. She smiled when Rory flopped down at the table. "So, let's hear it. Tell me about today."

"Not much to tell. It went fine. We went to Tristan's house after school. We did our homework. We went through all his classes. He's not doing that bad. He'd do better if he tried."

"You two got along okay?"

"Yeah, sure. We stopped trying to kill each other months ago."

Lorelai sipped her coffee. She had only heard stories about Tristan. She hadn't met him or seen him and Rory interact. She'd watched them tonight and had formed some new opinions. They may have gotten off to a rocky start, but there was that saying about friendships forged in fire. Somewhere along the way, they'd forged theirs and it sizzled around them.

"So, have you told Dean about your new gig?"

Rory groaned. "No. I was thinking about that on the way back here. I guess I need to tell him. But, really, I'm not sure how much it'll affect him." She was working on her argument to minimize the whole set up. "I mean, really, I'm just changing the location of where I do my homework. I'd be doing it at home and he works most afternoons. Fridays will be the same. I guess Saturdays will be some different."

Lorelai didn't let her off the hook so easy. "Honey, you agreed to spend a lot of time with another guy. A guy who just might be one of the hottest teenagers I've ever seen. And you have a brand new Range Rover. He might notice that."

Rory groaned again, "And a guy who Dean hates."

"What? Oh! The dance. Yeah, this is going to be awesome. Can I watch you tell him? Please? Pretty please?"

She watched Lorelai clap her hands together like a four-year old. "I'll tell him tomorrow night. We're going to dinner."

Lorelai took another sip and smiled. "Well, eat fast. Dinner may be over before you know it once he hears about Pretty Boy."

"What happened to Spawn of Satan?"

"Sounds like he's going to be around for a while. We should be more cordial."

Rory smirked, "As long as he keeps Grandma and Grandpa off your back, right?"

"Duh."