Disclaimer: I don't own Gilmore Girls or anything affiliated with the show.

I'd like to thank everyone who took the time to submit a review or put this on their story alert. I really appreciate the kind words and hope you're not disappointed in the following installments. I'm really having a great time with this and I hope it shows. Please let me know how you like this. Hope you enjoy

xoxoxoxoxo

Rory laid on a hard wooden table in silent agony as she listened to Tristan's monologue. Her tailbone was pressing into the unyielding wood, but she didn't dare move for fear of Paris causing a scene right then and there. Inwardly, she smiled. She imagined Paris taking Tristan's dagger and trying to kill Rory with it so Rory would have no excuse not to act dead. She wondered how Professor Anderson would grade that addition to the scene.

She was so grateful Professor Anderson had put a time limit on this presentation. Each group was only allowed twenty minutes for their act, which meant they had to pick the dialogues they felt were most important to highlight the essential themes. Thankfully, due to the lack of time, her death speech had been cut. Paris felt one death scene was enough to highlight that theme. Not only did that cut out her public speaking, it also cut an extra kiss she would have had to share with Tristan. So once Tristan died, another project would be in the books and hopefully she wouldn't be paired with him in the future. It was highly unlikely but a girl could dream.

She lied there, repeating in her mind Romeo's last speech. "A dateless bargain to engrossing death!" Tristan's voice boomed against the walls of the hall in a dramatic way Rory was sure Paris was relishing. "Come, bitter conduct, come, unsavory guide! Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on the dashing rocks thy seasick weary bark! Here's to my love!" Tristan paused. "Oh true apothecary! Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die."

She braced herself. This was the moment she was dreading, when Tristan would kiss her. They had never actually rehearsed this part and she hoped it would go off without a hitch. She wanted to curse Paris. She couldn't believe Paris insisted on a real kiss. Not only was Tristan going to kiss her in front of all these people, he was going to kiss her in front of Dean, as if he didn't want to kill Tristan already.

She felt Tristan's lips touch hers and for a moment everything was fine. Then his lips softened against hers and heat enveloped her. She sensed déjà vu and it was as if she was sitting on Madeline's piano bench again, her heart pounding with excitement. The world faded away and took her back there, and when Tristan's lips brushed hers again, she found herself responding, wanting more. She didn't know what she was doing, but she wanted to keep kissing Tristan.

Then he pulled away and plopped his head on her chest in a dramatic fashion. She realized with horror that she was still on stage, feet away from an audience, where her mother and Lane and worse of all, Dean were watching.

The main lights turned off and after a second of silence, the crowd erupted into enthusiastic applause. Tristan sat up and Rory opened her eyes, still reeling. She tried to look at Tristan. If she saw something in his eyes, she would know what she did. But she couldn't see his face as he was getting off the table. Instead, one look at Louise and Madeline's shocked faces solidified her worse fear. She had kissed Tristan back, and everyone saw it.

When she stood up to face the thunderous crowd, she caught sight of Dean's back exiting the hall. Her mind started to whirl with the consequence of it all. Before realizing it, she jumped off the stage and ran toward the exit after Dean.

The November air smacked her in the face cruelly, but she didn't have time to contemplate the justice in it. She ran toward Dean's receding back. "Dean! Wait!"

He kept walking to his green truck, oblivious to the shattered person running after him. She reached out and grabbed his jacket. "Please," she pleaded.

"I thought you were supposed be in a deep sleep or something. How can you kiss someone if you're in a deep sleep?"

"It was just part of the play. You knew he had to kiss me."

"You didn't say you had to kiss him back. Now I know why you're always stuck with him," Dean said huskily. "You wanted to play Juliet, didn't you?"

"No. Dean, I swear, it didn't mean anything."

"I'm not blind, Rory. Everyone saw you kissing him back."

"But it was a reaction. I hate Tristan. You know that."

"No, I don't, because it doesn't look that way to me, or anyone else who just saw that. You're into Tristan."

"How can you say that? He has made my life miserable since I started at Chilton. He's an arrogant jerk."

Dean stopped at the truck and turned around to face her. His eyes were full of rage and pain. "You must think I'm stupid. That day I went to Chilton and found you with him…" He ran his hand roughly through his hair. "I knew something was up. But you told me you hated him and loved me. I believed you. But you're not fooling anyone, Rory. Not anymore, especially not me."

"What are you saying?"

Dean paused a moment, setting his jaw before uttering, "It's over."

The words stabbed daggers into her heart. This wasn't happening. This couldn't be happening. This had to be a really bad dream caused by all the junk food she had the night before when she and her mother had Gilmore Movie night. Dean couldn't be dumping her again.

She had to reverse this. She had to make him understand. "Dean, please, I don't-"

But he was getting into his truck, turning a deaf ear to her pleas. All she could do was step back and get out of his way as he maneuvered his truck out of the parking spot and out of the Chilton parking lot. She stood in place, hugging herself against the fall chill. What just happened? How did she end up here, standing in the middle of Chilton's parking lot, watching her boyfriend's- no, ex-boyfriend's car disappear into the night? Her heart ached terribly. What was she going to do? How was she going to fix this?

She wasn't sure, but at that moment her ache turned to anger. She decided the thing she wanted to do most was to rip Tristan to shreds. He was the cause of this. He lingered. He was supposed to give her a quick peck and die, but he lingered.

She started to walk back to the Grand Hall when she saw her mother, Sookie and Lane come out to the parking lot. Lorelai looked especially concerned. Rory couldn't deal with her mother right now. She had to go kill Tristan.

Rory walked past them, even though Lorelai called her name. She went into the hall, where all the groups had dispersed into the audience. Tristan wasn't in sight. She walked the back halls, hoping he was still changing back into his clothes. She checked all the rooms, but they were empty.

Where did he go? Was he that quick in changing? How was she going to kill him if she couldn't find him?

She headed back to the main hall and Paris confronted her near her destination. Before she could open her mouth, Rory cut her off. "Not now, Paris."

The blonde ignored her. "What just happened in there?" Paris demanded.

"I don't know."

"Then let me paint you the picture. You're lying there, perfectly dead, then Tristan kisses you and all of a sudden you have a pulse. Have you lost your mind? Let's forget for a second that you were kissing back Tristan. Tristan! The boy you repeatedly rejected and shouted from every rooftop that you hated, not to mention you set me up with in some brief lapse of insanity. Let's scratch all that. We were to perform a classical rendition of Romeo and Juliet, and all you had to do was play dead while Tristan kissed you. And you couldn't do it. You had to kiss him back, in front of the whole student body, the faculty, the staff, and other people who were sorry enough to witness that, not to mention your boyfriend, who I'm pretty sure was not happy at all with his girlfriend kissing another guy. Do you really think Professor Anderson is going to give us a good interpretation grade when our comatose Juliet responded to Romeo's kiss?"

Paris had just summed up all of Rory's fears and added a couple of new ones, making Rory's heart sink deeper into her stomach. Paris's tirade pushed her to the edge. If she didn't get away, she wasn't sure what she would do. "I have to get out of here."

She walked away from Paris, feeling as if she was going to see her dinner splattered on the Grand Hall floor when she heard Paris behind her. "You better hope we got an A on this or you'll be sorry."

xoxoxoxoxo

The drive back to Stars Hollow was a strained one. Everyone kept their peace as Rory wallowed in her misery. What was she supposed to do about this? She already tried explaining this to Dean, and not very convincingly. Now Paris was pissed off at her for not staying in character. Who knew what Tristan was thinking? She wondered how he was going to use this to torture her. He probably would hold that kiss over her head forever.

When Lorelai asked Rory if she still wanted to go to Luke's, Rory opted to go home instead. She didn't have an appetite and the last thing she wanted was to break down at Luke's, which Rory thought was a real possibility. Lorelai dropped off Lane first, with Lane promising to call Rory the next day. Then Sookie was driven home with few encouraging words about everything would be better tomorrow. Rory hoped her mother wouldn't say anything. But when they both trudged into the house, Lorelai started.

"That was an incredibly realistic rendition of Romeo and Juliet," she commented as she hung up her jacket.

"Mom, don't," Rory pleaded.

"Don't what? Ask why? Because I think that's a fair question."

"I don't have answers." Rory headed toward her room, hoping her mother would drop the subject.

She didn't. Her mother followed her and continued. "How can that be? The only one who would have answers to this is you. You're the one who had the frame of mind to do this."

Rory tossed her jacket to a far corner of the room. "Tristan is the one that lingered. If he would have just pecked me like he was supposed to, none of this would have happened."

"Oh, honey. You're transferring the blame?"

Rory finally faced her mother, hoping to drive the point home. "I don't want to talk about this. Why are you making me talk about this?"

"You just kissed back your worse enemy at Chilton, which in turn caused your boyfriend, who you love, to end your perfect relationship. The fact that you don't know why you did this is even more disturbing. I just want to be able to understand why my daughter would do this."

"I already told you. I don't have any answers."

Lorelai paused for a second before continuing. "Do you still love Dean?" She asked softly.

"Yes," Rory answered automatically.

"You answered that very quickly."

"Mother! Of course I love Dean."

"I just think you should really think about it. If you really love him, why would you do this?"

"I don't think you're getting this. I don't know why I did that. If I could take it back, I would. But I can't. So I'm just going to think about what an idiot I was to do this and pine over the fact that I lost Dean again."

"What about Tristan?"

"What about Tristan? There's nothing about Tristan."

"Do you have any feelings for him?"

"No," Rory snapped. Then she sighed when she realized she had also said that too quickly. Even though she felt she didn't have feelings for Tristan, she couldn't accept that since she had kissed him back. There had to have been a reason she did that. Rory sat down on her bed, giving her time to think about her answer. "I don't know. I just pity him. I want to be nice to him. He's going through a lot right now. But every time I do, he just becomes this jerk and I hate him."

"Are you crossing the line?"

"What line?"

"The love/hate line."

"Mom!"

"It's possible."

"I don't love Tristan. I don't even like him."

"Well, I think you're going to have to make sure, Rory. Because what just happened is catastrophic, and if you don't like Tristan, you better be 100 percent sure of it before you try to find another explanation to all this."

Lorelai left the room and Rory slumped back on her pillows. A few seconds alone and the whole weight of the situation pressed down on her. The first hot tear rolled down her cheek, quickly followed by another, until Rory was curled up in a ball on her bed, crying herself to a fitful sleep.