Hello, Mr. President
Chapter Ten
Disclaimer: Not Mine
"Mr. Dugrey, please inform the President that we're to take off as soon as he says the word," The pilot told Joe, who was sitting up in the cockpit with them. Joe had never been on a private plan before, and relished every moment of it.
"Yes, Cap'n," Joe said cheerfully, shooting off to inform his father, as if he was a six year old taking his first ride on the space ship.
Tristin nodded distractedly as Joe informed him of this development.
"Fine then. Sit down, kiddo. Where's John?"
"En route from school, sir," Lydia said, sitting a row away from the President, looking over some notes busily, "Jonathan is trying out for the baseball team,"
"Baseball?" Tristin asked, looking up in surprise, "Why?"
"P.E. credits, sir. Jonathan needs two credits this year, and the school could only give him credit for football, so he needs to do another sport for the second credit,"
Josh yawned again and slumped lower in his seat. He hated flying and this was a fact that everyone knew all too well. Tristin smiled as fatherly as he could,
"You okay, Josh?"
Josh nodded, putting his iPod in, and tuning out his father, to look out the window. Joe sat next to him, pulling out some homework to do. He looked up, as if remembering something.
"Oh Dad?" Joe asked, looking perfectly innocent as if this was a last minute request, although this was probably rehearsed for days to perfect a good outcome.
"Yeah?" Tristin asked, smiling. He was in a good mood. Only a few hours and he'd be able to see Rory again. The thought of seeing Rory alone was enough to make him want to take off all his clothes and run to the Jefferson Memorial, screaming that he loved the world.
"I just remembered that Michelle DuPont invited me to escort her to dinner at a restaurant before the dance with other classmates. May I go?" Joe grinned
Tristin was about to give his approval when Lydia jumped in,
"Sir, the Secret Service would need extra men at all points for the restaurant and the dance is already going to take up a good deal of their men. Not to mention the fact that you have a speaking engagement that night which will include a string of Secret Service. It would be too much of a strain on our men for both the school dance and the restaurant,"
Joe looked down dejectedly and Tristin couldn't take it. He hated to see Joe look so crestfallen.
Tristin sighed, "How about you invite Michelle and these people here? Use whatever room you'd like," He smiled, "I won't be need any of the rooms, and I assume Josh and John won't either. The kitchen will be happy to cook up a fancy meal. They've been complaining that I don't do enough dinner parties,"
"I don't know," Joe hesitated, although it was clear that the idea was growing on him.
"At least ask," Tristin persuaded, "I'll be happy to talk to all the parents if that's what it takes,"
"Fine," Joe gave a hint of a smile, though it was evident that he would've much preferred escorting his date to dinner.
"Pigskin on the tarmac, sir," Agent Dobbs told him, after hearing the recording. Tristin nodded, and checked his watch, sighing. He pulled out papers, wanting to go over his speech for the millionth time. This was a very personal speech to him and one that his speechwriter, a college boy barely out of grad school, had written. Tristin didn't know if he liked the way it was written, but his colleagues had all read it and said it was perfect for the occasion.
After all, this was a speech to be given at a rally for breast cancer. His own wife had died from the disease and Tristin didn't want his words to be too overly extravagant, but not stingy either. It was difficult to find the medium and this would be the first occasion where he would be speaking in front of a major crowd about Nina's cancer.
Also, Rory would be there. It seemed like a bit of a faux-pas to talk about his dead wife in front of a woman who he would be going on a date with later that day. Of course, press would find out and it'd all go to hell then. He was surprised that they didn't figure it out when he and Rory were dancing. Probably, because Rory then danced with Logan, Finn, and a number of other boys who had asked her. She didn't dance quite as gracefully with them as she did with him, though, he was proud to note.
"Hey guys," John said, his face streaked with dirt and his body reeking of sweat and locker room scents. Joe made a face, as did Lydia. Tristin recalled when John was little and his father had declared that John would become the best football player in the world. Yet, he couldn't remember playing catch with John. He remembered promising John that he'd do so and he remembered the fights he had with Nina over what seemed like such a trivial thing.
"John," Tristin said and motioned for him to sit next to his father. John consented and Joe started to hold his breath, his face turning a funny color of green.
"Are we flying already?" John asked, looking at his little brother
"Why do you smell like B.O.?" Joe asked, coughing. Josh seemed disaffected by John's presence, just leaning his head against the window.
"Didn't you shower?" Tristin asked
"I had to leave early just to get here," John said, running a hand through his hair which allowed Tristin a whiff of his underarm, which wasn't deodorized. Quite pungent, "I'll shower when we land. I don't want Dannie to see me like this,"
"Put on some deodorant," Tristin said, "Agent Dobbs, please tell the pilot to start flying,"
"Yes sir," Dobbs consented, walking up to where the pilot was
John grabbed his Tag, yawning. Joe waited eagerly for the plane to take off.
"Why are we all going to New York again?" John asked
"Race for the Cure?" Tristin asked, "My speech? Breast Cancer Foundation? Any of that ring a bell?"
"Oh," John said in a different voice, "I forgot Mom died,"
He didn't say anything past that odd sentence, but Tristin understood.
"I wish I could forget," Josh spoke up, still looking stubbornly out the window. Tristin looked at Josh surprised.
He never talked about Nina or anything that had to do with her anymore. Not even in the grieving sessions where they had to talk about it to 'work out their pain'. Instead, Josh just sat there, motionless. The counselor gave up, and since his grades were solid and he didn't seem to be making any radical changes, Tristin didn't try to send Josh to any more grieving sessions.
"You might as well forget her," John said in a bitter voice and Josh looked at him, bewildered. Tristin put his shoulder on John's shoulder, trying to soothe him.
"What are you talking about?" Josh asked, pulling out his iPod buds.
"I was there," John said, upset, "I was there every single day Mom was in the hospital. You only showed up once. And that was for five minutes."
"John," Tristin said warningly, "Don't-"
"Hell, Joe saw her more then you did!" John added, in a burst of anger. Tristin realized that John had probably been holding this in for a long time and decided that today of all days, would be a good time to make his brother feel bad.
"John, settle down," Tristin said warningly, but John didn't seem to be listening, his upset gaze on Josh as they linked into another staring contest.
The plane began to move and Tristin was unsure of what to do. He considered calling Lydia over and asking, but that seemed so wrong in a sense.
"I don't like hospitals," Josh growled, his fists turning a pale shade of white, "Mom knew that,"
Tristin knew that too. Josh had been in a nasty accident when he was five years old. He hadn't stopped crying until they moved Josh out of the hospital and into his bed with a live in nurse/mother caring for him until he got better. John knew this too, and Tristin had always thought he respected Josh's fear, like Tristin and Nina had.
"John, stop," Tristin said softly, resting a hand on his son's shoulder.
"Mom asked for you all the time," John said, tears falling down his cheeks, "She'd worry that Dad would forget to make your sandwiches crustless and your two chocolate chip cookies,"
"What?" Tristin asked, surprised. Nina hadn't asked about Josh to Tristin. It was Tristin who told Nina what Josh and Joe were up to, "John, why'd-"
"Mom wouldn't talk about Josh in front of you," John said, "She didn't want you to make him do anything he didn't want to do. That's Mom. She always put you dumbasses before her, even when she was dying,"
"John," Josh started, and Tristin felt numb.
"Why didn't you cry?" John interrupted him, "Joe cried when she passed. Joe was there,"
"I was?" Joe asked
Tristin nodded, smiling sadly, "Yeah. You wanted some chocolate milk and when I came back, both of you were asleep." Tristin sighed, "You were the only one that woke up,"
Joe nodded, processing this
"Why didn't you cry, Josh?" John asked, "We were told at the same time. I bawled like a baby, but you just looked like a freaking statue. At the funeral, the only dry eyes in the place were yours, and I spent months peeking into your bedroom and saw you sleeping contently while the rest of us had nightmares,"
"Jonathan Jackson DuGrey!" Tristin roared and the plane took off, lurching everyone back.
"I am your father and you stop this!" He said angrily, "How your brother chooses to grieve is up to him and you are not going to judge him,"
"Fine!" John growled and Josh just glared at him fiercely, upset.
"I loved her too, John. She was my mom too," Josh said clearly, and moved to look outside the window. Joe put his hand over Josh's on the armrest to show support. Josh bristled at first, but didn't move Joe's hand away. Tristin sighed.
"John, let's just not talk, okay son?" He asked
"Fine," John said, popping his own iPod earbuds in, and Tristin saw Joe was going to do the same thing. Frowning, Tristin decided he desperately needed an iPod or an excuse to take his kids iPods away.
---
"Mommy, look at the shorts Daddy got for me!" Jamey said excitedly, running out with cute hot pink shorts with a little yellow flower embroidered on the pocket. Her striped pink shirt had a slight stain, but Rory wasn't in the mood to make her change and wait thirty additional minutes.
"Very cute," Rory laughed, "Are you going to wear that to the race?"
"Yes," Jamey said cheerfully, "And Daddy said that he's gonna wear a matching shirt so everybody knows he's my Daddy,"
"That father of yours spoils you too much, princess," Rory teased, and Jamey giggled
"Will Uncle Logan be there?" She asked as an afterthought
"No, but a very important man to me, will be there," Rory said, "And he wanted to meet you and Riley,"
"Okay, but can I get some Gummy Worms?" She asked thoughtfully, "I think there's enough to fit in my pocket,"
"Is there?" Rory chuckled, "Fine, but save a worm for Mommy, okay?"
Jamey nodded and walked off to the kitchen candy jar. Riley walked out, wearing a wifebeater and a pair of ripped jean shorts. He looked like a child version of Die Hard's Bruce Willis.
"Hey baby," Rory smiled, "Don't you look like a little gangsta boy?"
Riley scowled, "It's the look, Mom."
"But, you are meeting a very important man, and I don't want him to think that he's going to get mugged," Rory pointed out,
Finn came in, wearing a pink candy striped shirt, sure enough, and took one look at Riley, "You sure he's Dean's son? Looks like a hoodlum just like Jess,"
"That cements it," Rory said, "Riley, put on that blue polo I bought you last week and shorts that don't have the word basketball or ripped in their vocabulary."
"I hate you all!" Riley said, aggravated, before stomping back to his room.
"That boy was such a sweet little baby," Rory frowned, "Perhaps I should pick up some more literature on parenting young boys,"
"Oh Ror, Riley's fine. He's just mad at us for moving him and his lifestyle to Washington D.C,"
"And Jamey?" Rory asked, looking at him
"Jamey's used to it," Finn said, shrugging, "You know I drag her with me everywhere and she misses a few weeks of school,"
"Which is going to stop when we move," Rory added, "That was part of our deal. We take the kids to D.C., and you let your brother travel the world while you yourself are demoted to a desk job with no vacations, except for summers, which specifically begins between June 22 and August 22, as we agreed,"
"I know," Finn sighed, "I assume we can still go to Aspen for Christmas and St. John's for the Spring. Not to mention Australia for Thanksgiving,"
"No," Rory said, "Stars Hollow for Thanksgiving. Christmas will be in D.C. The weeklong Spring Break will be up to you and the kids, as long as it is not out of the country. We've been over this, Finn,"
"You're right," Finn sighed, "Your mother should've named you Lawyer instead of Lorelai,"
"She was going to, actually, but realized that Lorelai the Third sounded so much better while hopped up on the Demerol," Rory said dryly
"Better?" Riley asked, walking out in a seafoam blue polo that was slightly ratty and not the one Rory had been referring to. However, he was also wearing a pair of decent looking brown cargo shorts and she chose not to push her luck,"
"Somewhat," Rory said, sighing, "Jamey? Are you ready to go?"
Jamey plucked another worm out of the jar and ate it. Finn laughed and picked her off the counter, causing her to squeal. Rory laughed.
"Let me hold her, Finn. You and Riley can flag down a cab, and I'll tell Jamey why she can't eat too many worms,"
"You can never eat too many worms," Riley protested, smiling good naturedly, "Especially real ones. Did you know, Jamey, that even if they're dead, once they get in your tummy, they can reattach themselves and crawl around everywhere,"
"No they don't, silly," Jamey said, "My teacher feeds worms to our class snake, Bertie. And there's nothing crawling inside Bertie,"
"Stop it, Demonic Ry," Rory said, "Go spread your tales of fiction among the villagepeople,"
"Are we going to Greenwich Village?" Jamey asked, confused
"No. Central Park, hon," Rory said, "You ready?"
"Can I walk?" Jamey asked and Rory set her down, needing her hands for her journalistic tools anyway.
------
Tristin was sitting with a bunch of other people behind the podium. He wasn't the only famous person talking today. He saw a famous actor with a sister dead from cancer, a singer that had battled cancer herself, and a man he didn't recognize that informed him proudly both that he had voted for Tristin in the Democratic prelims and was on his way to beating the disease.
Joe, John, and Josh were sitting in the third row. Dannie was between John and Josh, holding John's hand. She was looking at him with affection in her eyes, and John clearly reciprocated that affection. First loves. They were hard to move on from, and Tristin wondered if he had ever really moved on from his first love.
He scanned the crowd for Rory. She had waved at him earlier, before getting distracted by her kids. The boy, Riley, he remembered, had a military cut hairstyle that needed to be touched up and looked upset. Rory had said he was ten years old.
Tristin, despite having had three ten year old boys himself at one time or another, was panicking about how to relate to this boy. This boy, whom he hadn't met. Riley looked like he had thorns growing out of his back, but when Rory rubbed his back or when the little girl directed a comment to him, he seemed to loosen up.
The little girl, Jamey, Rory had said was her name. She was a cute little thing, with Rory's bright blue eyes and the same cloud of innocence and purity that had caused him to fall head over heels for Rory Gilmore. Rory, being a journalist and exposed to evils like genocide or biological warfare, still seemed to have that same, almost naive look to her that made her look so much more appealing then the other girls.
Nina however. That was a whole new ballpark.
"..Tristin DuGrey, President of the United States," The lady at the podium was saying. Everyone clapped dutifully and Tristin looked at her for a second, blank, before realizing he was to walk up to that podium and give his speech.
He stood up, buttoning his jacket and cleared his throat. Standing at the podium, he looked at everyone, his speech in front of him, ready to be said. Instead, a different voice came out of him, and Tristin wasn't sure how to stop it.
"I loved my wife deeply, and this is the first time I've probably talked about her since giving the eulogy," To his surprise, tears were falling down his cheeks. Quickly, he washed them away, knowing he had to be strong, "It wouldn't be right to give this speech and not mention a woman who had this disease that we are all joining together to fight against."
People started to clap in support.
"However, when I think of my late wife, I don't think of a woman who had breast cancer. I think of my doting wife and mother of three handsome boys," Tristin smiled sadly, "However, the bigger picture is that there are other wives and mothers out there that share this cancer with Nina. We still have a chance for these people, these who are still battling, to get better and live long and happy lives. In memory of the deceased and the survivors, I dedicate my run to them as well as the hard working scientists who will find a cure,"
People clapped harder and Tristin smiled waving slightly. Rory looked at him and her expression was unreadable. What did this mean? He walked back to his seat and saw that Riley hadn't stopped frowning yet.
-----
Rory clapped her hands, thinking that she had never seen Tristin as emotionally vulnerable as she had at this moment. At least not since the day that Summer broke up with him. Tristin had caught Rory's eyes and for a moment neither could look away, and then Tristin had broken their connection.
Rory had felt sparks and other magic-like things shoot everywhere with Dean and Jess when they'd started out dating. Tristin and she, in that stare-down moment, it felt much more then a spark and Rory had never quite forgotten that moment. Nor had she forgotten what had happened at the piano when she saw that the once great Tristin DuGrey was down on his luck and she wanted nothing more then to comfort him.
They had kissed too, Rory recalled. It had been a nice kiss. Certainly nicer then her and Dean's first kiss which was just awkward and chipped her tooth slightly. However it was so long ago and Rory wondered briefly what would've happened if she hadn't thought that this kiss was better then Dean's. That caused her mind wrapped around the fact that stupid Dean had broken up with her, leading to tears on her cheek.
All of a sudden, Rory saw Tristin gazing straight at her. He had a merry look in his eyes as if he knew she was thinking about the kiss they had shared at the piano. Rory turned a light shade of red and willed herself to look at the speaker on the podium, although she couldn't hear anything he was saying, because her heart was hammering so loud. She felt like Tristin's searing gaze and it was making all these tiny sparks in her body join together to create some real magic.
Her stomach felt like an elevator out of control, and the tiny hairs at the nape of her neck were so on edge, Rory was sure she could've gotten a paper cut from them. Tristin was able to do all this to her, with just his eyes. His warm blue eyes that seemed to be saying, 'I want you', though for all her sensible mind knew, Tristin could be staring at her teeth, because there was something stuck in there.
However, Rory's sensible mind wasn't as in control right now, as it usually was. Her legs were shaking and her hands, which were supposed to be writing about the event with pen and tiny notebook, was instead doodling tiny hearts and Tristin's name over and over again.
All of a sudden, a tiny hand shook her arm and a tiny voice got through to her brain, whispering, "Mommy, I need to use the bathroom,"
Rory's maternal side took over her teenage lovesick side and she found herself looking at Jamey, who was doing her pottydance. Rory never felt more thankful then she did at that moment for regaining control through an eight year old that needed to be guided to the bathroom. She could use some fresh water as it was.
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Can't believe it's August already! One second I was listening to 'Crayons Can Melt on Us For All I Care' and the next second I realized that I have wasted a lot more then ten seconds in getting this post up.
Thank you all for being so supportive and loving and just solid reviewers. I still can't believe that I have 170 reviews! Isn't that amazing? And 129 people like this story so much they have me on the story alert thingie! You know what? If I manage to get to 200 reviews by September (I'll still post on a two week basis), I am going to whip up a super big chapter full of the Rory-Tristin moments we all have united over this story for.
No worries. I have no more va-cays til Rosh HaShanah, and that's like a day trip, so I have no more excuses to not post. Well, except for school, but I've done a better job posting during the school year then I have over summer, so you should all be happy about that, actually.
Write in a review! Make my day!
-Miss Priss