Chapter Ten: Roller Coaster

Disclaimer: I do not own Gilmore Girls or any character associated with the show.

If her life were a movie, she would have thrown her drink in his face, stormed out, and floated on a cloud of righteous indignation all evening. But she didn't react that quickly to his words. Instead, she sat, letting the insult wash over her, lapping against her in small but persistent waves of hurt.

He was shaking his head at her, laughing at her. "Well, I guess you won."

"Won what, Tristan?" she snapped. "Your sick game? Fine. Great."

"If I remember correctly, you were the one who was trying to prove something here."

"Fine! I'm all fucked up. I have some kind of sick need to prove to you that I'm not the waspy naive wallflower you think I am. And now you are sitting here looking at me like I'm the biggest jackass on the planet."

"Jackass? Not the word I was going for."

Her eyes narrowed as she stared him down, daring him to say it. He didn't. She felt the tears building in her eyes anyway.

"You don't get to do that."

"What?" she sniffled, struggling to hold the tears back.

"Cry."

"I think I have earned the right," she choked.

"Look, you're probably not even pregnant. I'm sorry I even told you."

"What, you were debating not?"

"I don't know..."

"Wait, when did you figure out that you had forgotten the condom?"

He swirled the drink in his glass. "Pretty much the second it was over."

Rory thought back to that night. So did that explain why he had withdrawn so suddenly? She wanted to ask him, but she couldn't bear the idea of him knowing she needed him to acknowledge that he had felt some form of connection to her.

"You should have told me then," she sniffled instead.

"I'm sorry," he answered simply. And then, sincerely he repeated "I'm really sorry, about all of this."

Rory nodded, accepting the sentiment. She was sorry too. So sorry about everything that she had done in the past few weeks.

"Look, we should head back. You need to finish packing, right?"

He was already inching out of his chair. She nodded. They left the bar and walked back to the hotel without exchanging another word.

"Where did you go this aftenoon?" Emily asked her granddaughter, pulling Rory out of her thoughts. Overhead, the loudspeaker blared instructions in German, then English about a departing flight several gates down. "I rushed down to my luncheon with Linda Lockheart after I got off the phone with your mother, and you were nowhere to be found."

"I was with Tristan," she answered absently. The look on her grandmother's face made Rory realize the mistake she had made. Up until now she had never even hinted at the fact that they had interacted after that awkward show Tristan put on their first night in London.

"The Dugrey boy?" Her tone was filled with icy malice. "Whatever for?"

Rory's mind raced. How could she have let that slip? Then she thought to her possible pregnancy. Maybe she needed to plant the seed of their relationship now so that at least when, no-if, she had to confess to her grandmother it wouldn't seem like such a shot from left field.

"Just coffee, Grandma. He wanted to catch up."

"With you? But why?"

The genteel puff of air that accompanied Emily's why made Rory's spine stiffen in defense. "I don't know. To reminisce about high school? It is kind of strange that we have been in all of the same cities and avoiding each other."

"I don't like the idea of you running around with that boy in a foreign city," she said sternly.

"It was just coffee," Rory said, and decided to steer away from her original plan. "And I'm sure there won't be a repeat."

"Well, thank goodness for that." Emily sat back against the stiff terminal bench. She looked deeply bothered by Rory's news, minor as it was. Rory regretted not being better prepared with an alibi. Well, at least she knew now that her grandmother had already slipped out of the hotel room before she could hear Rory fighting with Tristan in her bedroom.

She looked out across the gate. Tristan had arrived with his father and stepmother. His headphones were on, a new iPod in his hand. He was watching her. Something about that made her feel relieved. She hadn't been able to take her mind off of him for days, especially now. She was glad that he couldn't seem to take his attention off of her either. It made her feel less alone. But also very, very desperate to feel close to him.

With an excuse to her grandmother, Rory walked away from the gate and down the long terminal. As she walked she ran through the list of people she would have to tell she was pregnant. Her mother. Her grandmother. Richard. Luke. Dean. Oh God, Dean. Would Dean be angry with her, or just cold? Lane. Paris. Oh, God. Paris.

"Rory!"

She turned at the sound of his voice. He was quickly closing the distance between them, a serious look stretched across his face.

"You okay?" he asked lamely.

She shrugged, incapable of words.

He pulled her to him in a tight embrace, holding her firmly against his chest. "You're going to be okay. The world isn't ending."

"Easy for you to say," she mumbled.

He pulled back slightly, giving her a stern look. "Nothing has been done that can't be undone."

She shook her head. "Even if I'm not...pregnant. I've ruined everything. I've hurt a lot of people."

He had the audacity to smile at that. "And that, Gilmore, is a very attractive quality." He kissed her before she could protest. It was a confident kiss, firm and demanding. He didn't deepen it, just let it linger between them for a moment.

"So maybe I have never given you any reason to trust me," he conceded as he pulled away from her, not loosening his hold on her body. "But trust me in this?"

There was a vulnerability in his face that made Rory unravel just enough. She ran her fingers through his hair. He closed his eyes against her soothing gesture. And in that moment she wanted nothing more than to believe him.

She stood on tiptoe and placed a very soft kiss on his lips.

That night, after arriving in Madrid, Tristan came up to her hotel room. He simply came in, settled onto the bed next to her, and flipped on the small television set, much as he had done several weeks before in Paris. He switched through the stations until he settled on a rerun of Friends, dubbed, of course.

He didn't make a move on Rory, just put an arm around her. As they tried to piece together the plot of the episode from memory and the shared three semesters of Spanish between them, Rory slowly sank against him until she was curled up against his chest. At the end of two episodes, Tristan kissed her goodnight and returned to his room.

He paid her these visits for the next two nights as well. During the day Rory toured the public park with her grandmother, shopped, dined in restaurants. She found herself disinterested in exploring during her grandmother's naps in the afternoon and instead chose to try to sleep away the anxiety that plagued her.

Tristan left for a short trip to the countryside with his father and stepmother. The days he had been gone left Rory with little distraction but to stew in self-doubt.

On Monday, she got her period. As the color seemed to come back into her vision, she breathed her first real breath in ten days or so. She wanted to run out of her room and share the relief. But she didn't have to look around to understand that with Tristan out of the range of communication until he returned, she had no one to tell.