Dean pulled up to Rory's house and got out to open her door for her. When he had, Rory didn't move. She stubbornly crossed her arms and looked at the dash in front of her.

Awkwardly standing there, holding the door, Dean didn't know what to do. This night hadn't gone at all how he had planned. The pick-up, the dinner, the car- it had all gone smoothly. Then he had worked up the courage to tell her how he felt, he'd done it, he said the words and… she didn't feel the same way. He didn't understand! He was in love with her, wasn't she supposed to be in love with him too? "Rory," He prompted quietly.

She still refused to look at him, "No, I don't want to get out of this car because if I do, you're going to get back in and drive away and we'll be broken up and I don't want that to happen." She finally looked at him and it looked as though she was trying to fight back tears. "I don't want us to break up, Dean."

Even when he was so hurt about how tonight had gone, he didn't like seeing her hurt. "How about a walk to the furniture on your back patio, then? He held out his hand and waited. He had done a lot of waiting for her tonight.

Nodding slightly, she unfolded her arms and reached for his outstretched hand. Hopping up from the seat, she led the way around her front porch and to the back garden. She waited for him to sit down and then promptly straddled him and began kissing him.

"Woah," Dean broke off the kiss and slide her off of his lap. "Rory, do you really think you can react the way you did a little bit ago and then if you jump me, it suddenly makes it all better? That's not how it works, Rory!"

The battle with the tears was lost. They were running down her face now and she sniffled as she wiped them on the back of her sleeve. "No, I just want to show you that even if I can't say that I love you yet that I do care!"

Putting his head in his hands, he leaned forward on the bench, "Do you? Because when a guys says he loves a girl, he's really putting it out there and then for you to not say it back-"

"Why do I have to say it back? Were you scared when you said it?" Rory had pulled her legs up to her chest and she knew it wasn't very lady-like and her grandmother would have had a cow, but the coat she was wearing covered her completely and she wasn't entirely sure that she'd care in this moment even if it didn't.

"Of course I was!"

"Why?"

He was at a loss for words for a few moments, "Why? Why, Rory? Because I was afraid of this!"

"So then why say it? Why risk it?" She was still sniffling, but she was determined to make her point.

"Because I love you and I was hoping that you felt the same way. Which clearly, you don't, so I don't know why I'm even here." He got up and started to walk away, but Rory's hand shot out and clutched his as though her life depended on it.

"If you were hoping I felt the same way, then clearly in that moment before you said it, you believed that I cared about you enough for you to take that chance. Why isn't me caring that much enough? Why can't you give me time to get there too?"

"What?"

Rory stood up too, even though this in almost no way leveled their height difference. The tears had stopped, and her voice was done shaking, but she was still clearly upset. "Why can't you keep being the absolutely perfect boyfriend you are and have been up to and including tonight and let me get there? Just because at the very moment you decided to say it, I'm not ready doesn't mean you have to throw our 3 months into the gutter!"

It killed him to look at her like this. He leaned down and wiped the remaining tears from her cheeks. He felt so hurt by her not saying it back. But could she be right? "Look, if you need time to think about it, so do I. Okay? I'll call you tomorrow." He walked away with no further notice, too quickly for her to try to stop him again.

Later that night, Dean had closeted himself up in his room and turned on the music. It was so loud that he barely heard the knock on his door. Hastily wiping his sleeve over his face to check for the tears he'd been fighting and clearing his throat, he answered, "come in."

His mom's face poked around the doorframe. "Hey, bud, can we talk?"

He shuffled the books on his bed, noticing one that Rory had loaned to him as he did so, "Yeah, sure, what about?"

Smiling in a knowing way, his mom picked her way carefully across his room strewn with typical teenage boy detritus: wrappers, dirty laundry, sporting equipment, and sat down on the edge of his bed. "Did everything go okay on your date tonight with Rory?"

He looked down and let the hair fall in front of his eyes before he answered, "Is it that obvious?"

"Honey, no teenage boy listens to Alanis Morissette because his date went well."

He smiled at her sheepishly and grabbed the stereo remote to turn off the music. "Can I ask you a question, Mom?"

Settling more onto the bed and crossing her legs, she patted his leg, "Of course you can, kiddo."

"Did you and Dad say that you loved each other at the same time?" Dean was immediately annoyed at her laughter. Here he was heartbroken and she was laughing at him.

"I'm sorry, I don't mean to laugh. It's just that your father wasn't exactly smooth as he said it to me for the first time." She smiled recounting the memory in her head, "We were on our way home from a dance and he dropped his car keys. We both bent down to pick them up and we bumped heads. At the same time that I said, 'I'm sorry,' he said, "I love you' and then immediately started apologizing for it. But I said it back and it was a pretty special moment."

Dean shuffled his shoulders and pushed back against his head board, "Thanks, mom."

"Hey," he looked up at her again, "did you try to tell Rory that you loved her tonight?"

Hesitating for a moment, Dean nodded.

"And she didn't say it back?"

"She said she needed to think about it." He grunted and looked at the ceiling.

"Dean, I know you're a teenager and Rory is really special to you, but love isn't necessarily what you think it is. Sure it would have been nice if she had said it back to you, but from what I know of the girl, that's not who she is. She's had a rough time growing up with just her mom. She didn't have the background of two parents who love each other like you do." His mom stood and began navigating her way back across the room, "I would cut her some slack if I were you."

With her hand on the doorknob, she turned once more, "Honey, as long as you end up at the same destination, does it really matter whose car pulls into the parking lot first?" She didn't stop to see if he reacted, she just slipped out and shut the door behind her.

Dean went to bed still thinking this over.

It was just past dawn when he got up the next morning, he wanted to make sure he caught Rory before she and her mom went to the diner. He knew they had talked about all of what had happened the night before and he was hoping that Lorelei hadn't said too many things that would make Rory hate him. He drove to their house with the pink of the sun still in his rearview mirror and was waiting for them, leaning against his hood when the pair of them walked outside.

"Oh, I just forgot that I left something very, very important inside and it will take me several minutes to find it!" Lorelei exclaimed loudly as soon as she saw him. Well, no one ever said that her mom was smooth at getting out of the way, but she did get out of the way.

Rory looked hesitant. She was wearing a small smile, but she wasn't exactly closing the distance between them very quickly. "I thought you said you'd call me today?" She wasn't sure how to react. It hadn't been an easy night. She had stayed up most of it trying to reassure herself that if Dean really loved her, he wouldn't let this break them up.

But then she turned the situation around. If she had been the one to say it and he had not responded in kind, how would she have reacted? She knew that she would have been embarrassed. She knew that the last thing she would have wanted was more one-on-one time with him in that very moment, which is what she had pushed on him.

He pushed off from his car and walked toward her, "Yeah, but I can't do this," he leaned down and kissed her, putting an arm around her waist and pulling her right up against him, "when I'm on the phone. And after the way we, I, left things last night, I figured that was one of the more important things." He rested his forehead against hers. He didn't want to break the contact between them.

She could see his smile as she looked up at him. He was smiling! Her stomach was doing flips, but she still needed him to verbalize what he was saying, as nice as kissing Dean always was, it wasn't as comforting as she would have liked after how they had left things. Rory was chewing at her bottom lip, "So, does that mean that we're okay?"

He laughed softly, "It means that if you can forgive me for being an idiot, then yes, we're okay." He straightened back up, but Rory wrapped her arms around his shoulders, forcing him to stoop a little.

"I don't think you were being an idiot." She said against his chest, "You put yourself out there and then I was super not helpful with it. I'm sorry too. I wish I was less confusing and just let myself feel things instead of trying to analyze everything."

Rubbing her back, though her coat, Dean whispered back, "Rory, never apologize for who you are. I love who you are. And as long as you think that you'll someday be able to say that you love me too, then that's good enough for me."

"Yeah?" She had pulled back to look into his eyes with a smile that could have lit up the block.

"Yeah." He smiled back and leaned down to kiss her again.

"Umm, I do think I'll be able to say it someday in the not-too-distant future, you know that right? I need to make sure that you know that I do think you're amazing and I'm so, so happy to be with you." She smiled slightly as she searched his eyes.

"Hey, I know it's your nature to worry, but you don't need to look at me like I'm going to disappear. We're all good. I promise." He kissed her one more time, just a light peck, ever aware that Lorelei could reappear at any moment.

They broke apart when they heard the door shut from the house. "Okay!" Lorelei said, a little too loudly, "I gave you plenty of time to work through your issues, but you're kissing again and you've talked so I'm guessing it's all okay so can we please go to Luke's? I'm starving!"

They all laughed as they piled into Lorelei's car for breakfast.