Disclaimer. As thankful as I am of you thinking that I might own the show, the characters, and everything related to Gilmore Girls, I don't. . . thanks for thinking so highly of me, though.
Minus Dean 8
"I no longer have a date for the Winter Formal," Rory told her mom over the phone while she was waiting for her bus to arrive the day when she dumped Tom.
"J-Lo you should worry if you don't have a fiancé, not a date for a Winter Formal. That's how Liz got started, you know."
"Mom, it's me. . ."
"I know honey. . . caller ID, remember"
"So, I no longer have a date for the Winter Formal" Rory repeated herself.
"What happened?"
"Well, you see. . . Tom was being something of a jerk. . ."
Lorelai interrupted her, "Just as Tristan said he was"
"Yeah, so… there we were, and then all of a sudden, he starts getting on my nerves and then I dumped him."
"Talk about cliff-notes version."
"What?"
"That I will need something more than what you just gave me, for me to be able to hate him with you. Breathe honey; breathe. What happened with Tom?"
"Well, he started getting on my nerves. . ."
"Uh huh, we've been thru that. . ."
"And then I dumped him."
"Wow! For a future reporter you've really suck at news coverage… and you were there!"
"Mom…" Rory said.
"Here honey, let me get you thru it… take notes so next time something happens you have better idea of how you are going to tell mommy. What did he do to get on your nerves?"
"He was being Tom"
"But I don't know Tom, so that doesn't give me much. Elaborate."
"We were in the library working in our project and he started to get all touchy and feely and flirty. We were working, for God's sake! But anyway, there we were, I was trying to work and he wanted to have breaks. . ."
"Now we are getting somewhere, go on."
"And then he started asking me stuff. . ."
"About yourself?"
"No"
"About your likes and dislikes?"
"No"
"We were doing so well a few minutes ago Rory, go back to that place, back."
"He kept asking me about my friends and. . ."
"You mean, Tristan."
"Well, yeah, he is one of my friends. And he kept telling me that I needed a better 'screening' process for my friends."
"What are you? Human Resources?"
"Exactly. So then I got mad."
"Why did you get mad?"
"He asked me something. . ."
"About Tristan?"
"Yeah," she accepted finally, and Lorelai smiled "and how could I be friends with him and how Tristan wasn't the best guy to have around."
"He is when we need to change the water bottle. Luke is just not being as effective as he used to."
"Yeah, but I couldn't tell him that. Rumors would be all over school by early tomorrow morning."
"So that's when you. . ."
"That's when I snapped at him. I told him that I didn't like anyone speaking bad about my friends and then told him that I wouldn't go to the dance with him and then I left him there."
"Wow! Rory Gilmore, I never thought you had it in you."
"I'm a little ashamed about it."
"Ashamed? Are you crazy? I am so proud of you. I just didn't know from where you get that easy-temperament, because neither your father nor I have it. You have made me proud to be your mom. Many songs come to mind at the moment for me to sing to you. . ."
"But since you are such a great mom you are not going to put me through that, right?"
"Right. So what are you going to do?"
"Well nothing. Not going to a dance is not really a life-altering event in one's life. In fact, this won't be the first one I've missed. I've missed several while attending Stars Hollow High."
"My daughter, the wallflower."
"And proud of it."
"That's the spirit."
"Well I'm waiting for the bus to head to Stars Hollow, so I'll see you at home OK?"
"See ya at home, angel"
~*~
"Why don't you go with Tristan?" Lorelai asked Rory as they were having a cup of coffee at Luke's, later that same day.
"No"
"That's why I asked 'why'."
"I made a point about going with Tom. Going with Tristan is just giving him reason to be cockier because of the fact that he was right."
"So, accept that he was right and move on. Go with him."
"Accepting that he was right? No, that won't happen."
"The minute he finds out that you are not going to the dance with Tom, he'll know that he was right. But here is the thing. If you don't tell Tristan, he is going to jump to assumptions that will be wrong. And that boy would rip Tom's head off, because he is going to think that the reason he's not going to the dance with you is that he did something to you and not that you dumped him. Therefore, you should go with him, as damage control. For your fellow man well-being."
"No, I am not going with Tristan."
"But why? What about everything I just said."
"We can prevent all that with me just telling him that I dumped Tom. This will be punishment enough. I don't need to go with Tristan to add to that punishment."
"So you think of going out with Tristan as a way of punishment?"
"In this case, yes."
"I beg to differ."
"You always do. That's why you're you."
Then Rory added as an afterthought. "And he already asked someone else."
"And that was all your doing." Lorelai stated.
"Yes, it was."
"Well, he would go with you if you asked him."
"And have to endure the mocking comments, the teasing, the leering, that will come as a result of me asking him. No, thank you."
"You already live with that,."
"Times ten."
"Oh, now you're just exaggerating."
"No, I'm not."
"Have you told him yet about what happened?" Lorelai asked.
"Nope, but I think he probably already knows."
"Why do you figure?"
"Alex was there."
"And Alex is. . .?"
"Tristan's friend."
"He already knows." Lorelai said as she drank the last remains of her coffee.
Rory nodded, doing the same thing.
That night, Rory called Tristan and told him what had happened with Tom.
~*~
The day of the dance came. The infamous Winter Formal finally arrived. Rory hadn't been able to live thru what had happened with Tom. As predicted, Tristan mocked, joked, teased. . . and then he tried to persuade Rory to go with him to the dance.
"The dance is today," Rory said, as they where sitting having a cup of coffee at some place in Hartford.
"So. . ."
"And you already have a date for it," she said, rolling her eyes.
"So I'll break that date and we can go together,"
"We've been thru this," Rory stated.
"Your point being?" he asked her, as if he didn't get where she was going with that.
"You can't do that to Tracey, she probably just decided which color her dress would be so she wouldn't clash with the decorations or her friends' dresses."
"You know Mary, when you talk that way you sound a little jealous," he said with a smirk.
"You wish"
"Every night to the first star I see."
"Be serious, Tristan."
"I am being serious; the fact that you don't take it seriously that's another story, that I have nothing to do with." He said leaning in.
"Really now, you can't do that to her."
"I would do it, if you ask me to."
"I won't ask you to do such a thing. You'll have fun with Tracey," she said, trying to convince him.
"But I would have more fun with you. We could start the evening by pinpointing which couples will split by the end of the night, even put a wager on it if you like. Then we would make fun of everyone else, mocking them even more after someone has the smart idea of spiking the punch. We could laugh at anyone who fights with his or her dates. You see its fun."
"You would be Lorelai's perfect date." She said with a small smile.
"Yet I want to be your perfect date."
"Listen, go to the dance with Tracey, and pay attention. And tomorrow you can tell me all about it when you come over, and we can do everything you've just described." She finished.
"Are you sure?" he asked her, finally.
She hesitated. "Yeah."
"Then I should leave, I have to go and get ready."
"You do that." She said with an apologetic smile.
"Will you get to Stars Hollow alright?"
"I'll be fine." She assured him, as he got up. "Oh, and Tristan. . ." she called him when he was at the door, and he turned to see her "I want thorough notes on the dance, think Hemingway." She smiled. He didn't, and went on his way.
~*~
Rory had yet another movie night with Lorelai. But, she didn't free herself of Lorelai's comments, (whether they were to the point or alluded to something). But she hardly paid any attention to the movies, and even to what Lorelai had to say about, well, anything. Zoning out Lorelai wasn't something that was easily done, but Rory had mastered it. She didn't want to be distracted from her own thoughts, which she found led her to the dance and of course to Tristan, and what kind of time was he having himself.
She kept trying to get away from those thoughts also. She tried as hard as she could to avoid anything that would make her regret her decision of going to the dance with Tristan.
There was a moment during the night that she considered going by herself, but she decided otherwise. She wasn't the kind of girl that would do something as rash and spontaneous, and. . . . she didn't have anything to wear to the dance. But that wasn't the point; she just wouldn't do that to a person.
When they were through half of the second movie (or what Swatch would signal as 9:40pm), she decided that she was tired and that she needed to go to bed. Lorelai didn't try to stop her.
Lorelai had been worried about her. Rory had seemed distracted all through the night and the fact that they had rented, what could have been called a "School Dance Theme" (picked beforehand by Lorelai), including that movie where Britney Spears sang the main song for the movie, wasn't helping matters much. She knew that they were not the perfect picks, but she figured that maybe seeing the main characters hook up at the end of the dance would make Rory act against what her common sense dictated. She knew it was as good as a shot in the dark, but it was worth a try.
She had seen how her daughter had beaten herself up about accepting that date with Tom, and how relieved she had been when she broke it off. Of course, Lorelai couldn't tell Rory that, because she would deny it completely calling her delusional or something like that.
It was something that she had to wait for Rory to figure out. She could tell where Tristan stood in all of this; she knew he liked her daughter. But since Rory was the one that was going to do the figuring out, and it was going to take a while (being Rory and all), she would have to sit and wait for it to happen. This was going to take some time.
~*~
There hadn't been a most boring dance than the Winter Formal. A good thing was that Tracey decided that Tristan wasn't being the best of dates and she had left with Tom Harris, of all people.
Tom had planned a better revenge than this one, but since the whole thing with Rory had flopped, and this was apparently as good as it was going to get he seized the opportunity and left with Tristan's date. Tristan just chuckled. Harris didn't actually stand out for being smart.
Most of the night his thoughts traveled to a small-town girl that had stayed at her house because she was too nice of a person to ruin someone else's good time.
He left the dance and drove back home.
On his way home, he kept thinking about how he knew that Rory was going to laugh when he told her how his date for the dance had ended. At the thought of her laughing, he smiled. He could hear her laughing with him at everything he had witnessed at the dance. How Paris had attended the dance with a cousin that ended up hitting on Madeline, who already had a date but then left with Louise's and vice versa. How Alex had gotten trashed because he drank to much punch, and how Bryce ended up crying about something or other because of the same punch consumption. How everyone had met Josh's girlfriend (who attended another school). It had been an eventful dance after all. To bad, she had missed it.
That's when the realization hit him. How he had missed her, and how much he had wanted to go to the dance with her and not anyone else. It wasn't because of his initial capricious reaction to date her, because she was 'new'. Now it was more than that. It was because he wanted to enjoy 'the pleasure of her company' as Heath Ledger had accurately put it in 10 Things… It was because he wanted to go thru the whole dance experience with her. He wanted to go thru the details of getting to the dance, just as Alex had gone thru them with Dana a few days before, with her. He wanted to dance with her. He wanted to hold her in his arms so close that he would've been able to listen to her think.
This was beyond liking. This was… Tristan DuGrey was falling in love… with Rory Gilmore.
And as a montage, just like the ones people say that they have just before they go through a near-death experience, the last few months spent with Rory came to his mind. He realized that they had spent almost everyday of those last few months together. He saw how, with time, she seemed more at ease around him (and that made him happy). He also noticed the way he had changed, because of being around her so much. He remembered how he won over her trust (and Lorelai's). How everyone who was part of her life had taken him in, or better yet he saw how she had let him into her life allowing him a freedom that he never thought he would be able to have around a girl.
WOW, was all that he could think off.
~*~
At three in the morning, Rory heard a knock on the door. It was insistent. She hoped Lorelai would wake up and answer it. But she figured that she had a better chance of lighting striking twice on the same place, before Lorelai got up and answered the door at this time a night.
And then she did a double take when she saw that it was three in the morning, and she got worried. She grabbed her robe from the chair, slipped on her slippers, and went to get the door.
She kept mumbling to herself, that person better have a good reason for coming here at this hour, repeatedly.
When she opened the door, she was surprised. Or something beyond surprise if that was possible. A tear-stained Tristan stood there still wearing the suit he had worn to the dance.
"Tristan? What's wrong?" she asked alarmed.
"My grandfather Rory…" he started trying to hold his tears, or keep them to a minimum "My grandfather died tonight" and he threw himself in her arms and cried, as he hadn't in years.
She just hugged him tight and didn't let go. And then, she started to let her tears roll down her face.
~*~
Author's Note. Please don't hate me just yet. I know what everyone wanted, but there is a reason why I did this and you will understand shortly. Thanks to everyone who reviewed and please continue doing so.
Mary
