True to My Heart

By Ellie

Summary: On a crucial moment, Rory has to decide what she really wants.

Timeline: Rewrite to Run Away, Little Boy.

Author's Notes: This was my second story and first rewrite. I'm redoing it cause it's been a year and a half since I wrote and posted it, and I got better as a writer. Hope you like the upgrade. Please review. It would make my and Chiara's day!


It was a starry, slightly chilly Monday night. The Chilton Preparatory Academy was up to its top capacity full with guests. Students, families and friends were gathered together for the performances the juniors had prepared. As a Lit assignment, they had been told to split in groups, put together a part of William's Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" and perform it.

And that was why Lorelai Leigh Gilmore, a.k.a. Rory, was dressed on a beautiful, antique-looking green dress. She was going to play Juliet in a few extra minutes. Now, she was a very shy girl, and that was why her heart was thumping rapidly, loudly, painfully against her ribcage.

Yeah, right.

Honestly speaking, Rory wasn't so nervous about the play itself. What was driving her nuts was that she would have to kiss her bickering partner, male best friend and former nemesis Tristan Louis DuGray in a few minutes. Now, it was not like Tristan was a bad kisser. No, not at all. He was a great kisser - and that was what ennerved her more. Because she knew he was a wonderful kisser, and because she remembered fully well how perfectly and sweetly his lips had fitted and tasted against hers.

To increase up the pressure and leave her extra anxious, Rory would have to relive those feelings to an audience in where stood her very unsure and deeply jealous boyfriend. To sum it up: she was going to play Juliet in front of hundreds of people she didn't know and would never see again after that night. She was going to kiss a guy that stirred up unknown, but pleasant feelings in her, in front of her insecure boyfriend.

Now, can anyone say her anxiety was bullshit?

And it didn't help when her own personal pain-in-the-ass, nemesis Paris Eustace Geller, appeared, fuming and looking like about to have a hysterical breakdown. "All right, Gilmore, where is he?" She barked angrily, as always an addicted to be perfection.

Rory thinks someday Paris will collapse dead because of it.

"Who are you talking about, Paris?" Rory chose to play dumb.

"TRISTAN!" The blonde girl nearly spat.

Rory shrugged. "I really have no idea", she replied honestly. If I knew, I'd be bantering with him right now instead of burning in my own anxiety, she thought, but kept it to herself. "Are you sure he isn't in there watching the other groups? Or maybe at the restroom getting ready and recalling his lines. After all, we'll be on stage soon", she suggested distractedly.

"He is not, and he better be if he likes the way he looks!" Paris muttered.

"I know you do", Rory replied, anxious for some tension relief.

"Shut up, Gilmore", Paris shot back. "I knew this was a huge mistake, why the hell I heard to that 'let's pick Tristan to be Romeo 'cause he's hot' crap. We should have casted Brad instead of him".

"Brad would throw up on the audience", Rory replied dryly. "Dear God, Paris, chill off. Go check at the male restroom if it makes you happy".

"If I get a mark other than A+ in this assignment, Tristan can go to China if that makes him happy!" Paris said dramatically, and turned around, her heels clicking on the marble floor as she furiously walked away, muttering to herself.

Rory sighed heavily, throwing her hair back and pitying poor Tristan, knowing fully well that Paris would give him a lecture and a hell of a time if she ever found him. Sighing once more, the younger Gilmore turned to the direction opposite to Paris...

... and ran straightly into her wild, troubled Romeo.

"Oh. Tristan. Here you are", she greeted him softly, smiling.

"Rory. Here I am", he replied, checking her out from the top of her tiara to the hem of her green dress. Noticing the admiring expression in his eyes, Rory let an adorable blush creep up her cheeks, and Tristan thought she made a perfect Juliet, sweet, virgin and angelic. I envy the lucky guy who'll be her Romeo. "Dear God, you look gorgeous. Perfect", he complimented honestly.

"T-thanks", she stuttered, wondering why, oh, why, her face was so warm. This was Tristan, infuriating, cocky, arrogant Tristan, of sweet lips and kind eyes. She inched closer to him, noticing for the first time that he was taller than she was, and that made her feel safe and... protected.

Of course, leave it to Paris, the girl with the worst timing ever, to break their romantic time. "Why am I not surprised that you managed to find him?" She spat sarcastically to Rory, then turned to glare at Tristan. "And why the hell are you not dressed? We're about to..."

"I'm sorry, Paris, but I won't play Romeo", Tristan addressed Paris, with sincere sorrow in his voice, but his body was turned to Rory, and she inwardly gasped at the amount of longing and regret inside his expressive, limpid, crystal clear blue eyes. "I can't", he added softly, his irises never leaving Rory and burning a hole in her soul.

Paris hissed something unintelligible under her breath and then bolted away, leaving the stunning couple to themselves. Tristan sighed deeply and ran a hand through his always-tousled blond hair.

"What did you mean when you said you won't be my Romeo?" Rory asked in a low voice, still affected by the deep sadness and profound longing in his eyes. He noticed that she called him her Romeo, but, wisely, chose not to comment on it. Instead, he answered her question, regret filling the blue pools.

"My dad took me off Chilton", he said in a voice as low as hers.

She widened her eyes, startled. "What? Why?"

Tristan made an hesitant pause, fully knowing that revealing his failure would make him look even filthier to her eyes. "Some stuff about Bowman, Duncan..." Another long, regretful pause, "... and Duncan's dad's safe".

Rory felt her eyes widening even more and, blushing, Tristan desperately prayed that, for some kind of miracle, a hole opened up on the floor so he could hide inside of it.

"What?" She asked disbelievingly.

"Disgusting, I know", he answered dejectedly.

"No, hold on, he can't! There must be some sort of way out of this. Maybe if you give the money back to Duncan's dad, apologizing and explaining this is some sort of wild phase you're going through..." She started babbling nervously. Why the hell am I so desperate that he stays with me? She wondered. Whoa! Where did this come from?

"Rory. Rory, calm down", he said, putting a hand on her shoulder. She stared at him. "There's no way out of this mess. If this is a phase, then I shall go through it on a military school at North Carolina", he told her, a bottomless self-directed anger filling the cobalt blue eyes. He looked up at her, and was surprised by the amount of despair and sadness inside her turquoise eyes. Involuntarily, his mind came up with an image of a baby with tousled blond hair - like his - and turquoise blue eyes - like hers. Stop it, DuGray, he scolded himself.

"North Carolina?" She repeated, for a moment lost in translation. Her world, the Chilton world as she knew it, with Tristan as ruler, was slowly falling apart, and, no matter how hard she tried, there wasn't a way for it to go back to the way it was previously.

Rory hated not having power to control things.

"Yep", he nodded briefly, wondering why she looked so sad, when his news should bring her peace and joy. After all, she was getting rid of him. "So..." He looked around, taking in for the last time the school he had grown to love. His eyes stopped at the dark haired, tall guy who was glaring at him and Rory like a hawk. "I'd kiss you right now, but your boyfriend is watching", he said quietly. "I hope he makes you happy, Rory".

Rory didn't have the time to revel on the sound of her own name sliding through her tongue like a holy prayer, because a tall man with Tristan's eyes, only harder, appeared on the extreme right of the hall. "Tristan, let's go", the man called, and Rory concluded it was his father. Tristan nodded and turned to her. Her heart stopped beating at the love - love? - she saw burning inside his eyes.

The way his eyes reflected his feelings always made Rory lose her breath. When he was happy, they were intense, electric blue. When he was nervous or upset, they were stormy gray. And, when he was sad, like right then, they were thunderous dark blue.

"Well, Mary..." He teased her, for the last time, and Rory thought for a minute that she'd never hear the name Mary again without thinking of him. "I believe this is our goodbye".

Tristan leaned forward, brushed his soft lips against her creamy cheek and, giving her a last, wishful look, he turned her back to her and walked away. She watched him leave, feeling, very unexpectedly, lonely and cold.

"WAIT! TRIS!" The scream escaped her lips suddenly, and she never felt her hands lifting her skirt to ease her run. Startled by her call, he turned around, and was even more startled when he saw her running to him. She looked so beautiful, with her antique greenish-golden dress and the long, soft, satiny dark hair flying behind her.

Lorelai Leigh Gilmore, a.k.a. Rory, or Juliet-to-be, reached Tristan, her supposed Romeo, and threw her arms around his neck, melding her curvacious body to his strong one. He instinctively hugged her back, revelling on the feeling of her between his arms.

"Don't leave me", she begged in a whisper. "I'm begging you, don't you ever leave me, I need you".

Tristan hardened after a minute. "What for?" He managed to say.

"To help me keep my wit in shape. To help me deal with the Chilton backstabbing bitches".

Tristan stepped away of her. His heart was breaking once again. He was blossoming with hope when she literally begged him not to go, but then he was crushed when he noticed she didn't see him as more than a friend. "Too bad we never get it our way, right?" He said, quietly, but she saw a quiet anger and an utter defeat burning inside his blue eyes.

She hugged him again. "If you stay, we both will have it our way", she whispered, knowing now the truth she had so desperately tried to deny. "If you stay, I'll have you..." She backed away a little bit, "... and you'll have me".

He looked at her, and she had to smile at his disbelief. "You mean..."

"I love you, Tristan Dugray, and I need you to be with me because of this feeling".

She had no time to say more, because he tackled her, pinning against the wall and crushing his lips hungrily to hers. Rory kissed him back, taking delight on the feeling of him pressed against her, of his lips against hers. She was so lost into him, that she never noticed her boyfriend sadly shaking his head and leaving the building.

They only split because the need of oxygen was greater than the desire that ran through them. Tristan looked into Rory's eyes and smiled. "You sure you're not going to run away in tears?"

She smiled back. "No, unless you say you don't want to be with me".

"You think I fitin the dumb blond role?" He smirked at her. She entwined his fingers with hers.

"No, definitely not. But you fit perfectly in the Romeo one", she said with a smile. He stopped and looked intensely into her eyes.

"And do I fit in the boyfriend role?" He asked quietly.

She smiled and pulled him closer to her. "Most definitely", she said before crushing her lips to his in a brief kiss. "Now come on, we have a play to present!"

He smiled and put his arm around her waist. "Thank goodness we had time to practice the kiss, huh?"

She laughed. "Come on, let's go. We have to convince your dad to keep you here and then we have to knock the Chilton's backstabbing bitches and their parents off their boots".

"Let's not forget that we need to placate the wrath of Paris", he added with a chuckle. She laughed and, with hands entwined, they walked towards where Mr. Dugray stood.

T H E

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