Chapter Two

"Hello?" Rory answered the phone when she managed to find it. It was Saturday night and she was studying while her Mom went to Luke's to get them some food.

"Hey, Mary."

"Tristan?" she said, staring at the phone is surprise. Why the hell was he calling her?

"Who else calls you Mary?" he asked, amused.

"No one. Thank God. How did you get my number?"

"It's listed," he told her, as if it was obvious that he would search for her number.

"Okay, rephrase, why did you get my number?"

"Because my day wouldn't be complete without annoying you," he said, smirking.

"Gee, thank you for going to all that trouble for me. Bye."

"Wait!" Tristan said quickly.

"What?" she said, pretending to be really bored with the conversation. Although deep down she knew she had had a lot of fun hanging out with him in school on Friday.

"Well, I thought we could, you know, talk. It's what people do right."

"People? Yes. We? No."

"Why is it weird for you to talk to me?" Tristan asked.

"It's not."

"Liar."

"Fine it is," she admitted. "Probably because I hated you until a week ago."

"You never hated me. You wanted me. There's a difference."

"Yeah, sure, Tristan. I was so crazy with want."

"And now the truth comes out."

"Was there something you wanted?"

"I'm bored."

"So, you chose to call me?"

"Well, yeah. You're the one who said I should swear off girls."

"No, you said you would and I laughed at you," she reminded him. "Then I suggested you just swear off  a certain kind of girl."

"And that's what I'm doing. You're not like most girls. You're a girl with substance. A girl who is smart, driven and what else was it you said? Has ambition?"

"Tristan!" When she said that to him earlier, she hadn't meant herself. "I didn't mean me!"

"Why not?" he asked.

"Because…"

"Well, you're not with Dean, right?"

"No," she agreed, although it still felt weird to her. "But I can't date you."

"Again, why not?"

He wasn't sure if he was asking seriously, or still teasing, but he wanted to see how far she would let this conversation go until she shut him down. He really wanted to know what was so wrong with the idea of the two of them together.

"You're the one who told me find a girl who's smart, driven and ambitious, and when I do, you shoot me down? How will my poor heart handle it?" he added, returning to his usual tone of voice.

She rolled her eyes. Why was Tristan never serious?

"You'll survive. And I meant Paris," she told him, and then remembered his reason for not dating Paris. "Anyway what about the other girl you like?"

Damn. Tristan forgot about that. "Yeah, you're right. I guess I can't date you either. But we can still hang out, right?"

"Sure," she answered offhandedly.

"Good. I'm coming over now."

"What Tristan…" she started to protest, but he had already hung up.

Rory stared at the phone for a minute, wondering if she had even heard right. She wanted to call him back and make sure he definitely was not coming over, but she didn't know his number and she would not look it up.

She was sure he was only kidding anyway. At least she hoped he was.

******

He wasn't kidding.

After waiting over forty minutes for him to show up, and wondering if she even wanted him to, Rory convinced herself that she was being stupid to expect him, and had changed into her pajamas to make a point about really believing he wasn't coming. And just as she finished changing the doorbell rang.

"Don't get that!" Rory said, running out of her room just as Lorelai reached the door.

Lorelai looked at her daughter, confused. "Why not? One tends to answer the door when someone knocks, honey. It's the law of the universe."

"Not when Tristan is on the other side of the door!" she hissed.

"Tristan? Bible boy? The Evil One?"

"Yes, yes and yes."

"What's he doing here?" Lorelai asked, somewhat amused. "At ten thirty at night?"

"I don't know."

Lorelai started to answer the door again, but Rory wouldn't let her. "What part of don't get that, didn't you understand?"

"You can't just leave him outside, Rory. Even if he is evil. And if he is so evil, why is he here?"

"Because he's stupid. I definitely did not tell him he could hang out with me tonight."

Lorelai raised her eyebrows at her very irrational daughter, who just glared at her. "Fine. I'll just go upstairs and leave you to deal with the boy on our doorstep. It's not on my conscious if he gets pneumonia and needs to be taken to the hospital and dies calling your name."

Rory just rolled her eyes at her mother as she went upstairs.

Tristan knocked again and Rory sighed. Stupid Tristan, being all impulsive and just coming over like this. It was so like him to not appreciate boundaries.

She opened the door finally; knowing she couldn't really do anything about him now.

"Nice PJs," was Tristan's first comment as he looked her up and down.

Rory had almost forgotten that she had changed just before he arrived. Her hands quickly crossed over her chest, as if shielding herself from his view. But it only made him smirk. She was wearing a small tank top with her pajama bottoms and suddenly felt very exposed under his watchful eye.

"What are you doing here?"

"You invited me over? And it's not very nice to leave your guest standing on the doorstep for ten minutes while you fight with your mother about how evil I am."

"One, I did not invite you, you invited yourself. Two, you are not a guest in this house, because you are not coming into this house. And three, how the hell did you hear me?"

Tristan just laughed. "The walls are very thin. Now are you letting me in, or what?"

"No!"

"Rory…" he started to complain.

"Tristan, go home. It's late," she said, trying to stand her ground.

If she let Tristan into her house, he'd stay. And then they would spend more time together. And then she'd start liking things about him that used to bug her and that just wasn't right.

"But I'm bored."

"So, go bug someone else."

"No one gets flustered around me like you do."

"I am not flustered!" Why did he always know what was going on in her mind? It was starting to bug her.

"So why do you still have your arms crossed?"

Rory instantly dropped her arms. "You are so infuriating."

"But that's why you like me."

"Now where would you get an idea like that?" she asked.

"As much as I love this playful banter we have going here, I'm kind of freezing and would much prefer to continue inside."

"It isn't playful," Rory told him, but relented and finally let him in. "You can't stay long."

Tristan walked inside and looked around, noting how different this house was to his own. In his house everything was perfect and untouched. The only things that let you know it was his house were the few large portraits of the family up in the main room. In Rory's house there were pictures everywhere, books lying around, and old magazines scattered on the table.

"Does it pass inspection?" Rory teased, noticing Tristan look.

"Nice," he said offhandedly.

He smiled as Rory glared at him. She was so cute when she got flustered around him. He thought he had stopped affecting her a long time ago. But in the last few days he'd noticed she was off in her own mind lately, and wasn't as quick with her retorts. Almost as if he didn't annoy her anymore.

He turned and headed back for the door. "Okay, well I'll see you on Monday."

"What? You're just going to leave?" Rory asked, confused.

"Well, yeah. It is pretty late," he said, as if it should have been obvious to Rory that he would just come over for five minutes.

"But…"

"See I knew you wanted me to come over," he teased. "I, however, just wanted to see if you'd let me into your house."

Rory didn't know how to react to that. "You just drove half an hour to see whether I would let you in?" she asked incredulously.

"Yeah," he answered simply.

"You're crazy, you know that right?" she said, smiling now.

"Yeah."

And then, without warning, he leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. His lips lingered for a few seconds before he pulled away and left without another word.

Rory just stood there in a daze, wondering what the hell had happened to her to make her whole world seem weird. Dean had broken up with her. And now Tristan was being unnaturally nice. And she could have sworn she felt something when he kissed her. His lips were so soft and suddenly she remembered the first time they had kissed. Properly.

Why had she pulled away again?

Okay thinking about Tristan like this definitely felt wrong and she was not going to allow it. So she turned around and headed straight to bed. But Tristan, being as annoying as he was, wouldn't even stay out of her dreams.

******

Monday morning came too quickly and Rory was still very worried about all her sudden impure thoughts about Tristan DuGrey of all people. The fact that he was actually being nice to her (he had asked her about her weekend, and didn't call her Mary even once) and was trying to be her friend was even more unnerving. She had gotten used to having no friends at Chilton. It was fine with her.

The only person she had even started to be friends with was Paris, and she was still not talking to her. A fact that was actually Tristan's fault, but now that he was being semi-decent she couldn't even blame him too much.

"Mary, were you daydreaming about me again? I swear that's the third time today," Tristan teased as they both left their third period English class.

Rory chose to ignore him, because unlike before, she had no defense, she had actually been daydreaming about him a little. Only a very little of course. "Tristan, we've had many discussions about that name."

"Sorry, Ror. It slipped," he apologized, but the grin on his face led Rory to believe he wasn't all that sorry. "Although if you let me, I could assist you in getting rid of that name once and for all."

He looked her up and down suggestively and Rory wanted to be disgusted. She really did. But his eyes were just so captivating that she couldn't quite find what he said all that horrible. Embarrassing? Yes. Disgusting? Not so much.

"Are you thinking about it?" Tristan teased.

"The day I think about you like that is the day I give up my dream of Harvard to work at MacDonald's," she said back. Then she wondered if MacDonald's would be willing to hire her, since she'd already thought about him like that more then once.

"Ouch. You wound me. And I didn't think Stars Hollow had a MacDonald's."

"It doesn't. We have Luke's."

"What's Luke's?" Tristan asked as they started walking together.

"It's the local Diner. We eat pretty much all our meals there as well as get endless supplies of coffee, that Luke hates giving us, but feels he has to otherwise my mother will just talk his ear off."

"Yeah, the coffee thing, you get from your mother?"

"Yep."

"She sounds very…unique."

"Yeah, she is."

"So anyway, we have to work on this King and Queen thing sometime soon, right? Or Paris will kill us, and I don't think she's too happy with either of us as it is."

"Whose fault is that," Rory said, glaring at him.

"Yours," Tristan said instantly and she just hit him. "Hey! Aren't Queens supposed to love their husbands?"

"Not when their husband is you. You're very unlovable."

"There you go again with the insults. What is it with you?"

"Hmm. Maybe the fact that you made the first three months of my life here hell," she joked.

"It couldn't have been that bad," Tristan argued, although he was feeling a little bad.

Realizing the look on his face Rory relented. "No, it wasn't that bad. You're surprisingly easy to ignore."

Tristan just rolled him eyes as the warning bell for the next class, one they didn't have together, rang. "I'll see you at lunch," he told her.

"If you must," Rory said as she headed to class.

Tristan watched her go, and then wondered exactly what he was doing. He didn't want to be just Rory's friend and he knew it. But he couldn't help thinking that maybe she was starting to feel something for him too. And he was going to make her realize it, if it was the last thing he did.

******

"Who was the insanely cute guy?" Lane demanded the second Tristan's car pulled away from Rory's house.

"Hi Rory, how you doing? How was school?" Rory said sarcastically.

"Who cares about school? Who's the boy?" Lane asked.

"Just Tristan."

"Just Tristan?" Lane repeated. "Tristan, Evil One, Tristan?" Rory nodded. "Why didn't you tell me that Satan's Spawn was that Hot? He's like majorly cute, Rory."

"It wasn't important. He was annoying."

"Was?"

"Not so much anymore," Rory said offhandedly, as if it didn't really matter.

She walked into her house, and Lane followed not done with her questioning.

"Really?" Lane asked. "Since when?"

Rory was about to say "since he kissed me at Madeline's party" but then realized she had yet to tell her best friend about this. Now she wondered if bringing it up was such a good idea. Lane was sure to blow the whole thing out of proportion, especially since she thought Tristan was 'hot'. Come on, sure he was good looking, but he wasn't that hot. Right?

"What?" Lane interrupted her thoughts. "What are you hiding from me?"

"Nothing!" Rory protested, but she couldn't help blushing. Since when did she blush?

"You're totally hiding something from me. Me, your best friend!"

"I'm not. Really. Tristan's just become a bit more bearable lately."

"Yeah, but something must have happened to make him change."

"Fine. We kind of, sort of, mighthavekissedonce," Rory said so fast Lane was sure she misheard.

"WHAT!" she practically shouted.

Rory really wished she hadn't opened her big mouth. But Lane would have made her spill eventually. What she should have done, was tell Lane as soon as it happened, when it really meant nothing. Not that it meant something now of course, she had to remind herself, but it maybe meant more now than it did then. God, her thoughts were giving her a headache.

"It was nothing," Rory added quickly. "I was upset over Dean. He was upset over some girl. It was an accident that ended in me running crying."

"Wow. Was it that bad?" Lane asked and Rory wanted to laugh.

"No. It was good. But it's what triggered my crying over Dean."

"Oh," Lane nodded in understanding. "How are you with that whole thing?" she asked, as if just remembering that it had only been a couple of weeks since their break up.

"Surprisingly okay this week," Rory answered honestly. She didn't want to admit it, but all her thinking about Tristan had kept her mind off Dean most of the time. "I still miss him though. I just wish it didn't have to be like this. I can't say I love him, Lane. And that's all he wants to hear."

"Boys are stupid that way."

"Yeah, well I wish he wasn't."

"You really don't love him then?" Lane asked. "You're not just scared about saying it."

"I'm not scared. I like him. And it hurts that he's not around. But love? That's just so huge. And I don't think I'm there yet. Maybe I could be, if I had more time with him. But he's not giving me that chance. I guess I just have to learn to live with that."

"And you're okay?"

"Yeah. It still sucks, but I have to move on sometime, right?"

"Yeah. And it doesn't hurt that you have Tristan around to help you forget about Dean," Lane teased, trying to lighten the mood.

"Lane!"

"What? You said it was a good kiss." Rory rolled her eyes, wondering why she even bothered. "How good?"

"I don't know. Normal. I don't have a lot of experience in that area, do I?"

"Well was it like Dean's kisses? Or better?"

"I don't know, Lane," Rory said, starting to feel uncomfortable. "It was different to Dean. More passion." She saw Lane's eyes widen and then quickly added, "Not that it was very long, and I didn't really feel anything at all."

"How could you not feel anything with someone that hot?"

"I had only just broken up with Dean," Rory reminded.

"So what about now? It was awfully nice of Tristan to drive you all the way home," she said, trying to get Rory to admit she felt something for Tristan. Lane was Rory's best friend for a reason. She could tell something was going on between Rory and Tristan even if Rory didn't want to admit it yet.

"He offered. There's nothing more too it."

"Hmm. It seems like someone's protesting a little too much."

"I am not."

"But…"

"Lane?"

"Yeah?"

"Go home!"

******

Tristan drove back from Stars Hollow with a smile on his face. He didn't know what it was about Rory that made him actually care about her so much, but whatever it was he liked it. If he had just figured out at the start of the year that Rory would notice him more if he actually had a civil conversation with her, he might have done this a long time ago.

But something held him back. Probably because he had become so used to seeing girls as trophies that it was weird that Rory didn't even care that he was paying her attention. At first it had been a little disconcerting, and he'd wanted to prove that he could get her to notice him. But that changed lately.

Maybe it was that kiss, or maybe even before the kiss when she told him that Dean broke up with her. It gave him hope that maybe she could notice him; now that bag boy was out of the picture.

Either way, he wasn't complaining. Especially when she called him up that night.

"Rory, what a pleasant surprise," he said.

"Yeah, I'm sure you're just as surprised as I was to find your number written all over my math notes. Didn't I tell you to return them in the same condition?"

"Yeah, so I made minor additions. You can still read the work. I'm sure my number won't cause any disruptions in your plan for world domination," Tristan teased.

"I still wasn't impressed," Rory told him.

Although she knew it was a lie. When she found his number on her work, she had smiled, because it was so typical of him to do something like that. She knew he expected her to call him, but she didn't want to give in to him. Plus, she didn't know exactly what to say. But then the urge to hear his voice had won out. It was weird talking to Tristan when she was in her pajamas in her bed, about to go to sleep.

"So, what are you up to?" he asked ignoring her complaints.

"Sleeping."

Tristan laughed. "Most people don't do that while on the phone."

She rolled her eyes. "About to sleep."

"And you wanted my voice to be the last you heard? How sweet," he teased.

"No, you're just the last chore before bed."

"Whatever you want to believe," he said.

Rory wondered why every little thing was a joke, or a way to tease her with him. Sure, he was being nice, and not calling her Mary. But he was still annoying, still able to banter with her back and forth, still appearing cocky, without it being so obnoxious this time.

"So, what are you wearing?"

And then he really was obnoxious. But it only made him more entertaining somehow.

"Goodnight Tristan."

"No really, I'm curious."

"Yeah, just curious. I'm sure."

"Why do you always find something sinister in my actions? Maybe it's just your mind that's polluted. I think this whole Rory Gilmore, Miss Innocent, is all an act."

"Yep. You got me. I'm really a bad bad girl."

"Ooh I love it when you talk dirty."

"Tristan!" He had to laugh at her mortified reaction. If anyone was least likely to talk dirty, it would be Rory.

"Kidding. Jeez. You're way too serious."

"Good night, Tristan."

He smiled. "Night Ror. Sweet dreams."

And then she hung up, wondering what that feeling in the pit of her stomach was, and why the hell Tristan DuGrey had to be the one to put it there.

******