Disclaimer: Amy and Daniel Palladino, along with the rest of the WB, own Gilmore Girls. I'm just borrowing the characters.

Jess- Your wish is my command.

four51- Ok, I feel the need to explain to you: it sucked. I realized this. But, I needed it. Why? It was a filler. I couldn't have this chapter with the last chapter. I feel I should have some witty quote to go with my explanation, but I don't.

Ms. Vaughn- Asshat is an awesome word. The use it on the TWoP boards to describe Digger... LoL! Parental Units are stupid. I was thinking about my advice to you about mindfuck, and I realized, hmm... maybe I should've said not to use it around parents. But as long as you didn't get into too much trouble, that's all that matters. Oh, god, the cookie thing. I have no idea what it was, but it wasn't letting me log into things on my computer. It was probably just my fucked up computer, but I digress. Dean! I love Dean! I'm making 'Free Dean!' shirts! OK, but, seriously, I really didn't like Lindsay. She was pretty and all, but her eyes freaked me out. I can just imagine Dean at night laying in bed(shirtless, of course), and looking over at his wife in the middle of the night, and seeing her eyes glow. Seeing as I know you watch Alias, Lindsay is Lauren- evil with a confusing accent. And too much eye make up. Ok, I don't really know about the eye make up thing. Also, don't worry about the luring me away from school thing- I procrastinate enough so that any encouragement to do so is just redundant. So, really, it's not your fault. I'm also gonna guess that you live on the east coast or something because(don't kill me), my school doesn't start until September. Then again, you get out in May, so I have to be jealous. This is long.

More thank you's to smile1, PomegranateQueen (I love your name!), and Sarah. You really made it all worth it!Thank you all so much. I loved your reviews!

A/N: This chapter is coming a lot sooner than I expected and is longer than any of my other chapters. The idea for this chapter has been rolling around in my head since I started the story, so I hope it's good. It's probably also the reason the last chapter was such shit. One word: filler.

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As the knocking became more persistent, Rory realized that she could not get rid of the person on the other side of the door just by rolling over and putting a pillow over her ears. Sighing, she put one leg out from under her comforter and felt around for her slippers. The knocking continued.

"Hold on!" she yelled. Rory lifted her head up to look at the clock and promptly put it back down again. With a sigh, she propelled herself up and out of her bed. Just a few seconds later, she flung the door open and looked at the person of whom she was personally going to kill for waking her up this early.

"I hate you," was the simple greeting she gave said person, and tried to slam the door. Unfortunately, this person was not willing to give up so easily and held a hand out to stop the door.

"Now, Mary, we both know you don't mean that," Tristan said, laying on the charm thickly. It was for show, really. He knew that the only person that didn't respond to his charm was Rory.

"What are you doing here? At this time?" Rory asked, yawning widely.

"I need reasons to see you now? Well, if you insist, I just came to apologize. But seeing as you don't want me here, I'll just take my coffee and leave." He turned dramatically and put a leg up as if to leave.

Rory thought about this a moment, then opened the door a bit wider. "You have five minutes."

Tristan smirked and bent down to get the coffee. Rory walked over to the couch and took both cups of coffee he offered her. "Why aren't you getting ready for class on this lovely Friday morning?" Tristan asked.

"Because I, unlike my other unfortunate suite mates, do not have a class until nine. Why are you up? It's 6:30 in the morning," Rory whined. "You should be sleeping, like the normal people do."

"Au contraire, military time has been instilled into my mind, and I naturally wake up at 5:30 every morning," Tristan countered. "Now, I've come here to apologize for acting like an asshole yesterday, and no apology to a Gilmore girl is complete without breakfast. So get dressed."

"You can't order me around." Rory yawned again.

Tristan just looked amused. "And what were you planning on doing for breakfast? Going down the cafeteria? Tsk, tsk, I have never seen you turn down free food. Ever."

Rory raised an eyebrow in response. "You've never seen anyone offer me free food."

Tristan sighed, annoyed. "Do you want to go out to breakfast or not?"

Rory thoughtfully pondered this, well aware that Tristan was becoming more and more annoyed with every second she didn't answer. She knew the answer she was going to give him; however, she just liked keeping him in suspense. It was when she was almost half down with her second cup of coffee that she answered. "Sure. I'll be ready in half an hour. Wait here."

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"You have a Ferrari." It was more of a statement than a question.

"Yeah. Present from my father for graduating from military school without any more embarrassing stunts," Tristan replied, opening up her door.

"He sounds like a regular Mr. Rodgers," Rory commented.

"That's my father, your friendly cardigan-wearing friend," Tristan sarcastically said, turning on the car and blasting the heater.

"You have seat warmers!" Rory squealed, playing with the temperature gage on the side.

Tristan glanced at her from out of the corner of her eye. She looked so happy, just playing with seat warmers. He liked seeing her smile. "If I had known you were so easy to please I would've taken you out to eat sooner."

"And that wasn't filled with any kind of sexual innuendo," Rory said dryly.

Tristan laughed and turned on the music. "Hope you like the Foo Fighters."

"Are you kidding? I love the Foo Fighters!" Rory gushed. "Lane and I always dreamed of becoming guitarists for them!"

Tristan paused a moment. "Didn't Lorelai say that Lane played the drums?"

Rory just waved her hand in his direction. "We don't let silly technicalities like that get in our way."

Tristan chuckled to himself. "Is that right?"

Rory mock glared at him. "You're patronizing me!"

"I am not!" he protested.

"You are," she replied stubbornly. "Turn here."

Tristan obeyed and turned into the IHOP parking lot. "Are you sure this is where you want to eat?"

"I'm pretty positive, otherwise I wouldn't have told you to turn in," Rory replied dryly, already out of the car. She tightened the scarf around her neck.

Tristan ran a hand through his hair and got out of the car. Rory was halfway across the parking lot and had her hands on her hips. She was just standing there, waiting for him, looking cute with her blue striped scarf.

"Why here?" he asked when he caught up to her.

She looked at him as if she couldn't believe he even had to ask. "Chocolate chip pancakes."

"Of course, how could I be so stupid?" he said sarcastically, stepping in front of her to hold the door open.

"Such a gentleman," marveled Rory.

"Now who's being patronizing?" Tristan teased.

"Still you," she quipped.

"Two?" the hostess asked. Tristan nodded in response. "Right this way."

They sat in silence for a few minutes after being seated until Tristan asked, "What class do you have at nine?"

"American Literature," came the reply.

"Journalism major?" he guessed.

"You're very intuitive," Rory said sardonically.

Tristan smirked. "It's a gift."

After her third cup of coffee of the day, Rory asked, "What about you? What college do you go to?"

Smirking again, Tristan laced his fingers together and leaned back against his seat. "Guess."

Rory pouted. "You suck."

"I also bite and lick, but why talk about it when I could give you a demonstration?" he asked with a leer.

Rory rolled her eyes. "You're gross."

"Yet you love me. Now guess."

"Fine. Harvard?" She was starting with the obvious, seeing as he did say he was here for the game tomorrow.

"Nope."

"Princeton?"

"No."

"Stanford?"

"Nope."

Rory was becoming frustrated. "NYU? Berkley? University of Connecticut?"

"No, no, and yeah right."

She threw her hands up in the air. "I give up!"

Tristan laughed. "I'm taking the year off."

"You jerk!" she cried. "I never would've guessed that! And you know that!"

He just laughed and laughed.

"Are you done?" she asked drolly, taking a sip of coffee.

Tristan composed himself, but had to bite back a grin when he saw the look on her face. It was cute; a mixture of annoyance and fatigue. On anyone else, it would be not one you'd want to see, but Rory made every facial gesture look beautiful. "Yes."

"Good, because the waiter's here."

The waiter quickly took their order, than left the two alone again.

"I heard about your grandparent's divorce," Tristan said, breaking the silence that was threatening to become uncomfortable.

Rory froze and slowly lifted her head up to give him a perfect impression of a deer-in-the-headlights. Her grandparent's divorce was a high-profile one, somewhat akin to the Gellar's divorce back when they went to Chilton.

Tristan meanwhile was inwardly kicking himself for bringing up such a subject. Who wants to talk about divorce, anyway? "I'm sorry, I-"

Rory cut him off. "It's ok. We just don't talk about it at my house, is all. It's a taboo subject, such as the Liza/David wedding or anything involving Michael Jackson."

Tristan nodded, knowing what it was like not to talk about certain subjects in the presence of others.

Rory, feeling it was her turn to try small talk-and being naturally curious- inquired, "Why aren't you in school?"

Tristan laughed hollowly. "I have the rest of my life to go to business school so I can work for my father. And besides, he just hired someone new, so he can focus all his attention on him, giving me a free card for at least the rest of the year. Something Stiles. My grandfather does business with his father."

"Jason," Rory absentmindedly supplied for him.

"You know him?" Tristan looked at her, surprised.

Rory glanced down, her cheeks quickly turning pink. "My mom's ex-boyfriend," she said with a tone that suggested 'drop it.'

The food was served by two bored-looking waiters who couldn't be happier to get off their shift. Tristan was almost done with his food when a thought came to him.

"Still with the stock boy, huh?"

"Yes and no." Though she smiled when he brought him up, Tristan noticed. Damn.

"Meaning?" he prompted.

She stalled. "It's complicated."

"Try me."

Rory sighed. "We broke up, he got married, we stayed friends, they didn't work out, I won't officially date him until the divorce is final." She conveniently left our the parts where they slept together and her mom not particularly trusting Dean.

"I'm not that girl," she added on afterthought, though she sounded more like she was trying to convince herself instead of Tristan.

"What girl?" Tristan asked.

"The home wrecker," Rory replied simply.

Tristan knew there was something she wasn't telling him, but didn't call her on it. Instead, he just cursed the stupid bagboy for yet again getting the girl, despite getting fucking married. It wouldn't matter if he became Lorelai's poster boy, he could never have the one thing he cared about.

Shit.