"HELP!"

"Ouch," on the other side of the phone line, Lane held the phone further from her ear as she gingerly rubbed it back so that she could hear again.

"I'm sorry," Rory said, "It's just that...I don't know what to do!" she wailed.

"Well...why don't you start from the beginning?"

"Err...Dean, Tristan, Jess...mystery guy...?" Rory said, almost as confused as her best friend.

"What?!"

"Well....today at school, I received a bouquet of flowers and - "

Rory was interrupted by a shriek of envy at the other end of the line, "What?! Flowers?! That's soooo romantic! Who! Who was it from? Tell me tell me! Spill!"

"Actually...I was going to, until you interrupted me...so I guess since you're so interested in talking....I just won't say a thing," Rory risked a smile on the other line, knowing it'd show through in her voice.

"Aw, come on, you can't be serious?! You know me! If I even so much as catch whiff of a secret or something...I'll have to know it before I explode!"

"Alright, alright, alright," Rory relented, smiling again. She knew that a phone call to Lane would cheer her up immediately, "Well, the thing is...those flowers were from a secret admirer...."

"What?!!! REALLY?!" Now it was Rory's turn to hold the receiver far away from her face, "Yes, really..."

The hours gradually passed and the Gilmore household was shrouded in darkness by the time Rory gabbed every single detail of the past two weeks, and all her feelings had been analyzed therapist-style by Lane, and she put down the receiver with a contented sigh. She felt so much better now.

However, that still left the question on how to deal with this new mysterious admirer, not to mention Tristan and his unexpected turn for the better - or rather, sweeter. She smiled as she remembered the kiss he gave her, and against her own will tried to imagine what it would be like to plant a kiss square on his lips.

She rapidly blinked her eyes, "No! No! Think unsexy thoughts! Think unsexy thoughts!" But the image of Tristan smiling at her was too much to bear, "Fine!" she screeched, annoyed at herself, tugging at her hair as she lay on the bed, "At LEAST think about your BOYFRIEND!"

So she did. She thought of Jess. Of how beneath his bad-boy attitude, he had such charming qualities. Like the fact he could be a total gentleman, and how he was just so darn nice and caring...she sighed. She really didn't deserve Jess. Or Dean for that matter. Not even Tristan or Mystery Boy would rank on her list of 'Who-I-Deserve'. How could she?! She'd broken up with Dean because she'd two-timed with Jess, only to two-time Jess in turn with Tristan.

Okay, so maybe she wasn't actually two-timing him. But she had a feeling that the sentence should be rephrased to she wasn't two-timing Jess YET. If there was anything she'd learnt in the past two weeks it was that she definitely was a fickle person, and couldn't choose from one person to the other. What she didn't realise though was that Rory herself took things too seriously...and so she cried herself to sleep, beating herself up inside, wondering if it was right to break up with Jess after they'd only been together for a few days....