A/N: I'm not very happy with how this turned out, but I've decided to post it anyway. Maybe one day I'll revise it…

Disclaimer: If I owned it, this season would be going a lot differently.

Rory threw her purse on the floor and collapsed back onto her bed, trying hard not to think of things that might have happened on this bed before she moved in, with Paris and Doyle or with any previous residents.

She was trying not to think of a lot of things, but wasn't being very successful. Her appointments with the shrink hadn't been going very well. After her emotional outburst at the first session, he'd just been asking far too many questions about things she didn't even want him to know about.

Like Dean. Why had she brought him up? She had been trying to forget about him for so long now. It wasn't as easy as she thought it would be.

When Rory first fell for Dean, she thought of him only as her first boyfriend. Sure, she loved him, but nobody grows up and stays with their first love, right? She also had had nothing to compare him to. How was she supposed to know if what they had was really that great? Maybe it was nothing compared to what she could have with others.

But when she was with others, she always found herself comparing them to him instead of him to them. And they always fell short. How could they not?

He was perfect for her. He was her soul mate. She realized that now.

When Rory first met Dean, her mother had accused him of being like Christopher. Under the circumstances of Rory wanting to leave Chilton for him, that was understandable. But that was really her fault, not Dean's. She didn't think that they could date with her at Chilton, but she was wrong. Dean probably wouldn't have let her miss out on something so important anyway. He cared too much for her. He certainly wouldn't have let her drop out of Yale, at any rate.

But if she had been with him, she wouldn't have wanted to anyway. She wouldn't steal a boat with him. That's why Logan was so wrong for her—he made her into someone she didn't like, someone she couldn't respect.

But Dean wasn't like Logan.

And he wasn't like Christopher.

Jess was more like Christopher. He was the one who would waltz in and out of her life, saying he loved her and asking her to be with him, but always leaving her with tears in her eyes and a broken heart.

If Dean was to be compared with any of Lorelai's boyfriends, he was really more like Luke. He helped with things around the house, he would always do anything she wanted, even if he really didn't want to, and he truly loved her.

All of Rory's other guys had loved her too, or so they said. They loved her in spite of her crazy coffee addition and terrible eating habits. They loved her in spite of all the time she dedicated to her work. They loved her in spite of her occasional mood swings. Dean, however, recognized that all of these things, helped shape who she was, and for that reason he loved her not in spite of these things, but because of them.

What had she been thinking, letting him get away? Why had she been so sure that he wasn't the love of her life? How had she convinced herself that he wasn't the one, just because he had been her first boyfriend?

She had broken the rules of nature with her relationship with her mother… why not with her boyfriend too?

Quickly, before she could change her mind, she rolled out of bed, threw on a more flattering shirt, grabbed her purse and headed out the door. She got into her car and pulled out, careful to avoid eye contact with the group of shady-looking guys across the street. She pulled out of the parking lot and headed in the direction of Stars Hollow.

She had a soul mate to find.

A/N2: This is intended to be a one shot, but maybe if enough people ask I could give it a second chapter to wrap things up with a happy ending.