Lasts

She would never forget the last time she saw him. He looked so—broken—walking down that hall toward his uncaring father and out of her life. He had been so different in those last few moments, like the man she had thought he was after Madeline's party. When he said "I would kiss you-but your boyfriend's watching" she—just for an instant—wished he would, wished Dean was in Stars Hollow, in Boston, in Hell, anywhere where he wouldn't be watching them. But he wasn't, and he was, and the moment passed and Tristan turned away. And he walked out of her life for the last time.

Since the (she had to admit) inevitable dissolution of her relationship with Logan, she had been thinking about Tristan a lot. She wasn't even sure why, except perhaps that they were similar in so many ways: handsome, charming, blonde, rich, entitled. The past few years had shown her both the seduction and the danger of the world they had grown up in, and despite everything, she was beginning to think that Tristan had dealt with it better than Logan. He at least had struggled against expectations, had tried to be his own person. He might not have chosen the right way to do that, but he had been young and foolish, and he had suffered for it. Logan, on the other hand, had done what was expected of him- he had rebelled enough to be seen as 'strong willed', but not enough to be punished. He didn't mind the future that had been planned for him or the person it required him to be, he minded the schedule it was on. Their relationship had been doomed, even without the yacht incident and her breakdown—the man he was becoming was very different from the man she had first met, and not in a good way. She had changed too, and as she became stronger she began to realize that he was using her as his last link to the person he had been, without actually resisting the change.

People changed so rapidly and so dramatically—just think of the shift from Tristan the charmer to Tristan the rebel. She knew it was probably conceited of her, but she couldn't help wondering if what she had said when Dean came to Chilton had had any influence on that change. She hadn't ever hated him, probably wasn't even able to hate anyone. But she had needed something to tell Dean, and that had come out. She wished it hadn't, especially if it had hurt him in any way. She couldn't help wondering what he was doing now. She thought Paris had probably stayed in touch with him, but she had never asked where he was or what he was doing. She hadn't really thought about him much until recently. But now she kept wondering who he had become. Had military school forced him into the mold his parents planned for him? Had he become like Logan, a puppet for his parents? Had he forgotten her entirely? Why was she thinking so much about Tristan Dugrey? His name had even come up in her weekly therapy session, and the shrink wanted to revisit him next time.

But there was little point in worrying about it now, she would probably never see him again. And now she had to worry about her next class. Coming back in mid-year and registering late had left her with few choices of what to take, so she was fulfilling her general education requirements with some unusual choices: in addition to the three journalism and poly-sci classes she had been able to get into, she was taking beginning Arabic. She hadn't taken a language course in years, and was a little nervous about starting with Arabic, but it had fit into her schedule and would fulfill her language requirement. She had enjoyed the main class, going over simple words and sentences, but now, heading towards the section, she was a little nervous about having to speak. If she could only find it! Just in time, she saw the door and dashed through it, not even looking at the front of the class while she quickly found a seat, dropped her bag, and pulled out a notebook. When she did look up, all she could see was the back of the TA's head as he wrote on the board. None of the TAs, advanced students in Arabic, had been in class, so she was really hoping that this section would turn out to have the good one she had heard about. Last semester had been his first TA gig, and everyone who had him had raved about his skills, his accent, and (incidentally to Rory) his looks.

As he wrote the course info on the board, Rory began to copy it into her notebook, rapidly writing the time, location, office hours, and then she trailed off as she read the name of the TA—Tristan Dugrey.