CHAPTER 6 - Missed Calls and Mixed Messages

MILITARY SCHOOL - TRISTAN

All through dinner Tristan was jumpy. His knee was bouncing a mile a minute under the table and he couldn't focus on a single subject for more than two seconds. He wanted to call Rory, tonight. He knew if he didn't call her right after dinner then he would lose his nerve and never do it. "But what should I say?" Tristan decided that he would just stick to the basics tonight, "how have you beens? and what've you been up to's," would work just fine. He didn't want to go scaring her off by confessing his love for her the first night they talked.

"Dude, I'm gonna head to the library, I've got some work to finish before I leave this Saturday." Dave told Tristan before he left after dinner. Dave knew Tristan was going to call her tonight. He could see it in his eyes. "Well it's about time." Dave said to himself as he left the room.

GILMORE HOUSE

"Mom, I'm gonna go get Luke's. I'll be back in ten minutes!" Rory yelled through the house.

"Ok hun! Come home fast, I'm HUNGRY!"

Three minutes after Rory left the house, the phone rang. Lorelai ran through the house trying to find the phone. On the third ring she picked up.

"Hello?" she said, out of breath.

"umm...hi...is Rory there?"

"Nah, she went to get food, who's this?"

Tristan clenched his hands, how would she react when he said his name?

"Tristan, miss." he said slowly.

"Whoa, whoa, wait! Tristan as in Bible Boy? as in Tristan DuGREY?"

"Yes, miss."

"Well I never thought I would be home on a Saturday night, talking to Tristan DuGrey, after never having even met him."

"It's..umm.. Wednesday, miss." he said slowly, not wanting to sound like a smartass.

"Oh...I guess it is, and stop calling me miss. Call me Lorelai." she said with a laugh, "it's just Saturday sounded better..like people are usually out on Saturdays and..."

Tristan sighed, he couldn't believe he had missed Rory.

"Okay, well I can tell I'm losing you in this story, so I'll make this short. You should call back in exactly 20 minutes. No more, no less. Rory will want to talk to you. I'm not gonna tell her you called, cause then she'll get all antsy and "Oh my gosh! What did he say?" and I really can't deal with that right now. Alright? And plus if you catch her offguard she will be happier, and she'll probably even call it romantic. So, 20 minutes...okay?"

Tristan was trying to make sense of what Rory's mother just said. Did this mean Rory liked him too? "Yeah, alright." He said, snapping back to reality.

"And Lorelai?" he said, just as she was about to hang up.

"Yeah kid?"

"Thanks." he said sincerely.

"You're welcome, just don't screw this up." and Lorelai hung up, knowing she left him with his stomach in knots.

MILITARY SCHOOL - TRISTAN

Tristan didn't know what to do for 20 minutes. He walked around his room and looked at the clock every two minutes. He had no idea of what he was going to say, he had forgotten everything he planned.

As he walked over to sit on his bed, Tristan thought about every word Lorelai said. "Don't screw up." Now if he was just a nobody calling out of the blue, she wouldn't have said that...or even told him to call back. Rory must've said something about me, at one time or another.

GILMORE HOUSE

Lorelai eyed the clock nervously at 7:19. He had called at 7 and she was hoping he would have enough sense to call back. She knew he was scared, he sounded it on the phone. But she hoped with her heart of hearts that he would call back. Rory liked this boy, she could tell. Now Lorelai wasn't one to push a relationship on someone, but for some reason she was just waiting for them to get together. It was like watching a movie that has the two best friends destined for each other since the minute it started, and you have to wait for the very last second for the fairy tale ending kiss. Lorelai really didn't know why she wanted this to work out. She didn't even know why she took a liking to Tristan. She usually hated the whole Chilton, debutante balls and painted portrait scene, but for some reason she thought Tristan would be good for Rory. Now she had never really met him, but from the stories Rory told, she could tell that he felt the same for Rory.

She glanced at the clock again at 7:21. Lorelai let out a big breath. But just as she was about to start bashing Tristan, the phone rang.

bbbrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrriinnnnggggggggg

Lorelai let it ring twice, just to make his skin curl.

"Hello?"

"Hi, is Rory there?"

Rory wasn't in the room, so Lorelai knew she could play.

"You're late."

"I know I'm sorry. I had to work up the nerve to call again. It's not that easy." he said slowly.

"I'm giving you one more chance Tristan." Lorelai said, "now if you are gonna break her heart, I'm telling you, you better hang up now. I want this to work just as much as the next guy, but if you think you can just call her up out of the blue, work your magic, and then leave her hanging, you're sadly mistaken. So what's it gonna be? Last shot: take it or leave it."

"Take it." he said confidently.

"Alright." she answered as she walked towards Rory's room.

"Hey Ror, phone." she said, handing her the phone.

"Hello?"

"Hi Rory."

"Who is this?" she said with a smile on her face. She thought it was her dad, joking around with her.

"It's- it's, " this was it, either she would slam the phone down, or give him a chance. Tristan could feel his heart beating out of his chest, "Tristan."

Rory almost choked on her pop tart. "DuGrey?" she said, a bit louder than she meant to.

"Yeah."

Rory smiled from the inside out. "How are you?"

"I'm good. Same old, same old. How you doin' Mare?" he smiled, remembering the old nickname.

"Mare? Are we back to that Tristan? I've talked to you for all of a minute, and you've started in on the Mary thing." she exclaimed, encouraging some playful banter.

"Alright, I'm sorry," he said jokingly.

"I forgive you Bible Boy."

"Hey now! I apologize and there you go making fun of me. You're just as bad as me Rory." he said, half laughing.

Rory smiled. The way he said her name gave her goose bumps.

"Alright, I'm sorry."

"It's okay," Tristan said, "so how are you doing?"

"I'm good. Excited for summer...oh and prom too!"

Tristan's face fell, "Did you say prom?" he asked, trying to sound just as excited as he was a minutes ago.

"Yeah, it's gonna be so much fun. Grace is making me go, but now that I got a date, I think I'll have more fun.

She has a date? What was I thinking, of course she has a date. She doesn't like me, she never did. I'm such an idiot.

"Grace?"

"Yeah, you're sister."

"No I know who Grace is...she's making you go?"

"Yeah, she said she wanted me to go because she is going, and she didn't want to be there without any of her friends. Then she fed me some line about how it is my senior year and she wants me to have fun."

"Ohh...sounds like Grace. She's always scheming. ...So who are you going with?" Tristan asked, trying not to sound to eager.

"Jake."

"Jake Hemmers?"

"Yeah, just as friends though."

"That's good." he said, starting to calm down. Just friends, she said just friends.

"And why is that good?" Rory's heart was beating so fast, she thought it was going to pop out of her body.

"Well-no- I-I- I just meant that it's good you're going as friends, ya know."

"No Tristan, I don't know. What are you trying to say?" Was he implying that he liked m- No...he couldn't.

"Nah, I didn't mean anything by it, I just meant that with the summer coming, I don't know, you just might not want to be tied down."

"Yeah, that makes sense."

"It does, doesn't it." he said, trying to move his story along.

"No actually it makes absolutely no sense. But I'll let it go, seeing as how you've got your foot in your mouth on this one."

"Well thank you for your kindness." he said trying to play it off as a joke.

"Sure." Rory said with a smile.

For the next 20 minutes Tristan and Rory talked. They each tried to carry on the conversation and not let their real feelings interfere, which was hard to do, when all they could do was wonder what the other thought about them.

"Well, I should really be going. It was nice talking to you Tristan," Rory said, then later added, "really nice."

"I'm glad because I had a lot of fun too. Can I call you again? Maybe this weekend?" he asked, hoping desparatley that she'd say yes.

"Sure, I'd like that." she answered. "Well I'll talk to you soon. Bye Tristan."

"Bye Mare."

And right after she hung up she had realized what he said.

"Soo... are you gonna spill it, or do I have to beat it out of you?" Lorelai said, walking into the kitchen. Rory was sitting at the table drinking coffee and reading a book as she looked up to see Lorelai staring at her.

"I don't know what you're talking about." she said with a smile. Rory knew that the fact that Lorelai didn't know how the phone call went was killing her, so she decided to take advantage of it.

"Come on! Fine...next time he calls, if there is a next time, I will just hang up... And by the way, will there be a next time?" she asked with one eyebrow raised.

"Well it just so happens, there may."

"It went that good huh?"

"Mommmm, it was so good to talk to him. It was so out of the blue though. I mean, I know that I am best friends with Grace and all, but why would he just call? I mean, why?"

"Maybe he likes you."

Rory's face scrunched up. "I doubt it." she said, even though she hoped, desperately hoped, that she was wrong.

"Ya never know. Either that or he is hard pressed for a prom date," Lorelai joked. "he's probably going down his address book, one by one, asking girls he hasn't talked to in two years."

Both Gilmores laughed.

"You're right. Brad Pitt probably has no trouble finding a prom date." Lorelai finished, thinking out loud.

"Yeahh." Rory said with a far-off dazed look in her eyes. Lorelai left the room, knowing she had just triggered something inside Rory.

That night Rory couldn't sleep. And when she could, she dreamed about him. Why was he all she could think about? For all she knew, he had a girlfriend and was just calling her to catch up. She had no idea what he was feeling, and probably would never know just because she, herself, was too chicken to go out on a limb and put her heart on the line. "Maybe it's best he doesn't know. Then things would just get too awkward, and he'd stop calling. And lord knows, I want him to keep calling." she said to herself. All night Rory was trying to come up with different scenarios in which she could tell Tristan how she felt. But what would he say back? What if he did have a girlfriend? What if he never even imagined Rory like that? But what- what if he felt the same? There was a little voice in the back of Rory's head that kept encouraging her to tell him. And she found it incredibly strange that the voice in the back of her head sounded exactly like Grace DuGrey's.