Disclaimer: I don't own it. Just this particular plotline. And even parts of that are borrowed.

"Luke!" Lorelai called out as she and Rory entered the diner. "We need coffee! Like, now!" Rory started to head over to a table, but saw her mom head for the counter and followed her instead. Lorelai had taken to sitting at the counter after her fight with Rory, because she never had anyone else to sit with, and also she was able to talk to Luke more.

"Hello to you to." Luke said as he placed mugs down in front of them. He turned to walk away, but Lorelai grabbed hi wrist and pulled him back.

"Wait, I need my morning over-the-counter kiss, too." He kissed her quickly, still not really used to public displays of affection.

"What," he asked "no prescription jokes?"

"I'm too tired, let me drink this and I'll get back to you."

"Why didn't you have some at home?"

"My coffee maker is broken. Can you fix it later?"

"I don't know… this seems like a good thing."

"Luke! Don't joke about my coffee!"

"What makes you think I'm joking?"

"Luke! Don't joke about joking about my coffee!"

"Fine." Luke gave in, as usual. "I'll fix it tonight. Now, what do you want for breakfast?"

"Pancakes."

"Rory?" Luke turned to her and paused, waiting for her to give her order too.

"Um, I'll have some pancakes too." Luke wrote down the orders on his pad and walked back to the kitchen.

"So, kid…" Lorelai looked at her daughter. "What's the plan for today?"

"Today I will enroll in Capitol Community College in Hartford."

"Excellent plan. Want me to come with you?"

"No, mom. You've already missed a lot of work because of me."

"I gotta say, hon, there's no better reason to miss work than you."

"I know… but still. I can handle this alone. You should go back to the inn. Really. I'll be fine."

"Okay, if you insist."

"I do." Rory ended the conversation as she brought her mug of steaming coffee to her lips.

Luke came back with their breakfasts and the two of them ate in silence, each lost in their own thoughts. When they finished, Rory kissed her mother goodbye and headed out the door. Lorelai smiled, still not believing how things were turning around. She was so incredibly thrilled to have her daughter back. And to have her going back to school! Obviously, this community college was nothing compared to Yale, but it was still better than nothing. Rory could still attain her dreams, she could still have more.

When the diner started to settle down, Luke walked around the counter and sat on the stool next to Lorelai. He looked at her expectantly, waiting for her to tell him what was going on with Rory.

"She's going back to school." Lorelai knew that that was what he wanted to hear.

"To Yale?"

"No, just to a community college… but still. Rory's back."

"Rory's back." Luke agreed, knowing that Lorelai didn't just mean back in Stars Hollow. Rory was back to being Rory again—back to being the smart, good kid who loved to learn… to the kid who wouldn't let some stupid ass ruin her life.

---

Sign up here.

Rory stared at the small banner hanging from the ceiling in front of her.

Sign up here. She read again, wondering if this was really happening.

She walked towards the table beneath it, and picked up all the forms that she needed to fill out. As she sat down in a chair and pulled a pen out of her purse, she got this feeling… it felt right. Being here felt right. She missed Yale, and being there would have felt even better, but she was so glad that she decided to go back to college. This may not be as nice of a school, but it would do for now, for just a year. Then she would go back to Yale, and all would really be right.

The best thing about this school was that she could live at home with her mother. Well, with her mother and Luke. She felt a little bad about intruding on them when they were just starting to settle down into their relationship, but she knew that she and her mother needed to be together for a while too. They needed to fix their still somewhat broken relationship. They seemed to be back to normal now, but Rory knew it would be a little while before she regained her mother's trust. Just like that time a couple years before when she slept with Dean while he was still married.

Dean. Rory had been thinking a lot about him lately, when her relationship with Logan began falling apart. She had started comparing Logan to Dean, just like she had with Jess, and found him falling short. She knew this wasn't fair, to compare the two like that, but she couldn't help it. She also saw the irony: seeing her with Logan was what ended her relationship with Dean… and now, in a way, Dean had ended her relationship with Logan. Well, him and those three girls that Logan slept with.

Rory shook her head, trying to clear out these thoughts so she could concentrate on the forms in front of her. She filled them out hurriedly, anxious to once again officially be a college student.

---

Rory sighed in relief as she headed towards the exit. The sign-up process had been more of a hassle than she expected it to be. She was suddenly very tired and wanted to go home. She smiled at the thought that Stars Hollow was her home again, and not her grandparents' pool house.

Rory was still smiling to herself and not really paying attention when she bumped into the person in front of her who had stopped without her noticing. She stumbled back and stuttered out an apology when she saw who it was she had bumped into.

"Rory?"

"Dean!"

---

"Your offspring is here, and she's sitting in my chair." Michel complained.

"I'll get right on that." Lorelai told him.

She followed him to the reception area and gave her daughter a hug.

"So, how did it go?" She asked.

"You will not believe who I ran into there!" Rory began.

"The Pope?"

"Nope."

"Hey! That rhymed!"

"Mom!"

"I'm sorry, honey. Who did you run into?"

"Excuse me," Michel cut in. "But I thought you said you were going to do something about her sitting in my chair."

"No, Michel. I said I would do something about my daughter being here. And I did. I gave her a hug. And now I'm talking to her, so…" She turned back to Rory and repeated her earlier question. "Who did you run into?"

"Dean!"

"No!"

"Yes!

"No!"

"Yes!"

"Really!"

"Yes!"

"No!"

"Mom!"

"That was the last one, I promise."

"Good."

"So… What happened with Dean?"

"Well, you know he didn't go to college when he was with Lindsey because he was trying to support them both, and he didn't go last year either, but he decided he wants to get a degree, so he's going this year."

"So he'll be going to your school?"

"Yup."

"There are twelve community colleges in Connecticut and he's going to the same one as you."

"Yup."

"You've never gone to the same school as him before. Is he going to be in any of your classes? Wouldn't that be weird?"

"Actually, he's going to be in my math class."

"Math? But you're majoring in Journalism."

"I know. This college requires you to take a math course, even if it's got nothing to do with your major."

"Huh. So, Dean's in your math class."

"Yup."

"And, how is he? Did you talk to him some?"

"We went to get a cup of coffee at this place down the street from the school."

"Oh." Lorelai was surprised at this news. She assumed they had just exchanged a few passing words. Were they friends again? She had always been amazed at their ability to remain friends after they broke up before—maybe it wouldn't be so weird for that to happen again. "Was it good coffee?"

"I might go back there after school again, but it wasn't Luke's."

Lorelai smiled at the mention of Luke. "No place is."

"Well, Luke's is."

"Yes, but… never mind."

---

"That kid is trouble." Luke scowled when Lorelai told him of Rory and Dean's encounter.

"Dean is a good kid. He just made a mistake. It was a pretty big mistake, but he's still a good kid."

Luke thought about the Dean's bachelor party, how he came into the Diner drunk and started talking about how pretty Rory asking why she didn't love him. He clearly loved he still then, then went on and married Lindsay anyway. That was the real mistake, because if he hadn't married Lindsay, then when he and Rory slept together he wouldn't have been cheating.

Luke suddenly began to sympathize with Dean a little—he too had made the mistake of marrying someone when he was in love with someone else, but he got the chance to fix that. Maybe this was Dean's chance. Did he still love Rory? Luke thought it was possible, probably even probable. After all, the Gilmore Girls were pretty easy to love, and pretty hard to get over.

A/N: Okay, this is my rant about the show now. Does anyone else think this season is kind of sucking? The beginning of the premiere was GREAT, where Luke accepted (although I still thought he should have already had a ring, like he was planning to propose but didn't have the nerve), but the rest have all been so uneventful. The commercials make it look like all this exciting stuff is going to happen, but then it turns out that that's just, like, the last two minutes of the episode.

Worst of all, there has been hardly ANY Luke/Lorelai action going on. Luke was in, like, two scenes in the last episode. They had a lot more of him before they got together, which is not how it should work. He should be in it way more.

Oh well. The moral of the story is: Review, please!