"Hi, Dean." Rory said softly.
"Rory?" his voice contained masked hope, and surprisingly, no anger.
"Yeah. It's me." Rory paused. "Dean, who is Ashleigh?"
"She's my cousin."
"Okay; why did she say she was glad you had decided not to cheat on me?"
"Well, we had a very long talk on the phone, during which I said I had a girlfriend and she said that I had to make the decision now not to ever even toy with the idea of cheating on you, or else I would be tempted to. I made that decision, and she said that she would send me a note to remind me of the decision. I was afraid that if I explained it to you that you would have thought it was weird and that I was weird by association, and so you would dump me. Does that make sense?" Dean answered his own question. "It did at the time, but it doesn't now."
"Wow." Rory slowly processed all of this information. And her heart sank when she realized that he hadn't told her because he loved her. And here she was kissing another guy!
Her heart was fighting her mind as she took a deep breath and confessed, "Dean, last night I kissed Tristin."
Dean paused. "And...?" he prompted.
"Aren't you mad that I kissed another guy?"
"No...we were broken up." Dean said. "I'm a little jealous, but not mad."
Dean was so sweet! Rory couldn't believe she had believed that he had cheated on her.
"So...can we try this again?" Rory said softly into the phone.
"I will if you will." he agreed.
"Yay!" Rory cried involuntarily. "Meet me at Luke's for breakfast?"
"Sure. Race you there!" he hung up, shaking his head at Rory's reaction to his agreement.
Rory reached Luke's before Dean, because she had her car and he had to take out all of the trash bags in his house before his mom let him go.
Rory sat at her usual table. "Blueberry pancakes and one coffee, please!" she called to Luke over the breakfast crowd. He served her quickly and as she began to eat her pancakes, she saw him turn red, then white. She assumed that Taylor was doing something insane as usual as Luke rushed out of the diner.
She happened to turn as Luke closed the door, and she was just in time to see Luke coming to blows with Dean! She ran outside and after a few minutes managed to break up the fight. "Luke!" she gasped. "I didn't tell you!"
"Tell me what? That this clown was about to come into the diner?"
"Well, that we got back together this morning!"
"Oh."
