Disclaimer: I do not own Gilmore Girls or any characters associated with the show.

Chapter 3: Fresh Starts

Fired.

The word echoed through Rory's mind like a ping pong. Scratch that. More like a ball in a squash court. What were those called, anyway? Was the ball the squash? Did it start with one unlucky gourd catapulting around a room? Do squash splatter under extreme duress?

Fired. F.I.R.E.D.

Rory rolled over on her bed. Her childhood, twin size bed. She opened her eyes and looked around her room. It was like a shrine. Somehow it seemed comical that everything in her childhood home had changed, but this room was the same. Upstairs in the addition in the new space that had once been a window with a view to the oak tree was her unborn sister's unpainted nursery. The hall floor was home to her baby brother's squirt guns, even though it was mid-March. The upstairs closet housed her step father's fishing tackle. And somewhere behind that, way in the back, was the old monkey lamp that didn't really belong anywhere any more.

Here in Rory's room, though, nothing had really changed. Some things had disappeared. Photos of Dean, Jess, and Logan had each come and gone in their own time. Those were all packed away somewhere in their respective break-up boxes. The walls were still home to the maps, catalogs, and posters Rory had collected over the years. Who had she been then? And how did all of this stuff play in to who she was now?

So the Lindsay Lohan tweet maybe wasn't in the best taste. She had admitted that much to her boss on the phone today. Was it really worth firing her over? Eh, it wasn't just the tweet, her boss had admitted. They were handing over her job responsibilities to an unpaid intern anyway.

Her mom had told her that in that case, she wasn't really fired. However, lying here, on this bed, she felt fired. She felt more lost than she did after the whole boat stealing, semester skipping phase of her life. At least then she had been running away from responsibilities. Now she wasn't in control. She missed having control.

Tristan. If she was feeling especially vindictive, she could blame the whole thing on him. After all, he had not only given her the idea to write a tweet like that, he had also been the one to post it. But if she was being terribly honest with herself today then she had to admit that she liked what he had said to her. Turn wit into your weapon. How very Jane Austen. How very her.

Well, if she had any job prospects, that is.

"Did you decide yet?" Lorelai yelled from the other side of the door. Rory sighed and got up. She opened the door to see her mother standing on the other side, empty handed.

"Hey, I thought you were going to grab some choices from your closet!"

"Uh yeah, I was. Until I realized that everything that wasn't a maternity shirt had been spit up on at some point. And no matter what you say, you can't wear a spit up shirt on a date."

"Well I can't wear anything from this closet on a date either. Don't you have any dresses?"

"Yeah. In my other closet."

"And where would that be?"

"The attic."

Rory grumbled something and went back to her closet for the hundredth time. Everything in there were reject clothes. Things that had been left behind over various moves. Most things hadn't even seen the light of day since high school.

She pulled out a large sweater. "Ugh. I can't believe I wore this."

"Wear it tonight."

"Pregnancy really is making you crazy."

"What? You used to wear that all the time when you were a teenager. You looked so sweet."

"Exactly how I want to look on a date."

"He liked you back in the days of that sweater."

Rory snorted but didn't respond.

"Well what do you normally wear on a date?"

"You have got to be kidding me. You know I don't go on dates, like, ever. People my age don't really even date."

"So your last date was with Logan?"

"That implies that we ever went out on a formal date."

"Jess?"

"Do you remember him? The less socially adept version of Luke?"

"Dean?"

"Probably."

"Oh man. We need a really stellar outfit here."

They stood shoulder to shoulder at her closet for another minute. "I can't believe I'm moving back in here," Rory said at last.

Lorelai draped an arm around her daughter's shoulder. "It's not forever."

"I know."

"Because if you start getting too comfortable I will make sure to change the parental control lock on the TV so that you are subjected to all of Matthew's shows. I'll play Mickey Mouse Club House on repeat for days until your ears bleed and you run out of the house screaming."

"Thank you."

"Wear the black skirt in the back of your closet with the tank top you had on yesterday."

"And that's about when I realized my only choice was moving back in with my mother." Rory shoved another french fry in her mouth. She avoided eye contact with Tristan. Filling him in on the whole firing fiasco had felt natural. But now that she had finished her story and explained that now that she was unemployed she was also as good as homeless, she suddenly felt the shame of her situation creep back in.

"What about Paris?"

"What about her?"

"Have her get you a job."

"Uh, yeah. Because sawing into children's bones is exactly what I'm qualified to do."

Tristan threw a curly fry back into his food basket. "What?"

"Paris is finishing up medical school. She's specializing in pediatric orthopedics."

"She goes around snapping little kid's bones? That's rather ruthless."

"That's Paris."

"I thought she edited the Yale Daily News. I saw a copy on a friend's coffee table when we were still in school."

"She did. That was just a hobby."

"Again, how very Paris."

"Quite." Rory sipped at her beer and settled back into the cushions of the booth. The date wasn't going exactly like she had anticipated. Not that she wasn't pleased. First of all, Tristan hadn't dragged her to some swanky place with valet parking and white linen. They were in a bar. A nice one, no doubt. But a bar none the less. Her burger was perfect, there was great live music. But they were doing an awful lot of shouting over the band to hear each other. Frankly, she was a little surprised that this was his style of wining and dining.

"So I have bored you with my career woes. Why don't you fill in the gaps between when you were shipped off to jouvie and now."

"Jouvie? It was military school."

"Potato pohtatoh."

Tristan settled back into his own booth, beer in hand. "Well, military school scared the crap out of me."

"A compound full of men without a single female in sight was surely your worst nightmare."

He let out a short and bitter laugh. "It was. I was such a little bitch about it too. I'm surprised the officers didn't just throw me out into the woods and try my best Survivor Man impersonation."

"That good, huh?"

Tristan sighed. "That good. But it did the trick. I'm cured."

Something in the sigh led Rory to believe that there was a lot more to Tristan's story. She didn't pry, though. He had the right to his secrets. This was, after all, supposed to be a casual first date.

"So then where did you go?"

"After military school I moved to LA to go to USC."

"Not Columbia?"

"No, Miss Yale. Not Columbia. Just lowly USC."

Rory blushed a little. "Berkley is a great school. I didn't mean-"

Tristan smiled. "Everything with you was always about the Forbes College Ranking. I get that. I'm flattered you thought Columbia would even want me."

"You are a legacy."

"I didn't want to be a legacy. After military school I needed a new scene."

Rory thought briefly of rooming with Paris freshman year, then of dating Logan. How would things have turned out if she had stayed away from the Hartford scene at Yale? Or if she had left Connecticut like she had always intended?

"So, after college, when I had realized that all that sun was giving me road rage, I moved to New York."

"A city notorious for its lack of traffic."

"Precisely."

"And in New York you are a…"

"Suit."

"3-piece or 5?"

"I sit in my cubicle, punching numbers into the database all day."

"Insurance?"

"Finance."

"Ouch."

"Riveting stuff, I know."

"You don't really sit in a cubicle do you?"

"Well, not exactly. But it's not a corner office on the 85th floor either. And it's not in my father's company."

"So whose is it?" she said, knowing full well how rude she was potentially being.

"My Godfather's."

"Let me guess...he made you an offer you couldn't refuse?"

"That was too easy."

"You set me up for it. I couldn't leave that one dangling."

Tristan popped a few more curly fries into his mouth, chewed, washed it down with some beer and then turned to Rory with a funny look. "So what are you going to do now?"

"Well, I was thinking about dessert…"

"About your job."

"Oh." She swirled a fry in her ranch. "I don't really know. I haven't gotten that far yet."

"Do you like the digital journalism stuff?"

Rory thought about it for a moment. "If I want to be part of the field, which I do, I have to like it." She ate the fry. "And you know what, I liked the idea of the path you were sending me down last night. I guess the Globe just wasn't as trashy as I thought it was."

Tristan thought that over for a minute. He summoned the waitress over and asked for the bill.

"Thanks for dinner," Rory said when he waved away her credit card.

"My pleasure."

He pulled out his phone and began scrolling through it idly. Rory felt uncomfortable. She thought about pulling hers out just to look equally as engaged. Wasn't there a no cell phone rule on dates? What a jerk.

"Would you mind if I gave someone your number?"

Well that wasn't what she had thought he was doing. "Depends on who. I have a blanket no communication with the Jersey Shore Cast rule."

"You think I have their numbers?"

"We still have a lot to learn about each other."

"I know someone who is looking for a social media correspondent. She is a beauty editor at Images."

"Oh. Wow. I don't know what to say."

"Say I can give it to her."

Rory looked around the bar. She hadn't accepted any jobs from friends since the disastrous internship with Logan's father. In fact, she had made it a rule not to ever again.

"It's just a phone call from her," Tristan said. "Not like I'm promoting you to CEO of my multi-billion dollar corporation."

She was caught. Flustered. She tried to spit out a rebuttle, but it was pointless. And she did need some kind of a job.

"Thank you. I appreciate it and I owe you."

Tristan smirked. "I will remind you of that some day."

"Well, I don't know. Sometimes guys don't kiss girls on the first date."

"Yeah, on the Brady Bunch," Rory grumbled.

"Didn't Logan not kiss you or something?"

"And look how great that turned out."

Rory flung herself on the couch, but managed not to spill any coffee on her pajamas.

"How did you guys leave it?" Lorelai asked.

"He dropped me off, told me it was fun, and said he was glad we had run into each other."

"Well, that was nice."

"Mom, that's something that soccer moms say in the snack pack aisle at the grocery store."

"Well kid, I don't know! This is Tristan, the guy who was chasing you all of high school and you were just too young and twitterpated with Dean to pay attention to it."

"Maybe that was all left in the past. Maybe...oh wait. That's my phone." Rory slammed her mug down on the coffee table and shuffled back to her room. She caught the phone on the last ring. Unknown number. She accepted it and clicked it on to speaker phone.

"Hello?"

"Rory Gilmore?"

"This is she."

"Rory, hi. This is Carly Kerrins at Images. Tristan Dugrey gave me your contact information?"

"Hi Miss Kerrins."

"Please, call me Carly. Now, I just have a few questions for you. I saw that Lindsay Lohan tweet. It actually made me laugh out loud when I was in line for my latte. You're witty. Are you available to live tweet events such as the Grammy's or Fashion Week?"

Does that mean she'd be attending those things? "My schedule is flexible."

"Lovely. And will you be able to attend staff meetings three times a week in our New York offices?"

"Yes, that shouldn't be a problem."

"Alright, then you are hired. You'll be getting a call from HR by the end of the day. You can come in for your first staff meeting at 9 tomorrow. HR will give you all of the information. Do you have any questions for us?"

She was stunned. And in her state she felt the word vomit bubbling up to the surface. "Well, I'm flattered and of course I accept, but is that really it? You don't want samples of my work, or a resume? You are basing this off of one lousy Lohan tweet?"

"This is obviously on a trial basis. We will give you three weeks then take it from there. The pay is crap."

"Oh, I see. Well I wasn't expecting-"

"Tristan spoke very highly of you. He said I would be a fool to let you go to a Conde Nast publication."

"Well, thank you, that is very nice."

"Wait...hang on Rory. What? No, babe. I told you. 7. And can you pick up the dry cleaning? I'll be late."

Rory headed back to the living room and rolled her eyes at Lorelai, who had been listening to everything.

"Oh and babe. BABE. Wait. We have dinner with my parents tonight. 8 o'clock reservations at Centennial. Did you hear that? Babe? Tristan?"

Rory almost dropped the phone.

"Rory you there?"

"Yes Carly."

"See you tomorrow at 9."

"Yeah, 9," Rory mumbled. She hung up the phone.

"Well," Lorelai said. "I guess that's why he didn't kiss you good night."