- -
Rain falls angry on the tin roof as we lie awake in my bed;
You're my survival; you're my living proof my love is alive, and not dead
-- 'I'll Be', Edwin McCain
"Rory?"
"Dean? Dean."
"Rory."
"Dean."
Somebody laughed. Maybe it was both of them. Rory shuffled her feet, and
tucked a stray hair away before settling the phone against her other ear. She
leaned her head over, tilting it so that the phone was held between her cheek
and her shoulder, settling in the soft part of her neck. "Cue uncomfortable
silence," she chirped. She didn't know which part of her was more nervous: her
wavering voice, or her stomach doing flip-flops among the butterflies set free
of their cage. Her rib cage. Insects fluttering within her chest walls. Vomit
waiting to surface on the shore.
Dean laughed again. His laughter didn't seem so forced this second time, as
if the first exhale of a giggle had cleared his trail in the pathway that stood
between them. It was a long pathway. Many miles. Or so she supposed. Where on
earth was he?
"There's no need for the silence to be uncomfortable," Dean finally said,
saving the both of them from the death hung in the air that was eating them both
alive. "Or awkward. Or too long. I don't want things between us to be strained,
Rory."
"Oh. Okay. Yeah, me -- me neither."
"I know it's... been a long time."
"It has..."
"I haven't spoken to you in, what, a few years?"
Rory nodded, though he couldn't see. "Right. Since that night when you..."
Broke up with me. Left me to the arms of college boys who clobbered me with
alcohol until the tears clogging my throat gave way to giddy grins of
forgetfulness of the fact that I had to watch my lover drive away
"Right. Since the night I realized that you were too good for me."
"You were wrong."
Dean smiled to himself. "I should've known you'd say something like that. You
could never see it, Rory. You're better than my small-town grocery store
paycheck. You're greater than Stars Hollow."
"Nothing's greater than Stars Hollow. It's my home. It's my heart."
"You know what I mean..." Dean paused. It made for a dramatic effect. "You're
meant for bigger and better things. Amazing things. I needed to stop pulling you
down with my dead weight; I needed to let you go so you could fly."
Rory looked down at her bare toes, stained with deep magenta nail polish on
well manicured toenails. She blushed as Dean's words soaked in. He always did
see the better part of her, the part that she's always wished and hoped and
everything short of prayed for. It was his greatest show of loyalty... it was
his greatest downfall. There is such a thing as believing in someone too much.
So much that you cancel yourself out of a relationship with the amazing person
that you feel beneath. So much that you don't realize your own shining potential
that lurks just beneath the surface, a potential that the partner you let get
away could single-handedly bring out into the sun. They brought out the greatest
in one another. But he couldn't see it... he could see nothing but the blinding
light that was her.
Realizing another silence had seized hold of the conversation, Rory looked to
the window and cleared her throat. "So, um, I graduated."
"I know," said Dean, a smile in his voice. "I was there."
"You were what?"
"Lorelai sent me an invitation. She told me to stay near the back, in case
you wouldn't want me there. Even though she thought that somewhere deep inside
of you, you would want to share that experience with me."
Rory sat down on her bed. She ran a hand absently through her gorgeous silky
locks. She imagined that hand being Dean's. She remembered so many times when it
was. And she shivered.
"I did stay near the back," Dean continued. "Where you couldn't see me. I
didn't take a seat. I stood up the whole time, ready to bolt if you looked in my
direction. But you didn't, and... I saw you."
Rory twirled a few strands of hair around her finger. "Yeah?"
"Yeah. I saw you in your robe, I saw you shake the Dean's hand. I saw you
accept your diploma. Rory, I've never seen you look that way before. You just
glowed. You were the most beautiful thing..."
"Oh, Dean -- "
"Rory, I miss you."
Swallowing over the lump she hadn't noticed had formed in her throat, Rory
felt a tingling sensation start behind her ears. It slowly spread to her cheeks,
making them burn, turning them the shade of her plum blush. "I miss you, too.
Dean, it's been so long..."
"Are you at home? Are you moved out of the dorm?"
"Yep, I'm... back at the CrapShack."
"Can I see you?"
"Where? When?"
"You could come to my place. I could give you the address. It's just ten
blocks or so from your house."
Rory sighed, happy amid all the butterflies in her ribcage. "Sounds great."
After scribbling down the address on a stray piece of paper, Rory hung up the
phone, and turned to the full length mirror in her bedroom. She remembered
looking in a mirror on a previous day, getting ready to go out with Dean again.
Her mother was so proud. Somebody hit you with the pretty stick.
She giggled softly. She adjusted the thin straps of her lime green sundress,
fitting them perfectly in the center of her shoulders. She fluffed up her hair,
bangs once again absent, just as she used to be. She looked very much like she
used to look, back when... well, back when Dean saw her on a regular basis.
Certainly she looked older, wiser, more worldly... But her hair, her smile, her
complexion, all were the same girl she had been all her life. He would recognize
her. He would take one look at her, and things would be as they had always been.
As they would always be. Wasn't that how it always was? With your first love?
She flitted out of her room, happily, in a sort of dream state. She was going
to meet up with Dean. Suddenly they were talking again. And somehow this was a
good thing.
Grabbing the pair of sunglasses on the hallway table, she put them in place
in front of her eyes, and looked to her mother sitting on the couch. "I'm
borrowing your sunglasses, and going out," she informed Lorelai.
"Go do everything I wouldn't do."
"That leaves me with no options whatsoever."
"That's the spirit, that's my girl. Be a nun. And be back by Labor Day."
"Bye, Mom!" Rory strapped on some very uncomfortable dress shoes, and headed
out of the house.
"Talk to all strangers," Lorelai yelled helpfully. "Steal candy from babies!
Use your cell phone at Luke's!" The front door slammed shut.
Free of Mom and any questions she might ask, Rory started on her walk of ten
blocks to Blacksmith Avenue. Years earlier, Taylor wanted to give that street
this particular name, but only if there would be a business present on the
street. So the local hot dog vendor offered to set up shop there. And from then
on, all blacksmiths in Stars Hollow knew where to go.
It was two houses down from the hot dog man's corner that Rory found house
number 920. A small house, one story, painted a charming shade of light creamy
yellow, like lemon pudding, with a clean white trim edged around the roof and
the nicely placed windows.
Throughout the walk here, the butterflies had set wing, and had taken off,
leaving Rory's body completely. She was now utterly comfortable, faced with the
front door of the house that held captive within it one of the best friends of
her life. There was nothing to be nervous about. Everything was good. She was
rekindling a friendship with a long lost, much missed pal.
Before she could raise her fist to knock on the door, it was thrown open, and
there stood Dean, tall, handsome, smiling with those brilliant white teeth.
"You're here!" he said, as if announcing it for some third party. "I admit, I
wasn't so sure you would come."
"Of course I would come, Dean. You know I wouldn't lie about that."
"Well I don't know for sure, I mean I don't really know you anymore." Rory
absorbed the sting of that comment as the smile faded from her mouth. "But," and
Dean held up a finger carefully, "I would like us to get to know each other
again."
He took Rory's hand and led her into his bedroom. He flung himself down on
the freshly made bed, ruffling the covers some with his body. He patted the
other half of the bed. "Take a load off, kiddo," said the friendly former
boyfriend. Former lover. Former everything.
"I'd like us to get to know each other again, too," Rory offered, flinging
herself onto the bed beside Dean. As he relaxed, she relaxed. They sighed
together, each getting more comfortable on the cheap mattress that couldn't
possibly give a good night's sleep. "Where did you get this mattress?"
"Liquidation World in Hartford. Dirt cheap."
"Well, no offense, but you can tell."
Dean laughed, a sort of silly little giggle. "Tell me about it."
A cloud scooted over in the sky to block out the sun. Shades of grey filtered
in through the sheer curtains at Dean's bedroom window. A slight wind caused
them to flutter in the summer heat. Suddenly it became cooler as the hint of
darkness closed in around them.
Then it started to rain.
The silence between the two wasn't as uncomfortable now. It was more
companionable. There was nothing they needed to say, and therefore they said
nothing; merely spent some precious moments together while the staccato pelts
sounded from the rain on the roof. Drip, drip, drip... drop-drop-drop-drop...
Moisture met the heat of the black roof, which sizzled. Like burgers being
cooked on an outdoor grill. One could almost smell the meat cooking.
"Rory?" Dean said at long last. He reached over in the bed and without even
having to look, managed to lace the fingers of his left hand through hers. "Come
on a road trip with me. A hundred days and nights, on the road, just you and me,
together. Like old times."
Rory breathed out a long, slow, agonizing breath, as Dean waited and waited.
She thought of the first time she saw him, in the hallway, after crashing and
burning, and dropping all of her books. She remembered their first kiss over a
can of soda and a box of corn starch. Her thickening needs were quite met on
that shoplifting day. She thought of the last day of her first year at Chilton,
of the "I love you, you idiot!" Of the kiss that followed.
She thought of the sex on that night that turned into a disaster. When her
mom didn't understand, and Lindsay's world came crashing down on her. She
thought of being rebuffed by Dean, coming out of her grandparents' house looking
like a princess, with a tiara to boot, and being turned away by the first boy
she ever loved. She thought of the years they had lost, when they hadn't been
together, because they had been too afraid to reach out, and take that unstable
step again.
She thought of all they'd been through, and all they'd lost in this time they
had spent apart. Go on a road trip with him?
Rory turned and looked Dean in the eye. Rain pummeled the rooftop overhead,
and splashed in tiny blotches onto the glass of the window, wetting down the
fragile draperies. She let the magic of the moment soak in, with the rain and
the blocked sun and it being as if she and Dean were the only two alive in the
world, and said, "Okay."
- -
to be continued...
