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“And what about you, Rory?!” Dean says, and he isn’t talking to her anymore or arguing with her – he is yelling at her. Rory isn’t okay with that; isn’t okay with being treated like dirt. She’s been here before, and she recognizes this tree, and she is pissed.
“What about me? I’m not the one who’s canceled that last six times we said we were going to hang out. I feel like I’m the only one trying to make this work!” She is exhausted. She has been working on a piece for the paper and reading obscure Russian literature, and Yale is hard. She doesn’t need this to be hard too. This part of her life is supposed to be easy.
“Yeah,” he scoffs. He runs a hand through his hair. “I’m the one who changes plans. I’m the one who cancels things. Me.”
She is so mad at him, yelling at her because she calmly asked whether or not they’d be able to see each other next weekend, since he had canceled on her today. But at that – she pauses, baffled. “What are you even talking about?” She paces to the other side of her bedroom, looks down at her phone to make sure it’s not about to die on her. She could have been at Yale this weekend. She could have been working on a paper or on the paper. Instead, she came home, only to have him cancel – again.
“You – you always back out of things, and when I do it because I have to work, because I’m not at some Ivy League school, you get mad at me.”
“Hey!” she says. “That’s not fair. You could’ve gone to college if you had wanted to. You picked this! And what the heck are you even talking about? I don’t back out of things.” She is mad, but she also is wondering if he’s drunk because he’s not making sense.
“You bailed on me with Jess!”
Rory slams her eyes shut. She can’t have this conversation again. She is so mad that she can’t breathe. It’s not just Dean who says this. It’s everyone she has ever known – even her own mother.
“For the fiftieth time, I did not bail on you. I was in love with you. And yes, I had feelings for someone else, but I never acted on them - ” she doesn’t think mentioning the kiss would be a good idea – “and you broke up with me. You can’t help having feelings. I couldn’t help having feelings. But you’re the one who decided that I should’ve been able to help it. That me picking you wasn’t enough. That me wanting to be with you wasn’t enough. You broke up with me in front of the entire town!” She had been calm up until that last part, but now she is achingly mad. It’s like an old scab, opened again to the world. She whispers, “How could you do that?”
“Rory, you loved him!” She can picture him now, punching a wall or something equally ridiculous.
“No, Dean. I loved you!” she spits back. She can hear footsteps in the kitchen and wonders how much of this conversation her mother has heard. She is panting like she has run a marathon. “That just wasn’t enough for you! And that was years ago. Does it even matter now?”
There is quiet for a minute, while Dean tries to think of a counter for her argument. He blusters on: “Well, what about my wedding?”
Rory laughs. She can’t help it. She sits down on the chair in her room, the fight easing from her bones. “Are you kidding me? Are you seriously mad at me for not going to your wedding to another woman, who you then cheated on with me?” She can’t believe she’s said that out loud. In Dean and Rory: Round Two, they have almost never mentioned how they began again. They just don’t talk about it. It’s been the elephant in the room the entire time.
“You know what, yeah, Rory. I am. You promised you would go, and you didn’t, and we weren’t together then, but we were supposed to be friends. You just bailed, and now you’re mad at me for having to work, when you couldn’t go to the most important day of my life!”
“You’re divorced, Dean. If that’s still the most important day of your life, you have some reevaluating to do!” She snaps. Even in fights, Rory usually isn’t mean, usually doesn’t cut below the belt.
But he is being cruel to her and also – she doesn’t know how to explain this to him. Doesn’t know how to explain that Luke told her to not go, and she trusts Luke more than anything, more than her father or her grandparents. Not more than her mother, but only by a little.
It takes Rory a minute to realize he has hung up on her. She mashes her lips together and blinks – hard. She breathes in and out. Rory knows adults have fights, knows this isn’t weird. She’s just never really been in this situation before. She stands up and heads to the kitchen for some post-fight fuel.
As Rory opens the door, she says, “So how much did you hear, Mo-”
Luke is standing near the back door, looking like he was trying to leave before she saw him. “Luke?”
Sometimes it’s still weird for her that her mom and Luke are dating, but she knows that they love each other, and she loves Luke too. Luke having a key to the house is still odd though.
“I promise I wasn’t eavesdropping,” he says. “I was fixing the sink.” She sees his toolbox, Burt, in his hand now.
“How much did you hear?” she says, kind of taken aback.
“Snippets,” he says. He forces an uncomfortable smile.
Rory can’t help but smile at the echoing of a conversation with her mother. “So basically, everything.”
He adjusts his baseball cap. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Rory sighs and moves towards the cabinet. She grabs a box of PopTarts and heads for the toaster. “I wasn’t exactly being quiet. And I thought my mom was out here anyway.”
Luke is still standing in the doorway.
“You can come in, you know.”
He inches towards the table, and she laughs again. “Luke, you basically live here. Sit.”
She grabs the PopTarts from the toaster, puts them on a paper towel, and sits across from him. She offers him one, and he looks at it like it’s poison, but awkwardly breaks off a tiny bite. “I’d be embarrassed about you overhearing all of that, but it’s not like you don’t know most of it. Obviously, my mom told you about how Lindsey and Dean broke up -" and she can hear herself babbling, but can’t stop – “and my role in it. And you know all about Jess.”
“Rory,” he interrupts. “I’m….” he pauses. “Sorry for how everyone blamed you when Dean broke up with you. That wasn’t right.”
Monosyllabic Luke has just apologized to her for something he didn’t even do. She smiles. Sometimes he’s more like Jess than he knows. Jess had apologized once too, knowing that she hadn’t really picked him, but had been forced to. She hadn’t known what to say then either. “Thanks.”
He takes another piece of PopTart, and that’s when Rory knows that something is wrong. “I need to tell you something,” he says, fast, like ripping off a Band-Aid.
“Okay,” she says slowly. She eats a big bite of Chocolate Fudge PopTart. It’s her favorite flavor now.
“Do you remember Dean’s wedding?” he says.
She looks at him, baffled, and nods. “Do I remember my ex-boyfriend slash current boyfriend getting married? Yeah, Luke.” He seems so uncomfortable that she doesn’t say duh.
“Do you remember me telling you to not go?”
Again, she nods, feeling an impending sense of doom, but not knowing what is coming. She wishes she had gotten milk for the PopTarts, but doesn’t want to move now.
And slowly, he explains. Dean and his friends had come into Luke’s after his bachelor’s party. Drunk, Dean had passed out in Luke’s apartment. “But first, he talked about you, Rory. About your hair and your smarts and missing you. And I don’t know how to say this, Rory,” Luke pauses, “but I think he was still in love with you when he married Lindsey.”
This isn’t exactly news to Rory, but she can still feel a roaring sound in her ears for a minute.
“And I didn’t want you to go. I didn’t want Dean to be looking at you when he promised Lindsey forever. It just didn’t seem good for anyone involved. I should’ve told you when you guys started dating again, but I figured it was none of my business. But then, with your fight, I figured you had the right to know why I told you not to go.” Luke is looking at the wallpaper behind her head, instead of her.
“He…” she pauses. “He knew he was in love with me still.” That’s the part she’s stuck on. She had always kind of known that he had still been in love with her – why else would he risk his marriage? But she hadn’t known he had known, had realized his own feelings, even as he promised forever to another woman.
Rory thinks about her first time, thinks about how much she loved him once. She thinks about being sixteen, about his bracelet on her wrist. She thinks about all of that, and then she thinks about Lindsey’s mother calling her a monster in the town square. About Miss Patty and Babette quieting as she walked by. As her old classmates from Stars Hollow High whispered “slut” as she walked by. About questioning her very morals, all for this boy who had known the pain he was likely to cause, even as he said his vows.
“I think he did,” Luke said. He pauses. “Are you mad?”
“I’m not mad at you, Luke. You were trying to protect me, Dean, even Lindsey. That was good of you. You’ve always looked out for me.” These words of praise are rote-memory, but her mind is in another place.
Luke seems to sense that, because he excuses himself. “If you need to talk, I’m around. And your mom is. Obviously.” He smiles.
Rory thinks about how defensive Dean had become when she had accused him of not making time for their relationship. She wonders if Lindsey had felt that way. She thinks about Lindsey a lot lately.
She leaves a half-eaten PopTart on a paper towel on the kitchen table. Her mom will finish it later. She walks into her room and looks at her phone. She stops and grabs Colonel Clucker. Rory lays down and thinks about how much pain Dean and she had caused, and he had known the whole time that he loved her. Had he ever even loved Lindsey at all? What kind of person gets married to someone when they’re still in love with their old girlfriend? (Probably the type of person who cheats on his wife with said girlfriend, Rory notes. But this still feels different. Bigger.)
It’s a long time before she talks to Dean again.