Title: Longing With a Cherry Tomato on Top | Chapter Ten | Paris and Rory, Leaping Out of the Gate!

Author: Nate

Pairing: Paris/Rory, alternating POVs between Paris and Rory throughout the chapter. Also, the beginnings of allusions towards Madeline/Brad.

Spoilers: Nothing as far as actual show plot, but this would be the Longing version of Let the Games Begin, without the start of the Jess/Rory relationship or Luke's fretting over everything.

Rating: R (swearing, tame sexual actions and dreams, innuendo, indirect homophobia, and light alcohol usage)

Disclaimer: Dorothy Parker Drank Here Productions and Hofflund-Polone run the show and Warner Bros. Television profits from that. Even if Rory's character is ruined and Tristan II...er, I mean Logan ruins the image of our two favorite girls together. Did I mention that Liza Weil is still a regular cast member, not supposed to be playing the second coming of Laverne DeFazio and have wacky antics and pratfalls like getting drunk off punch? Seriously people, use her better next season, even if she does sing an adorable I'm Walking on Sunshine.

Archiving: GilmoreGirlsSlash, Realm of the Shadow, RalSt, femslash.net, aff.net and ff.net. Anywhere else ask first.

Summary: Paris and Rory start their new relationship off beneath the noses of the Chiltonians and the Hollowites, and find ways throughout the school and at home to keep their flame strong.

Author's Notes: Another three months, another 40,000 words, hopefully I did a great job because this chapter was very improv. I have the ideas for everything else in the story, but Raven wanted me to add something in-between the realization And Then She Kissed Me... chapters and their first movements deeper into their love, thus this is what ended up happening. I ended up dealing with at least two aborted plotlines, a dead computer in March, the new computer that replaced it crashing after just five weeks of use, and some of the worst episodes of GG ever while I wrote this chapter. Really people, is there anyone demanding more scenes of Taylor out there?

My usual betas Raven and Cinn were unable to read for this chapter because of things happening in their real lives, so please keep them in your thoughts. They did still receive the chapter in advance however because of their help over the last months in making my story the best that it could be. Hopefully things return to normal for the both of them soon and they'll be able to beta for me again in the very near future.

In their place, Erin Griffin was my beta, and I thank her for taking over the daunting duties on such short notice. Thanks so much for the once-over!

Thanks to Brian and The Raven for their encouragement, and Amy on GGSlash for the nice chats, which I really enjoy when my plots get stuck. I recommend you read her Coalescence series currently on the site, the picture she sets up of a disabled Paris being nursed back to health by Rory is truly wonderful.

I'd also like to wish Liza a happy 28th birthday on Sunday, June 5th! Thanks for another great year of Paris' trials and tribulations, and my fingers are really crossed that you'll be back on the show next year, it certainly wouldn't be the same without you or Paris :)!

Finally, thanks to Lexar for their USB flash JumpDrive Sport that keeps this story backed up almost everyday; without it I may have lost everything I wrote between March 28th and May 7th. Fanfic writers, USB drives are the best thing ever, and having the almost-latest copy of Longing on one after a hard drive failure really saved my butt here. Throw out your floppies and buy one today, they really come in handy!

And to those reading on ff.net, the 10th time should be a charm in telling you that Paris and Rory will be getting more physical in this chapter, so if you don't like, don't read. Please also keep in mind that I accept any criticism, and if you have a question, let me know in a review please.

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Paris' POV, Monday, 7:00pm

"OK Par, you can do this, just stay calm. Day after, first day of the rest of your life, this is going to be easy. She doesn't regret this, so don't think she does."

That was what I was telling myself this morning as I passed the white sign welcoming me back into the village of Stars Hollow, home of the 2002 state champion Minutemen in Division 4 hockey. I was tightly belted into my seat, looking at the clock reading 6:55; I still had five minutes to go before I pulled up in front of that diner that was the favorite haunt of my classmate and vice president.

Not to mention my new girlfriend. I remember getting up this morning and going through my normal routine, all the time thinking about the small things I could do to tell Rory that what I said in that email to her last night before bedtime (and uh, my 'thinking' about her) was true; that I was going to do my damndest to keep her interest in me piqued. I took a couple extra minutes brushing my hair, making sure it was totally smooth and had a golden sheen to it. Another couple minutes spent in the shower and at the vanity, putting on a slight shade of lipcolor, and then one more stop inside the closet. Again, I tried to make myself feel a little more sexy by putting on a bra and panty set that was thinner than usual, along with a bra that lifted instead of flattened for once; a nice lacy light pink set that would feel very nice beneath my clothes. I smiled as I looked myself over, content in my appearance. I couldn't look any better in the uniform, and as I buttoned up the school sweater over the oxford blouse, for the first time it seemed in years, I felt the shirt give tight against my bosom.

Now that, that is the look of a girl in love! My inner vixen projected inside. Finally, thanks to Rory's help and her heated flirting the day before, I felt both confident and sexy. I already noticed a change in my mannerisms this morning as I went through my morning routine. I had always been excited to go to school before that, but kept it bottled up under the guise of being stone cold serious about my education. Other than the academic side of school however, I always loathed the socializing part of Chilton. Having to play babysitter to those in the Franklin of lower IQ, and help those same simpletons get out of high school without having to study a word, it wasn't fun for me. Hell, I'd probably rather be home-schooled, that way I get 100% of my education without all the empty calories of Chilton cliques and classes, or the broom closet interludes.

But then, I wouldn't have Rory at all, and that's a thought I don't want to have to think ever again.

6:25am I left my bedroom, and snuck downstairs, hoping to dodge Mother's line of questioning about my choice of bra for the day. I didn't let her know about my new schedule, so I hoped the 'stranger in your own house' routine would continue strong.

"Miss Gellar, Paris..." I heard some whispering from a corner of the great room as I hit the bottom landing of the grand staircase. I walked towards the sound of the voice, and found our newest night maid, Roberta, dusting some shelves and looking both ways warily. I went over towards her and asked why she called out my name.

"It's safe, she never came home last night."  She may have been new, but Roberta knew going in from the fellow housekeepers from her service that Sharon was a bitch to all the help, and that I usually tried to avoid her as best as I could.

"Not home? Where is she?" I asked, and then rolled my eyes because I already knew the answer. "Mohegan Man's arms?"

She nodded her head. "Called at two in the morning to have me let you know she's staying in San Diego until tomorrow afternoon, apparently the airline refused to board her and her boyfriend because they were drunk and belligerent towards the staff at the Lindbergh United counter, and she really sounded smashed."

I sighed, thankful that I wouldn't have to reface Mother for another day. "Thanks, tell her the usual if she calls, I miss her and Boston was great..."

"Got it, you have a great day Miss Gellar." I thought about giving Rory two rides to and from school, and Mother stuck in California, and already felt like Monday the 11th would be just as good a day in my life as Sunday the 10th. I smiled wide at Roberta, and thanked her.

"It's off to a great start." I headed towards the garage, dumped my messenger bag in the backseat, and pulled out the Manor gate at 6:30am. Right on schedule; life was good.

I found traffic going southbound on the Cross relatively light since most everyone heads inbound into Hartford, and with the radio tuned to a light classical station, found the ride, though slow because of how much I was anticipating picking up Rory and taking her to school, seemed to pass by. Probably had more to do with the guiding speed of 73 everyone else was doing, though truthfully, my speedometer display read 81 for most of the last portion of the trip.

I pulled off the route 26 exit around 6:50, and found myself at the familiar rooster statue a few minutes later, winding around the square's traffic circle a couple times before I found a nice place near the bus stop to pick up Rory across from Luke's diner. I slid into the parking spot lines gracefully, idled the car to park, and then looked across the street towards the former hardware store building on the corner with the wide picture windows painted with the establishment's name in yellow paint.

I wondered to myself if I should go into the diner, but decided against it because I wouldn't purchase anything inside. I was too nervous anyways; I thought I was still regarded as 'that crazy schoolgirl from Hartford' because of the Oppenheimer story, and somehow I doubt that opinion changed even with my zero negative words about the town all Saturday and Sunday when I was here. I also feel guilty if I go into a store and not buy an item; I didn't need anything at Luke's except Rory, thus I didn't have to go in.

Still, I drummed my fingers against the steering wheel, looking into the diner's windows and finding Rory and Lorelai kibitzing with Luke about something. Even from that far away she looked nice; her hair was in a braided ponytail and she seemed to be in a nice mood, as was I. She smiled up at Luke, as she stacked her empty dishes and her orange juice glass atop each other. Luke then handed her a couple of foam cups. Probably both filled with coffee, she's crazy for the stuff, I assumed. I stared at her for two minutes through the window, unnoticed by everyone who happened by my spot. She moved towards the counter, put those cups down, reaching into her backpack to pull out her purse, and in turn some paper currency and handed it to him. He nodded, seemed to thank her, and just after, she was leaving the diner, looking both ways right out to probably locate my car.

My car might blend in a little because of its maroon color, but not so much that Rory didn't find it. She found me just by looking in my direction, and just her blue eyes from afar staring right back at me made my heart palpitate out of rhythm. She ran across the street when there was a break in the traffic, and came around to the passenger's side door as I clicked open the lock to let her in.

Effortlessly, she opened the door and slid into her seat, which after about 55-60 rides was set up to her own specifications. She smiled at me as she threw her backpack into the backseat, and gave me a look that told me she was excited about this new arrangement that we were sharing.

She greeted me with a good morning, and I told her the same as she set the foam cups in the cupholders on the console.

"I bought you some tea, I figured that you might want some as a perk-up to wake you up," she then told me. To say the least, I felt flattered that she was thinking about me. "Wintergreen, of course."

I smiled funny at her. "You didn't have to Gilmore, but thanks." I wasn't looking directly at her, trying to keep my gaze on the road in front of me as I shifted into drive, sure that the town's eyes were all directed towards me. So much for my email declaration that I wouldn't be nervous.

I pulled slowly onto the road, and could feel Rory's hand on the armrest console between us, brushing against the side of my skirt. I turned on the road out of town and took a sip of the tea, the ride so far seeming a bit more silent than I thought it would be. When we reached the guidance sign for the exit onto the Cross, I finally looked at Rory for the first time since we left town.

Whether to bring up the fact we were now secretly betrothed to each other was going through my mind, as I tried to think up a way to broach up conversation. This is one of the things I hate about relationships, you lose that natural bond the two of you had before you became involved. Though it was only officially our fourteenth hour, I analyzed the situation. Just the very idea of a relationship was alien to me, I had never been through it with a boy before, not counting a boy in sixth-grade Jewish summer camp, but back then I didn't know all that much about love. Now here I was in the same car with Rory, I didn't know what to do.

Thankfully my mouth decided to think for my head for at least once in my life, saving me from the awkward first morning kiss I wanted to get just right.

"Do we want to lead with the football loss, or go positive with the volleyball win? I was looking at Davidson's article last night and Jenna Smith's commentary, along with the pics of the field goal attempt, I think we can get a good page one out of it." I was happy to be back to talking to one of the things that bonded Rory and I comfortably together, The Franklin.

She turned and looked at me, arguing her side. "I took a look at Davidson's article too, it's a strong piece," she told me. "I made a few notations for editing, and I saw the front page in my mind. What I think we could do is have an inset of the team within two columns, and on the bottom, show the Chilton stands reaction to the field goal passing through the uprights."

"Agony might not sell Gilmore," I argued back. "I think we need to go look-ahead on this one instead of showing the pain of the student body. The Demons were one game away from the playoffs with a second-year coach, if we did a sub below the headline saying something like 'Coach Staley proud of progress, already looking towards '03', that would make the student stop, look at the article, and think that our writers felt the pain just as bad as they did, but they know the team is progressing. They look at Davidson's piece and think that he's a true insider, with an ear to the team. That sells more copies, makes Davidson strive to work harder during basketball and baseball seasons to impress, and in turn, solidifies us as having a strong stable of storytellers."

I felt Rory focusing her thoughts for a bit, trying to come up with a reply. Her gut instinct is something I really like, because although she might seem mousy, she wants to see the paper succeed in the end. "That's a good idea, but don't forget that people are going to save this in their attics years from now." There she goes with her small-town nostalgia bent, was what I was thinking as she went on about how it might be better to show the crowd reaction, while mixing in the optimist's view of the next season on that front page. "We're seniors; in the end 2003-04's team doesn't represent our class."

"Yeah, but they will represent the frosh, sophs and juniors of this year, along with the Eighthers at Country Day, I don't want to leave them out."

"Darn it, I hate it when you're right." She pouted for a bit and thought a little more, looking ever so adorable while she remembered that one of the points of the paper's mission statement was to remain neutral and represent the entire student body, not just the seniors. "Uhhh, hmmm...What if we put the crowd shot on top right, wrapped around Davidson's story with your headline-subline combo to instill that hope, then we put a horizontal line in the middle of the page? Below that, we tell Jenna to rewrite her commentary to focus on the Blue Demon's progress this year, we go back to the upset at Hillside and in the photo space, show Wes Albertson's reaction to throwing that touchdown in with a second left to win the game?" She scribbles a dummy layout on a page in her notebook representing the front page, and I glance at it out of the corner of my eye, thankful the traffic merging onto the Cross is light. "That way, in the end, on the same page the senior class will be able to look back on this page for years to come, while at the same time it makes everyone hope for greater things next season. You see where I'm going with this, a mix of nostalgia and a look towards a better season for the underclassmen--"

"Which might help this edition circ as well as the regional spotlight of last week." I could see it in my head, Rory's idea was perfect. She might not have the official title of co-editor, but she might as well be with these brainstorming sessions we have in the car after school. I smiled, and decided I would take our mixed idea seriously. "First thing this afternoon I'll plug it into PageMaker and see if it looks well; I'll stop Jenna in Philosophy in second and tell her to do a quick rewrite, and we'll see what we got. It's obvious we have to do the front page on the game. We'll move Erica's former cover on society Thanksgivings to the left tease and keep it as the middle foldout, and we'll be all set." I didn't even need PageMaker to see the results, because the layout in my mind looked perfect.

"I like that Par," she told me. "Erica's gonna be a little mad she didn't get more than a cover mention, but she'll recover."

I smiled, and relaxed into my seat a bit as now the cover layout was clear. Only 21 other pages to go. "She'll be fine."

Then just before I could react, Rory thanked me, stretched over the seat, and kissed me lightly on the cheek, surprising the Dickens out of me. I wasn't up to highway speeds yet, but felt my grip loosen on the steering wheel just a little bit and the car waver.

It wasn't much of a kiss, a lot less deep than the first one we shared last evening. Despite that though, it still had that emotional wallop that hearing Rory come out stirred within me. My heart thudded against my chest, and it took me a couple of puffs to recover my breath as I pulled off the road and onto the emergency shoulder.

Damn, I knew I should've kissed her when she got in the car, I have privacy windows for crissakes! But the windshield is still clear; someone might have seen. Blood rushed to my face, and there was a bit of me who was pissed off at her for interfering with my driving. Everyone knows for instance my phone is off when I'm in the car, don't dare try to call me.

I couldn't help but smile though. Rory was giving me that smile she had just after our first kiss, silly and carefree. In the end too, I really liked the kiss.

"I forgot to wish you a good morning. God, I wanted to do that since before we left town." She's giddy at surprising me, and I felt like to admonish her for her sly move for thinking up a front page as an excuse to kiss me wasn't anything I wanted to do. The momentum of the car stopped, and I could finally look at her without the threat of a drift into the median and certain death.

I was still hyperventilating a little, and controlled my first reaction to yell at her about it. "Don't ever do that again, you know how fast I drive." I kept myself calm as I looked at her sternly, and somewhat lovelorn. "Why didn't you just say you wanted to kiss me in the first place?"

"I didn't know when to bring it up," she admitted. "I couldn't do it in town, and since you didn't come in the diner this morning where I was planning on directing myself into the restroom so you would follow and we could have a good morning kiss, I just thought I'd take the first opportunity that came along, and God, I was stupid." She looked down at herself, cursing her timing. "This is tougher than I thought, I mean there you are looking all cute right in front of me, and I don't know when to make the first move."

"In the diner?" I questioned aloud. I didn't even know the diner had a bathroom.

She nodded back. "Yeah, I was waiting in there for you to come in. I don't know how many times I looked out the window this morning."

"I guess I should stop being so stubborn then," I admitted, feeling sort of down for disappointing my girl. "I just feel like I have to buy something when I go into a place, call it Emily Post syndrome."

"When I buy you the tea Paris," she told me, smiling and moving her hand into mine, "that's the signal that you can go in. It's an extra $1.50, nothing that's sending me to debtor's prison. I like you, and that means you can come into my world whenever you feel."

"But your mom--" I just have the feeling that Lorelai is thinking my offer of a morning ride as leading Rory down that evil path into the world of the entitled. Rory moved in to assure me.

"She's fine with it. I want you to be more Annie Hall and less Woody Allen here, please."

I rolled my eyes at the mention of my mental state, and then realized something out loud. Remember here, I have an IQ figure in the higher echelon of the 160's. "I missed a chance to kiss you in Luke's?" I felt like I had a hot pink shirt with an upturned arrow pointing up from the sentence reading 'I'm with stupid' on.

"Luke's girls room, but nonetheless, Luke's." I shook my head, feeling pretty dumb as she reassured me that it wasn't an emotional wallop that would bring her down for the rest of her life. "If you're worried about how sanitary it is, it's cleaned three times a day."

I smiled funnily, this twist of fate irking me to no end. "Yes, but at least it would've been private. I don't understand your madness, but next time you have something planned like that, I have text messaging in my phone, a simple ':-* me in Luke's bathroom' missive (and yes, I actually spoke the words 'kiss symbol colon-dash-asterisk' in that sentence; don't look at me like that!) would've sufficed in getting me in there." I caressed her hand, looking at her with all the love for her I had. "If I promised you that I'll actually come in tomorrow morning, uhh, could I kiss you here, now? Please?" Oh yeah, I'm not about to ghostwrite the next #1 Harlequin bodice-ripper here. I felt again like a nervous little Jewish girl.

That is, until Rory parted her lips open and ran her hand up my side slowly until it was against my warmed and probably red right cheek. She moved in closer and I could sense the mix of cinnamon toast, cool mint Scope and Eight O'Clock on her breath. "Cross your heart you'll come in tomorrow?" Her voice hushed, and I couldn't help but think that overnight she seemed even more alluring to me.

"I'll be there." I nodded back at her, looking at the morning rush passing by us northbound. I caressed her palm with my pointer, noticing that she hadn't put on her tie yet, leaving one button open and bare freckled skin leading into her oxford shirt. I squinted my eyes, trying to think of something dry and academic, something that wouldn't lead to me trying to replicate the work of Alfred Kinsey in those two bucket seats.

"Good." She gave me her shy smirk, and then broached the last of the distance between us to give me that good morning kiss floating around our collective brains since the moment we awoke. The spark hadn't faded at all like I expected; our connection was just as strong as our lips met and I moved my free hand up to massage her neck. I felt like I was high on something as I decided to take the lead and deepen it a little, unbuckling my safety belt and bringing myself closer towards her side, so much I felt myself shift onto the console piece separating us.

My body hummed, and I already felt like all my senses were picking up. I flitted the tip of my tongue against her lower lip, pulling it back in because I wasn't ready to go that deep. It was much more of a teasing buss than the kisses from the last evening. It seemed like we were kissing for such a long time, when in reality it was only thirty seconds here, a separation for breath, and then another thirty seconds.

Her hands moved down towards my sweater and fisted material on each side; no iron could've prevented the shirt below from wrinkling. We kept back and forthing nothings about each other and how the emails and sweet dreams were much appreciated and how well we both kissed.

We separated only when a loud semi, obviously breaking the 'no truck' rule on the Cross, honked its horn and shocked the fuck out of both of us. We broke the kiss, but not the contact, figuring the traffic wasn't looking at two girls making out in a car off to the side of the road. I slid back into my seat, slowly easing Rory out of my grasp, finding it hard to bring my attention back to scholastic matters.

"Mile 67," she said to herself. I didn't know why she said that so I asked her the reasoning to repeat the portion of road we were on.

"It's a good mile." She smiled at me, trying to straighten her sweater. "Mile 67 is a good mile because we had our first good morning kiss here. I like this mile."

I gave her an odd look, but had to find it endearing. After all, this is the same girl who along with her mother names small household appliances, like her pencil sharpener Anais. I couldn't help but agree with her, because if the road we were on was a small country lane, with the trees along the sides of the road in the last stages of shedding their leaves for the season, it would be a beautiful scene. I nodded back, and recovered to gather my bearings back to accelerate the car back onto the road, rebuckling up my belt.

Before I did though, Rory had to make me swoon just one more time.

"I like that you ditched the flak jacket by the way." She laughed nervously, and I knew exactly what she was talking about. "You look much more beautiful, more...feminine. Not that you weren't before, but now, even more nice. Yeah." She ran a hand through her hair, giving me this funny smile. "God, I must sound like a perv, I didn't mean to."

"Rory, it's OK," I reassured. "You don't. I sort of did it for you, something subtle only you'd clue in on. Everyone else doesn't care, you know?"

"Oh, right." She looked at the clock, and then smiled. "7:15, we better get going before we end up in trouble." Our comfortable banter remained even after I pulled back on the road, and I spent the rest of the commute up north trying to help Rory get past Mr. Mercurio's pop quiz that was sure to befall us fourth period. It wasn't a good challenging test day, so it was going to end up just a general school day.

When we arrived in the lot and pulled into my space, I immediately noticed that Madeline and Louise were awaiting me at the front door, most likely to confront why my cell phone wasn't on until eight last evening. I had turned it off and not let them know my weekend plans so I could go either way with how I wanted to say I spent my weekend; up in Boston if things didn't go very well at all, or mentioning the dance marathon with a very explicit warning to keep everything down low because the less I was the gossip subject, the better.

I noticed their surprised looks when Rory opened up the passenger's side door, backpack in tow and ready to go.

"Oh...good morning Rory." My dark-haired friend was surprised to see her so early and not coming off the bus.

"Morning," Rory greeted her with a smile. "Did you and Louise have a good weekend?"

Louise interjected her way into the conversation. "Good as in the middle linebacker drowned his sorrows for losing the game within my walls, or good as in general?" Rory soured her lips, and Madeline nervously laughed as both mine and Rory's eyes drifted her way.

"Hey, I studied this weekend, honest. My stepmom's going to take away my Rover privileges if I don't score at least an 1,250 on the SAT's." She looked nervously around the crowd. "You know how much I love my car, I don't want to have to drive around in my dad's old Catera."

The four of us walked into the building, blue spirit posters and a 'GO BLUE DEMONS!' banner in the gymnasium foyer, reminding us of what everyone had been looking forward to only three days ago. "Good weekend, but where were you Gel?" Louise asked me. "I had a tough quotient to figure out, and the homework helpline seemed to be shut down."

I thought for a moment about lying, but I wanted to tell someone outside of Stars Hollow about what Rory and I had done Saturday.

So I spilled, telling Louise the reason I wasn't on the phone was because I was dancing all day and all night.

"Dance marathon?" Louise was astonished by the very concept of this idea, and that six years after my prime, I agreed to go with Rory. "What did your mom have to say about it?"

"Nothing, and if you and you," I pointed at Madeline and Louise, "value your individual lives, you won't say anything to her either."

"Lips are sealed," Madeline told me, making a zipping motion. "Hey, did you know that your mom's new beau was on the World Series of Poker? He was tenth last year--"

"I don't think Paris really cares about that, right?" Rory surprised me by butting into one of Madeline's off-kilter observations and trying to defend me. I nodded and just shrugged. "So about this dance marathon you two, please don't say anything to anyone, but both of us did win the whole enchilada. Don't ask us how, and please don't ask how we came into school without sore feet."

"Won?" Louise questioned. "How long was it, like eight or nine hours?"

"Your time frame is currently in Antarctica and chilly, add some more time." I just wanted to move on from the topic, but as we walked down the hallway, it was hard to admit, but it's nicer to talk to friends when you have more to say about your weekend than you studied all through it.

"Eighteen hours. That's the time limit on your bra, right?"

I was taking a sip of my tea just then, and almost choked upon hearing Madeline's guess. I tried to hold back my first impulse to blush and then admit that breast support wasn't in play for the entirety of my weekend. I found my voice again after gasping out the liquid from my lungs, where it wasn't supposed to go.

"It was 6-6, Saturday morning to Sunday morning, give or take 11 minutes." Thank goodness for Rory noticing my discomfort and trying to veer the topic away from where it was. They were astonished that both of us stuck together for that long.

"Still, you two together, dancing, voluntarily for any amount of time," Louise gestured at both of us. "Never in a million years."

A million years pass by quickly when it's just two days, I thought to myself, feeling that this achievement's afterglow was still warm a day after the event took place. My two lifelong friends were amazed as we both went into an edited account of how well everything went, not mentioning that Rory now knew she was being watched by the camera when she kissed Tristan. I pretty much let Rory tell the story since she knew more about the history of the event than I did, along with the rivalries.

After stopping at our bank of lockers to get our schoolbooks, Louise left when she saw her guy of the week in the hallway moping around, still down about losing to Seth Thomas. Madeline hung with both of us, and asked why I was ferrying Rory to school. It took us a few moments to struggle for an answer, but we finally came up with Rory losing her bus pass and since she paid cash, she couldn't get CT Transit to give her a new one since they didn't have proof of a cancelled check or card transaction. A good way to shrug off any questioning about the arrangement until at least December 1st.

"That's cool, the bus is icky and filled with creepazoids anyways." Her attention seemed to shift somewhere else, and before I could figure out why Mads had to run, she told us she had to leave. "Sorry guys, I uh, have to go." She left us behind, and I just had to wonder if Rory's theory that she was flirting with Brad in secret was correct.

Both of us continued conversating about academics as we came into Advanced Economics, trying to get back into our catatonic states of mind about school where nothing else was a distraction but the instructor's words and the props they used to teach us the lesson. Rory sat in front while I sat in back.

"So, we're here. In class. Our first class." She looked at the familiar surroundings, which now after this close weekend, seemed alien to her. She seemed a little nervous as she sat down at her seat and I stood near her desk. We were both going to be distracted with each other, that was a foregone conclusion; however the seating chart Mr. Silvestri created was sort of a help to my hormones, since we were on a slant where a misdirection towards looking at Rory would be noticed and I would be asked to pay attention.

I smiled at her, finding my voice uncharacteristically shaky. "I'll be back, behind you. Still in the same room."

"Mm-hmm. Hopefully Silvestri's explanation of economic indicators keeps us distracted."

"Yeah." I held out my hand, and with few students in class, touched Rory's palm lightly as I separated from her, a sly way to state how I felt about her without anyone catching on. We said our goodbyes, and I moved to my seat in the back, watching the students walk in and getting out my texts and instruments to lay them out in the order I always did. Text at left, notebook at right, pencil up above, bag draped over the chair. My routine of sitting had never changed, and that comfortable feeling, despite the presence of my new love to my diagonal right five rows down, eased me back into the world of learning as my watch and the bell intersected at 8:05:00am to bring me back into my comfortable world.

Strangely, though I thought about Rory for those forty-five minutes and what she was thinking, in Mr. Silvestri's field of vision, my eyes never directed away from the front blackboard as my left hand gripped my Dixon and decoded Mr. Silvestri's words into my form of note-taking.

Still, my mind wasn't 100% on the class. When he'd turn around to write on the board, my gaze would drift northeast towards Rory's seat in the front, and watch her, taking notes studiously and without distraction. Her focus was on school, and I couldn't help but stare as her eyes drifted left-right as Silvestri moved towards the center, and then the right board, the chalk he held revealing formulas that I had to memorize over and over in my head.

This is why I respect Rory, because she's at Chilton to soak in everything like it's new and exciting. So much was revealed to me last night when she broke down in front of me and told me that she felt unchallenged in Stars Hollow, and scarleted because the students only saw her as the kid of that teenaged mother, not as their future valedictorian. She's quiet and shy, and because of last night, I now know why.

I'm glad that Rory and I went through the path we did in order to come to what we have now. Without her in my life, I might be complacent right now, acting lazy with my grades and just coasting through the year without much to stop me. Both of us give each other speed bumps, and in turn, we also challenge to strive to be better, for our sakes. It was months ago I stopped working for my grades to please Mother, now it's to prove to myself I can be the best.

If it proves to be Rory atop the mountain however, I will be gracious in defeat, no matter how much it might pain me.

Rory and I went our separate directions for our second period classes, leaving me undistracted and at attention through that class. I felt my usual persona of cool, calm and collected come back, and it passed by quickly.

However, spending all that time up in the clouds Saturday, Sunday and this morning blinded my brain, because I had forgotten that this week was another phy ed week for third period. That 45 minutes at 10 in the morning on alternating weeks, was the bane of my existence. Not that I'm saying I don't get exercise at all. Living in the Manor, with a room Daddy converted from an upstairs den into a room filled with all the latest equipment, I try to work out at least once a week, and summer tennis and golf at my country club helps keep me fit as I easily beat Madeline and Louise in those games.

It's just I don't play well with a group. And boy do I hate having to change clothes. As I've said before I usually find the most private place to change and hope that no one in the locker room sees me. Today's game was volleyball though, and though our feet were still a bit sore, Rory and I sucked it up and on the same team, tried our best to help them win.

Unlike the field hockey match she used to lure me in a few weeks ago however, we didn't do so well this time. Most everytime the ball didn't make it past the net when I or she served, and during one try, Rory missed the ball entirely. Everyone laughed, and well, even though she's my girl...I kind of chuckled too. She gave me a dirty look, but since we share a hate for sports, somehow she understood it was more of a 'I'm sorry you suck and I feel miserable for you, but you still look cute trying' laugh than one belittling her.

Rory did try her best to win though, and looked pretty nice doing it. I still remember clearly how hot she looked as she came at me in competition trying to dislodge the ball from my hockey stick, and though she's not an athlete, she looks damned good in her gym shorts and t-shirt. The shirt she wears is tight against her, and when she was going in for a volley or a spike, I couldn't help but feel sidetracked by her body. If the heat of competition is good for one thing it's that everyone's too distracted trying to pay attention to the game, leaving me with plenty of time to give heated looks towards my girlfriend. During one point, she jumped up in the air to try a spike, and oh dear...her shirt would become untucked and I'd get a nice look at that flat stomach my hands caressed last night as we cuddled during the news. Needless to say, I was finding myself flushed red from something besides physical activity.

Somehow, we both got through the game, and after having to take ribbing from all the girls about how awful we were, I headed back into the girl's locker room to shower and change. This time I managed to time myself so that I ended up in the shower first, got my quick sprtiz and shampoo in, then ducked out before Rory could see me in just a towel, or less.

I changed back into my uniform and thought I would be able to get out of there scot-free, without having to see Rory after she came out of the shower. She's changed by now, I thought to myself, confidently. She hates gym like I do, Rory can't wait to get outta this class.

I took my messenger bag out of my locker and put the combination lock back on the hasp. I was ready to leave, trying to dodge out before I'd get stuck with my new girlfriend in a less-than-fully-clothed situation...

"Paris." I felt a finger tap the back of my shoulder, and that familiar light tone in my ears. My breath stilled as I confirmed who it was with a calling out of her name.

She responded that it was her, and for a moment, I seemed to temporarily lose that important information in my mind to remind me that I was now romantically involved with her. I also went on the assumption she was trying to get my attention fully clothed.

I need to really learn that all that assumptions do is get me in trouble. For when I turned around, Rory wasn't clothed.

Oh shit, look away, look away! I felt myself firm up, a bit thankful she was in bra and panties, but nonetheless it triggered the effect of dragging my mind, then focused on the 'surprise' Russian Novels pop quiz, right down into the gutter.

I didn't look away like my mind scolded me to, instead my gaze remained firm. She was mismatched, wearing a white cotton bra and a pair of floral print panties colored purple, reminding me of her station in life as a small town girl who could care less if she was matching Victoria's Secret with Hanes Her Way. I felt my breath quicken because I was startled at the sudden picture presented in front of me, and struggled to hold back several reactions; one to lash out at Rory for startling me in this state of undress, and the other to push her against the lockers and ravish her senseless.

I asked her what she wanted, all the while holding my gaze with her and holding back the temptation to note her Dover-shaded skin looked particularly alluring from the skylights above us that were installed to lessen the dungeon-like feel of the eighty year-old room.

"Ms. Stuart stopped me before I left because she wanted to ask who was covering girl's basketball for the Franklin this year. I told her I didn't know, and she gave me this list to give to you of suggested candidates she'd like to cover their beat." She handed me that list, and looked down. "She delayed me a little, so could you let Mr. Mercurio know that I'll be a little late getting into class?"

I pocketed the list in the side pocket of my messenger bag without a glance, and frowned. "She does this every year Gilmore, and thinks that we have a bias for covering the men's varsity, so she wants someone who won't criticize her coaching style. If you see her, let her know it's going to be Ella Walsh, same as last year. If she doesn't like her, tell her we can just as easily ignore the lady Demon beat this year. We only have six pages for sports and only so many sports to cover, so if Ms. Stuart wants better coverage, she needs to whip those girls into shape. Otherwise they're going below hockey, plain and simple."

She looked at me as I made my Tony Kornheiser-like point, and understood where I was coming from. "I won't see her again today, but I'll slip a note into her mailbox about it." Rory looked up at me, and smiled nervously. "I should probably get dressed before you rebuke me for wasting your time with this and being late for class, sorry about that." About then she covered up her chest, seeming to remember her modesty finally. "I'll uh, be going now."

I looked around the locker alcove to see if there was anyone watching us in this odd conversation. I felt like I was going to burst and Rory shifted her bare feet on the cool tile floor, her nervous energy obvious. Somehow I had to let her know that this wasn't something I didn't exactly hate.

I was getting used to exchanging those conspirital smiles between us, previously used to belittle those who tried and failed to rise to our GPAs, but now to denote this relationship we were somehow keeping away from the always busy social circle of Hartford.

"This wasn't a waste of time, rest assured. It's fine that you came to me with this." I let her know, coding my words. "Just try to match next time, uniformity with everything and anything, you know better." I was trying to keep the surface tension that's defined us for the last three years going in the eyes of our fellow peers if they happened upon us. "Please be on time." One odd look on Rory's face later, I left her behind to puzzle that tension-filled talk, all the while wishing that we shared a study hall instead of a mind-draining class like Russian Novels the next period.

A few minutes later I was at my seat, after telling Mr. Mercurio that Rory might be late. Just as predicted, under a bunch of paperwork that 115 question 'pop quiz' sat, ready to startle absolutely no one. After Rory came in and he sprung the test on all of us, the curses of exams became known to what both of us shared. We had to keep our eyes on the paper at all times, and the instructor walked the aisles, precluding her from being able to flirt with me from behind. "No talking, no moving, no sharing anything with a seat mate," Mercurio bellowed, as the cursed curriculum kept us from in-class reading because some of my classmates, dumbasses they are and rightfully so in that crap class, struggled through the quiz throughout the whole period, precluding Rory from doing much more than an occasional brush of her finger against my back.

This had been the period I had been looking forward to since I awoke this morning. Now it was turning into a soul-sucking and pressure building period of time. Since I finished off the quiz within twenty minutes, I was left twenty-five minutes alone to myself without anything to do since this idiot has a rule that we cannot do schoolwork or organize if we had free time in the class. About the only thing Mercurio lets us do is catch up on reading, and since I didn't have a modicum of interest in reliving more of Tolstoy's dragging Peace, I was left alone with my mind, sensing that Rory was having an actual struggle with the quiz and trying to remember what I had told her in the car that morning.

The time dragged, my mind agonized because the girl behind me thought of me as more than a friend and to all the world I still had to remain an iron bitch towards her inside Chilton. Somehow I started to feel as if this was a bad idea, this loving for Rory, because we had so much to go against us. You have thirty miles, two communities, an entire school, and two families with the most austere reputation in all of Connecticut's capital between you, I thought to myself. Have you even thought about how everyone else is going to react to you two involved?

No doubt that was myself being analytical about everything. I stared towards the state flag hanging in the corner, my mind needing a non-blank focal point to look at so I wouldn't be driven insane, per the advice of Dr. Birnbaum. For the first time since my breakdown in the Stars Hollow High bathroom, I thought about the reactions of Mother and my father, and of my extended family, not to mention those of the Chilton faculty and those at Harvard I had known for at years.

Somehow within all this mess in my brain, I started getting this feeling that I was acting selfish. Here I was, falling for Rory Gilmore head over heels, and I wasn't giving one thought to how anyone else would think about it. Doubts started to overtake me, as I thought about the impact of this relationship. Harvard was going to be definitely affected, my interactions with other girls would end up having to change to pre-empt a jealousy streak from Rory just in case I started to unknowingly flirt, and I would feel an extreme amount of guilt if I had to date a boy on Mother's behest to keep up appearances.

I started to sweat in my seat, my stomach rumbling and acid starting to rise up my esophagus. I was being someone I was not, passionate and willing to put aside anything and everything just for the love of a girl. My mind was supposed to have a Terminator focus on Cambridge, not a girl from the sticks. I felt scared for how I was thinking, but I couldn't help it, because once one doubt set in, and then another, and then another. Madeline and Louise laughing at both of us, telling us we were both so desperate we could only find solace in each other. Charleston finding it 'a troubling development in your high school career Miss Gellar. The reputation of this school will take a hit if we send a gay valedictorian to Harvard, wouldn't Vassar suit you instead?'

Then I thought about my baby; my paper. The Franklin has 74 years and 10 months of tradition, and in one move, it could all be taken away from me. Those rumblings at the country club about my evasiveness with the guys and my disinterest in dating, that I was a 'butch bitch in a plaid skirt'. But my mind stayed on The Franklin, and what would happen if Rory and I came out. No doubt a rival undergrounder would be formed right away, bite into circ and my writers and workers would be discredited, or worse. The image came to my mind of that homophobic hate-mongering Dr. Falwell, finding his ire with the harmless Teletubbies gone, focusing all his hate and vitriol on an innocent school newspaper editor, accusing me of advancing a gay agenda when the only agenda I had was to produce a damned good read every week from September to June.

I was starting to panic, my mouth drying out and my breath quickening with doubt. I felt like crying, and here I was in front of Rory, doubting my love for her, feeling guilty for my feelings. I remembered feeling this way only once in my life, when I was in fifth grade and bombed a simple math test. I dreaded bringing home the paper, marked with a C-, and so I didn't, for three days. After all that guilt built up for keeping the result from Mother, I became physically sick and ended up in the hospital for two days (over a weekend of course, so I kept my perfect attendance streak going) from exhaustion. When she found out, despite what I went through, she grounded me for a week.

That was how I felt this morning, though to a much lesser extent. My stomach lurched, and a wave of dizzying nausea overcame me. I hyperventilated in my seat, and without Rory's hand in my hair or along my neck, I never felt the sense of calm I usually did in Russian Novels. Maybe it was the mix of a wrong food in there somewhere, or else my body wasn't feeling all in the subject matter. Before I knew it though, I was rising up in my seat, raising my hand, crying out aloud in anguish to Mr. Mercurio for what was a rare mid-class pass to the restroom.

"Miss Gellar," he called, his high academic tone grating me like scraping fingernails on bare sheetrock, "You have ten minutes until the bell, and surely you can wait--"

I held back a shocked breath as I made an excuse on the fly. "I forgot to take some medication before this class, for my lactose intolerance." I acted panicked. "I always have to take it at maximum a half hour before, otherwise I cannot have dairy. I apologize sir, but I want to partake of the special whipped pumpkin pie today."

"Fine." He barely acknowledged me as he scratched the pertinent details on the yellow slip of paper, and without looking back, I fled out of the classroom, and then the few hundred feet to the nearest ladies room, which I was thankful was empty as I threw up in the handicapped toilet, my stomach emptying its contents of the morning and releasing a tight knot of unease. I hated having to flee from that classroom, but at least the quiz was finished, and since everyone knew my imposition to dairy, my dignity remained intact.

I didn't want to go back into that classroom though, with all these thoughts spinning around in my mind. I thought it was right, that I was putting everything below Rory and fucking up the rest of my life. I sat down on the seat after flushing and cleaning my face up, wishing the world would just go away and leave me in peace. I was convinced I could never be happy, that I wasn't supposed to be that way. The goal in my life was to continue the Gellar legacy until I gave birth myself and then just step aside, nothing else.

I wasn't feeling feverish, just stressed, and I spent those last seven minutes of the period thinking about what happened the night before, and that I may be giving Rory the dishonor of an awful relationship to come, her being the long-suffering Alice to my Ralph, even though I had never gotten into a physical fight in my life. I'm but a burden, were the words of wisdom floating around my head, a chaotic and disorderly island in a sea of calm. A life spent following my Palm, instead of my heart was the intended path for me to go, and my mother was going to stubbornly make me realize that, gay or not.

Minutes later, I heard the bell ring. I get ready to duck out of the building and towards my car for an off-campus lunch, hoping that the time away from it might give me some clarity.

However, within seconds, I heard the bathroom door open and a clattering of saddle shoes rushing into the room, along with a quickened shutting of the pneumatic unit that closes the door.

Immediately I knew it was Rory, since she was asking from near the sinks if I was in the bathroom. I call her out in response, shirking down in the stall.

"You rushed out of there awfully fast," Rory told me, calm and collected.

I peeked through the slit in the stall door, the familiar 5"7' form and intense blue eyes clear in the 3cm space between the door and the partition. "I'm OK Rory, just go to lunch," I called out. "I guess the tea didn't agree with the toast."

She didn't laugh at my humor, instead, calling for me to come out again. "No one's going to come in here, just, you're never sick, and I could tell. Please come out of there."

I couldn't avoid her, nor keep her from lunch, forever, so with hesitation I unlatched the stall lock and opened the door slowly.

Once I came out, Rory's concern with my welfare was quite obvious, and she seemed to hate seeing me in this condition. I tried to explain I just had a bad food reaction as she handed me my messenger bag, but she wasn't budging.

"Franklin office, right now, we need to talk." She was starting to take charge; making it known that in this relationship we were on even footing.

"But lunch--" I tried to argue, but she came back in that unique Gilmore way of hers.

"Obviously it's not an issue right now, come on." Her simple eloquence stunned me silent, and I could only follow her down the hallway towards the newspaper office.

Once in there, she had me sit down in my chair at the editor's desk, and sat down on the edge, looking at me with all she had. She seemed pained, and sad for me as I looked up at her like I was caught with a hand in the cookie jar. My mind was still spinning with that negativity, and I was afraid of bringing my gaze up.

"Are you alright Par?" Rory asked me, her voice trying to soothe me. "I tried to go after you just after you left, but Mercurio bitched at me about bathroom breaks being one at a time, so I had to stay in my seat until class ended."

"It's alright, I'm good," I lied. "My stomach just had a lurch, nothing awful happened."

"Your posture looked tight and still, there is something going on in your mind." She sighed, and slid off the desk, bringing a chair from the layout table over so that she could sit at my eye level. She sat down and began anew. "I know your brain, sometimes it gets overwhelmed, things happen where you get stressed and it shows on the outside." She lowered her lashes and took my right hand into her left. "You're starting to have second thoughts, aren't you?"

I reeled back a little, freaked that despite not looking back at her all period, she could see transparently into how I was feeling. "Of course not, no, I'm good. That's me, cool as a cucumber." My voice was betraying the inflection I wanted in my head, and I could tell that I was starting to show that yes, I was worried as hell about everything.

"You like me right? In the way that I do you?"

"No question that I do Gilmore," I said with 100% honesty.

"Good." She smiled, and slid a finger into the cuff of my blouse and against my wrist. "Then stop worrying about the little things that might get in your way. I could tell that was stress that was making you puke, and you were getting into overanalyization mode, realizing the reality is more daunting than the fantasy." I felt stiff, and she placed another finger on the wrist, using both fingers to rub it in circles. "That's what you were thinking, right?"

I couldn't lie to Rory, because with her my face is an open book. I just didn't realize that my body language was either. "Maybe a little. Just a smidge." Trying to minimize the trauma wasn't doing any good at all, so I went full tilt after a bit of thought. "It's fanatical to think of Jerry Falwell finding out about us, and trying to force me out of the paper because I'm gay, right? I mean I earned my place as editor, so how could he throw me out?"

Rory shook her head at me, letting out a little laugh. "Maybe a little crazy, and besides, he has bigger fish to fry."

"Probably," I admitted.

I looked down at my shoes for a bit, before Rory put her hand against my chin and had me look back up at her.

"You're not the only one, so don't feel like you're alone here." She heaved a breath, and then told me what her train of thought was for all of fourth period, what was unpictured in my line of vision.

What Rory told me sobered me a little; she had been struggling with the test not for a lack of knowledge about the material, but because she thought everyone could see that her and I were no longer enemies, and more than friends. She went on about feeling Kenneth the Russian Novel nut behind her, like he was watching her every move since being the class suckup he was done in five minutes.

"My mind, it just drifted towards this other place, where I was picturing everyone in my life starting to despise me for this. It's like my mind is trying to overrule my gut, and trying to reassert that I need to be attracted to a guy, like Dean." She frowned at this revelation. "But I'm sick of Dean, I don't want him anymore. It's like, he was safe and unexciting, did all the right things and made the right remark at the right time. I was just in this world where everyone is looking at both of us with heightened awareness, our every move and action. They weren't being kind about our relationship either, they wanted to tear us apart."

She looked down at her free left hand, still bared from the bracelet and replaced with that watch she wore during the dance marathon. "I think about all the months it took to get to this point, and it's just getting into me that where we are, it's not a dream anymore. We're together. And frankly, I'm scared to death that we're going to be so insecure and shifty, we're not going to be into it."

I admitted some of those same doubts to her, like the thought of us losing Harvard, the possible shunning by high society and our own families, and the doubt I feel when I think about how sometimes I don't deserve her. I didn't mince or edit like I usually did to sound cultured and above it all, I felt raw spilling all this out to her. It's strange that I'm doing this in the only place in this entire school where I feel safe, private, and secure, in the office. No one else besides the relevant faculty members and Rory has a key for this room, where we usually spend hours and hours devoted to our publishing craft. The one thing that really bonded us, those long nights spent in this room, watching each other scrutinize pages of loose-leaf for grammar and spelling errors, draft layouts reconfiguring headlines and text...looking at Rory as she tries to scrutinize the red marks on an article I proofread for her, her scowl at decoding why exactly I corrected her and wasn't giving any hints as to what was wrong. It's these little things that turned the little spark of attraction I had for her into a full flame of want.

We both admitted that we thought about much more than those lovey-dovey girl in love items we noted last night as we solidified our attraction. Both of us were nervous and didn't want this to go wrong, and hoping no one found out before we intended them to. The last thing we that we wanted was to be out when we weren't ready to be out.

"We're going to be OK," she told me, confident yet soft. "I'm going to make sure of that, and especially in Stars Hollow, Miss Patty. I didn't mean to forget to tell you this, but I needed to get it out to someone, and when I was out to lunch Friday at the dance studio, she was there, I was bursting, and I needed to know if she thought it was OK to have you be my dance partner. Honestly, we were the first girl-girl unrelated couple in years, and I just wanted to make sure...and well, she got it out of me that I wanted to not only dance with you, but 'dance' with you." She stuck her hands in the air to quote.

For a moment, I was stiff as Rory let me know that indeed, the reason she handed Ms. LaCosta the Bangles CD case before the marathon, was that she did know that Rory was attracted to me. That somehow she got it out of her, and she was able to tell someone.

That meant only one thing; I smiled as I learned about this, wondering why things sometimes end up so fucked up between us, but in these right moments of clarity and total lucidness, everything gets all sitcom-tied-up in the end. I started laughing, upon realizing Ms. LaCosta's view of things above my shoulder.

"What are you laughing at?" Rory's face turned quizzical on me. "Did I say something odd, funny, wrong?"

I shook my head, keeping my smile as I let her know about all those missing ten minutes Saturday night. I honestly didn't see that Ms. LaCosta knew about everything already, but the first sign should have been that she was the only one to enter that bathroom during the break and she was immediately trying to get me back on the floor and back into Rory's arms. It's funny, I couldn't have seen the woman who spread the most gossip in Rory's town to be the only one in that entire municipality to know about us. Though there's a small part of my mind that's afraid she'll blab, I can trust her as much as I do Fran.

"So wait, she's the one that got you back into the dance?" Rory asked. "What would I have done without her, I mean God, we came so close to losing not only the contest, but the entire weekend, and what we had." She started to frown, worrying about what never did happen.

I got up, took her hand into mine, and brought her in for a hug, previously something I would've never done, but was something that was called for here. I shushed her fears, trying to let her know that it was OK to think that way, but not dwell on it. "Sssshhh, don't worry about it Gilmore, everything worked out." The scent of her hair was soothing my own fears that cropped up only minutes before. "We're together, and we're fine, right? You don't have any doubts about the present and the future, just of the past and all those times we just missed out."

Rory looked up at me, and nodded her head, moving her hands lower down my back to tighten the hug. I rested my chin against her shoulder, the hollow of her neck seeming to fit my head perfectly. The moment we were having was soft and intimate, and known to only us, thanks to the drawn shades towards the courtyard window. I didn't want to leave her behind, and she just stayed in my arms for a couple minutes, trying to cut through my firmness by letting me know I felt nice in a hug. She thankfully decided not to broach the Par-Bear nickname, despite how the hug seemed.

We eventually released, kissing on the lips and thankful that we had privacy somewhere in Chilton.

"I apologize if I fled out," I told Rory as we decided that we were ready for lunch, but we'd settle for some yogurt tubes, fruit cocktail cups and some canned Diet Cokes from the office mini-fridge to keep our stomachs settled and our drama out of Chilton's sight. "I just felt those doubts, and they manifested the way they did. When I get nervous my system isn't used to it, and well, I throw up." I didn't laugh, but Rory saw the humor was there.

"When do you see Dr. Birmbaum next?" she then asked, unexpectedly. I gulped a little, because though I tell my psychiatrist everything, the lesbian subject, I hadn't brought up with her because we were more focused on worry over my schoolwork and future than other portions of my mental health. I said to Rory that my next appointment was in two weeks from Wednesday afternoon.

"I'm sure you won't share everything with me, so at least talk to her about this, maybe she can suggest a technique or some extra meditations to calm your nerves. I just want you to be OK hon." She smiled, and I couldn't refuse a promise to Ror, I never have.

"I'll sit down with her and let her know, from what her theories and politics are she's a left-centrist, and since she's on Daddy's payroll and not Sharon's, she'll keep everything secret, patient-client confidentiality notwithstanding." We spent the rest of lunch proofing stories and plugging in layouts, deciding to go with a somewhat similar one to Rory's original idea, changed around a little to fit in the table of contents in the corner and a late bottom banner ad buy. There was just something about working with her at lunch today that put me more at ease, that this was truly our own time to spend, with no one in Chilton about to find us.

She talked about a new novel she had dug up a few days before at her town's bookstore and tried to gauge how I felt about the writing, while I tried to push the idea of audiobooks, be they on tape or iPod on her. "It's better to just hear the book read on the way to an event, and you don't have to worry about the wrong voice speaking the book," I argued. "I also hate it when I'm in a good read and then I repeat reading a line over and over again from a distracting keeping me stuck on that line."

"But the smell of books, you can't beat that." Rory fought back with her own side of the argument. "Anyone can press a CD or record a tape to shuttle it out to the stores with some general dull-voiced guy reading it. With a book though, it's the author's work completely. The formatting, font type, paper used, the cover, and lastly, the voice you create for the character in your head. It reflects how the author wants you to see this world they're creating."

"I know, but I like it aural." I stopped to make my point, and forgot to remember the other form of the word I just pronounced.

Rory gasped at my answer, shocked and widening her mouth into an O. "You mean aural as in hearing it, I hope."

My mind reprocessed the sentence and realized how it could've sounded in another form. I put my hand up to my mouth, blushing because of what I said.

Being myself though, I dug myself into an even deeper hole. "Of course, aural as in 'to hear' of course. That doesn't mean I don't like...the other thing. Not that I've ever had it or given it to someone else, I'm sure it's fine and very wonderful, and..." I wandered off as I noticed Rory's smile widen and her looking at me like I was crazy. I stared her down and tried to get serious. "Hey, you're the one who latched onto my vocal miscue, don't be putting these words in my mouth, you know what I meant!"

She giggled, drawing closer to me and both of us backing towards a wall along the side near the darkroom. "I knew what you meant." The side of Rory that only Dean had ever saw was coming out, and I felt myself wanting to lose control as my mind thought over those words and brought up those images of myself...well I don't have to spell it out here. Suddenly I felt like I was back in sophomore year, Tristan shamelessly flirting with me to get what he wanted, usually some notes or a paper done. Only Rory knew what she wanted; me.

"Well, why...why run with it if you knew my meaning?" I nervously asked as the space between us became less and less.

Rory's confidence was strong, and I saw the resolve I had in her eyes as she moved her right hand against my cheek, and talked in a hushed tone towards me.

"Because, it's nice seeing you off-guard, and you were asking for it."

I argued back that I didn't ask, but the mini-fight of banter was short-lived once she moved in for a soft kiss. I returned it, and though we only kissed for a bit, the love within it was perfectly expressed.

"I'd like to do more than that, but if someone walks in on us, wouldn't look good." She felt sorry for not bringing it further as we separated, but it wasn't something I was about to argue at all. The big problem with a school like Chilton is privacy has to be earned with anonymity and grades, not assumed. Since we were academic loners our space was respected, but at any moment a wayward underclassman could walk into an intimate moment, and moments later, the illusion of being alone was gone, everyone would look at us. Look at what happened when I spread the gossip about Lorelai and Mr. Medina; I turned a quiet parent's day lunch into a torrent of noise and bluster.

I was just glad to share an intimate moment with her in the school. After a worried talk about someone watching us, both Rory and I decided to self-police ourselves and kill the temptation we'd have to do anything within Chilton. As we looked at the clock and saw the end-of-lunch bell was approaching, we finished the proofing and made a rule for ourselves; no kissing in Chilton, period. Nothing blown, implied or written down on paper that said we were kissing. We had privacy today, but it could always go away in the snap of a finger, both of us afraid of an intimate moment being walked in and intentions being misconstrued by others.

"What about after-school though? If we have a brain-mash session once Ms. Peters leaves?" Rory wanted to create a loophole to the rule within moments of us shaking hands on the agreement. "If there's no one near the office, is it OK?"

I shook my head, thinking I never would've thought of you as sex-starved Gilmore. I didn't tell her that, but said we should just take it a little at a time; if it was during a week with an off day, maybe I'd do it, but you never know with the Chilton custodial staff if they'd come in, see us and then blab or not.

We were comfortable, and I left the room a little lighter. The doubts I have still linger a bit, but not as badly as if I kept them in.

The only problem I have with Rory right now is that I want more from her than to kiss her. I want to share her bed, and love her in the way I've seen in my dreams and wandering thoughts of her. I know I can't try anything right now, lest I scare her and myself also. In the baseball analogy I'm not even out of the batter's box yet, since I'm watching the ball drift along the foul line and hoping it stays straight along. Baby steps Par, don't rush it, that's the guiding mantra in my head.

The day finished out swiftly and without much more tension between the both of us, though the Life Sciences class where we shared a table was a fight with my brain and my heart to stay on topic and in focus. I wanted to be more than her table buddy, but for the safety of both of us, I stayed separated from her, thankfully because of lab work that brought Madeline and Louise to us in a group project. They have something called 'gay radar' (at least that's what I think it might be called, I've heard it reduced to the one word 'gaydar' in some media), and sometimes they come off as having stronger signals than Hartford's weather office. No need to take a risk of brushing my ankle against hers with both of them in our sight, and I have to keep the old façade up when I'm dealing with them for an entire class period.

Once we got back into the Franklin afterschool, Rory and I were in work mode, and it showed in how we carried ourselves. We were able to control any mooning we had over each other, and I was completely focused on explaining the front page and story choices to the staff, who were taking everything pretty much like I thought. That is the news staff quarreled with sports and Erica was indeed pissed at Jenna and Davidson for pushing her into a tease. I did my best to calm her down from her 'column stealers' tirade, and compromised with her by pushing the syndicate piece tease atop the right side of the masthead out and giving her a better descrip along the entire masthead. She's not happy with me, but at least I didn't lose her entirely.

The ride back to Stars Hollow was also calm with Rory, probably because we needed time alone to ourselves to gather and think about how we're going to go further with this. The time we're spending is good, but sometimes we don't need to fill the time with conversation because we're comfortable enough not to have to spill silent space with unfocused monologues. We talked, but mostly about the newspaper and more student government business that was put aside for the entire weekend. Our working relationship needed to be recharged, and I had to figure out some way to keep Francie at arms length and away from any important decisions. Her motives are very suspicious lately, and this new sorority that's being allegedly formed with her as the figurehead within the shadows is intriguing to me, though not in a positive way. After that last experience with the Puffs, I'm not ready to join one anytime soon. The forced camaraderie and excitement over something inane like a makeover or some event that's allegedly for a charity but just a front to fund them, that's not my idea of fun. A night at the table doing schoolwork, pondering the unsolvable puzzle some eccentric is offering $10,000 to the one person who can solve it, sticking to the NewsHour no matter how many bloggers think that the evening news is an anachronistic tradition soon to go the way of the hand-cranked car. I'm quite happy to live that way.

Rory understands me so much. On the way home we also had this conversation not about our relationship, but something no one will ever understand as fun. We talked about long Scrabble words and how we could work in the Q, X and Z pieces onto a blue or pink square to score high point totals, for instance. She's always felt like she could beat someone in the game, but the trouble is that most Hollowites would never dare take her on in a challenge because her brain has almost the entirety of both the Webster's New World and the Merriam-Webster Collegiate dictionaries memorized. I tell her I'm willing to play her one day, and she smiles and gets excited over being challenged in that. She almost had an orgasmic squeal over it, I swear!

We stopped at the town line and shared our goodbye kiss, knowing there was no way in hell we'd be able to get away with it in town without someone watching us. I hated to leave her behind, but Mother left a voice mail on the home phone letting me know she was jetting in at nine, so with a lot of apprehension, I said goodbye to Rory at the foot of her home's stoop, but not before I felt this calm I never had before.

I look over my homework now here at my desk, and the day that just passed puts a smile on my face. We both had worst of times, and then best of times, but we came through the day unscarred and unregretful about what we're doing. My mind might be buried in Rory at times, but it still knows I have to go to Harvard, so I can let anything, even my love for her, get in my way.

There's just something in my head nagging at me yet. It's fun darting looks and notes between each other in class, but despite how much I loathe the very idea of dating, I want to go out with Rory, and soon. I mean sure, technically the dance marathon could be considered our first 'date' in a pre-meditated way, a part of the plan Rory used to tell me she wanted me as her girlfriend. Certainly, I'm not datable to begin with; the flat date with Jamie in Washington hammered home that idea. Then of course Tristan, with the damned index cards.

But I want to try and go out with Rory, see how we would work in a public setting. This time each of us knows how we feel about each other, so things will certainly go a lot better than when someone's pining over the other, and that other is looking at their watch waiting for bedtime to finally come because they're so bored. Our conversations so far have to stick to surface issues because of time and school. I want to go deeper with her, get to know the Rory behind those blue eyes, see her for who she is. And in turn, I feel ready for her to know me more, hear my secrets, know my life as I know it.

You might think 'But it's only one day, you need some more time to think about this Paris.' That might be, but I've been denying how I feel about her for a year and a half, shoving that yearning of to the side off to the side and resigned to the fact she'd never see me that way, no matter what I did. I've been ready for Rory for months, preparing myself, steeling myself for the inconceivable, that we’d be together like this.

I know I'm ready for her, completely for a first date. I have the generic dinner and a movie date planned out, several restaurants in the Zagat circled, and hitting up CTNow and Rotten Tomatoes for movie reviews, times and ability to sneak a kiss in with your squeeze when things get sort of dull. I have everything planned in my head, from pulling up in her driveway until the last kiss goodnight, with everything else in-between.

The only problem; the performance of the asking her out. I don't know how to do it; my Sadie Hawkins ask-out towards Tristan freshman year pretty much consisted of me looking like an open-mouthed goat trying to get the words 'Will you dance with me, please' out, and failing once he eyed some mousy-looking redhead and fled away from me as fast as he could.

I have to think about this ask-out carefully as possible. Rory wants to go out with me, I know it. She likes me. No denying that.

Trouble is, am I a great dating companion, or the first girl on Elimidate to be dumped because she kept her shirt on and stayed away from the whipped cream orgy? I don't want to bore her to tears, so I better not take her to an extremely uppity restaurant where $100 for a meal is considered value pricing. Nor should Cosmos be considered material to 'get busy' to (my mind, it hurts it to think that in my head!).

This is going to be tougher than I thought; I knew romance would be tough to figure out, but this is challenging.

Then again, I'd rather be planning out how to ask Rory out than still fretting that she likes me or not. It's a good kind of worry to have, that's for sure. Rory, what I do to please you...

Rory's POV, Wednesday, 6:30pm

I've always thought of myself of being in control of all the aspects of my life, from the day I started becoming conscious about life when I was four and started to think for myself rather than out of control, weighing the consequences and my actions before I did something. Whether it be with school, life, or socially, my mind didn't wander from task one, no matter what.

It was the same with sleep. Sure I had the occasional nightmare or fairy tale princess dream like all good little girls have, but usually my dreams always involved two subjects, the events of the day, or me living the book I just read. I dreamt I was Alice, Cinderella, Goldilocks, Ramona Quimby, whatever. I even had sexual confusion and dreamed of myself as the title boy in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory once, and other guys in stories. I fell into the role well though, and no one got freaked out my voice was a little higher than usual or that my hair seemed a little long.

My dreams have advanced in the last few years once I matured into the world of dating. Dean started permeating them, followed by Jess, and the drama I had in the triangle I didn't want to be in with either of them. Usually they'd be me trying to make a choice between them and figuring things out; and then the 'dates' I went on with them seemed right out of the Vaseline-smeared scenes of some 80's guy and gal combo running in a field or kissing, or looking at a lake as the announcer tells us all that 'The Lovin' 70's has all your favorite songs, all sung by the original artists, and it can be yours for $17.95 cassette, or $23.95 for two CDs. Operators are standing by, call now!'

Yeah, I need to stop watching bad late night movies on USA, I know. Thankfully those ads haven't made their way into my current dream repertoire.

Then again, my dreams of Paris and I would be considered too hot for a channel you don't need a descrambler to watch; the kind that are without commercials or FCC restrictions.

The one I had this morning of her was kind of strange. I thought back to the time when we had the picnic basket auction, where Jess bid on my sad attempt at emulating Martha Stewart and I ended up spending the afternoon with him instead of Dean, bonding with him a little.

My mind decided to muck the image up a little, with everything that happened beforehand still going on, up until the point Jess made his eighty dollar bid. Also, I'm continuing the secret romance with Paris I had started with that dream about the night of the Bracebridge Dinner from last week...

I'm pretty much resigned to the fact that I'll be spending the afternoon with a guy I'm not really interested in, and will piss off my current boyfriend who has a problem being outwitted by someone else with guts. The boys are fighting and bickering about my bid price like I'm a cow at the slaughter with the choicest cut of beef ever available. I'm rolling my eyes at the entire situation and bored; this wasn't how I wanted to spend my day.

"I'M RIGHT HERE!" I grit out through my teeth, impatiently.

Now if you notice, the dream went from heated to irritating within the space of a minute. You want to wonder why? Was it Tristan or Dean entering stage left and asking to join in? Did the maid come in and notice us? Did Sharon walk in with groceries?

"Rory, wake up, Rory..."

Nope, it was Paris' voice morphing into that of my mom's, her hand shaking my back, trying to rouse me awake out of bed.

"RORY!" I hear Mom picking up her tone. "Come back to reality here kiddo!"

It was then I realized that Mom usually isn't the one to wake me up. I open my eyes a little to take a look at my alarm clock, trying to focus on the glowing numbers through the haze of sleep.

A few moments later, I start to realize what time it is, once I see a 6 shape at the far end of the display...

I mumble out a "What?" to Mom, and try to turn back into bed...

"Rory, it's 6:40, get up otherwise I'm pouring cold water on your head!"

6:40, 6:40...I try to recall the meaning of the time in my head...

Holy shit! I was still in bed with an hour-twenty-five to go before school; 6:40 is the time I'm usually sipping my morning blend and eating my cinnamon toast at Luke's.

I rose out of bed like a bat out of hell, already attentive. "SIX!! FORTY?! It's six freakin' forty?! Please tell me this is a dream!"

Lorelai told I was in reality alright; by pinching my arm at the wrist! "We're behind Sleeping Beauty, really badly."

"Ouch!" I reeled back my arm as she moved away from the side of my bed. "No, this can't be right, the alarm is set for 5:30, it's just early..." I wandered off, looking at the clock once again, reading the cursed 20 to seven time. "It's 6:40!"

"I think we've established the time more than a NewsRadio 88 anchor on speed here, get up!" My mom was being extra snarky this morning, and this certainly wasn't helping.

I was already grumpy, and finding out your alarm backup was asleep on the job only makes your mood worse. "What time did you get up?"

"6:30," Mom said.

"But what about the fuzzy clock, don't you set that for 5:30?" I asked. She shook her head at me and explained the fuzzy clock had no working battery for at least three weeks, thus she was depending on my biological clock's punctuality as her wake-up call.

"Why didn't you put a new battery in it?" I asked, trying to stay calm. "We have extra batteries in the junk drawer, why didn't you look there?"

"Because, you still tick when I throw you against the floor," she reasoned. "Fuzzy clock breaks, fuzzy clock's alarm is annoying, fuzzy clock--"

"Fuzzy clock needs a AAA battery in it because I'm not having this happen again!"

"Well look who got up from the wrong side of the bed," Mom joked. That only soured my mood even further with her. "Wait, you're not even out of bed yet, but you're grumpy, so technically--"

"Paris is gonna kill me, that's what she's going to do," I reasoned out loud, getting out of bed by throwing the blankets towards my nagging mother. "I promised to meet her at Luke's at 6:55, non-negotiable. Now she's gonna drive away without me, and probably she'll be mad all day because I ditched her."

"Rory--"

"I have to get in the shower. I need to catch up and pray that I can get everything done in the next ten minutes... " I stopped at my dresser for only enough time to make sure my underwear and socks matched (Paris' little lecture at me Monday about matching in the locker room had made me really self-conscious about that) and that my uniform was pressed and clean. I couldn't even hear Mom as she tried to stop me. In her voice's place was that firm voice of Par's like a drill sergeant pushing me to the limits and demanding I do fifty pushups.

I slammed the bathroom door hard, slipped out of my pajamas and hopped into the shower, turning the water on hot straight-out and almost burning myself in the process. My mind was still spinning from the dream that made me oversleep; Paris drawing in closer, about to touch the tip of her tongue against my clit...

And Mom woke me up from it! I washed my hair, starting to feel embarrassed that my mom had to wake me from a sex dream! I flushed cherry red, thinking about what may have happened if it had been twenty minutes later and I'd be near the climax...the guilt of seeing that would probably give both of us a heart attack.

I stood there in the shower, doing my usual routine of shampoo, conditioner and body wash, wishing I was feeling normal and staid. Instead my mind was heated from the images that just went through my brain. I wanted to stop and relax and finish out the dream so much, even if I had to create the rest in a daydream. Thinking about Paris like that, as a sexual aggressor who used a town event to get into my pants. God, my dreams were never this depraved when Dean was mine.

I felt myself warm from more than the shower spray as I thought back to the exact moment when I was so rudely interrupted by my mom's hand shaking me awake. It had lasted through an hour of an alarm I wasn't sure went off or not, and I was wet when I got out of bed. The muscles in the back of my neck were tight, my heart beating just from the very idea that I was dreaming of Paris seducing me like that.

I wanted to do more than take a shower, so badly. I felt knotting all over and a certain uncertainty that I didn't finish what I started, my whole morning was incomplete. I gulped everything down however, and focused on the time rather than my needs as I rushed through the bathroom tasks and slid into my uniform a few minutes later, continuing my morning routine, no matter that my body was telling me to do more than smell the coffee.

Coffee...my thoughts were distracted by that as I ran out into the kitchen, the microwave clock confirming the time.

6:57, it read. If I wasn't dead before, I should start my last will and testament, because Paris was going to be here any minute to bitch me out about time management and my incompetent alarm clock. I headed into my room panicky, with an undone tie hanging around my neck, my shirt tucked on one side and not the other, and askew socks...

"Fourteen minutes, I'm impressed Gilmore. I would've figured you a seventeen minute shower girl." And apparently, a certain blonde girl is sitting on my bed, taking in the décor of my bedroom, and smiling at me like I was the biggest dork in all of human kind.

I was panting and in a rush to get to the town square in the next ten minutes, and my reason for getting there, Paris, was sitting on my bed, holding a cup in her hands and her messenger bag draped over her shoulder. Suffice to say I was shocked; how did she know? Why was she in my room, and not waiting for me outside.

"What are you doing--" I tried asking her and making excuses for my lateness that didn't involve her and I...together in dreamland.

She stood up from her spot on the bed, came towards me, and smiled. "While you were rushing to get into the shower, your mom was trying to yell at you to call me and have me stop here at the house instead of the diner. Since the combination of you showering with a cell phone to your ear might prove to be fatal, she used your phone to call me just as I was getting into town and let me know you slept in this morning."

"Oh." I could only see myself as a mouse, small and meek. In my rush to be on time, a simple detour to my phone and her directory entry would've brought her to the house instead of me running towards the town center on pure adrenaline. Stupid, I chastised within my mind.

Paris moved towards me, her nervous energy getting to me. She felt as awkward about the situation as I did, looking towards the window.

She played with the edge of the cuff of her sweater as she went on. "I didn't know if we had time or not to stop at Luke's, so I stopped there and ask for a couple take-out cups. This one is yours. I gave the other cup to your mom." I was handed the cup of warm joe, but she kept her attempt at banter up. "I hope one creamer and a pinch of sugar was fine, that's what Luke told me you usually took."

I sipped it for a jolt and to make sure it tasted fine. Indeed it was perfect as usual. "Good memory," I said softly, my mind thinking more about Paris instead of coffee, and how she was looking at me. I must've looked the part of a mess with how I dressed, buttoned and covered, but not straightened out. I felt out of it, awkward. Why were we suddenly not so verbal, looking at each other the way we have the last two days but not saying anything?

I sat the cup on the dresser, feeling embarrassed about my state of dress out of the shower. I needed to straighten myself out first, think about Paris' romantic interlude second. "How was the drive down?" I asked nervously.

"Good. Non-eventful, my car isn't scratched, no rain, another postcard autumn day in the land of nutmeg." I started to tuck the blouse in my skirt, a silent version of throat-clearing trying to communicate I needed privacy. "Did you look over that proposal from the Armory about a rental increase for the Winter Formal?"

I nodded back, looking Paris over. She looked the same as the last four days I've seen her. Still smart, beautiful, driven, that hidden sexuality only I truly knew and was trying to bring out sort of subdued after a cooled day yesterday, no thanks to Mr. Mercurio deciding that our Russian Novels class was 'the worst he ever tested' through that one pop quiz, and forcing us to start War and Peace over again for no reason except he's a top-par asshole.

I told her rushed I had read the report, feeling her eyes on me with each move I made. My suggestion was to halve their asking price of $3,500 with our usual yearly $2,500 bid that sufficed for twenty years. We both knew the state guard was using the building for military activities again and to show support for them the price increase was necessary. My mind was more concerned with her staring however. My blouse was unbuttoned down two places and a head gesture to show her out of the room wasn't working.

As I went on about the proposal, she moved towards me, invading my arms length in that assertive Paris-like way I've pretty much become used to over the last couple years. "Fine, we'll try to ask them for $3,000 rent. What's on my mind right now however is you." Her voice was firm, yet the dominating message within the statement was expressed clearly. "How, if you have a 5:30 wakeup time, did you end up just hopping out of the shower now? I checked your alarm clock, it has a loud alert and works just fine, so you can't tell me you slept through an hour of that, or seven nine-minute snooze periods."

"I don't even know if my alarm went off," I responded honestly. "It was 6:40, Mom shakes me awake, I curse a little in my head and I'm off for the shower." I shook a little as she moved closer towards me.

"Look, it's OK, sometimes we oversleep, at least I knew before I got mad at you about it. Which I wouldn't have unless you decided to go Sandra Dee on me overnight and shirk all responsibility altogether."

"OK, good, I'm glad you said that." I tittered softly, my sarcasm synapses apparently on holiday. "I don't look good in leather anyways."

"You know," Paris brought her voice down to a whisper. "Lorelai had to run to the neighbor's for a few minutes."

"Babbette and Morey's?" I was getting annoyed that my compressed routine was getting sidelined. "But she usually doesn't go out there in the mornings to talk..." I felt her move closer, seemingly in an attempt to pin me towards a wall.

"Rory, connect the dots." I felt my rear bump the wall farthest from the window. "If we weren't the way we are now, you really think I'd be in your room, much less your house? I'd be waiting in the car honking the horn every minute, waiting for you to come out." She curled the corners of her lips up, lowering her voice a little more. "Lorelai kind of played an Ed Belfour role because it was odd to those two my car pulled up here at this time of morning, and right now she's trying to make sure they know I have permission to come here. They were about to play twenty questions with me, where are you from, what kind of music you like, how many pets, those kinds of things. Lorelai saw me, ran out from the porch towards me, took her coffee and played interference as I walked into the house and waited for you."

"So wait," I tried to clear my head. "They tried to intercept you, but..." I felt a cool hand plant against my side, and I knew just what Paris was doing with me.

"Twelve years of meet-and-greets have trained me well, avoidance is key. I'll talk to them one day, but once 6:55 comes, you're my charge. That means doing anything and everything to get to this point." Her left thumb lifted the hem of the blouse, the untucked side, to gain access to the waist of my skirt. "In plain English, that means I want what we've both wanted in these last two days."

My lungs staggered, and I struggled to breathe normally as I awaited another of those blood-rushing kisses I was fast getting used to. Still, my mind tried to setup a punchline. "Proper Chilton uniform protocol?"

She laughed smally, wrapping an arm around the small of my back. "You can fix it in the car Gilmore."

"What about breakfast?"

She pointed to the breast pocket of her blouse. "Grabbed a pack of raspberry. Just eat it over a napkin and throw the pop tart wrapper in the ashtray after you unwrap; I'll make an exception about eating in the car just this one time."

My excuses for putting off the morning kiss were fast running out. "I haven't gargled yet--"

She put a finger to my lips, and brushed a slick wet clump of hair back to behind my ear. "Just suck on an Altoid." I laughed a little, those words so familiar from a year ago when she was my last-minute Romeo.

"I'm not in the mood to, right now at least." I felt kind of geeky, but that feeling went away as Paris closed the distance between us and softly kissed me on the lips, her hands resting at my sides, her focus on me and nothing else. I brought myself into the atmosphere of the buss, starting to feel the exciting rush of kissing the girl I liked with my mother only next door, less than a hundred feet away keeping the nosy neighbors at bay. As we kissed, my mind spun with whether I should tell Paris the real reason I overslept, since I felt sexually charged right about there.

It was interesting to say the least, keeping one eye on her and trying to make sure we both had enough space so that if we heard my mom's footsteps approaching towards the kitchen we could separate in moments. It was a kiss that lasted a minute, one that made me feel relieved. We broke, both flushed, thankful no one had seen us. I felt a thrill at sneaking a morning kiss with my lover for once, trying to keep a smile off my face because Paris didn't get mad at me about oversleeping.

"That was...nice," I stumbled out, feeling light as I brought myself towards the nightstand and the hot coffee for a sip. "I should oversleep more often if that's the way you're going to say good morning to me." I smirked towards her as she flopped back down on my bed and rolled her eyes.

"Next time it's cold water in a bucket, whether you're awake or not." Always amazing how her sarcasm dial can go from 3 to 11 in less than ten seconds. "We better get the lead out, I only allowed ten minutes of extra time out of town and last night's sleet made the trip down a little sluggish."

I sighed towards her and shook my head, knowing that even if the end of the world was nigh at 8:06am, Paris would still go to school and be sucked up to whichever afterlife destination she believes in stuck to her desk.

We've pretty much fallen into a routine once I straighten myself out and get into the car. It's nice to see that some things have changed, but our discussions in-car seem to stay the same and within that academic banter that only could turn on the two of us. I discuss what I read, and make sure that what I've noted myself matches her version of events, but not too closely so that a higher-up might think we're cheating. She's also interested in what I've been studying lately, picking up some more journalism classes for my last Chilton semester so that I can get a good headstart on my college credits. Of course she has hers already, but she thinks I'm on a good track nonetheless.

The radio isn't even turned on anymore, nor do I take out my Walkman and try to block out things anymore when I'm in the Jag. How could I possibly concentrate on the latest news and traffic when I'm too busy staring at the blonde next to me blatantly and unhidden? I never thought of myself as a gawkier when it came to love, probably because of the lack of a physical attraction for Dean. Yes he was cute, and the hair did something for me, it made him look younger. But he was big and gangly, and imagining what I wanted to do with him was always a balancing act between fantasy and reality, with the only solution seeming to deny Dean's height and bringing him to my eye level instead.

I don't do that with Paris though. I watch her slip into the car next to me, sliding her key into the ignition, and she looks beautiful. Her eyes concentrate on the road no matter what I say, her hands almost staying still on the steering wheel except when she has to stop. When she's in her seat, Paris is more relaxed behind the wheel than she ever will be anywhere else. When she extended the invitation for me to ride home, the reason I felt skittish about her giving me a ride was because her car is really her castle. She maintains it religiously, even for a little knock in the engine (One deep study session evening between us earlier in the year was spent in the lobby of a Jiffy Lube while her oil was changed), and by entering it, it was another step to say that I was really becoming her best friend.

I feel like I want her to keep on trusting me, and I hope she continues to do that now that I'm her lover. I'm nervous now that I'm not just looking at her and wishing I could be in her arms. But if the last three days, especially today, are an indication of how our relationship will go, I think we'll last quite a long time.

Maybe even 'lifers', as Louise described how close I was to Dean in happier days.

I should probably clarify that. I meant in my younger, more clueless, and in denial days.

Just as long as Paris is in the driver's seat, I'd stay by her side, better or worse.

"So I'm thinking that Gregory Smith of Everwood is cute, don't you agree Madeline?" Louise says.

It's another Wednesday lunch at the table I share with Madeline, Louise and Paris, where I'm convinced day by day that the lime Jell-O is neither lime, gelatin, or flavorful. We still sit next to each other, and this is about as close to her I'll get in school publicly with everyone around. Paris picks at her meatloaf with the plastic fork, having long polished off her regular salad. I don't even bother with the meat, going ala carte with a chicken sandwich, the salad, and an oatmeal cookie in place.

Madeline seems distant lately, her eyes drifting left and right as she takes in conversation and tries to wring wittiness out of it. "Everwood? What's that?"