Cute Meet

60

Chapter 60

"I guess I'll see you tomorrow, okay?" Rory finished up a call with Honor, with whom she'd made plans about going shopping in the City, having already made a lot of postponements. But since Rory was about to head to Europe - technically just for a quick stop at Paris and the a couple of weeks in the UK where they'd be joining the guys, she already knew she was going to need some new and appropriate things to wear. Her entire wardrobe from last year looked like it belonged to someone else entirely. She felt so much less like an innocent and timid little girl, more like a woman, having begun to relax considerably on wearing designer outfits and glamorous accessories like it was considered proper to a future wife of Logan Huntzberger.

"Bye," she added, after hearing Honor's goodbyes.

She barely focused enough to direct her eyes back to the computer screen in front of her, when her phone rang yet again. She'd had a very busy July, volunteering or technically interning - she wasn't quite sure which this was, at the campaign office helping them with editing and some smaller writing tasks.

"Hello?" Rory asked.

"Rory?" she heard Paris' unmistakable tone on the other end.

"Oh, hey, Paris," she replied.

"Hey, we need to talk," Paris began. "Is this a bad time?" she asked.

"Okay," Rory agreed. "No, no, now's a fine time. What's up?"

"They're asking for our preferred assignments at the apper. I saw you hadn't put your in yet," Paris expressed her concern.

"I didn't put in a request because I no longer go to campus. I'm not on the paper," Rory explained.

"So, you're sticking with this "Not going to Yale" thing of yours?" Paris asked.

"Yes, I am," Rory said, the fact having cleared itself up for her a little. She was planning on sticking by the campaign through the fall, and her grandparent's hadn't even been mad at her, unlike her mother, considering she was just exploring her options and making connections while taking a semester of academic leave. She wasn't dropping out, it was just doing something else.

"Is this about what happened at the yacht?" Paris inquired, the whole thing having remained a little fuzzy for her. Sure, medically she'd been very supportive, but about the rest she'd just gotten bits and pieces, and among other things she'd speculated considerably about Rory's mental health, which frankly hadn't been completely off base. She had been lost, she still was a little lost.

"No, well... Kind of. I just want to explore what else could be out there for me," Rory explained, standing up, and walked across the room to glance at the old campus.

"And now it's politics?" Paris reflected, having been surprised of her choice.

"Not necessarily. But it's a writing job. It's better than fetching coffee and filing microfilm archives at a newspaper office," Rory shot back bitterly.

"Right," Paris snorted, not hiding the fact that she didn't like this.

"Paris - I told you over two months ago that I might not be coming back. This is hardly news," Rory added, hating that she felt like she had to defend herself in Paris too.

"There was not a total sense of finality in our last conversation," Paris said.

"Well, there is a total sense of finality now. I'll reconsider things at the beginning of next semester. If I figure out what I want to do, I'll just have to squeeze four semesters into three, it's not the end of the world with all the credits I already have," Rory explained. For once - having been an overachiever was paying off, giving her this freedom.