Two Halves of One Whole

An Affair To Remember Part 2

"Gilmore? Uh- I'm sorry, Rory Gilmore, is that you?" Rory had been reviewing her notes and trying to google something the auto industry jobs in the US as opposed to other places worldwide after the Senator's speech in Michigan so she didn't hear her name called immediately, not until someone touched her shoulder. She whipped around and her eyes went big.

"Professor Culbertson?"

"Oh please, I wasn't really even a professor even when I was taking over your grandfather's class, Ms. Gilmore, call me Tucker."

"Well, if you're not Professor Culbertson, I'm most definitely not Ms. Gilmore- you should call me Rory." He was smiling at her- a particularly handsome and bright smile that just lit up his incredibly blue eyes that were framed so well by his glasses. For the first time in a long time Rory felt genuine butterflies in her stomach- she couldn't help but smile back at him, and suddenly she was back in the campus bookstore in New Haven, stammering, attempting to tell her ridiculously handsome TA how much she loved Eva Luna.

He reached towards her and pulled at the press pass she was wearing on a lanyard around her neck.

"You know, your grandfather mentioned you were working as a reporter for the campaign. He has a wall of your articles posted in his study, he's so proud of you."

"Wow, my own wall- promise me it doesn't look like a serial killer's wall of death, does it?"

"No, just weird enough to force people to listen to his odes to your brilliance and prowess- not creepy. Of course, I'm sure he wishes you were working on McCain's side, an upstart social organizing law professor from Harvard hardly seems presidential to the Gilmores." Rory laughed at that one as she nodded, readjusting her bag on her shoulder."

"Oh, the shame that I must be bringing upon all of Hartford- not to mention the town of New Haven, for one of my own to support a Crimson man. What are you doing here, in Michigan?"

"I'm just here to give some advice to the Senator on his economic policies. He's got all of these meetings and everything to bounce ideas off of. Nothing particularly glamorous or sexy, just trying to actually put all that education to some kind of use."

"Wow, that's still pretty impressive, advising a possible future president. Even if he did graduate from Cambridge." He smiled back at her.

"You know, I was just on my way to get some coffee, right down the street, would you like to join me? Maybe you can fill me in on the more salacious aspects of following a Presidential campaign?"

"Oh, I don't know if I should; we're going into this two day economics policy summit and roundtable discussion with his staff and advisors and I feel woefully unprepared to understand a damn word he says when he gets caught up in the IS-LM Curve and finding equilibrium in the income-expenditure model. Seriously, why did I have to get my start on a campaign for a president who is a freakin' genius- why couldn't it have been the last president? I'm sure I understood just as much, if not more than that guy did!"

"Well, you know, it just so happens that I have two Masters degrees and a PhD, which, strangely enough, is in Economics, and not from a stupid slacker school like Harvard. Why don't you let me buy you a cup of coffee and you can grill me on anything you don't understand. I did get pretty decent ratings on my teacher evaluation forms, after all." He was smiling at her and it had the butterflies going all over again- she bit the bottom of her lip as she gave a smile and nodded- why the hell not?

Coffee had turned into drinks, which had turned into dinner, they just talked and laughed, and surprisingly little of the conversation was about economics. It turned out that Tucker had an older brother and a younger sister, they were all pretty close, probably due to the fact that his father was an Ambassador and they had lived all over the world- making friends was never easy for any of them when they moved every 12-30 months. Rory told him all about her parents crazy love story, the way that they had tried and missed so many times, how she thought that the last failure was the final nail in the coffin, but they ended up going to therapy and working through it all and seemed happier than she'd ever seen either of them.