Blame
the Hat Rack (and the Heineken)CWS
entry for 'The Third Lorelai' Apologies for the lateness,
and for the slight plot-tweaking, minor borrowing from future
episodes, and implausibility and/or silliness of the whole thing. You
try realistically hooking Lorelai and Luke up in a completely
Luke-less episode in which, as far as we know, they're both already
either happily phone-dating or shacking-up with their respective
teacher- and photographer-types :p Hopefully you enjoy anyway.
Feedback is always appreciated :) Thanks to Carrying on… Emily:
If she met your grandmother she'd understand. Now, please, just
bring the rack with you when you come tonight, okay? Lorelai:
Okay, sure. Emily: Thank you. Lorelai: You're
welcome. Bye.
Independence Inn, Friday, 11:42 am
Stabbing at the phone's 'power' button with her thumb, Lorelai sighed. Hat rack. She pinched the bridge of her nose and squeezed her eyes shut before zeroing in on the phone once more. Dialing the familiar number, she let out another sigh.
"Luke's," she heard barked in her ear.
"I need the hat rack," she declared, caring less than she should have just how much she sounded like her mother.
Confusion tinged Luke's voice as he asked, "Lorelai?"
Lorelai rolled her eyes as she flipped absently through the inn's mail. "Duh," she replied.
"What the hell are you talking about?" demanded Luke tersely, the din of the diner a dull roar in the background.
"The ginormous, 4 headed, bronze hat rack from my mother that I made you put in our attic two days after she gave it to me," Lorelai explained.
She heard Luke snort. "And you need the hat rack?" he asked wryly.
"My mother needs the hat rack," she corrected, "because of my grandmother. Who gave it to my mother, who in turn stuck me with it."
"Of course…"
Lorelai shifted impatiently at Luke's sudden penchant for drawing out conversations. "I need the hat rack," she repeating, trying to keep the whining to a minimum. "Today."
"So get the hat rack," came Luke's response.
"Lu-uke, I can't get the hat rack," Lorelai pointed out, losing her battle with the whining. "It's in the attic," she reminded him. "You put it in the attic, you have to get it from the attic."
"Uhh," Luke stalled, likely distracted by the crash Lorelai heard in the background. "Can't Rory help?" Luke asked. "She's… you know, taller…" he stuttered, "than when I had to put it up there. The two of you can get it."
"Um, A," Lorelai explained, "Rory's in her study group's evil clutches permanently these days, so she won't be home in time. B?" she added with a chuckle, "Even if she was, despite her newfound tallness, I'm pretty sure the two of us could drag that beast a grand total of three feet, max. The whole getting it through the hole in the ceiling while on a ladder? Distinct possibility of death, so, depending on who's upstairs and who's on the ladder, when the thing falls and squishes one of us, we either have endangering the welfare of a child and/or murder of said child, or a suicide/child abandonment combo, neither of which were on my list today."
Luke sounded less than impressed with her rambling tale. "Lovely," he stated flatly. "But I can't leave the diner."
"Sure you can," she insisted cheekily.
"Caesar's not in until after lunch, at two."
"So?"
Lorelai was sure she could hear Luke's eyes rolling. "That means I have to be here until two," he reiterated wearily. "Therefore, I can't leave."
Lorelai frowned a moment, then suggested, "Rachel can't cov-"
She found herself immediately cut off by a harsh "No."
Taken aback, Lorelai let out a confused "Ok…" When Luke didn't say anything more, she piped up with a somewhat hesitant, "But you can be at my place at two?"
Lorelai heard a small sigh from the other end of the phone, only to have it quickly followed up with a begrudging, "I'll be there at four."
She smiled triumphantly and hung up the phone.
Crap Shack, Friday, 2:07 pm
Some two hours later, Lorelai was lounging on her couch, work clothes still on, heels kicked off, beer in hand, and a half-eaten plate of pizza bites on the coffee table. The computer at the inn had refused to be fixed, and given that she'd be spending the better part of her Saturday working, she'd taken the liberty of giving herself the afternoon off. Lacking anything better to do, she found herself flipping idly through television channels in the hope of finding something mindless to keep her occupied for another two hours while she waited for Luke.
After her third go-round on the channels, there was a knock at the door. She smiled to herself. Just after two, exactly as she'd asked.
"Come in!" she called out over her shoulder.
Behind her, she heard Luke enter the living room and pause.
She glanced over her shoulder in time to catch him, hefting a ladder along with him, sending a look of mild incredulity at her and the scene in front of him. With a smirk, she shrugged and turned back to the TV. "Early much?"
"Hat rack?" Luke asked, a twinge of annoyance sneaking into his tone.
"Right. Up," Lorelai said, gesturing towards the stairs. "You've got the ladder, you know what to do."
Luke gave a soft snort in response. "Swell," he added wryly. "Remind me why a 500 pound hat rack was put all the way up in the attic?"
Lorelai smiled angelically at Luke. "Because we couldn't have its ugliness showing in the house, of course," she said. "And hello, have you seen the garage? The attic was easier."
Luke held up his free hand in mock surrender. "My mistake." Likely realizing questioning Lorelai about her logic wasn't going to get him any farther in getting the actual hat rack, he shook his head slightly and began his ascent up the staircase.
Lorelai watched silently for a moment, trying not to snicker at his attempts to maneuver the ladder awkwardly up the turns in the staircase. "Do you need help?" she finally inquired.
"It'll probably be easier if you keep your distance," Luke muttered as he cleared another corner.
"Fine by me," Lorelai replied. "Yell if you decide you're not so independent after all." She was about to get back to her channel surfing when she recalled what she'd dragged out of the closet and left in the hallway for Luke. "Oh hey, Luke?" she yelled upstairs.
"What?"
"Uh, there's two boxes there in the hallway…" Lorelai informed him casually. "Can you chuck them in the attic while you're up there?"
"Whatever…" Luke grumbled, continuing his efforts to get the ladder up to the second floor.
Turning back to the TV, Lorelai called out after him, "Gracias, merci, danke!"
Crap Shack, Friday, 2:31 pm
Lorelai was staring blankly at the tail end of her second round of "Your Locals on the 8's" when she heard heavy footsteps on the stairs. She shook herself from her Weather Channel daze to see Luke wrestling with the awful hat rack. "God that thing is ugly," she exclaimed, adding an exaggerated shudder for good measure.
Luke rolled his eyes in her direction and hefted the unwieldy contraption down another step. "Am I putting the ugly thing in the car too?" he asked knowingly.
"Yes, please," Lorelai replied, before frowning as Luke nearly missed a step with his foot. "Are you sure you don't need any hel-"
"I'm good," Luke grunted in assurance.
Crap Shack, Friday, 2:46 pm
By the time Luke returned from the Jeep, Lorelai was resigned to the notion that the most watchable thing on TV really was the Weather Channel and had plucked a beer from the refrigerator. Lacking the motivation to do anything else, she figured a movie was her best bet and was perusing her video selection when Luke cleared his throat behind her.
He looked as if he had planned on just heading upstairs to fetch his ladder when Lorelai saw the slight double take. "Isn't it a little early for that?" he asked, gesturing with mild incredulity at the sleek green bottle she held.
Lorelai shrugged unapologetically. "Michel broke my computer, so I wasn't gonna be productive at work. And I've gotta gear up for the four-generation dinner. Want?" she teased, waving the bottle playfully in his direction.
She hadn't exactly expected anything but a flat-out refusal from him, and found herself surprised to see him appear to be toying with the possibility. And, perhaps a little grateful for a drinking buddy to make her feel a little less pathetic at not even 3 in the afternoon, she pointed out in a sing-song voice, "It's five o'clock somewhere…."
Though still obviously not completely comfortable with the notion, Luke managed a "Uh, sure, thanks."
Lorelai raised her eyebrows, impressed, and headed for the kitchen. She grabbed another Heineken and quickly returned to the living room, holding it out in Luke's direction.
He took the proffered beer, took a generous swig, and gestured vaguely towards the stairs. "So, it's done," he informed her, stating the obvious. "Hat rack out of attic, hat rack in car. Max and Dean in attic," he continued, with a wry lift of his eyebrow in Lorelai's direction.
She groaned melodramatically and flopped onto the couch as Luke continued, smirking. "…now bonding with Todd, Steve, a few Christophers, Brian with an 'i', Bryan with a 'y', Greg, and their other friends."
"Did you not hear about the dinner I'm facing?" Lorelai moaned. "Could be amusing, could be hell — either way, you feel the need to mock my sad, sad dating history, which, by the way, I've also apparently now passed on to my daughter?" She pouted animatedly, playing up the 'woe-is-me' act, though she did have to admit, hearing about her less than successful dating exploits, especially from a friend who was happily in a relationship, stung a bit.
Oddly enough, Luke seemed to catch the subtext, and, taking a seat at the opposite end of the couch, offered a stammered apology. "No, sorry, I uh," he started, "I thought things were good with you and the, uh, teacher guy."
"Hardly," Lorelai scoffed as she pulled herself back up to a sitting position. "Months with nothing, see him once, we agree to talk on the phone, crickets ever since," she summarized bluntly. "And that was two weeks ago." What she didn't admit was that, while Max hadn't called her, she hadn't exactly made any attempts to contact him either, or that she was probably more upset about the lack of any someone at all than she was the lack of Max. She downed another swig of beer. "Thus the box in the attic."
Luke offered what was probably intended to be a sincere "Sorry," though Lorelai could have sworn that it seemed, perhaps, a little less heartfelt than one might have expected.
She didn't dwell on that, however. "Eh," Lorelai brushed him off quickly, not having meant to drag down the mood, as it were. "Hey, you've got Rachel," she chirped, forcing a smile, "so at least it's only half a pity-party."
With a vigor Lorelai definitely had not expected from Luke, he brought his beer up to his mouth and downed nearly half the bottle in one fell swoop. "All I've got," he eventually declared, without much emotion, "is a couple Rachel boxes that could hang out with Max up there."
Taken aback, Lorelai felt her jaw drop. "What?" she exclaimed. Hadn't he and Rachel just been the happy couple at the Firelight Festival not a few weeks ago?
Luke cast a sidelong glance in her direction, his cheeks tinged with just the faintest bit of pink. "Yeah, we're not- She-" He stumbled over his words. "She went back to Chicago," he finally spit out.
Shocked more than anything, Lorelai mumbled an automatic, "I'm sorry."
"It's what she does," Luke shrugged, downing more of his beer. "I expected it," he admitted. "And she moved the milk."
Lorelai's brow furrowed. "The milk?" She was confused by both the reference, and by the fact that she wasn't a smidge more empathetic towards Luke — her friend — over the failure of the relationship he'd been holding out for for years.
Luke shook his head, and waved off her question. "There was nothing there anymore," he rephrased.
"Huh," Lorelai replied. "Well," she added brightly after a contemplative pause, "this is a full-fledged pity-party then, isn't it?" Noting, again surprised, that Luke's beer was nearly empty, she clinked her bottle against his knowingly. "'Nother one?" she asked.
"Don't you have to go to your parents?" Luke inquired, eyeing her suspiciously.
"Not for a couple hours," Lorelai replied. "And Rory can drive. It'll be more fun this way anyway."
Casting a glance down at his beer, and then again over at Lorelai, Luke finally agreed. "Yeah, sure, ok."
After she quickly gulped down the rest of her beer in an effort to catch up, Lorelai jumped up from the couch and ran to the kitchen to grab two more bottles from the fridge.
Upon returning to the living room, she handed one over to Luke, and lifted her own in a toast. With a wry grin, she exclaimed, "To being pathetically single!"
Luke chuckled in response, bottles were clinked, and Lorelai sat back down on the couch, her body unwittingly plopping down just a little closer to Luke than she was before.
Crap Shack, Friday, 3:36 pm
Another beer or so later, Luke and Lorelai still sat on the couch, feet up on the coffee table, dumbly watching some sort of cooking show on the Food Network. Lorelai had insisted on such, given that, according to her slightly inebriated logic, Luke was a cook and should therefore like cooking shows. Luke had protested, of course, but to no avail.
For Lorelai's part, while Luke might have absorbed something useful from the show, it was only serving to make her hungry. Practically salivating over what appeared to be some sort of gourmet taco or fajita-like concoction, she giggled. As best she could considering how far she'd slumped down into the couch cushions, she leaned over towards Luke and awkwardly poked him in the ribs. "Hey," she hissed, "You should add tacos to the menu."
Looking bemused, Luke dropped his gaze down to Lorelai and lifted an eyebrow. "Why?" he asked gamely.
"Because tacos are gooood," Lorelai informed him.
Luke smirked. "So?"
Lorelai furrowed her brow for a moment in concentration before stating matter-of-factly, "So, you should offer your customers good food."
"I thought I already did that," Luke replied.
He'd barely gotten the words out when another hunger pang hit Lorelai. "Ooh, what about pizza?" she cried, "You already have pie, so you could have pizza pies!"
Luke let out a drunken chortle at her antics and snorted, "Nuh uh."
"Taco pizza!"
"No."
Crap Shack, Friday, 4:27 pm
By the time the contents of the twelve-pack in the fridge had started to dwindle, Lorelai had roped Luke into watching an episode of 'What Not To Wear,' and had also decided that Luke's shoulder made a right comfy pillow.
As it happened, Clinton and Stacy's victim du jour was a photographer by trade, and Lorelai took the opportunity at a commercial to roughly poke Luke in the ribs again. "So you think there's gonna be another chance for you guys?" she wondered aloud, her hand lingering at his side.
"Nah," Luke shrugged, studying the bottle he held. "It wasn't the same. Neither one of us was in it." Turning his head, he eyed Lorelai warily. "You?"
"No sir-ee," Lorelai declared, shaking her head vehemently. "Although… I didn't think there was last time, and then there was two weeks ago," she added leadingly.
Luke nodded in acknowledgement. "Two weeks ago was when you saw him last?" he asked.
Lorelai smirked. "Oh I saw him alright…"
Even four and a half Heinekens in, Luke couldn't have helped but catch the lascivious innuendo. "Jeez," he muttered.
Lorelai laughed, letting only a trace of bitterness leak into her tone. "Yep, you called it Luke," she confirmed, giving him a good solid pat on the chest. "It was a good old fashioned booty-call. Except there was no call, I just — bam — showed up on his doorstep."
She giggled again at Luke's reddening face. "Oh come on," she goaded him, "maybe you and Rachel weren't into the relationshipping thing, but there's no way you spent what — like 2, 3 weeks? — in that teeny tiny apartment without any friends with benefits things going on."
When Luke's color deepened further and he failed say anything or even look her in the eye, Lorelai squealed. "Ha!" she cried, rising to her knees to face Luke, which meant that one of her knees slid between his. "There was totally ex-sex! I knew it!"
"Not really…" Luke finally muttered awkwardly. Just, you know — the festival and the founder's day punch? She had more than her share, and she somehow made me have some, and there you go," he summarized. "I was on the couch the rest of the time," he finished tersely, punctuating his sentence by taking another swig of his beer.
"Huh," Lorelai said pensively. She let herself slide back into the couch cushions, though she rearranged herself such that she was curled up, her feet tucked beneath her and her knees pressed roughly against Luke's thigh.
"What?" Luke inquired, his tone, Lorelai thought, a funny combination of indignant, embarrassed, and teasing.
"Drunk Luke gets frisky," she giggled, "Who knew?"
Luke waved his hand, brushing the comment off with a derisive snort even as he inadvertently proved Lorelai's point by letting that hand fall to her knee, where her skirt had slid up to mid-thigh.
"Come to think of it," Lorelai continued, "you did have a vibe-thing going on last time I saw you imbibing. An imbibing vibe!" she exclaimed, the realization dawning on her suddenly.
"What?" Luke scoffed, his fingers starting to drift over Lorelai's bare knee. "I don't do vibes."
Lorelai corrected him. "Uh huh," she insisted vehemently. "When we were picking paint colors."
"Whatever."
It was only then that the fact that the soft, caressing sensation on her leg was actually Luke's thumb dawned on Lorelai. She glanced down at her knee, and then drew her gaze up slyly to meet Luke's. "Guess I should watch myself here, huh?" she teased. "How many is that, mister?" She was surprised to find that immediately after she mentioned it, she regretted saying anything lest he stop and pull his hand away.
Luke didn't. Nor did he answer the question, replying only with a question of his own. "How many is that?" he asked knowingly.
Shaken by the sensations running through her, brought on, quite literally, by the hand of Luke, it took Lorelai a moment to respond. "Um," she eventually admitted sheepishly, "more than I should have had by 4:…30 on a Friday before I have to go have dinner at my parents with my daughter and my grandmother?"
Luke nodded silently, his fingers still absently tracing chaotic patterns across Lorelai's skin.
Lorelai was confused to all hell not only by the notion of Luke practically pushing her skirt up her leg but even more so by the fact that she was really, really liking it. The last thing she wanted to do was move considering how comfortably numb, and warm, and fuzzy she felt. But she stupidly blurted out, in some sort of drunken attempt to fill the silence that had taken over the room, "So, another one?"
Luke didn't answer that question directly either, instead wondering aloud, "Why do you have so much beer?"
"Tons of leftovers from Rory's party," Lorelai explained as she mentally willed his fingers to keep running over her leg. "Does beer expire?" she chattered nervously, "Is that too long to have beer around?"
"I dunno," Luke replied, finishing off his beer with a timely swig.
"So, another one?" Lorelai asked.
"Eh, why not?" Luke answered.
So, reluctantly, Lorelai slipped away from Luke and headed for the kitchen once more.
Crap Shack, Friday, 4:54 pm
'What Not To Wear' was still on in the background, but Lorelai wasn't paying any attention to it. While she'd taken note earlier of Luke's mention of her beer consumption and the fact that she still had to go to dinner later, and had discreetly refilled her beer bottle with water while getting Luke an unopened one, she was still feeling a pleasant buzz. A buzz that, happily was strong enough for her to have been pleased when, immediately upon returning to the couch earlier, Luke's hand was right back to where it had left off. A buzz strong enough, also, for her not to dwell on why he was doing that, nor on why it was that she was enjoying it quite so much. She'd let herself, instead, drift into a sleepy daze, curled up against him.
Luke finally broke the silence once again with an inquisitive, "Didn't you have to work at all today?"
"Eh," Lorelai said, resituating her head on Luke's shoulder. "Michel broke the computer."
"Right," Luke nodded in acknowledgement, "right."
"Don't you?" Lorelai found herself asking, knowing that he'd only been meant to be getting the stupid coat rack, not lounging on the couch with her for hours.
Luke finally did take his hand from her knee, placing it instead on her arm and giving it a comforting rub. "Caesar's got it."
"Good," Lorelai grinned.
Crap Shack, Friday, 5:43 pm
Nearly an hour later, though she'd had to fetch Luke yet another beer, Lorelai was beginning to sober. And wondering what on earth was transpiring between her and Luke. Not that she was complaining, per se — she was still tipsy enough to be thoroughly enjoying their closeness without completely freaking out — but it certainly seemed as though it had come from nowhere.
"So why'd she leave?" she suddenly piped up over a 'Law and Order' rerun.
"It's what she does," Luke replied, not having needed clarification on the 'she' reference.
Lorelai frowned. "That's not an answer. Why this time?" she pressed. "I can't believe she just stands up and says 'Hey, it's about that time' and just takes off. She's gotta have a reason."
When Lorelai heard his voice catch in his throat, she sat up a little straighter.
"She was developing pictures…" Luke said slowly.
"And?" she coaxed.
Luke turned his head to glance at her through narrowed eyes, silently admonishing her impatience even while drunk. "There was a picture…" he drawled.
"A picture? When she was developing pictures?" Lorelai gasped facetiously. "No! You're kidding!" For some reason, she was getting the sense that what Luke was trying to say had more gravity than she was willing to deal with; forced humor was what she did best in such a situation.
"You know what I mean," Luke said pointedly.
Chastened a bit, Lorelai toned down the teasing and asked curiously, "A picture of what?"
"Us."
"You and Rachel?" Lorelai asked, confused. "Was it dirty?" she joked with a nervous, tinny laugh. That was a question she probably didn't actually want to hear the answer to…
"Us," Luke clarified, clearing his throat. "You and me."
"Well I know that wasn't dirty," she teased, half relieved that it wasn't anything to do with the relationship that had been Luke and Rachel. However, she found herself with her other half even more worried about the weighty implications of what Luke might be getting at. How a picture had anything to do with it was beyond her, and her curiosity got the best of her. "What was it?" she asked. "And how does a picture make her leave?"
With a sigh, Luke explained wearily, "It was us, at that stupid firelight thing. She said we looked too 'cozy.'"
Cozy. Cozy as in, they were pretty cozy at the moment too… "But cozy is good," Lorelai spluttered, the sense of humor defense kicking in yet again. "We're cozy now," she observed aloud, adding a genial pat on Luke's chest for good measure. "And beer is good!" she spat out awkwardly when she knocked Luke's bottle inadvertently with her own.
"Not good cozy," Luke corrected. "She said 'intimate' cozy."
"Luke," Lorelai exclaimed a little too quickly, "I think if I had been intimate with you, I'd remember…" She knew before she even finished the sentence that it had not been the right joke, nor the right time.
Suddenly seeming more sober than he had in a few hours, Luke finally abandoned Lorelai's knee, and brought his hand up to brush away a stray hair from her face. "Yeah?" he whispered.
Her heart suddenly pounding in her chest, Lorelai felt her reply slip from her lips of its own volition. "Wouldn't you?" she asked breathily.
Luke, yet again, didn't say anything in response to her question, but Lorelai knew his answer all the same. How could someone's eyes speak so loudly? Still silent, Luke's hand wandered to skim up and down her arm lazily. His gaze eventually dropped down, and finally he spoke again. "She also left because she said it felt like something — someone — was holding me back. And that's why I wasn't in it."
Frozen still since Luke's hand had left its previous residence on her leg, Lorelai tentatively placed her hand over Luke's where he was tracing patterns in the freckles of her other arm. "Someone she said you were intimate with?" she questioned softly.
Luke's eyes darted back up to meet Lorelai's, his gaze now insistent. "Why didn't you call the teacher when he didn't call you? What held you back?"
It was Lorelai's turn to be at a loss for an answer. It hadn't had anything to do with Luke… Had it? "I…" she trailed off, unable to get anything else out.
"Someone?" Luke coaxed gently as he lifted a hand up to cup her face.
Lorelai sucked in a quick breath at the contact, her eyes fluttering shut briefly. "Maybe…"
The next thing she knew, Luke's lips were pressing softly against hers, warm and insistent and oh so many times better than the leg caressing she'd been satisfied with earlier. And when his tongue began to gently tease her lips, coaxing her mouth open, she really had no choice but to comply. She felt herself leaning back, letting her body melt into the couch as Luke pressed down against her. His hands, just a moment ago teasing the skin of her knee innocently, were dancing up and down her torso, inching up her shirt and leaving her unable to do much more than grasp haphazardly at his own shirt. Her head was spinning and she couldn't catch her breath, though she had no idea if that was simply the heady haze of alcohol or the intensity of Luke's kisses and the overwhelming sensation of his tongue dancing with hers.
What she did know, she realized, letting out a soft moan when Luke's mouth detoured down to her neck, was that having Luke's body weighing down on hers while his hands and lips wandered felt damn near perfect.
Her composure regaining ground as the initial shock of their new circumstances, as it were, faded into a more comfortable, sensual give and take, Lorelai released her grip on fistfuls of plaid. Cradling his face and relishing the slight rasp of his stubble beneath her fingers, she brought his face back to hers and kissed him fiercely. She shifted beneath him, allowing him to settle between her legs. Reaching for his shirt once more, she began slowly unbuttoning the flannel as their tongues still dueled languidly.
Luke seemed to take that as an invitation; a split second later she found herself letting out a breathy gasp at the feel of his hand skimming up her leg, pushing her skirt up further, and teasing the edge of the lacy fabric beneath. She smiled into Luke's kiss and wrapped that leg around his thigh, pressing her hips upwards into his. Luke groaned softly, letting his head fall momentarily to the crook of Lorelai's neck as he ground back down on her.
Lorelai's eyes fell closed and a whimper slipped passed her lips, and she sought Luke's mouth out once more. Slipping her hands beneath his t-shirt, she raked her nails up his back gently, silently urging him to continue.
Not a moment later, practically in their own version of surround sound, Lorelai's cell phone alarm and the chime of the large clock in the living room decided to unceremoniously interrupt.
Jolted out of the fog of sensations, Lorelai yelped, shoving Luke off her roughly. "Oh my God. Is that 6?" she cried. "That's 6. How is that 6?" she wailed, simultaneously trying to smooth her hair and straighten her skirt, while failing at both. "Rory's getting off the bus now, and we have to leave in 15 minutes! Crappity crap crap crap," she muttered, scurrying around the room, trying to collect herself, not to mention the impressive set of Heineken bottles. It had to have been a full ten seconds before she caught herself and spun back around to face Luke. He stood, looking just as shell-shocked as she did, hair mussed, shirt unbuttoned, jeans looking uncomfortably tight in front. "Oh God," Lorelai moaned, flustered and out of sorts, not to mention aroused beyond belief. "I'm sorry," she apologized awkwardly, "I-"
His cheeks red, Luke managed to stammer out a gruff "Right. I'm gonna go…" as he quickly buttoned up his flannel.
"Right. Right…" Lorelai echoed numbly, still somewhat stunned by the whole debacle. She had turned to head to the kitchen, but at the last moment spun around, and chirped an overly courteous, "Um, not driving, right? "
"Walked," Luke informed her flatly.
"Ok. Good. Good," she repeated, still at a loss for how to treat the situation. What had happened? "Um, thanks for the, uh, coat rack thing," she finally managed.
Luke nodded. "No problem. I guess I'll, uh, see ya." And with that, he was out the door.
"Right," Lorelai echoed again to the empty house. "See ya."
To be continued…