" Happy Father's Day." Lorelai grumbled sarcastically, slipping onto a
stool.
" What?"
" Why did it have to fall on a Friday?" Lorelai smacked her head down on the counter.
" Why did what have to fall on a Friday?"
" Father's Day."
" Oh." Luke frowned and disappeared into the kitchen for a minute. Lorelai waited for him to come back out, then looked at the doorway into the kitchen quizzically. She jumped down off the stool and shuffled over.
" Luke?" She leaned around the doorframe and saw him sitting on the floor with his back against the oven. " Luke?" She looked at him like he had gone nuts.
" You're still here?" He sighed, not opening his eyes.
" Um, yeah. What part of our 20 word conversation mislead you into thinking I was leaving? I haven't griped, groaned, explained, complained, or gorged yet, so what's with the disappearing act?"
" Take what you want. I'm not in the mood tonight."
" But you haven't even heard what happened. Chris hijacked Rory to have dinner in Hartford with him and Sherrie and Gigi, and it was a Friday, and I didn't know about Rory's little dinner plans, so I already told my mother that I would be there for dinner tonight. One whole Friday night alone with my parents. I'm about ready to throw myself into a snowblower."
" Must be rough. Can this wait until tomorrow?" Luke sighed.
" What's up with you today? Your tail was all out of joint at breakfast, but I figured that was because I asked for chocolate chips in my omelet. So what's bothering you now Senor Moody Man?"
" Lorelai, I don't want to talk about it."
" But you completely blew off our damage report date! I always come in on Fridays for the blow by blow."
" Look, Lorelai, I know your relationship with your parents is hard sometimes, but sometimes you might want to just be happy that they're there." Luke said a little more harshly then he intended to.
" Oh...."
" Look, never mind, I'm just having a bad day is all. I hate today."
" Today day of the month, or today Father's Day?" Lorelai asked quietly. Luke looked down at his hands in front of him. Lorelai took that as a yes and slid down beside him. She poked her head next to him, moving it around and trying to catch his gaze. " You know you never told me much about your dad. Sometimes I find talking helps."
" So what, you're depressed all the time?"
" See! A joke! I'm helping already. Come on......come on......share your troubles my friend. Lean on me. When you're not strong. I'll be your friend. I will help you carry on. For.-"
" Lorelai. If you don't stop, I will physically throw you from the diner."
" Sorry. I'll lean on you then." Lorelai leaned against Luke's side, nudging at him. " So?"
" So what?"
" So what do you want to tell me about him?"
" Not much to tell."
" Come on Luke, he's your Dad. No amusing anecdotes? Embarrassing baby stories? Awkward tales of teen angst?"
" Nope."
" Alright then, you hard-to-crack nut...Why don't you tell me something about the two of you then?
" Like what?"
" Like why do you keep ever thing the same?"
" He...He died in a hospital." Luke took a deep breath and looked up at Lorelai, trying to figure out what exactly he had wanted to say to her. He had hidden on purpose. He wanted to talk, to tell someone, but he couldn't just be like a normal person and come out and say it. He knew that if he hid, she would come and find him and poke and prod until he finally got the guts up to say something. He started off talking slowly, but soon he was at full on rant. "All he wanted to do was die in his home, where he was comfortable. But I made him stay. I thought that maybe by keeping him there I could keep him from dying. If he couldn't die where he wanted to, he wouldn't die at all. He was stubborn like that. And I knew this wasn't going to work the same way. He couldn't stop this this time. He knew it, I knew it. I made him miserable for the last days of his life to make it easier on me. Making myself ignore what was happening. I can't believe I was so selfish. The least I could do after that is keep the place he loved for him, not be selfish and do whatever the hell I felt like with it."
" It's not selfish Luke." Lorelai looked at him sadly. He had felt guilty ever since his dad had died. " It was hard for you too. How old were you?"
" Eighteen, nineteen." He shrugged.
" Really? That young?" Luke nodded, leaning back against the oven and staring at his feet. " Where was Liz?"
" She left, after the funeral. Found New York, found Jimmy, had Jess, called me whenever she got into trouble. I was too busy to care. I was opening the diner." Lorelai knew he was lying, and he did too. He had spent night after night awake after she left, worrying. Lorelai looked at him calculatingly and thought about him opening up the diner when he was just barely out of high school.
"Was there ever anything else you wanted to do?" She asked curiously.
" Anything else what?" Luke mumbled.
" Go to school? Learn to play water polo? Fly commercial airliners? Any other dreams?"
" Yeah I guess." Luke sighed, sinking down a bit. Lorelai raised her eyebrows and looked at him expectantly.
" Well?...." Luke never really told her that he had wanted anything else, or what that was. He always seemed satisfied, for the most part, with what had happened, with his life and the diner.
" There's a couple."
" What are they?"
" There's no point. It's not like they're going to happen now. Might as well just forget them."
" Come on Luke. I'll tell you one of mine. Until I got pregnant with Rory, I was going to go to L.A. and be a back up dancer in music videos."
" Really?"
" Honest. And trust me, I had the moves." The edges of Luke's mouth turned up a little, and she took this as a good sign. " Now you share....Pleeeease?" Luke furrowed his brows.
" I wanted to run."
" For President?"
" For the States."
" I don't follow."
" I ran track in high school."
" Oh right! Butch Danes." Lorelais grinned at him, but Luke frowned.
" Don't call me that."
" So you were that good?"
" Good enough." He shrugged, but Lorelai kept pushing.
" How good?"
" I came third freshman year, and won State's in Junior and Senior." Luke listed off.
" Wow. Impressive."
" I guess. I was going to national finals at the end of my senior year."
" What happened."
" He died." Luke said simply, but Lorelai looked confused.
" Why didn't you go?"
" I had the funeral, and I had to get the diner going. I didn't have anything to live on anymore."
" He would have wanted you to go. He would have been proud of you."
" I don't care. I wouldn't have done anything."
" You could have won, or kept going, gone to school on a scholarship-"
" I'm not that smart." Luke snorted and Lorelai rolled her eyes.
" Running scholarship. You could have graduated or run internationally. What did you run?"
" 400, 800, 1500."
" Why didn't you go Luke? Just to see, even."
" I was busy."
" You could have made time."
" I didn't want to."
" I know you did." Lorelai insisted.
" Just leave me alone alright!" Luke stood up angrily and Lorelai jumped up and blocked his way as he tried to escape into the diner.
" Not until you tell me why you didn't go!" Luke tried to get around her, but she dodged left and right, not letting him pass.
" GET OUT OF MY WAY!" He finally pushed past her, storming into the diner, but Lorelai followed.
" LUKE!" She cried plaintively. She watched him as he paced back and forth, trying to get something out.
"IT...I....WHEN HE.....I WAS ANGRY OKAY? THERE, DOES THAT MAKE YOU HAPPY? LUKE DANES TELLS YOU HOW HE FELT." He glared at her for a moment, then sat down hard at one of the booths. Lorelai walked over cautiously and slipped in beside him.
" Angry?" Luke looked over and sighed.
" Yeah, angry. I mean, what right did he have to get sick? What right did he have to get sick and make me take care of him for months, not to mention trying to take care of Liz, which wasn't easy. Do you know I failed every single one of my exams that year because I had to take care of him and run the hardware shop and stop Liz from flunking out? I mean actually failed. I never did well in school, but I got 36 % on my English exam. That was the one I did the best on. I only passed because my teachers let me do extra credit work, which I did while I stayed up watching him at night. And what right does he have going and leaving a store to me? I was eighteen. What the hell did I know about actually running a business? Hell, I could barely even figure out how to pass a math test. And how could he make me responsible for Liz? She was sixteen. What did I know about raising sixteen year old girls. Hell, how could he leave me to raise myself? How was I supposed to do that, and make our meals everyday, and pay rent, and go to school, and get to track meets, and go to the Prom with Rachel, all without someone there to help me out. I wasn't supposed to be a parent at 18."
" I know." Lorelai agreed. That kind of responsibility at that age was hard. She definitely knew that. Luke rubbed his hand across his face and rested his head in his hands. " What else is there?" She asked him.
" There's nothing else." But Lorelai knew better, and he knew she did too.
" What else is there Luke."
" He left me alone." Luke sighed.
" You weren't alone." Lorelai rubbed his arm.
" I WAS alone. I was all alone, alone as it gets. My mom left when I was seven. Seven years old and she dies, and all that was left was me and Liz and my dad. And hell, Liz was gone before she even left. All I had was my Dad growing up. And just when I'm about to do something good, when I'm about to really need some help, when I'm really about to go somewhere, he dies. He's gone, Liz is gone, my mom is long gone. Hell, even Rachel left. And I was angry at him. I knew he would have been proud. He was always proud when I ran. It was the one thing I was really good at. So I didn't go. Because I was angry at him."
" Luke..."
" I know it's stupid." He shook his head.
" It's not stupid."
" He would have thought it was stupid."
" You had a right to be angry."
" I was sad." He said, looking defeated.
" You still are."
" HELL, he pisses me off more dead than he ever did alive. At least then I could yell at him." Luke shook his head, and clenched his fist. Lorelai rubbed his arm to get him to relax, and tried to find something better to talk about, something to take his mind off things.
" What was your other dream? What else did you want? Or did you screw that one over too because you were angry?" She asked him softly, trying to make him a little happier. Luke just exhaled a little laugh and nodded sadly.
" Almost, a couple of times."
" What did you want?"
" Stupid stuff. The girl, the kids, the house not about the diner."
" Matching outfits and a minivan."
" My jeans and my truck."
" You're going to have to find someone who's willing to accept your reluctance to change that was caused by the death of your father at a time your life was about to change dramatically."
" That's not why, you analyze everything way too much.........But I guess it is why it didn't work with Rachel."
" She wasn't big on the no change idea." Lorelai agreed, but Luke just shook his head.
" Sure." Lorelai looked at him carefully.
" Unless..."
" Unless what."
" Unless you had already found someone willing to put up with your non- changedness. That's why she left." She said cautiously.
" Leave it alone Lorelai. That horse is dead."
" I swear I just saw it twitch."
" Post mortem nerve impulses."
" I'm guessing biology was the second best exam?" She watched him smile a little bit, and decided to push a little further. "Who is she?"
" I don't want to talk about it right now." Luke wouldn't look at her, just frowned and stared at his palms on the table.
" Okay....... Promise you'll tell me later?" Lorelai tilted her head so that she could see his face. Luke shrugged nonchalantly.
" Yeah."
" Are you going to be okay?" She smiled and put her arm around his slumped shoulders.
" I think I'll take the rest of the night off or something."
" You want company?" Lorelai asked, but Luke just took a deep breath and shook his head.
" I'll be alright." Lorelai smiled at him understandingly and gave him a gentle hug, holding onto him a little longer than usual. Luke put his arms awkwardly around her waist as she rested her head on his shoulder. He pulled away clumsily and she smiled at him again, rubbing his arm gently.
" I'll see you in the morning...... Can you tell me who she is tomorrow?" Luke grinned at her insistence, but shook his head.
" I'll tell you someday."
" Promise?"
" Sure. Go home." Luke grumbled from behind the counter, glancing up at Lorelai as she walked towards the door. Lorelai stopped at the door, looked back at him and grinned.
"You're not alone any more Danes, whether you like it or not."
" Go home."
" You've got you're own little Star's Hollow family started here with me and Ror and Sookie and Jackson and Davey....."
"I though I told you to go home." Luke sighed exasperatedly.
" Me too Luke." Lorelai looked at him and bit her lip. Luke looked up and frowned, then slowly changed to a little smile.
" I'll see you tomorrow." He nodded slowly, furrowing his brows and slipping his hands into his pockets.
" You'll have to tell me." Lorelai teased.
" I'm sure you'll be up all night trying to figure it out." He said sarcastically.
" I have a feeling that I won't be sleeping much. Call me if you're lonely...or you want to talk...or for no reason at all...." Lorelai grinned at him and slipped out of the door. Luke shook his head, but looked at the phone, then up at the clock. She'd be home in five minutes.
" What?"
" Why did it have to fall on a Friday?" Lorelai smacked her head down on the counter.
" Why did what have to fall on a Friday?"
" Father's Day."
" Oh." Luke frowned and disappeared into the kitchen for a minute. Lorelai waited for him to come back out, then looked at the doorway into the kitchen quizzically. She jumped down off the stool and shuffled over.
" Luke?" She leaned around the doorframe and saw him sitting on the floor with his back against the oven. " Luke?" She looked at him like he had gone nuts.
" You're still here?" He sighed, not opening his eyes.
" Um, yeah. What part of our 20 word conversation mislead you into thinking I was leaving? I haven't griped, groaned, explained, complained, or gorged yet, so what's with the disappearing act?"
" Take what you want. I'm not in the mood tonight."
" But you haven't even heard what happened. Chris hijacked Rory to have dinner in Hartford with him and Sherrie and Gigi, and it was a Friday, and I didn't know about Rory's little dinner plans, so I already told my mother that I would be there for dinner tonight. One whole Friday night alone with my parents. I'm about ready to throw myself into a snowblower."
" Must be rough. Can this wait until tomorrow?" Luke sighed.
" What's up with you today? Your tail was all out of joint at breakfast, but I figured that was because I asked for chocolate chips in my omelet. So what's bothering you now Senor Moody Man?"
" Lorelai, I don't want to talk about it."
" But you completely blew off our damage report date! I always come in on Fridays for the blow by blow."
" Look, Lorelai, I know your relationship with your parents is hard sometimes, but sometimes you might want to just be happy that they're there." Luke said a little more harshly then he intended to.
" Oh...."
" Look, never mind, I'm just having a bad day is all. I hate today."
" Today day of the month, or today Father's Day?" Lorelai asked quietly. Luke looked down at his hands in front of him. Lorelai took that as a yes and slid down beside him. She poked her head next to him, moving it around and trying to catch his gaze. " You know you never told me much about your dad. Sometimes I find talking helps."
" So what, you're depressed all the time?"
" See! A joke! I'm helping already. Come on......come on......share your troubles my friend. Lean on me. When you're not strong. I'll be your friend. I will help you carry on. For.-"
" Lorelai. If you don't stop, I will physically throw you from the diner."
" Sorry. I'll lean on you then." Lorelai leaned against Luke's side, nudging at him. " So?"
" So what?"
" So what do you want to tell me about him?"
" Not much to tell."
" Come on Luke, he's your Dad. No amusing anecdotes? Embarrassing baby stories? Awkward tales of teen angst?"
" Nope."
" Alright then, you hard-to-crack nut...Why don't you tell me something about the two of you then?
" Like what?"
" Like why do you keep ever thing the same?"
" He...He died in a hospital." Luke took a deep breath and looked up at Lorelai, trying to figure out what exactly he had wanted to say to her. He had hidden on purpose. He wanted to talk, to tell someone, but he couldn't just be like a normal person and come out and say it. He knew that if he hid, she would come and find him and poke and prod until he finally got the guts up to say something. He started off talking slowly, but soon he was at full on rant. "All he wanted to do was die in his home, where he was comfortable. But I made him stay. I thought that maybe by keeping him there I could keep him from dying. If he couldn't die where he wanted to, he wouldn't die at all. He was stubborn like that. And I knew this wasn't going to work the same way. He couldn't stop this this time. He knew it, I knew it. I made him miserable for the last days of his life to make it easier on me. Making myself ignore what was happening. I can't believe I was so selfish. The least I could do after that is keep the place he loved for him, not be selfish and do whatever the hell I felt like with it."
" It's not selfish Luke." Lorelai looked at him sadly. He had felt guilty ever since his dad had died. " It was hard for you too. How old were you?"
" Eighteen, nineteen." He shrugged.
" Really? That young?" Luke nodded, leaning back against the oven and staring at his feet. " Where was Liz?"
" She left, after the funeral. Found New York, found Jimmy, had Jess, called me whenever she got into trouble. I was too busy to care. I was opening the diner." Lorelai knew he was lying, and he did too. He had spent night after night awake after she left, worrying. Lorelai looked at him calculatingly and thought about him opening up the diner when he was just barely out of high school.
"Was there ever anything else you wanted to do?" She asked curiously.
" Anything else what?" Luke mumbled.
" Go to school? Learn to play water polo? Fly commercial airliners? Any other dreams?"
" Yeah I guess." Luke sighed, sinking down a bit. Lorelai raised her eyebrows and looked at him expectantly.
" Well?...." Luke never really told her that he had wanted anything else, or what that was. He always seemed satisfied, for the most part, with what had happened, with his life and the diner.
" There's a couple."
" What are they?"
" There's no point. It's not like they're going to happen now. Might as well just forget them."
" Come on Luke. I'll tell you one of mine. Until I got pregnant with Rory, I was going to go to L.A. and be a back up dancer in music videos."
" Really?"
" Honest. And trust me, I had the moves." The edges of Luke's mouth turned up a little, and she took this as a good sign. " Now you share....Pleeeease?" Luke furrowed his brows.
" I wanted to run."
" For President?"
" For the States."
" I don't follow."
" I ran track in high school."
" Oh right! Butch Danes." Lorelais grinned at him, but Luke frowned.
" Don't call me that."
" So you were that good?"
" Good enough." He shrugged, but Lorelai kept pushing.
" How good?"
" I came third freshman year, and won State's in Junior and Senior." Luke listed off.
" Wow. Impressive."
" I guess. I was going to national finals at the end of my senior year."
" What happened."
" He died." Luke said simply, but Lorelai looked confused.
" Why didn't you go?"
" I had the funeral, and I had to get the diner going. I didn't have anything to live on anymore."
" He would have wanted you to go. He would have been proud of you."
" I don't care. I wouldn't have done anything."
" You could have won, or kept going, gone to school on a scholarship-"
" I'm not that smart." Luke snorted and Lorelai rolled her eyes.
" Running scholarship. You could have graduated or run internationally. What did you run?"
" 400, 800, 1500."
" Why didn't you go Luke? Just to see, even."
" I was busy."
" You could have made time."
" I didn't want to."
" I know you did." Lorelai insisted.
" Just leave me alone alright!" Luke stood up angrily and Lorelai jumped up and blocked his way as he tried to escape into the diner.
" Not until you tell me why you didn't go!" Luke tried to get around her, but she dodged left and right, not letting him pass.
" GET OUT OF MY WAY!" He finally pushed past her, storming into the diner, but Lorelai followed.
" LUKE!" She cried plaintively. She watched him as he paced back and forth, trying to get something out.
"IT...I....WHEN HE.....I WAS ANGRY OKAY? THERE, DOES THAT MAKE YOU HAPPY? LUKE DANES TELLS YOU HOW HE FELT." He glared at her for a moment, then sat down hard at one of the booths. Lorelai walked over cautiously and slipped in beside him.
" Angry?" Luke looked over and sighed.
" Yeah, angry. I mean, what right did he have to get sick? What right did he have to get sick and make me take care of him for months, not to mention trying to take care of Liz, which wasn't easy. Do you know I failed every single one of my exams that year because I had to take care of him and run the hardware shop and stop Liz from flunking out? I mean actually failed. I never did well in school, but I got 36 % on my English exam. That was the one I did the best on. I only passed because my teachers let me do extra credit work, which I did while I stayed up watching him at night. And what right does he have going and leaving a store to me? I was eighteen. What the hell did I know about actually running a business? Hell, I could barely even figure out how to pass a math test. And how could he make me responsible for Liz? She was sixteen. What did I know about raising sixteen year old girls. Hell, how could he leave me to raise myself? How was I supposed to do that, and make our meals everyday, and pay rent, and go to school, and get to track meets, and go to the Prom with Rachel, all without someone there to help me out. I wasn't supposed to be a parent at 18."
" I know." Lorelai agreed. That kind of responsibility at that age was hard. She definitely knew that. Luke rubbed his hand across his face and rested his head in his hands. " What else is there?" She asked him.
" There's nothing else." But Lorelai knew better, and he knew she did too.
" What else is there Luke."
" He left me alone." Luke sighed.
" You weren't alone." Lorelai rubbed his arm.
" I WAS alone. I was all alone, alone as it gets. My mom left when I was seven. Seven years old and she dies, and all that was left was me and Liz and my dad. And hell, Liz was gone before she even left. All I had was my Dad growing up. And just when I'm about to do something good, when I'm about to really need some help, when I'm really about to go somewhere, he dies. He's gone, Liz is gone, my mom is long gone. Hell, even Rachel left. And I was angry at him. I knew he would have been proud. He was always proud when I ran. It was the one thing I was really good at. So I didn't go. Because I was angry at him."
" Luke..."
" I know it's stupid." He shook his head.
" It's not stupid."
" He would have thought it was stupid."
" You had a right to be angry."
" I was sad." He said, looking defeated.
" You still are."
" HELL, he pisses me off more dead than he ever did alive. At least then I could yell at him." Luke shook his head, and clenched his fist. Lorelai rubbed his arm to get him to relax, and tried to find something better to talk about, something to take his mind off things.
" What was your other dream? What else did you want? Or did you screw that one over too because you were angry?" She asked him softly, trying to make him a little happier. Luke just exhaled a little laugh and nodded sadly.
" Almost, a couple of times."
" What did you want?"
" Stupid stuff. The girl, the kids, the house not about the diner."
" Matching outfits and a minivan."
" My jeans and my truck."
" You're going to have to find someone who's willing to accept your reluctance to change that was caused by the death of your father at a time your life was about to change dramatically."
" That's not why, you analyze everything way too much.........But I guess it is why it didn't work with Rachel."
" She wasn't big on the no change idea." Lorelai agreed, but Luke just shook his head.
" Sure." Lorelai looked at him carefully.
" Unless..."
" Unless what."
" Unless you had already found someone willing to put up with your non- changedness. That's why she left." She said cautiously.
" Leave it alone Lorelai. That horse is dead."
" I swear I just saw it twitch."
" Post mortem nerve impulses."
" I'm guessing biology was the second best exam?" She watched him smile a little bit, and decided to push a little further. "Who is she?"
" I don't want to talk about it right now." Luke wouldn't look at her, just frowned and stared at his palms on the table.
" Okay....... Promise you'll tell me later?" Lorelai tilted her head so that she could see his face. Luke shrugged nonchalantly.
" Yeah."
" Are you going to be okay?" She smiled and put her arm around his slumped shoulders.
" I think I'll take the rest of the night off or something."
" You want company?" Lorelai asked, but Luke just took a deep breath and shook his head.
" I'll be alright." Lorelai smiled at him understandingly and gave him a gentle hug, holding onto him a little longer than usual. Luke put his arms awkwardly around her waist as she rested her head on his shoulder. He pulled away clumsily and she smiled at him again, rubbing his arm gently.
" I'll see you in the morning...... Can you tell me who she is tomorrow?" Luke grinned at her insistence, but shook his head.
" I'll tell you someday."
" Promise?"
" Sure. Go home." Luke grumbled from behind the counter, glancing up at Lorelai as she walked towards the door. Lorelai stopped at the door, looked back at him and grinned.
"You're not alone any more Danes, whether you like it or not."
" Go home."
" You've got you're own little Star's Hollow family started here with me and Ror and Sookie and Jackson and Davey....."
"I though I told you to go home." Luke sighed exasperatedly.
" Me too Luke." Lorelai looked at him and bit her lip. Luke looked up and frowned, then slowly changed to a little smile.
" I'll see you tomorrow." He nodded slowly, furrowing his brows and slipping his hands into his pockets.
" You'll have to tell me." Lorelai teased.
" I'm sure you'll be up all night trying to figure it out." He said sarcastically.
" I have a feeling that I won't be sleeping much. Call me if you're lonely...or you want to talk...or for no reason at all...." Lorelai grinned at him and slipped out of the door. Luke shook his head, but looked at the phone, then up at the clock. She'd be home in five minutes.