Luke Can Say the Words

Chapter 1 Back to the Beginning

Back to the beginning. That's where he was with Lorelai now. He did one stupid thing and before he knew it, he was alone again. Not only was he alone, but he was surprised by that fact.

He wasn't surprised by Emily plotting against their relationship. She'd made her disdain evident the times she'd met him after he and Lorelai got together. He wasn't surprised by Christopher piling on to greedily make another attempt to grab the golden ring Christopher thought Lorelai would hold open for him forever as Rory's dad. Even Richard, who generally ignored Luke completely, unsurprisingly asserted his disrespect of Luke's existence with "Why Luke, there you are."

Luke was surprised when he found himself in a cab on its way from Hartford to Stars Hollow. After blindly running out of the vow renewal, he'd scrawled a brief note on the Hello Kitty notepad Lorelai left in her unlocked Jeep, letting her know he'd gone home via taxicab.

Still confused and hurt by Christopher's proclamation of Luke being Lorelai's "for now" guy, he stood stupidly on the street in front of the diner. He could hear Caesar's music and see the light on in the diner's kitchen. He needed to be anywhere but here.

He couldn't go to Lorelai's. What if Christopher followed her there? What if Christopher managed to convince her that Luke's "for now" was over? He couldn't face that tonight. He needed to be alone if he had to prepare for the worst.

Completely missing the irony his subconscious played on his brain, Luke made a beeline to the Black, White and Read movie theater. Rejecting Kirk's offer of chocolate-covered beef jerky or some insane poison like that, he made his way up the stairs, where he didn't have to stand in line to buy Lorelai's snacks, and didn't have to squish the cushions before the movie started, and didn't have to lift his right arm to place it over her shoulders as they fluidly cuddled in the middle of Big Red, the sofa that always seemed to be available just for them.

He sat there, on the cold sofa. The darkness overwhelmed his senses and he stared unseeingly at the screen while the insults of the Gilmores, Christopher's arrogance, the stares of the country club members and the words overtook his ability to process. Then the words came pounding back into his head.

"Rustic."

"Lorelai and I belong together. Everyone knows it! I know it, Emily knows it!"

"I had a friend who ate at a diner once and the next day she dropped dead. Her family considered suing the place but there's nothing to get from these people. A couple of stools and a toaster."

The cushion on Big Red sagged and suddenly Lorelai was next to him, trying to break through his curtain of despair.

Subconsciously, Luke had come here to the movie theater because he knew she felt comfortable here. That they had shared countless makeout sessions here. They had refined their banter to a high art here on this sofa, her teasing him, him sharpening his sarcasm, all of this between hugs and kisses and touches which had created an intimacy he'd never known. Where he knew she loved him, even though she'd never said it.

The BWR theater was a place where he could keep feeling close to her in spite of the people trying to pull them apart. Instead of feeling comforted, though, he watched his humiliation at the vow renewal play out again in the old movie on the screen. Guy is humiliated by the girl's friends and family.

He had come to the theater with an unacknowledged crazy hope she would come; maybe she'd somehow be able to help him fight through this.

That's what Luke and Lorelai did. They helped each other through their issues. It was their thing, pushing through each other's barriers, whether it was him talking her out of killing the bag boy, or her buying his boat.

She had helped him through many difficult times by simply not giving up. She'd refused to let him crawl inside himself during his dark day. She'd challenged him to take Jess' problems seriously. She'd tweaked him until he expanded the apartment, creating a real home for Jess.

He'd helped her, too. He patiently taught her what he knew about running his own business. He picked her up time and again when the burden of creating her inn became too much. He pushed her to go into her father's hospital room, adding the reassurance that he would be outside waiting for her.

Her willingness to stand by him while he worked through whatever was bugging him had saved him many times in the past. Her talking beyond the point of rudeness broke through his barriers.

Tonight she didn't talk, she didn't push. She said a few words, but she didn't do what had worked so well for them in the past. He heard himself saying he needed time. "A little time to think."

And she accepted that. Lorelai never accepted that from him. "I need to clear my head." She accepted that, too, and asked him to call her when he was ready.

Then she was gone. He'd gotten what he'd asked for. The sofa was empty; he stared at his fingers, missing her already, not understanding why she'd left.

The next day was awful for Luke. He still didn't understand how to deal with the situation, and somehow Lorelai had lost her usual challenging voice, the voice she used to pull Luke off the edge. So Luke sank further into the humiliation.

Lorelai didn't find her voice until they met at Doose's, but by that time, Luke was as deep into his own head as he was on his dark day. Lorelai, for her part, was hopped up on the forty year separation story told by Sookie. So when she saw Luke going into Doose's, she was already so wound up that nothing but crazy came out.

If she had come to him in the middle of the night, like she did the night of the elections, he would have found a word for him to hold onto, a lifeline. Her saying she was all in would have been enough, had he not been completely surrounded by the cacophony of his everyday life: Taylor, the diner, nosy townies who wanted more gossip, and the relentless torture of Emily's machinations.

He walked out the door of the grocery, not fully realizing he'd left again. He had missed the lifeline she'd thrown him between the soft drinks and the canned soup. Instead of jumping when she said, "I'm in, I'm all in," he only saw a future in which they'd be torn apart by Emily, Richard and Christopher time and time again.

"I'm thinking I can't be in this relationship. It's too much." Then he left the market.

After that there was nothing but silence. She didn't come to him to do her Lorelai thing. She simply disappeared.

When her voice came over his answering machine, he thought he had been saved. There she was, with her words, pushing him, calling for him to come and be just what she needed, which was also what he needed.

He practically ran across town to see her, convinced that this was a real chance to get back together. She still wanted him and he still wanted her; that was clear from her message.

When he heard her say the words "her ex" it felt as if a trap door had opened up underneath him and he was falling into nothingness. All because he left the vow renewal.

Sometime before Lorelai called him her ex, unintentionally signaling that she was done with him, Luke had worked through the issues surrounding the breakup.

The only thing that really mattered was the fact that Lorelai had lied to him. He forgave her when he realized that, even though she'd lied about the meetings with Christopher, she wasn't lying about what happened when she explained it to him. He could see, even looking back on the events at the vow renewal, that she didn't have feelings for her teenage boyfriend. Luke knew that she wasn't waiting for Christopher to return.

He couldn't help hating Christopher and Lorelai's parents. He saw red when he heard Christopher's voice, an anger worse than when Taylor came into the diner with some annoying scheme. He felt the humiliation of her parents' insults whenever he recalled the events leading up to the breakup.

But none of that mattered. When Lorelai called him her ex, she was done with him. That mattered. She was done with him. He hadn't been able to fix it during the time he said he needed to be thinking because he didn't know how.

Therefore, they were broken up; they'd gone back a few years to the time before Luke and Lorelai were the town's Brad and Angelina. The time when the gossip was about when Luke and Lorelai would finally see what was right in front of them.

He corrected himself. It was actually worse than just going back a few years, because now they weren't even friends. They didn't speak at all. Didn't banter and flirt over coffee in the diner. Didn't nod at each other on the street, because Lorelai made sure she stayed away from where Luke would likely be.

Luke tried the same things he'd done before they were a couple. Waiting was his plan; he waited for a perfect opportunity to move their relationship beyond their close friendship. He created opportunities in a non-stalkerish way to see each other: staying open late with fresh coffee on the warmer, going to town meetings, even showing up at the occasional town festival.

This time he waited, but he dared to do more. He did everything he could think of to get her to talk to him again, in the hope that she would give him a small sign that they could repair the relationship. He built the damn musical props. He even took his boat, no, her boat, out of the garage, hoping she'd chase him down and yell at him. He even directly challenged her to show up at the musical, hoping that there they could have one of their "moments," and he'd find the words to ask for forgiveness.

Nothing had worked, and he stood here tonight fruitlessly trying to repair the broken toaster. He recalled Jess' ability to fix the toaster, which he appreciated almost as much as Jess' ability to goad him into action. He missed Jess more than he could say.

Luke grunted as he realized that Jess might still have that damn audio book. That book about love, the book that had given Luke the impetus to finally ask Lorelai out. Maybe there was advice in that book that would help him now.

He should call Jess. He had to call Jess. He needed that book.

Picking up the phone, he dialed the cell phone number he'd scribbled in the contact list he kept in the diner. He cursed as he listened to the 'no longer in service' message.

He picked up the pliers and turned back to the toaster. Maybe tomorrow he'd go to the bookstore and see if Andrew had another copy. Maybe tomorrow she'd run into him in the bookstore and he'd find the words.