He thinks that he finds himself bowing before her a great deal in this lifetime. Which is odd because he's not exactly the kind of man who takes things lying down. In fact, there is little that he finds sacred. On the short list of things he has compiled over the years, she ranks the top, followed by Kerouac, Ginsberg, New York City, and pie. And Luke.
It isn't really a long list for a reason. He has no particular inkling to add heroes to his non-existent pantheon of gods and goddesses, but she will always sit above the rest.
[-]
He thinks that he sincerely has lost her the moment that she doesn't react upon his utterance of those three words. He's six months late and she's berating him and it's taking all his strength not to bark out a laugh like this is two years ago and they are arguing about Saturday Night Fever and Chinese take-out. But he left and she broke and the world turned without them.
He knows sincerely that he has lost her when he marches in all James Dean and leather jackets, combat boots pounding the floor with desperation and she screams in so little words that he kind of hates her for it. She's Rory and should be spouting off a dictionary of dissertations at him with so much rage and anger for everything he knows he deserves. But she isn't, and that is how he knows.
[-]
He can say with confidence that he is well read (Well, what is much?). And as a result of this, he is well-learned when it comes to the difference between great love and right love.
Great love is all those things that he reads: passion, too much heart, hard time breathing, the feelings coming too quick and too strong. It's the only thing that he knows really in the sense of the word love.
Right love is simple and easy. Comes with little to no effort. And there is absolutely no mentioning of it in any of the million works of literature that he has read. He never wonders if this fact is a coincidence. He knows it's not because although it may be called right love for a purpose, there is nothing right about it. There's a reason that great love is the kind that is always used. I mean, he figures, eyes rolling in the sockets, it is called that for a purpose.
Isn't it?
[-]
The first book he writes nearly gives him a heart attack each time he opens his laptop and peruses the file. He gives her another name and another town to be princess of and a different mother and another understanding uncle and a diner that serves the best coffee in town.
He doesn't even gloss over the fact that it is their story spelled out in similes and metaphors and dialogues. It's not a fairytale. It isn't supposed to be, that's why he doesn't give it an ending. Rather he writes California and Hartford and it plays out on the page perfectly with one exception. There is no calculation for Logan or Dean or any other male that falls ridiculously head over heels nuts for her.
Even in their safe plane of literature they don't get that happy ending.
[-]
When she gets out of the car, he barely recognizes her. Gone is the girl with the stick straight brunette locks that lay in a neat curtain against her shoulder. The cerulean eyes are ghosted over with age which he finds absurd at the mere age of twenty one. She rocks back and forth on her heels, uncomfortable as he stands before her, cocoa eyes probing her with a bunch of never to be answered questions.
And just like that they fall back into routine, and he instantly falls back into being seventeen and in love with Rory Gilmore. It's always been this easy to pretend that she has been his.
[-]
He hates her the moment that she sits in the corner booth, gin and tonics wet on the back of her mouth, lips stained with lime. Face twisted in some kind of delicate grimace as he defends his honor to yet another one of Rory's stupid fucking boyfriends.
Only this time they are not seventeen and it doesn't feel like denouement when he shoves aside his beer and walks away, October air biting his bare arms as he pulls on the jean jacket that feels more mature and so grown up and such a fucking lie since not ten minutes ago he was seventeen and Logan was masquerading as Dean while she watched from a table in the diner, coffee cup pulled to her coral lips, hiding an effervescent smirk.
It feels like backtracking. And he hates her for it.
[-]
He pulls and she pushes. That's how it has always been. And he's not brave enough to hold that tether for much longer without her holding onto the other end.
With mirth, he realizes that this is what great literature is made of.
[-]
She comes boomeranging back to him in late March. Hair stick straight, eyes alive, that effervescent smirk wrought on her coffee tinted coral lips. She looks like first love and first heartbreak. All those lies that he told and promises she kept. A laugh shatters the silence and he can tell that she has an agenda just from looking at her.
They patter around each other with nervous stares and glances that linger just a fraction too long to be friendly. In the silent room, books their only witnesses, she kisses him with such conviction that he swears the book has already finished itself with one eye shut. Feeling familiar pulses in her thigh, a hand glides with experience and then the world ends with one confession.
"It is what it is. You. Me."
[-]
He never rewrites the final chapter. He still publishes the book.
He claims that he hates her every day. (He knows that he doesn't.)
[-]
Luke marries Lorelai in December six years after Rory shows up at Truncheon and sends splinters of the remains of him flying off into the solar system. It is without irony that she is the maid of honor and him the best man. They are both in positions that they expected to be in one day so it is finally a happy moment to fulfill the role.
He's out that night after the town has gone to sleep, reading on his favorite bench, legs crossed over the other, a worn down copy of Slaughterhouse Five marked to no end with red lines and black crosses, blue dots and green slashes when he hears footsteps in the back of his mind. He's still dressed in his suit, black tie loosely knotted around his neck, collar tumbling lazily off the lapel of his jacket. Before him, she waits with hesitation, ivory blue gown and heels slipping in the third snow of the season.
"Hey."
It's one word and loaded, like so many times before. And he just peers up at her. A copy of Howl is clenched between gloved fingers and he allows that half smile to perch on the corner of his mouth.
"Hey." She smiles wide, the way he used to know.
[-]
It's as easy as it's ever been, pretending that she has always been his. It's probably because when he runs out of words, she's the only thing left to say.