"Lorelai"
Disclaimer: I don't own them. Wish I did.
Luke had never met a woman like her before.
She was annoying, aggravating, sometimes downright infuriating. Her hyperactive behavior and caffeine addiction made him cringe at times. She delighted in pushing his buttons. He knew she did these things deliberately. He knew, but somehow it didn't seem to matter.
The worst part was, he liked it. He liked being the focus of her attention. He liked the way she kept herself in his space. He liked that she did this to him, and only him. He liked that what they had was special. He knew his grumpy façade tickled her, which kept her coming back for more, and so he played it up. He encouraged her. He had never encountered a woman who made him want to do that before.
Sure, there were times when she stepped over the line and really, truly, made him angry, but he couldn't help but forgive her. It was her nature to push, and he could accept that. From any other woman, it would be a deal breaker. From her, it was simply one more facet of her intense personality.
Besides, he thought he understood. She had been forced to grow up almost overnight when she got pregnant. They had talked about it before. Suddenly, she was responsible for another human being. A helpless, innocent child needed her, and she rose to the challenge, as she always did.
She clung to the last vestiges of the person she had been, though. That young girl was still very much alive inside of her, never far from the surface. Maybe it made her immature at times, but it also made her glow.
He envied that about her. Losing his mom had been hard, but after losing his dad, he had become a more withdrawn version of himself. He had pulled away from the people around him, from life itself. It was the major way in which they were complete opposites. He had given up and created a wall around himself. She grabbed life by the horns and never looked back, determined to enjoy it to its fullest.
He knew a lot of that had to do with Rory, too. She wanted to surround her daughter with happiness, so she embraced every bit of joy she could find.
He had never met a woman who sparkled before. Lorelai Gilmore sparkled.
And she was beautiful. God, was she beautiful.
She dazzled him sometimes, with her smile. It was the way her smile lit up her face, the way her strikingly blue eyes would focus on him, making him feel like they were the only two people in the world. He loved seeing her smile. He'd never met a woman who could stun him on the strength of her smile alone.
The fact that the rest of her was just as killer was completely unfair to men everywhere, in his opinion. For years, he had watched men trip over themselves to get to her, and while he felt a great deal of contempt for their clumsy and shallow attempts, he could also sympathize. Lorelai Gilmore could drive a man to distraction.
Lord knows, it had happened to him often enough. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. You couldn't help but want her.
Luke knew he was a sucker for her, for her and Rory both, actually. He would do anything for them. He'd never had a woman or child wrap him around their finger before, but he was incapable of resisting those two. One look was sometimes all it took. He had learned to keep his head down.
Lorelai's relationship with Rory was unlike anything he'd seen before, definitely not your typical mother and daughter relationship. Those two were bonded so closely they could've almost been sisters. They shared everything, in a way Luke would've found uncomfortable with a child of his own. Maybe it was because they were closer in age than most mothers and daughters. Maybe it was because of the way they had lived when Rory was growing up, stuck in the close quarters of the potting shed. He didn't know. He only knew that it was true. Lorelai was quick to admit that Rory was her best friend, and it was easy to see.
Luke had never been as utterly charmed and beguiled by a woman before he met Lorelai. He had never met a woman as strong and protective of her independence. No woman had ever taken his breath away, as she did so easily. He had always thought of that phrase as a silly cliché until it happened to him. No woman could compare to her. There was no one like her.
Lorelai Gilmore had stolen his heart with no effort at all. She'd sent all of his walls tumbling down. He had never experienced anything like it before. None of the women he'd dated in the past had affected him this way.
And somehow, it just seemed right.