AN: I got this idea at work a couple of weeks ago. Not sure where it came from. But, here it is. Reviews would be appreciated.
He readjusted the cap on his head and tried - unsucsesfully - to get by his collegues unnoticed.
"Hey, Jess, you wanna come have a drink with us?" His business partner Matt asked.
"Nah, I'm good. I'll see you guys Monday."
"You're not coming in tomorrow?" asked his friend Chris.
"I told you guys I have plans this weekend. Starting tomorrow."
"Yeah, what's up with that? You never take personal days."
"Well, I'm taking one tomorrow. And it's personal so if you don't mind-"
"And what's with the hat?" Chris interupted.
"Nothing." he returned, instinctivly pulling the baseball cap off of his head and holding it against his chest.
"But you wear it all the time." Matt explained, "Even inside, which is something I never got. I mean, it's like wearing sunglasses inside. Compleatly inneffective."
"I just... It reminds me of someone..."
"Who?"
"It's not important. I thought you guys were going to Cedar's?"
"No. We found a new place. Come on, tell us." Chris could get so whiney sometimes, Jess wondered how he managed to put up with him.
"Come on man. Let's just go." Matt suggested, trying to pull Chris away.
"No. I really wanna know. I mean, it's not even good looking. It's so old. Couldn't you get a new one if you like 'em so much?"
"It's not the cap," Jess replied, finally cracking." It's the person the cap belonged to."
"Yeah? Who was that?"
"My uncle Luke saved my life. He took me in when I was about five minutes away from pounding the self-destruct button. He let me into his life, into his town, gave me a bunch of chances to set my life on track. But I was too young and stupid to realise it then.
"When I met you guys, almost all traces of 'the hoodlum' were gone, so you didn't really have much of a chance to see how I used to be. But it took a long time and I couldn't have done it without him."
"Jeez, your uncle sounds like a hell of a guy." Matt smiled, trying to imagine Jess as a hoodlum.
"Yeah, We'd love to meet him sometime."
"I think he would have liked that too. But you can't meet him. Luke's been dead five years."
"Jess, I-"
"I'm ok. I just... My whole life I had nothing. No one. Then, there was Luke and things actually started to work out. I wouldn't be the man I am today if it weren't for him." he replied emphatically. There was no way he wou be where he was if he wasn't shipped off to Stars Hollow at seventeen.
"Do you-"
"Tomorrow's the anniversary of his death. I usually head home to spend sometime with his wife. It's kind of our... Dark day. Anyway, the cap was his. She gave it to him one year for Christmas and he wore it ever since, except for a while when they had broken up. She gave it to me on the first anniversary. She said... She said she knew that I didn't like hats very much, but that it had been important to Luke and she wanted me to have it."
"We're sorry man."
"Yeah, we didn't realise..."
"It's ok. I should talk about it, about him, more often. Luke was a great man, people deserve to know about him." Jess shook his head and replaced Luke's cap. "I'm gonna go, if that's alright. I have a bit of a drive ahead of me."
"Yeah, sure man,"
"Go. Drive safe."
Jess nodded before picking up a stack of pages and carrying them under his arm. His other hand dug into his pocket to finger the tiny coffee cup charm he kept to remind him of someone else he had lost.
Only, she was gone long before Luke. And she would most likely be with Lorelai when he arrived.
She wasn't dead, just long gone from his life.
FIN
AN2: So, that was it. I hate the idea of dead-Luke, but... anyway, the idea came to me and I just had to write it. Hope somebody like it.