Improv: observe ~ sudden ~ casual ~ olive ~ learn ~ honor

Disclaimer: I don't own them. They belong to Amy Sherman Palladino and the WB.

Spoilers: Everything up to the season two finale, "I Can't Get Started".

Blindsight

She knew that he'd always be there.

Even was he wasn't present, when she couldn't see him – he was there, somewhere in her world, in her mind, in her heart.

But he left her.

He was so close… a moment away. He slipped through her fingers before they even had a chance to begin again. Almost doesn't count. With them, it never did.

So she is here drinking coffee that she made because she can't go over to the diner, either. She scowls. She had offered the proverbial olive branch but Luke didn't accept it and she was stuck alone, drinking homemade coffee.

Her life had officially hit rock bottom.

She gazes across the table, frowning when she remembers Rory isn't there. She misses her daughter. She is reminded again, loudly and clearly that she is alone in her kitchen on a warm July morning.

With a single, shaky sigh she decides that she doesn't like the summer.

No daughter.

No friend.

No Christopher.

She should be used to it by now. She should know that he always blows into her life when she feels like she needs him the most and blows right out of it again when things take a monumental turn.

They sleep together. He has a new girlfriend. They sleep together again. Said girlfriend gets pregnant. And they break – never to be fixed again.

Same old, same old.

Because they never learn.

She wonders how much more of this she can take. How many times can she have him come back to her only to lose him again? How many times can they disappoint Rory? Disappoint themselves? How many times can her dream come so close only to be snatched away the last minute?

She can't even shut him out of her life like she did with Max because he's still Rory's father, he's still a part of their lives – he's still her Christopher.

He's always there, whether she wants him there or not.

Their history is almost tragic, almost romantic – lovers caught in a web of let downs, disappointments and bad timing. She wishes they could escape it.

It is her dream, something she keep buried down deep inside and doesn't tell anyone but she wishes that one day she'd be with him and their daughter and truly be family. Living together, married and – it was a silly dream really – maybe even having more children.

She had been tempted, oh so tempted, to accept his proposal a year ago. She'd thought briefly after he left how it would have been to finally stand beside him in a church and hear him promise to love, cherish and honor her until death did them part.

But it didn't take death to part them. They managed to do that all on their own.

Lorelai Hayden.

She felt as if she were sixteen, sitting in Chemistry and contemplating his first proposal, idly scribbling her new name (if she had accepted) in her notebook. Lorelai Gilmore Hayden. Lorelai Gilmore-Hayden. Mrs. Christopher Hayden.

Maybe if she had accepted his second proposal then he would never have met Sherry. She wouldn't be pregnant now. He wouldn't have left her for another woman and the baby he had with her.

But it didn't matter. She could observe, think through, analyze the situation over and over again – looking for loopholes, for possibilities, for hope – and she'd still come up with the fact that he'd left her. He'd put something else above her like he was destined to do.

And maybe she was destined to wish and hope for him to come back to her. Because that's what it felt like to her – the fates were cruel enough to make that reality.

She can't let him go. Not completely anyway.

And he can't escape her either, not without showing up again to turn her life around and leaving her to pick up the pieces.

She wishes that she could hate him.

But he's a part of her. He was the biggest part of her life before Rory was born. He was the one she went to when her parents were suffocating her. He was the one she sought comfort from; he was the wild boy that made her heart race and her blood stir.

It was funny how he still could.

Oh God how she wished that they were nothing but a casual fling. How she wished that they were just attracted to one another – still after all these years and they only acted on lust and passion.

But she knew better.

Every man would be compared to him. Every potential romance would be affected by his presence in her life and heart. Every possibility of happiness with another man would be put on hold because she would always hold out on the possibility of her happiness with him.

She had told him that she'd let him go when he had brought Sherry to visit. She had lied.

All of a sudden, she looks at the coffee in the mug and a tear begins to slide down her cheek and onto her hand. The realization hits her hard and her body starts to shake.

Through the haze of tears clouding up her eyes, it's clear to her now: she'll always be just a little bit in love with him.

The End