There was Babette and her ankles, and then suddenly, the whole town just gave up. And before he quite realized what was going on, Kirk had deposited arms-full of raincoats and tarps at the diner's entrance.
Three hours later, and he was still sewing.
'A stitch in time saves nine. A stitch in time saves nine.'
He heard his mother--either he was delirious, or the diner was haunted...
Nah, he was just tired. It was the middle of the night and he couldn't quite remember when the last time was that he'd been up at this hour. He'd forgotten how very quiet and dark the town could be.
His tired fingers pushed the needle through the latest tarp he was attaching to what hopefully would become a giant tent.
He remembered one night when she dragged him outside in the middle of the night because it had started to snow.
'You're nuts. Certifiable,' he informed her after he came out to check on her for the second time.
'Well, I only do this once a year...and it usually doesn't happen at night...ooh, look, look, the stars! I can see the Milky Way! It's so so pretty,' she declared with childlike wonder.
'That's not the Milky Way. That's clouds.'
'I don't care. It's the Milky Way. Ooh, do you think Doose's is open? A Milky Way candy bar would taste so good just about now...'
'Like I said,' he reiterated, 'certifiable. And no, Doose's not open at what, three AM.'
He pricked his finger on the needle and quickly sucked on its tip. Returning to the task at hand, he heard his mother's voice again. In and out, over and under, he thought. A stitch in time, saves nine.
Why nine? He wondered.
He'd have to ask April some time. She'd know.
He was always better at doing things. His mind raced ahead, imagining the look on her face when she saw the party. He still knew her so so well. She'd be thrilled, truly a kid in a candy shop, and she would look around the square with pure wonder and joy on her face.
He spent the next twenty minutes steadily sewing East-Side Tillie's camper cover onto the assembled tent.
'My neck hurts,' Lorelai said one day after a long event at the Inn. 'I didn't get a chance to sit down. Not once today...'
'Sorry,' he murmured, turning from the fire he'd lit in the fireplace. 'Would it help if I...'
'Oh, Luke. That's so good. You have such magic fingers. To the left, no, right...no, down my back a little.'
'Your shoulders--you must have hunched them.'
'Oh, Luke, that feels so good.'
He just smiled.
Now, he'd literally kill to be able to touch her, anywhere, again.
But he couldn't.
Somehow, that thought seemed unbearable to him, and he stabbed himself once again with the needle.
Maybe it was getting blunt.
He rummaged about in a drawer and found an old darning needle whose point still had some oomph to it.
He once couldn't imagine life without her.
He'd just needed time to adjust. To being a new father. And he hadn't noticed her slip-sliding away.
He remembered the first night that they actually slept together. Not just sex, but sleeping together.
For a woman of so many words, strangely, living with her meant fewer words. They just seemed to communicate so well. One look as they sat snuggled on the couch, and with no words, they'd suddenly agree to call it a night.
She always looked at him with so much love--she said she never could be away from him for long and would just have to fling herself into his arms. And he loved that. Loved feeling so wanted, so needed.
It made him feel the way he did as a child, only better. That warm, safe feeling--a haven in an awful world, was what she was. Like his mother had been.
And she'd also left him.
And he was without then--without someone to be there when things were bad, when she would just touch him--with her smile, her hand, it didn't really matter--and he would again feel safe, feel loved.
And then she left him.
And married him, that millionaire loser with the fancy scarf.
During the year that passed, he'd come to realize a number of things. Take a few nights ago, at KC's. Looking into her eyes and listening to her voice--which always betrayed her--he realized that he still wanted her.
Whoa, wait a second. What he really meant, he thought, was that she so obviously still wanted him. 'I will always love you,' she'd crooned, right?
And if she would only have him, would only take one step towards him, he knew that he would do it, wholeheartedly take her back, be a 'them' again.
I will always love her, he thought, as the needle reached the edge of the tarp.
Some might think him a fool for doing this for her, he considered. But he would take the higher ground. Always had, always would.
So once again, he was doing something for her. He'd spread a tent over the town and wrap it up like a gift for her. Keep her and Rory safe from the storm.
He reached down to briefly touch the necklace box in his pocket. Maybe he would get a chance to slip it to her at the party. Say it was a "you done good raising your kid" gift.
He remembered the second time he tried to tell her about April.
She'd come running down the stairs, surprising him in her wedding gown and veil, the purest vision of joy he could imagine.
And after reassuring her as to the perfect nature of the dress, he kissed cheek and made her cry.
"Are you ok?" he whispered as she cried.
"I'm just so happy," she whispered back, her arms tightly wrapped around his neck.
There was no way he could tell her about April. About a girl he'd abandoned before she was even born. A girl whose existence was bound to ruin her happiness.
"Kiss me again," she whispered after a moment, the smile breaking through her dress anxiety.
"Any time," he responded, "You know that I love you, right?"
She laughed, and then they kissed once more, as his fingers gently hooked under her chin and tipped her beautiful veil-shrouded face to his. And they kissed and kissed and he just couldn't tell her as he held her in her wedding gown.
He wanted to see her happy, not sad.
Morey's yellow-slick raincoat came next. It was perfect, really, for this--he was a tall fellow. It only took a few minutes for Luke to attach it to the tent, before moving on to Kirk's mother's patio furniture cover.
Oh, my God, green plaid flowers on one side, white and green stripes on the other.
He remembered the night that he told her that he was all in. They arrived at the diner, ostensibly for coffee, and she'd stopped him before he got to the counter, and demanded a kiss.
And kiss they did. Epic, was what she later called it, somehow managing to get in a reference to George Clooney and Orlando Bloom. It was a kiss that made her forget about coffee, a kiss that made him thankful that he'd arranged for Cesar to open the next morning, a kiss that changed his life.
But he was a hypocrite.
Some time during that beautiful breathtaking night, he remembered saying in all earnestness, 'Lorelai, I meant it before when I said I was all in.'
'I know,' she quietly and uncharacteristically said with seriousness, 'me too.'
He pulled her head closer against his chest and kissed her hair. He chuckled, 'I think you showed me tonight.' And then he stroked her breast slowly and he could feel her smile against his chest, and he was aroused and god, he hoped she was--again.
But when push came to shove, he let her down. He hadn't been all in.
He remembered the timbre of her voice as she came, the way she called his name, an inflection he'd never heard before.
Damn. Another finger poke. The calluses on his hands were rough now, repeatedly poked by the needle, and dented by fishing line.
He'd never been with a woman so exciting, he reminisced. Maybe that's why his 'date' with April's crazed swim coach hadn't worked out. Lorelai was wonderful and exasperating, loving and helpful, passionate and crazy, but she'd loved him. And maybe, just maybe, he thought as he reached for more fishing line, maybe her song the other night meant that she was just keeping that love for him locked up deep inside. That she'd made a mistake marrying that good-for-nothing.
She was certifiable, though. Their car-buying expedition a few weeks earlier had reinforced that for him. After a year apart, they were slowly slipping back into old patterns, he, exasperated, and she...just being Lorelai.
And from that day on, his life seemed to change again. Eventually she came back to the diner, and it was as if the lights had been dimmed for a year and were suddenly turned back on. For the first time in a year, he felt challenged. On every subsequent diner visit, it seemed to be a little easier for both.
It was four-thirty AM. It was a good thing he'd cancelled today's deliveries.
Time to put the finishing touches on the tent.
He remembered discussing his first marriage. His only marriage.
'There was one thing I never understood,' he told her one evening at dinner.
'How I get my hair to flip just like this?' she laughed and then demonstrated.
He reached out to still her movement. 'Why it was so important to you that I explain why...that whole Nicole thing...' he waved his hand across the table.
She pouted. 'Lots of reasons, burger boy...'
Right, he thought.
'I mean," he continued, 'it really wasn't any of your business.'
'Really? I don't remember much about that time...it just was weird, the way you didn't move in with her, really.'
'Did so,' he adamantly countered.
'Depends on your definition of moving in, I guess...but hey, why are we talking about this? We're together now, you and me, and...'
'I like it when you're happy,' he let her know.
'Luke,' she responded, 'I love you.'
'I know.'
'Ooh, how Han Solo of you!' she squealed with delight.
He'd always put her on a pedestal, he thought. And then came the day that HE called, and he'd skulked off to his apartment and morosely sat there amidst the gloom of his life before Lorelai.
And yet, in spite of his nasty words in front of their friends, she'd come to him, full of sunlight and hope. And he made her promise to keep no secrets. Of course, that was before April.
She sat on his lap and kissed him, then got off him and knelt down and unzipped his pants and wrapped her mouth around him even as he sat there, still morose, still holding his beer. It took him an extraordinarily long time, he remembered. And, he angrily recalled, he sat there being a jerk while she...she kept on going, not stopping until he came with barely a grunt. And he still sat there, angry and morose, because of an answering machine message. Even though she placed her head gently on his knee once he was done, and softly stroked his leg.
She really was the only person who ever understood him. She knew to keep the boat for him. She knew to give him the space he needed when he asked after he told her about April. Even though she knew it would doom her, doom them, her keeping so quiet. It must have been awful for her, knowing the whole time that he was shutting her out, where it was all going to lead--nowhere. Or rather, that guy's bed.
Yes, she proved it for certain when she left him and went to that...Christopher.
His index finger was very sore as the sun faintly rose over the town square.
He stiffly rose and spread the tent out as best he could. What was missing?
Nothing, it seemed.
Maybe there could still be a chance. Maybe she'd see through the ruse of the necklace...that song had to mean something.
Today was going to turn out wonderful, in spite of the gathering rain clouds drifting across the face of the early dawn sun.
He remembered the first time they had sex after she found out about April. He'd been so relieved--she'd seemed so modern, so understanding about it. She hadn't run off screaming because he'd ruined their wedding. She hadn't run off because he obviously was a horrible person if Anna hadn't told him about their baby.
He kept his distance for a few nights, carefully rolling over just as she did; only perfunctorily touching and going through the motions.
Then one night, he just had to tell her about his sense of betrayal at what Anna had done, and the ice broken, she responded so beautifully, so simply--put one arm around him and pulled him close in to her, and let him rest his head against her soft breasts. Then as if reclaiming possession, she kissed him, taking the upper hand. As his stubble dragged along the edge of her face, she smiled and he thought life was returning to normal.
Time to put the tent out onto the lawn of the square.
He wonders what it would be like if he could just make love to her once more. He'd spend extra time making her ready for him, then enter her slowly and move with infinite patience. And he'd let her lead him all the way; let her control things from there. And he would be the luckiest man in the world if she'd only forgive him as he had long since forgiven her and he would hear her beautiful trembling voice as she cried out for him as she opened herself to him body and heart and soul.
The tent is finally open and sprawled on the lawn. He'll get Zach to help hoist it up.
He still can't believe that he actually pulled this off, he thinks, as the first drops of rain fall. Slow and steady won the race--he can hear his mom again. Many stitches in time have saved the day for Rory. And Lorelai.
This is going to make her so happy. And he'll be there, in the crowd, and smile.