June, 2006
Jess makes the drive back to Stars Hollow from Philly late one Thursday night in the middle of a late spring storm, calling himself all kinds of fool for coming all this way. He'd never admit it, but he's worried. Luke has had the annoying habit for a while now of calling precisely every seven days just to check in—to ask him mundane questions about work and survey his dietary habits. Jess had become accustomed to the brief weekly call and when it didn't come one week, he'd been surprised. When it failed to come the next week, he'd pretended he wasn't concerned. The third week, he'd picked up the phone and dialed the apartment, only to talk to the answering machine. Yesterday marked four weeks and, rather than revealing his concerns by calling someone else and checking in, he's taking a long weekend and making the three and a half hour drive to Stars Hollow to check for himself.
It's well after closing time when he pulls his car into the alley behind the diner and lets himself into the apartment, figuring Luke won't be there anyway and he'll see him in the morning.
What he finds stops him cold for a long moment.
The TV is on, late night infomercials casting blue light over the couch where Luke sits, starting morosely at the screen. Beer bottles litter the coffee table, a dozen or more of them, mostly empty. Behind him, at the end of the kitchen counter, the recycle bin is overflowing and surrounded with their cousins. One half-drunk bottle dangles from Luke's fingers.
Luke barely looks up at Jess' entrance.
"Luke!" Jess barks sharply, striding over and taking the bottle from his fingers. "What the hell are you doing?"
"Nothin,'" Luke replies, snatching the bottle back.
"Luke," Jess tries again, more gently this time. "What's going on? Why are you here? Where's Lorelai? Does she know you're single-handedly keeping the beer companies in business?"
"S'no Lorelai. Th's no more Lorelai." He follows that sentence up by flinging his head back against the back of the couch and draining the remaining half of the bottle's contents.
"Jeez," Jess grumbles. "Are you trying to drink yourself stupid? You guys have fought plenty of times, you'll get over it."
Luke shakes his head: exaggerated, uncoordinated sweeps of his head a back and forth.
"No more Lorelai. Ever."
Jess stills. Something in that phrase sounds a little too final.
"Luke. Are you not still engaged?"
Luke's response it to reach for a full bottle from the coffee table and twist the top off.
"Not," is all that escapes from his mouth.
Suddenly incensed, Jess takes the bottle away before Luke has done much damage to its contents. Standing, he gathers the last full bottle from the table and takes them with him. Confident that Luke is likely unable to stand long enough to come get them off the counter, he leaves them there and fills a tall glass of water for Luke. With sharp, abrupt movements, he hands Luke the glass with a curt "drink this" as he flips the TV off and grabs Luke's feet to swing them up onto the couch. "Go to sleep," he orders. In the near-darkness, he checks to ensure that Luke is curled securely on his side before he storms out of the apartment.
He's striding up the driveway of the Crap Shack almost before he knows what he's doing.
"Lorelai!" He shouts as he mounts the front steps, unheeding of anyone who might be sleeping in the house or the surrounding neighborhood. When the door opens, it's not Lorelai but Rory who steps out.
"I need to talk to your mother."
Rory folds her arms over her chest and raises her eyebrows at him. "You're not getting anywhere near my mother."
"Then maybe you can explain to me why Luke's apartment looks like the back alley of a pub right now, and he's blind drunk watching infomercials!"
"Whatever is going on with Luke doesn't concern us anymore. He made his own choices."
"Luke made his choices? More like Lorelai made his choices for him. The only thing that could make Luke act like this is Lorelai. She sure as hell did something."
"If it's all my mom's doing, if this is what she wanted, why do you think I have to make sure come home every few days just to make sure she eats a decent meal once in a while?" Rory hisses at him. "Why do you think I stand outside her room every night while she cries herself to sleep and then pretends everything is fine the next day?"
Jess leans a little closer to say incredulously, "You think Luke is the one that did this? He's pined after Lorelai for years before she even noticed he existed! You think he'd give up on that?"
Rory's voice is cold when she replies.
"Apparently that's how it works with the Danes men. They say they want you, but they don't really want you enough to let you into their lives. That's what the men in your family do, right? They walk away when they should stay. They think grand gestures one day make up for hurting you every other day."
Jess has to take a step back at the force of her words: "Luke's not like that! He's better than me!"
"Yeah, well, that's what we all thought," she spits, "but he seems determined to prove us wrong."
After long moments of staring at each other, the glares shift to some semblance of understanding and they both heave a tired sigh.
Lorelai chooses that moment to lean out the door. "The next movie's about to start," she tells Rory. The first thing that strikes Jess is that she seems small, fragile and shrunk. She smiles, but it looks brittle. When she sees him, she turns a cracking smile his way: "You're welcome to come in and join us." She is quiet, calm, polite. The Lorelai he knows is not quiet and calm and polite. She is all quick wit and rapid fire and grand schemes. It is this more than anything that shocks him and stops him cold.
He mumbles a "no, thanks" and watches her close the door before he turns back to Rory.
"It was that bad?"
Rory turns to look back at the front door her mother has just disappeared behind.
"It was bad, Jess."
"Hang on a minute," Rory tells him as she turns and slips through the same door. She returns a moment later and thrusts something at him.
"Since you're here," Rory says, an edge of bitterness mixed with the weariness in her voice, "you can take these back to him. He's got his own family now. He obviously doesn't want to be a part of ours anymore." In his hand he finds a manila envelope. He doesn't know the story behind one of the items in it, but there is little doubt in his mind what the tiny black box holds.
AN: I've always figured that for as much as she cares about Luke, and as much as she can acknowledge her mother's mistakes, Rory would still be feeling a fair amount of anger toward Luke in the aftermath of season six.
This is not going to be a long, drawn-out piece—I'd say it's more of a beginning than a resolution. I expect it to be maybe 6 short-ish chapters, three of which are finished already.