Prologue: Tequila or Vodka?

Loralai Gilmore felt as if her head was about to explode. For a crazy moment, she thought she'd found all of the missing anvils. They seemed to have decided to reappear inside her head, each dropping one at a time. "Ugh," she murmured and flopped on her back, her hand slapping something on her left. It was smooth, and a bit hairy—like an arm. "That's not… the cow, and the mooing of the alarm clock…"

Loralai's grumbles were incoherent, and it seemed as if the anvils were falling harder against her cranium. With an annoyed groan she leaned against her elbow and nearly screamed at the sight of a naked man lying beside her—and it was not just any naked man. It was a Luke shaped naked man. With shocked and shaking fingers, she shook him awake.

"You," Loralai said, her eyes wide open. "You. Wake up now."

Luke quickly jerked awake and looked around him. When his eyes focused and locked with the woman next to him, something in his head clicked. There he was—Luke Danes, owner of the local diner in Stars Hollow—and he was in Loralai Gilmore's bed. Not to mention he had an excruciating headache and no pants.

He kept seeing flashes of vodka and hearing mumblings about the first snow falling. "What the hell is going on?" he half shouted, only to be stopped by the searing pain in his temples. Oh, yeah. He was definitely hung over.

"You. Me. Naked. Not working," Loralai rambled.

"Make sense, please," Luke said back, rubbing his head and scanning the room for his pants. "Why am I here?"

"Why are you here, Luke? That's a good question!"

"I don't know, I was asking you! Ow, damnit!"

"Your head?"

"My temples feel like they're gonna crack open."

What was going on? Was Loralai having another one of her dreams? "There aren't a thousand alarm clocks in the room, and I don't have a sexy night gown on!" She closed her eyes for a moment. "Oh, god—please don't tell me I'm pregnant!"

Luke stared blankly at her. "I'm not even going to ask," he stated slowly.

"My head won't stop banging, Luke, make it stop banging and the squirrels are out there on the tree branch, just staring at me…"
"Loralai," Luke started, "I think that banging is the door."

For a moment, Loralai looked confused—but in the next she was leaping out of the bed and throwing aside clothes on the floor. "Rory's home."

"Rory?"

"Yes, my namesake, she's home!" Loralai ran to her closet and found her plaid robe. "You stay here."

"Rory's home?" Luke sat down on the bed in a confused nature. "Why am I here?"

"Luke!" Loralai shouted and then pulled back due to her brain almost hemmorhaging. "Do. Not. Move."

Loralai scrambled down the stairs and to the door, all the while trying to tie her robe and compose her thoughts. She couldn't seem to concentrate with the thought that she had a naked Luke sitting on her bed upstairs.

Undoing the locks and throwing open the door, she did her best to put on a bright smile. "Hi, babe!" she chirped, flinching at the loudness of her own voice.

Rory Gilmore stood on the threshold of her childhood home and smiled at her mother, who seemed to be quite frazzled about something. "You look tired," Rory stated. Loralai forced a laugh and leaned on the edging of the door frame.

"I'm fine."

"Mom, you haven't had any coffee this morning, have you?"

"You know me too well, child. I need my coffee. Thouest will fetch it for thy mother?"

Rory grinned and entered the house, followed by a nervous Loralai. "Do you want me to make you some? I can tell you all about Paris and her apparent new beau."

"I'm fine," Loralai repeated and ushered Rory into a chair by the refridgerator (the only thing she could think of doing). "I have a bit of a headache."

"Hangover?"
"Never."
"Tequila or Vodka?"

"Rory, for heavens sake," Loralai said in her best southern belle voice, "you know drinking is for sinners."

"So is having children out of wedlock, but that didn't stop you," Rory grinned as Loralai pretended to be hurt. They spent several moments bantering about sin, Loralai shooting off several Pope references. Then there was a thump.

"What was that?" Rory asked, raising out of her chair. Loralai panicked. Rory could NOT find out about her drunken night with Luke.

"I'm sure it was nothing," she reasoned, blocking Rory's path to the stairs. "Look, you're right. I'm just a tad bit hungover."

Rory grinned smugly. "I thought so."

"Could you do Mommy a huge, huge, favor, though?"

"Is it illegal?"
"Only in thirteen states. Go and get Mommy some hangover food?"

Rory nodded and grabbed her purse. "Sure, I'll just go to Luke's and—"

"NO!" Loralai shouted and immediately winced. "It's… Mexican Fiesta Ole' time at Al's… and… I need a burrito."

"Um… okay," Rory said and maneuvered her way past to the front door.

"And bring me some Advil!" Loralai added before the door shut. With an aggravated groan, she went back upstairs and to her bedroom. "What part of don't move do you not understand?" she asked a grizzly looking Luke.

"Well, I had to find my pants. I don't even wanna know how they ended up under your pillow."

"Ooh, dirty," Loralai kidded, feeling the pain in her head subside slightly. "It's all part of the Siamese mating ritual."

"Look, just don't say anything right now, okay?" Luke found his every day plaid shirt on the floor and threw it on, while moving around in an attempt to find his shoes. Loralai sat down on the edge of the bed and pursed her lips together as if to force the words to go back down her esophagus.

It didn't work. "Aww, you're wearing plaid—I'm wearing plaid—every lumber jack's nightmare."

Luke shot her a glare as he fitted his tennis shoes over his bare feet. "I can't find my socks," he told her.

"Probably hidden somewhere with my bra," Loralai chimed in.

"That's wonderful news."

Loralai paused for a moment before opening her window. "Climb on out, Lumber Jack man," she said.

"You're out of your mind."

"Luke, we don't have any options," Loralai countered. "If you go out the front door, Babette'll see you through her so-called closed curtains, and she'll ring Miss Patty up and tell her that you left my house—and that will be while she's teaching Kirk to dance to the Horah—and he'll inform Taylor, and his candy shop is right next to you, and I'm pretty sure you don't want him making his 'you non-christian' face at you through the big hunk of glass separating him from your diner."

Luke stared at the window, contemplating what she'd just said. And finally, as if giving up all hope, he warned, "I better not fall."

"Well, the ground is there, so it'll break wherever you land," Loralai kidded as Luke tried to squeeze through the window. She suppressed a grin.

"I just got a sudden image of the Brawny paper towel guy," she laughed. Luke gave her a dirty look and made his way down carefully. "Oh, my Spiderman," Loralai cooed.

When Luke reached the bottom he seemed to be struggling on whether or not to say something. "Um… if you wanna come by the diner later… we could talk… you know, about…" He wasn't good at expressing his thoughts on matters like the one at hand, so he just made a gesture with his hands. Loralai nodded somberly.

"Yeah, we'll talk."

Rory came back about a half hour later with four bags of Mexican Fiesta Ole' food from Al's (and Advil for her hungover Mommy). Loralai scarfed down her portion in record time and hurriedly got herself dressed and ready to go to the Dragonfly Inn.

"Are you done using my hair dryer?" Rory called from downstairs.

"Perhaps," came Loralai's squeaky voice, "but you must find your way to Mount Doom, young Rodo."

"Rodo?"

"Frodo and Rory. C'mon, work with me." Loralai lept downstairs with the hair product in hand. "I've gotta run, sweetie. Michel's called my cell at least twenty times with complaints about Sookie knocking people out with various cooking items."

"At least she hasn't sent anyone to the hospital."

"Yet." Loralai grinned, shoving a foot into a suade boot and running out the door. She spent the whole day wondering what she was going to say to Luke when she saw him. 'Sorry I got you all drunk and sexed up' didn't seem to cut it. Why had they gotten drunk in the first place? It was sad that she couldn't even remember that.

Sookie could tell something was up but didn't ask, making Loralai thank her lucky stars. The hours became later, and finally it was around eleven in the evening. She asked Michel to cover for her and she headed off to Luke's diner. The sound of the bell chiming above the door nearly sent her spiraling into a table full of condiments. "Damn it," Loralai shouted, thanking God that nobody was around to see or hear her.

"Loralai?"

Damn it. "Yes, that was me," she said cheerfully, "the one almost wiping out an entire ecosystem of parmesan cheese and red pepper."

"Murderer," Luke said and came out from the door leading up to his apartment. He smiled in his normal Luke-ish way. "You alright?"

Loralai nodded, feeling completely stupid. "Other than having to run two of my kitchen staff to the hospital because of Sookie, I'm doing fabulous."

Luke watched as she sashayed to the counter and sat down. Like habit, he poured her a large cup of coffee, and for a moment there was a seemingly never ending silence. Loralai stared at her coffee and Luke stared at the Danish container.

"So—" Loralai started, but stopped when she felt Luke lay his hand over her own. "Um… the best things have always happened to me on the first snow," she grinned, letting her blue eyes meet his green ones.