Luke and Lorelai continue their talk, filling in the gaps about their most peculiar first meeting…

"A little bit ago, you said I was steady and sure of myself. What are the odds you'll still think that after we get through with our reminiscing?" Lorelai challenged him.

"I think the odds are pretty good," Luke said confidently. He smiled encouragingly at the woman sitting across from him on the picnic blanket, the one who was no longer a complete stranger. True, she probably was a little crazy, but he was finding that the status of her mental health concerned him less and less the more he got to know her.

"Then here we go!" Lorelai said, sounding determined. She sat up straight and pushed her hair behind her ears. "I arrived downstairs, in my p.j.s, noticeably confused and agitated, according to my mother. Apparently I spied the wedding portrait she insists on keeping on the mantle and screamed my head off."

"From your wedding?" Luke questioned.

"Yeah, a super posed one of me and Chris from the big day. Mom doesn't seem to think having it displayed in a place of honor is in any way awkward for me."

"You were upset because it was there?"

"No, Mom says I acted like I'd never seen it before. Like it was a huge surprise to find out I'd married him."

"Oh," Luke said quietly, re-evaluating the crazy aspect.

"She thought I should calm down, eat breakfast and get ready for work, but instead I started yelling for someone named Rory."

Luke nodded. "Right. Your daughter."

Lorelai stared at him, her face paling noticeably. "How do you know that?"

"You told me. You said you had a daughter named Rory, and you thought she'd been in love with my nephew Jess."

In a panic, she scrambled to her feet. "Is that true?"

"Is what true?" Luke wasn't sure if he should stay seated or get up, just in case he needed to subdue her.

"About Ror – that girl. Being in love with your nephew."

"I don't know."

"Why don't you know?"

The constant knife of guilt twisted a little bit in his heart. "Because unfortunately, I didn't talk much to Jess the last couple of years of his life."

Lorelai drew in a shaky breath. "Oh, no. He's dead?"

Luke nodded, and Lorelai weakly plopped back down on the blanket, as if she no longer had the energy to be on her feet. "Oh, Luke, I'm so sorry."

He shrugged stoically. There really wasn't anything to say back to that without revealing a lot more than he wanted to at the moment.

"I'm sorry he's gone, and I'm sorry that me bringing him up probably caused you pain."

"Actually…" He shook his head and looked down at his clasped hands. "It was kind of nice to hear his name again. There aren't many people willing to talk about him."

Lorelai looked distraught. "How could I have known about him? How did I even know his name? Why would I say that – this girl, Rory, whoever – was in love with him?"

"I take it you don't have a daughter?"

"No," she whispered. She pushed her hair back, thinking. "If you don't mind me asking, how old was Jess?"

"He'd be 21 soon." Luke bit his lip. So young. Too young.

"Do you think that my not-daughter was probably around the same age?"

"No way of knowing that, but sure. I'd guess around his age, anyway."

"OK, math isn't my strong suit, but…" She stared at him, doing calculations. "That means I would have had to have her at 16."

Since Luke didn't have any idea how old she was now, he didn't comment, but he watched her face as something else stole her focus.

"Which means…I probably would have gotten pregnant at 15," she said quietly.

"Possibly," he commented. "I mean, if this girl existed, and if you were her mother."

She took in a huge, shaky breath of air and looked directly at him. "When I was 15, I had a pregnancy scare."

He nodded, trying to ignore the little shiver of the occult that wafted between them at her words.

"No one knows that, not even my parents. I kept those three weeks of sheer panic to myself. I didn't even tell Chris."

"It was Chris, even that long ago, huh?" He was already tired of Chris.

"Yeah." She sighed again and looked apologetic. "We were typical teenagers. Thought we knew everything, and considered ourselves invincible, too. Sometimes we were sensible and cautious, and other times we just couldn't be bothered about being careful. But let me tell you, those three weeks changed me. I suddenly saw how everything I'd worked so hard for could collapse. From then on, I was a stickler for birth control. I studied harder than ever. The party girl left the building."

"So what happened? You really weren't pregnant?"

"I don't think I was?" He could tell she was going back in time, reliving those weeks of uncertainty again. "It's possible I was, I suppose. I told myself then it was just my period being late, but I guess it could have been a miscarriage, and I didn't know enough to even suspect that." She looked at him honestly. "All I know is I made damn sure it never happened again."

She was quiet, reflecting, and after a moment, Luke reached over and lightly touched her hand, a gesture of understanding.

"How weird is it though, that this Rory person would have been the same age as that baby would have been?" she murmured. "If there'd been a baby."

"It is weird." Luke didn't know what else to say. "What happened after the Rory part?" he asked, trying to get her to move on.

"Well, I guess I got more upset, and went into my dad's study, where supposedly there should have been a huge painting of her behind his desk." She looked at him grimly. "There wasn't," she informed him, unnecessarily.

"Ah."

"By then, both of my parents were really concerned about me. They thought I was having a nervous breakdown or something. Dad gave me a shot of Scotch, just like you'd see somebody in a movie do. It's a wonder neither of them slapped me across my face."

"Or whacked you over the head with a vase," Luke suggested dryly.

"Ooh, whacking! Dirty!" Lorelai trilled, shooting him a suggestive smile.

"Wh-what?" he sputtered.

But she was already continuing. "Somewhere in the middle of their discussion about what was wrong with me, I offered that I'd been watching a Lifetime movie about a teenaged mother as some sort of excuse, then went to get ready for work. The only other out-of-the-ordinary thing was that I tried to take the gardener's Jeep instead of my car. And before you ask…" She put up her hand. "I have no idea why. I've never harbored a secret desire to drive a Jeep."

"I'm still flummoxed by the statement that you have a gardener." Luke shook his head at her. "I'm pretty sure we live in completely different tax brackets."

Lorelai snorted. "I don't have a gardener. My parents do. They also have a cook and a revolving door of maids. My mother's hard on the help."

"Did you just hear yourself? The help."

"Let's not get caught up in arguing socioeconomic disparities. We'll never get to the end of what we need to talk about if we do."

Luke nodded. "Point taken."

"Good man." Lorelai winked at him, then pulled her legs over to one side, carefully smoothing down her skirt as she did so. "After that I know I arrived at work, walked into a meeting late, said some really stupid things, and made a whole design team mad at me. Then I dropped my mug of coffee, which destroyed some storyboards, and got even more people mad at me. Then I ran out, did who-knows-what, and returned to my parents' house that evening. Dad found me sitting out back in the rose garden, looking tearful." She sighed and looked at Luke glumly. "I said something to him about not fitting in anywhere. He still thinks the whole episode was brought on because I was working too hard."

"Wow. That's quite a day."

"Yeah." She reached for her coffee and took a gulp. "OK, your turn to fill me in."

Luke felt like a teacher had unexpectedly called on him in class, and he experienced a moment of schoolboy panic. "Uh…well…" He scrambled for how to begin. "Like I said, it was in the afternoon, maybe around 3 o'clock, and I was out taking a walk around the square."

"The square?"

"Yeah, you know. Typical small town. We've got an open square in the center of it. There's a gazebo, even. All of the businesses sort of surround it, including mine. I wanted to get out of the diner for a while, to clear my head."

"Stars Hollow sounds picturesque."

"Not really." He shrugged. "Anyway, I heard someone call my name, and it was…Well, it was you."

She was staring at him, riveted. "And I knew you?"

"Yeah, definitely, but I didn't recognize you, so that was the first thing I asked: do I know you? And you said, 'I don't know, do you?'" Luke did a pretty good imitation of her breathless, flirty delivery.

Lorelai chuckled. "That does sound like me," she admitted.

"I said no, because I didn't, and that's when it looked like you were going to cry."

Lorelai grimaced.

"I asked if there was anything I could do to help, because obviously you were very upset, and that's when you did start to cry."

"Ugh. Sorry. Believe me, that's not something I make a habit of in real life."

"I sort of led you to a bench, back behind Gypsy's, and I did that thing guys do, patting at their pockets like they're looking for a tissue or a handkerchief or whatever, but I knew I didn't have one. And you…" He took a deep breath. "This is the first really weird thing."

"The first, huh? OK, let's hear it."

"You already knew I didn't have a handkerchief. You said that was OK and you agreed, giving your hanky to someone else to blow their nose on is disgusting."

Lorelai shook her head slightly. "Why is that weird?"

"Because that's exactly what I've said about the practice, many, many times. And the way you said it – the way you repeated it – it made it seem like you'd heard me say it before. You even sort of smiled when you said it."

"I don't think saying that is too freaky. Lots of people feel that way," she stated with a shrug.

"It was more the way you said it," Luke insisted. "It was like you were quoting me."

"Whatever. Crying. No hanky. Go on."

Luke felt irritated at the way she dismissed that part of their conversation. "Next is the thing I can't rationalize, no matter how hard I've tried. You said, 'So you married Rachel, huh?' as if you knew us and knew our whole backstory or something. Before I could respond to that, you said, 'Does she still move the milk? Does that still drive you crazy?'"

"What?" she asked, laughing.

Luke wasn't laughing a bit. "I'd been living on my own for quite a while when Rachel first came back and moved in with me. Everything was arranged the way I wanted it, you know? But she started moving things, not maliciously, but because she didn't even think it mattered, and the one thing that drove me up the wall the most was that every time I reached into the refrigerator for the milk, it wasn't where it should be. It did drive me crazy, but I never told Rachel; I never mentioned it to anyone. I bit my tongue and kept it to myself. But somehow…you knew about it. You knew. How could you know?"

Lorelai was no longer amused. She looked spooked. "I don't know. I don't know you, or Rachel, or Stars Hollow, or any of this! I don't know about the milk being moved. Of course I don't know!" she insisted, beginning to sound angry.

Luke pointed at her. "See, that was my reaction that day. I was so unnerved that I snapped at you. I demanded to know how you knew that. You said you didn't, that you should go. You looked so sad that I felt bad for snapping at you. I asked if you lived in Stars Hollow, and you said…" He swallowed hard, because for some reason, whenever he thought about the anguish on her face as she replied to that question, it felt like a blow to his heart. "You said you thought you did but you guessed you didn't."

"That makes no sense," Lorelai murmured.

"If you think that makes no sense, you'd better buckle up for the next part," Luke warned her. "When I asked you to explain, you started talking about sci-fi TV shows and alternate realities."

"No! Stop it!" Distressed, Lorelai lunged forward on her hands and knees towards him. "Come on! You're making this up! You expect me to believe this? Sounds to me like you're the one who's crazy! How do I know that any of this really happened?"

"If it didn't happen, then how did I know your name? How did I know where to find you? How did I know who Rory was?" he countered. "How did I know when your 'lost day' was?"

She stared at him for a few seconds, breathing heavily. "I don't know," she finally said dully, and reluctantly sat back down. "This is just so insane," she murmured to herself.

"No argument from me," Luke said sharply. "But let's be clear that you're the one who came to my town and disturbed my life and made me doubt my sanity. You're the one who started this."

Briefly, she covered her face with her hands. "Oh, my God. Alternate realities. Go on."

"You mentioned Star Trek, Twilight Zone, Outer Limits. And again, it was like you knew mentioning those specific shows would mean something to me."

"Did they?"

"Yes," Luke sighed. "Next, you started telling me about this other reality. You – she – this other person…" He suddenly stumbled over how to identify the Lorelai he spoke to that day. It was going to be awkward, repeating her own, more intimate words to this relative stranger sitting across from him on the picnic blanket.

"The Lorelai I was that day," she suggested, trying to help him out.

"Right. She said that in this other Stars Hollow, that this Lorelai…well, she loved Luke –"

Lorelai made a noise like she was being strangled.

He looked over at her, meeting her embarrassed, horrified gaze. "That was the first I'd heard your name, so I commented on that, that it was a pretty name." He swallowed hard again, remembering with perfect clarity the pure electricity that had jumped between them when she'd tucked her hand around his. He decided to keep that insight to himself. "She said that she loved her daughter Rory, and ran the Dragonfly Inn with Sookie St. James, and had a good life, but none of that was true here."

"Wait, wait, wait!" Lorelai was agitated again. "Back up! That's too much information. The what now? With who?"

"Um, the Dragonfly Inn, with Sookie St. James."

"Is that true?" She shook her head, hearing herself. "I mean, is that a real place? Is that a real person?"

"Well…" Luke frowned. "I think the Dragonfly used to be a place, but it's been closed for most of my life, if not longer. I have sort of this vague idea about where it's located. Sookie, however, is most definitely real."

"Did you talk to her?" Lorelai asked eagerly.

"Did I go up to her and ask her if she knew someone named Lorelai from an alternate reality?" Luke asked disparagingly.

"Right, right," she grumbled, again briefly putting her head in her hands. "We don't want other people to know about the craziness, got it." She glanced up at him. "But she does exist. You know her?"

"I know her. Stars Hollow is small, everybody pretty much knows everyone. Sookie's a really good cook. A chef, actually. She used to work at the Independence Inn until fairly recently. She tried to open her own bakery in town, but she couldn't make a go of it. She's in the process of selling it."

"Aww, too bad." Lorelai spared some sympathy for this unknown person, then looked intrigued. "Did you say she worked at an inn?"

"Yeah, the Independence. It's a big place, pretty well-known in the area. Unfortunately when the owner died, it was bought up by a big chain operation, and a lot of what made it special disappeared. That's when Sookie quit and tried going out on her own."

"So it wouldn't be completely out of left field for me to be running an inn with her?"

Luke looked at her, half in amusement, half in bewilderment. "Sure, why not? Run an inn that doesn't exist with a person you don't know, in a town where you don't live."

"Well, when you put it that way, Mr. Spoilsport." She pouted prettily at him. "What happened next?"

"I pointed out that you were probably crazy."

His dry assessment made her laugh. "Way to state the obvious."

He smiled but cast his eyes downward, troubled by how similar her reaction was to the other Lorelai's.

"Anything else?"

"You – she – got up, said it was time to go before I called someone to lock you up. And then you…you asked about Jess."

"Your nephew," Lorelai said solemnly.

"Yeah." He stared down at his hands. "You could tell, right away, that there was something wrong, and you – she – that Lorelai – gave me a hug."

"I am sorry."

"Look, I should just tell you." He forced himself to meet her sympathetic gaze. "Jess died of an overdose. They weren't able to say whether it was on purpose or not, and because of that, no one knows what to say, so no one says anything. But you were instantly supportive. You didn't care about how or why, you were just ready to provide a shoulder to cry on."

"That's the way it should be." She leaned over and patted his knee. "The circumstances shouldn't matter. You support your friends when they're going through a rough patch."

Out of curiosity, he clasped his hand around the one of hers that was still resting on his knee. He discovered that the electricity between them was missing, and he wasn't sure if he was relieved about that or not.

Luke sat back, oddly disappointed. "You said that he'd loved Rory, and that you were pretty sure that Rory loved him." He smiled suddenly. "And then you said the best thing. You said that you'd secretly admired Jess' smart-assedness."

She chuckled but looked confused. "Why was that good?"

"Because that sums Jess up perfectly. He was a smart-ass. It got him in constant trouble, but the kid was so fiendishly clever, so damn witty. You couldn't help but laugh, even as you wanted to strangle him."

"He does sound like my type of person," Lorelai said with a grin.

Luke smiled back at her. "It was good to hear a comment like that. It helped me remember the way he was before things got bad. I appreciated hearing it."

Again, she seemed to be fixated on his smile. "I'm glad it brought back some happy memories, then." She appeared to think back over what had been said. "Did we talk about anything else?"

Luke tried to shore himself up against the embarrassment he knew was coming. "You – she –"

"The other Lorelai," she said in resignation.

"Yeah. She, um…she kissed me."

With a groan, Lorelai bent over, hiding her face. "Oh, God! Luke, I'm so sorry!"

"No, it wasn't…It wasn't bad," he insisted. "It was quick, but sweet. Tender. It wasn't…it wasn't embarrassing, or a big display, or anything. It was…" She looked up and he studied her face, trying to find the right description. "It was like one final goodbye; the way movies show people parting at train stations during times of war." He shook his head at what he'd just said. "Sorry, I'm no good at this stuff. It was special, and…and bittersweet, maybe? It made me feel bad that I couldn't help you, because it was so obvious your heart was breaking."

She took in a sharp breath. "I don't think there's anything wrong with that description at all," she said astutely. "I'm sort of sorry I don't remember it." She smiled regretfully.

"Then you gave me a business card and told me to come look you up if I wanted to hear more about the other reality." He wet his lips, feeling uncomfortable again. "But I gave it back to you, because I said that wasn't who I was, and you agreed that I wasn't. You told me goodbye after that and walked away," he said briskly, wanting to put an end to all of it.

"Wait – you mean, that's it?"

"That's it. I watched you walk away, and I felt…"

"What?"

Luke decided he might as well be honest. "Sad. I felt sad that I didn't know you. I felt sad that I'd missed out on those experiences with you."

"Experiences that happened…in some other reality?"

"I know it doesn't make sense," he grumbled.

She sighed heavily. "If you gave me back the business card, how did you find me?"

"I said I gave it back to you, I didn't say I didn't look at it. The important information stuck."

"Stalker," she taunted him, with a fleeting smile. "Seriously, though, do you have any theories about what happened that day? Obviously the whole thing's been on your mind. What do you think was behind it?"

"You're absolutely certain you weren't sick?"

"No, although I did use that excuse the next day, when I heard the tales. I said I was running a fever. I even pretended to be on antibiotics for a while." She looked at him frankly. "I read some stuff about extreme sleepwalking. Do you think it was something like that, maybe?"

"It's possible, I guess. But –"

"But how did I know to say the stuff I did?" she pointed out, beating him to the punch. "That's when we get right back to the spooky, sci-fi stuff." She hummed the first familiar notes of the theme song.

"Twilight Zone," he muttered. "Outer Limits."

"Crazy Town," she agreed, trying to smile. "Can I ask you one more thing? It's really a weird question," she warned him.

He lifted one eyebrow. "You mean, as opposed to all of the normal, everyday things we've been discussing up until now?"

That made her giggle. "Yes, exactly!"

"Be my guest."

She grew quiet and thoughtful. "The person who came to see you that day, the other Lorelai. Was it – was it me?"

"No," Luke said authoritatively, not even having to think about it. "Thank God," he muttered a half-second later, under his breath.

Lorelai's head sprang up at his immediate response. "Why no?"

"Because you – that day – you weren't –" He forced himself to stop and think dispassionately about what he wanted to convey. "The woman I interacted with that day was not the person you are. Look, words aren't what I do best, but I'll try to find some. There was something different about her, something that had been altered…maybe because she'd lived a different life. Mostly, I guess it showed in her eyes."

"Her eyes?" Lorelai frowned.

"There was just something extra in her eyes. Some sort of different…spark? Again, I can't find the words to somehow have this make sense. There was just a different feeling about her. Look, you're nice and pretty and everything, but you're not her."

"I'm not her?" Lorelai looked more confused than ever.

"That's not…" The words he'd just uttered came back to haunt him. "Of course, it was you. I'm not saying…" He groaned and rubbed at his head. "This is damned confusing," he muttered.

"Tell me about it."

"Of course, I realize it was you, because otherwise we'd have to accept alternate lives and parallel universes and all sorts of things that aren't real, and I don't think either of us are ready to wear tinfoil hats and sit underneath pyramids, or anything like that. I don't understand what happened to you that day. I don't have an explanation about how you knew to say the things you said. But the Lorelai I've been talking to today is not the same Lorelai who visited me in Stars Hollow." He raised his hands up in surrender. "Please say that answers your question."

"Sorry, it doesn't begin to answer all of my questions…but I guess I can live with it." She smiled faintly at him. "I do, however, have one more thing to ask."

"Go ahead," he said, resigned.

"Why 'thank God?'"

"What?"

"After you so emphatically said I wasn't her, you said 'thank God.' Why?"

He felt his cheeks heating up. He looked down and shook his head, stubbornly refusing to answer.

"I have really good ears," she commented. "I know that's what you said. What was going to happen if I was that Lorelai? If I was the one who kissed you and said she loved you and knew Jess? Were you going to run off with her?"

"No," he insisted, his head jerking up. He met her eyes, then faltered, as those dark-blue irises forced him to further examine his feelings. In true discomfort he recalled the poignancy of the brief kiss, the electricity he'd felt between them. He acknowledged how thoroughly she'd infiltrated his psyche since their first encounter. And immediately, he decided to ignore it all. "No," he said again, even more firmly. "I don't cheat on my wife. I don't chase after other women. I gave the business card back. That's not the way I live my life. I came here today only because I needed answers."

She watched him for a while before finally giving her shoulders a shrug. "OK," she said mildly. "We'll leave it at that."

"Thank God," he mumbled again, this time deliberately. As he expected, she smiled.

"What time is it?" she asked, motioning at the watch on his wrist.

"Almost 3." He got to his feet. "I should be going. I need to pick up supplies and get home in time for the dinner rush."

Lorelai got up too, gathering up her lunch debris. "Dinner rush!" she repeated and giggled. "That sounds so exciting!"

"It's not," he disputed, but he couldn't help but smile at her enthusiasm for his mundane life.

They were both quiet and introspective on the drive back, thinking about everything from the afternoon they'd just shared.

After Lorelai parked her car, they got out and glanced awkwardly at each other.

"Well, if you're ever in Hartford again, come look me up!" Lorelai said, with a forced gaiety.

"The same to you, if you visit Stars Hollow," Luke offered.

Lorelai looked at him with a sad smile. "That's probably not going to happen, though, is it?"

"Probably not," Luke agreed soberly.

She took a determined breath. "Look, I realize that I really don't know you or Rachel, but I do know that life is short. Too short to go through it unhappy."

Luke thought about his nephew, dead before 21, and nodded in agreement.

"You owe it to yourself to try and change that, Luke. If you're unhappy, there's a good chance Rachel is, too. You should talk to her. See if you can get yourselves to a happier place. If not together, then separately." Her face took on a certain grimness. "I know that's not fun, but sometimes it's what you've got to do."

Normally he'd blow up if anyone attempted to tell him what to do with his life, but he found that he was willing to listen to her. Maybe because he knew she'd been through something similar.

"I'll give that some thought," he promised.

"There's one more thing I think you should know." She looked bemused. "I'd sort of forgotten this, until talking with you today. When I was a girl, my father traveled for business all the time, and my mom and I went with him whenever we could. He'd go to his meetings, and Mom would go shopping, and I'd –" She laughed, self-consciously, at whatever she was going to say next. "I stayed in the hotel and befriended the staff. The maids, the concierge, the person manning the front desk – whoever was willing to talk to me. The whole behind-the-scenes thing fascinated me. For a long, long time, I imagined that one day I was going to be the one running a hotel. Or…or an inn."

"No kidding?" Luke looked at her in fascination.

"Yeah. I even took some classes in college, thinking I'd get into the hospitality field, but Mom and Dad threw a fit when they found out. That was not the career they'd imagined for me. We had real fights about it for a while. Finally, for the sake of family harmony, I gave it up. I got the marketing degree they thought I should. I got the job they wanted me to." She shook her head. "Funny how I buried my first aspirations, isn't it? For so many years I've been trying to be the perfect daughter, ever since I realized I could have blown it all by getting pregnant at 15. Strange how I forgot that I had dreams of my own."

"You don't like what you do now?"

"I'm good at it," she replied immediately, then looked at him, surprised. "That's not what you asked, is it?"

"No."

"Do I like it?" she mused. She looked back at him with another smile. "I think I may have to ponder that question. Hey, do you think the reason I had so much fun planning my wedding was because it reminded me of arranging hotel events?"

"Could be," Luke said kindly.

"Lots to think about." Her pretty face shone at him. "Thanks for coming to find me today, Luke. It was very brave of you."

"Was it?" he asked doubtfully.

"Of course! Coming to track down a possible crazy woman? Brave beyond measure. I'm so glad you did." She held out her hand to him, but before he could take it, she retracted it. "A handshake seems pretty lame, after everything we've been through. Is a hug OK?"

"Yes," he said gently. He opened his arms and she stepped into his embrace.

She was soft and warm, and smelled of coffee and some sort of perfume with a spicy undertone. Holding her was pleasurable, but the thrill he'd experienced previously was missing, for which he was glad.

Probably, he was glad. Mostly, anyway. No thrill made his life easier, definitely.

Still, he had a hard time letting her go. He fought the urge to kiss her forehead, the way he had that day in Stars Hollow.

"Take care, Lorelai," he said gruffly.

"You too, Luke. Thanks again for tracking me down." She held onto his arms for another moment or two, even as she was stepping backwards. Her tenacious smile remained in place.

He raised his hand, symbolically saying goodbye.

The steadfast smile still on her lips, Lorelai nodded and turned towards her building.

Luke started to walk to where he'd parked his truck. He paused on the sidewalk and looked back, to satisfy his need to see her one last time, but she'd already disappeared into the lobby.

His attempt to wade into another reality had been thwarted. His timeline remained annoyingly intact. Whatever half-baked hopes he'd brought with him today, that maybe she'd have the magic solution to fix his discontent, had been squashed.

With no other option, he turned his back on a life that maybe could have been and returned instead to the one where he belonged.

Author's Chat: Thanks to those of you willing to suspend belief and come along for the ride on this one! I think the main thing to remember is that this Luke and Lorelai don't have 8+ years of fond acquaintance to fall back on. They're meeting for the first time, and it's going to take a little while to nudge them to where they need to be.

Usually I have a favorite line or exchange in every chapter, but it's rare when anyone else mentions it. I've decided that rather than wait for someone else to love the same line, I'd just tell you what it is! Last chapter my favorite lines are from Lorelai: "No wonder I came to find you that day. You're the guy of my dreams." Just hold that thought, Lorelai!

Thanks again to Eledgy for beta duty!