"I know that look you're giving me. You were with her last night?"

Jess pulled out the chair from the dining room table and plopped down in it. "Look, it was an accident. You and Lorelai disappeared, everyone else took the kids home, April took off with that friend of hers . . . we were the only ones there. We got to talking and . . ."

Luke pulled the other chair out and sat down. "This is far LESS than appropriate now."

"That's what everyone else says. I mean, come on, Luke, it's not like we don't know each other. We're friends. We're still interested in the same things -"

Luke shook his head. "It's not like it was when you were kids. You're practically related now. You run into each other at holidays."

"Tell me something I don't know."

"Do you really think you're in the position to offer her anything at this point? You've been lounging in this apartment for six months, working on that book no one's ever seen. This whole life you had built up in Philadelphia, any chance of trying to rebuild what you had there: where is it? I don't see it. I keep trying to be patient and tell everyone it's going to work out for the best, but hell if I know." Luke stopped himself, trying to rein in the ranting. "And now you've gone and hooked up with your de facto cousin. Do you have any idea how many lines you are crossing? Sometimes it's like nothing's changed since the last time you were here. "

Jess let his head fall back. "Stop. You really think this is new information here? I tried to save the business. I sunk everything I had into it. I failed. So I come back here and I'm living the same life I had when I was 17. You think I feel good about that?"

"I know you don't. But this isn't helping."

"Like you're really one to give me relationship advice.

Luke cocked his head to the side. "What the hell does that mean?"

"What do you think it means? You pine after Lorelai for years, you finally get together, you're going to get married. Then this kid pops up that no one's ever heard of, and you actually try to pretend that Lorelai doesn't exist, and that you don't know Rory. You took April to my book launch, and you can't even explain to her who Rory is, that Lorelai even exists."

Luke put his hand over his eyes.

"What was it you told me a long time ago? That it wasn't right for me to treat someone like crap and for her to do the same to me? Heck, you go out and marry someone I know you didn't give a shit about because you couldn't have the person you wanted, and you still go out and do all this stuff."

Luke let his gaze meet Jess's. "How on Earth do you remember all of this?"

"Oh, I'm a lot better at keeping track than you think, "Jess countered. He paused and took another swig of his beer. "Next thing I know you're split up and she's married to Rory's dad, but you're still following her around like a lost puppy dog. Then you're back together, and it's like you're married but you're not, and none of that ever happened. And you know what? You turned out to be right about her. Things worked out. You're really going to sit here and tell me that me and Rory are less weird than your situation?"

Luke adjusted his cap. "No."

Jess tipped his chair back on one leg. "Whoa. Are you actually telling me I'm right? Are you admitting I'm less screwed up than you were?"

Luke glared at him. "Not exactly."

Jess looked at him questionably.

"I didn't think you saw what happened between me and Rory back then."

"Rory told me."

Luke looked down at his hands. "I got really screwed up when April came around at first. What happened when Rory met April – it wasn't right. Whatever was wrong with me, I should never have let it bleed over to Rory and you and April. It was complicated. More complicated than you know. But it was mostly my fault."

Luke looked Jess in the eye.

"I don't ever want to hear you blame this on Lorelai. At least that part of it. Especially that part of it. I'm not really sure how I ever got her back, but I did. " He let out the breath he didn't know he'd been holding. "Maybe when you get to be an old and ornery man like me, you'll learn to leave better off alone when something is working. If you're happy, there's no need to mess with it."

"So why aren't you guys married by now?"

Luke shrugged. "We've got a pretty wretched track record. She doesn't want to do it. I screwed up before, I wasn't ready –" He paused. "Whatever she's ready for now, I am, too." He rubbed his hands together. "But me and Lorelai is me and Lorelai. It's got nothing to do with you two."

"Oh, come on, it's got everything to do with –"

"Let me finish," Luke interrupted, eager to put a dent in his nephew's indignation. "We both know what it's like to be stuck on someone you feel you can't have, and what it feels like when they finally say yes." He made sure to choose his next words very carefully. "But whatever you decide to do here, it's not just about you guys anymore. And I don't want you to cling to her just because you don't have a lot else going on. That isn't fair to her or to the rest of us if it doesn't work out."

Jess glared at him. "It's just like before. You're still trying to protect her before anything else."

Luke shook his head. "I'm trying to protect both of you."

Jess spun the half-empty bottle on the rim of the table. "You know, I'm not exactly the same person I was when I was growing up there."

Luke nodded. "You did some great things out there. Just because it didn't work out doesn't mean those things never happened."

Jess placed the bottle on top of the table. "What if I told you that I was thinking of a way to put the book press back together? The bad debt – it's mostly not in my name. I even know of someone who can rent us a new space. Most of the stuff we had is salvageable. It can be done." He rubbed his eyes. "It's a big risk, but it can be done."

Luke raised his eyebrows. "And this book you've been toiling away on up here all this time?"

Jess grinned. "Well, we've got to have something new to put out."

Luke put his hands together. "Well, you know, I've got a business. Lorelai's got a business. There's stuff we can help you out with. It's never easy, but there's a lot of ways to avoid what happened before."

Jess chucked the beer bottle into the wastebasket. "Well, I'll let you know." He fiddled with the side of the table. "But if I'm going to get started from here, there are certain pieces of information that might make it a lot easier".

Luke averted his eyes, rubbing his knuckles together.

"OH MY GOD."

Rory buried her head in her hands.

Lane hurried over to the dining room table with two battered mugs full of coffee. She slid one over to Rory, and tried to find room to place her s down amongst the detritus of the latest Kim/Van Gerbig crowdfunding project. "I mean, seriously. I would have expected it the first year or two after you guys broke up –"

Rory lifted her head and ran her fingers over the faded Grizzly Bear logo on her mug. "I have to say, that seems to be a popular opinion today."

Lane pursed her lips, suspecting she was being far less understanding than Rory expected. "I guess your mom already found out."

"I wore his shirt home. A shirt with a giant snake on it. It wasn't that hard to figure out." Rory stared out the window. "I feel like such a screw up."

Lane reached her hand out to Rory's. "Don't feel that way."

Rory threw her hands up in the air. "Well, why not? Your reaction is the same as everyone else's. We're pretty much cousins, right? I can already see everyone looking at me, thinking I'm one step away from settling down with the gap-toothed guy in the swamp. AND JESS IS GOING TO BE THE GUY IN THE SWAMP! Seriously, what have we done here?"

"Okay, now you're just thinking crazy."

"Am, I though?" Rory took another sip of her drink.

Lane shot her what she hoped was a far more sympathetic look. "How was it?"

Rory couldn't help herself from grinning. "Great, actually."

"So there's that, then."

"Yeah, but –"

Lane tucked her hair behind her ear, waiting for Rory to continue.

"Look, he's been really amazing for the past couple of years. Any time he saw anything I'd written, I'd always hear from him. He'd send some of the stuff he was writing to me, I'd send the stuff I was working on to him. We could really talk about the things that interested us, like we used to." Rory rubbed her finger over her eyebrows. "I mean, we're not exactly in the same industry, but it's more like it used to be, before we got together."

Lane wrinkled her nose. "Well, you know, maybe that's a sign –"

Rory looked up. "A sign of what?"

"That you guys should stay friends. Maybe you just aren't meant to work as a couple. Especially given, you know –"

Rory nodded. "Family complications."

"Exactly."

Rory shifted her cup from one hand to the other. "That's what makes it so weird. With everything that went down with Mom and Luke, Jess was the only one who really understood how confusing it all had been. Maybe we didn't always have our real dads in the picture, but we did have Luke in common." She adjusted the strap on her bracelet, nervously moving the clasp back and forth. "Then we had this new person to share him with, and no one else really understood the strangeness of it all, especially when things got back to normal again."

Lane set down her mug and moved her laptop a few inches to the right to keep it from sliding off the table. "You know, you aren't going to want to hear this, but when you say it like that, it becomes even more perverse."

Rory shook her head. "I know. We're quasi step siblings as well as cousins. It would be . . . really complicated."

Lane wiped her side of the table with her napkin and stood up. She crossed the kitchen to rinse her cup out in the sink. "So do you think this is going to go any farther?"

Rory drained the rest of her cup and placed it down on the table. "I don't know right now. I really don't." She picked up the CD on top of the stack closest to her. "Hey, this is you."

Lane returned to her side of the table and brought the laptop back to life. "Why, yes, Rory, that is me."

"I thought you put out a CD last fall."

Lane shuffled the papers on the table. "Nah, that was Zach and me. This one is technically just me, although Zach did play guitar on some of the tracks. I had to play all the drums myself, because I'm a perfectionist, but we're looking to get someone else to help us when we go back out."

Rory fingered the edge of the CD. "How long are you doing that for this time?"

Lane squinted and typed away at the keyboard. "Just six weeks or so. We'll be home in time for the boys to start school. We'll probably do some more stuff around the holidays, but it's back to normal life for a few months."

Rory looked at Lane with pride, marveling at the discipline it took to shuffle being a working musician and a mom. Most of the time she had trouble even staying in the same state for more than a month at a time. "So, all this that you've got here –"

"PledgeMusic."

"Is that different from –"

"Kickstarter?" Lane sighed. "A lot different. It was an organizational nightmare last time. If people wanted to change their orders, they had to contact us first, and –" She shook her head. "It was a mess, what with the boys and Zach's day job and –" She adjusted the brightness on the side of the laptop. "We got a project manager this time so all we really have to worry about is sending stuff out. Of course, they take a little more off the top, but –" Lane shrugged. "Them's the breaks."

Rory grinned. "Well, it's great to see that things are working out. Are you bringing the kids with you this time?"

Lane looked up from the keyboard. "I might be crazy, but yeah. Turns out my mom's tragic Flyleaf addiction has made her more amenable to coming along with us to you know, normal clubs." She shrugged. "If I'd known years ago that's all I had to do to get her onboard, I would have have introduced her to Christian speed metal a lot sooner."

Rory absentmindedly ran her fingers through her hair. "You know, I'm really sorry I couldn't meet up with you guys last summer."

Lane rescued the haphazardly assembled stack of autographed CD inserts just before they fell over. "Did I tell you we ran into Dave there?"

"NO. I thought he was in Cedar Rapids, though?"

Lane separated the stack of inserts into smaller piles. "Nah, I guess he missed us up here. He's in Albany now: moved up last year." She grinned. "His wife was pregnant again. Popped out another girl last spring."

Rory spun her coffee cup around. "I should pay more attention to Facebook, I guess."

Lane guffawed. "Meh. Too much drama. It's good seeing him again, though. Funny he wound up with twin girls and I had twin boys, though. Good thing we didn't wind up together. I might have ended up with quadruplets and then one more." She picked up the cap of her pen. "Can you imagine?"

Rory laughed. "Definitely not. I couldn't see you married to an accountant, anyway."

Lane picked up the stack of envelopes on the other side of the computer. "So where were you anyway?"

"The Testicle Fes –"

Lane shook her head silently as the glass door opened and Kwan stepped into the kitchen, mud dripping from where it covered most of his shorts.

"What happened to you?"

Kwan approached the table with an impish grin on his face.

"You know what we say about touching Mom and Dad's band stuff. Where's your brother?"

"Out on the patio making more mud pies."

Lane frowned. "Oh boy. ZACH!"

Zach crossed over from the hallway, stopping in his tracks a few feet away from the table. "Oh , man."

"I thought you were going to fix their bikes".

Zach brushed his hair out of his eyes. "The wheels keep falling off whenever I try to adjust them. If I can just –"

Lane raised her eyebrows.

"I'll call Luke."

"Before you do that, please take him and his brother, hose them and the patio down, and bring them in by the garage. I don't want any of that mud getting close to the stuff."

"Yeah, yeah". Zach ushered his son towards the door. "You know, kid, sometimes you're just a little too rock and roll."

Lane and Rory giggled as they met each other's eyes.

This chapter went a lot longer than I thought it would. I know the Lane stuff gets a little out there, but since ASP didn't really want to give her much of a musical career, I thought I would. Lane looked very happy in the revival, but to me Lane wouldn't be happy unless she was creatively fulfilled.

Thanks to everyone who's taken the time to read this. I really appreciate it.