So things began for them again, much as they had upon their last painful breakup and reconciliation. There seemed to be an implied understanding between them that they couldn't start over from scratch and date again – they'd long since gone beyond that – but that things also couldn't quite go back to the way they were before, either. Lorelai knew that they both wanted to do something more than merely try again. They had to find a way to heal all the hurt and the pain that they'd caused each other and somehow make this link between them finally become permanent.
She hadn't a clue on how to do it, but she knew that she wanted it. And this time she knew that Luke wanted it just as much as she did.
Luke had told her that he regretted pushing her away, and that things were going to be different. Lorelai in turn told him that she was sorry that she'd let things get so out of control, and that going to Christopher had been a grievous mistake. There was no mention of marriage or moving in together. Lorelai knew that discussion would come in time but it was all too soon at this point. They needed to just exist for a while, and trust that it was enough to patch over the old scars for now.
They settled into a kind of buoyant bliss for a bit. Lorelai felt ecstatic and guilty all at once. How could she not have known how much easier it was to manage things with him around? How could she not have known how much she had missed him? It was like the last mostly miserable year didn't exist.
She wondered if there was some sort of limit on how much make-up sex you could have. They seemed to be passing it quite often.
Lorelai knew they couldn't stay ensconced in this cozy little bubble forever, but she wanted to prolong it as long as she could. Too much else was changing. She had known for the last few years that it would soon be time to send her daughter out into the big, scary world by herself, but she still hadn't quite felt ready once she knew it was happening. It didn't even seem to matter that Rory technically hadn't lived at home in years, that she was old enough to drink beer with her in karaoke bars and set up house with her own boyfriend. This was her girl, the baby she'd carried with her from the darkened corner of a house that was too big for either of them to exist in to a dusty potting shed to a home of their own, who she'd sheltered through midnight feedings and homemade dresses to scabbed knees and first boyfriends. She'd struggled with her through poverty and prep school and college as she tried to grow up herself along the way. All of that was in the past now.
Rory was out on her own, and Lorelai didn't know when she'd see her next, or for how long. She was crisscrossing the country, often too busy for more than a rushed cell phone conversation or an e-mail every other day. Lorelai felt proud but also melancholy that Rory's childhood finally seemed to be over. Rory was no longer a half hour drive away: the years of spontaneous move marathons and late-night consoling sessions were probably gone for good. Her visits home would likely become more rushed and infrequent, and the partnership that had sustained them would never be quite the same again.
Luke was proving to be a very welcome and needed distraction and solace.
So Lorelai went to Friday Night Dinner by herself, and tried to find a plausible reason for why she had such a giddy grin on her face. Everything was still too new to broach this subject with her parents, and even though they no longer seemed to judge her for her personal decisions like they once did, she wasn't going to let them have the chance to tarnish her newfound happiness. They left for a sojourn to Italy after two weeks, and Lorelai breathed a sigh of relief. She could keep that bubble wrapped around her and Luke for a little while longer.
Besides, after all of this time apart the last thing she wanted to do was share him with anybody else. She wanted this stretch of long lunches and lazy Sunday mornings and sweat-soaked nights to last as long as possible: eventually they'd have to face the tougher stuff, but not yet. She knew from the way that Luke clutched her to him at night and let their lunches linger just a bit too long that he felt the same, and was delighted when he suggested that she come along with him on the boat trip that he had planned for himself and April. They needed some time away from the constant din of the town's gossip mill that was currently proving to be much more of an annoyance than an encouragement. She knew that their friends meant well, but there were too many intrusive questions and expectations from everyone around them, and she was a little afraid it would become a threat to the fragile peace that they had begun to establish.
It wasn't until they were out on the water that Lorelai realized that a very inopportune anniversary – or unanniversary – was about to take place.
June 3.
It didn't hurt like it used to.
Last year, Lorelai had felt like she was a bundle of nerves struggling to make it through the day and put one foot in front of the other. That black hole created by their separation had seemed particularly cumbersome that week. She hadn't yet begun to look to Christopher as the saving grace that would replace everything that she had lost when she walked away. At that point, she was simply trying to get from day to day and avoid any action that would necessitate accidentally bumping into Luke. It was a far lonelier existence than she had anticipated.
She had been buying her groceries twenty minutes outside of town, careful to avoid both Doose's and the grocery store where she had her last fateful encounter with him, the one where he had essentially told her that their entire friendship and relationship was a mistake that hadn't been built to last. It had devastated her, but she knew then that he was more hurt than angry, and she didn't want to make it worse. She had been ordering in every night and getting her coffee either at home or at the Dragonfly: she knew eventually she'd have to start going back to Weston's every day, but she wasn't quite ready for that.
Still, as with all things Stars Hollow, the latest quirky town festival had drawn her curiosity, and she was finding it more and more difficult to convince herself to stay away from the festivities. That week the town saw fit to celebrate peaches – never mind that the fruit didn't grow anywhere near Connecticut – and the stragglers and sightseers who were showing up at the inn actually seemed intrigued. Lorelai found herself increasingly frustrated by having to talk up the merits of an event that she wouldn't let herself attend. It couldn't hurt to actually let some genuine observation fulfill her professional obligations, would it?
So on the morning of June 3rd Lorelai had trotted out with her thermos full of unfulfilling home-brewed coffee in hand and sat down to quietly watch the festival come together from a distance. She quickly shut down thoughts of what it would have been like to celebrate her wedding reception in the middle of a sea of orange streamers and gigantic anthropomorphic peach balloons, and instead simply tried to focus on the spectacle that was being assembled in front of her. A gigantic farmer's market was being set up next to what appeared to be a neon slushy cart, and Taylor and Jackson could already be seen bickering next to the picnic tables just beyond them.
It was at that moment that Luke appeared with April in tow.
Lorelai felt like she had been pitched headfirst into that crater that existed inside of her.
She knew that she should leave. She didn't belong there. She had made a promise to herself that she would stay away from these types of things, especially if she knew Luke was going to be involved. She should go back to work and take care of her responsibilities. Better yet, she should call in sick to work and spend the day gorging herself on ice cream and watching old movies with Rory. What had she been thinking in the first place, going on as usual on what should have been her wedding day? But she stayed rooted to her spot, unable to move, watching what took place in front of her in a daze.
Luke and April continued to circle around the boxes of peaches as April occasionally poked and prodded at the produce. She could hear Luke chuckling as the strains of April's animated conversation wafted through the air - something about cross fertilization and the different between regular and white flesh peaches. She watched as Luke picked up the pieces of fruit that April handed to him and stacked them inside a crate that Jackson passed to him.
He wasn't wearing the blue baseball cap that she had given him so long ago, a small token of gratitude for his friendship and loyalty when the specter of mortality came her way entirely too soon. He hadn't taken it off of his head for six years, not even when he was married to another woman. In its place was a black hat that already looked horribly ugly and ill-fitting to her even from a few hundred feet away.
I'm supposed to getting married to him today. That's supposed to be my family. Instead he's there and I'm alone and he's actually wearing a hat of relationship mourning.
Lorelai felt herself start to panic, and wondered if her feet would remember how to work soon.
Patty and Gypsy came up to Luke then and Lorelai could see him begin to shift and shuffle his feet as he worked to suppress a rant. She could hear something about peach cobbler, and felt her stomach start to rumble.
April looked up at Luke then, and she could see him start to nod.
The Rory face. There's an April face now.
It hit her in the gut then. She could do nothing but blankly look on as Luke walked back over the town square and disappeared with April into the diner.
None of this was available to her anymore. These town festivals, her friends, the undeniably delicious peach cobbler that Luke was making right that second.
She stumbled home completely unaware of anything else around her and called in to work feigning illness, though she could tell that Sookie didn't buy it. She had planned to hole up in her room and absorb herself in the lives of people with far better relationship outcomes with herself (who cared that they were all dead by now?) but Rory had convinced her that spending the day shopping and snacking in Hartford was a far more productive use of her time. It wasn't until Rory had gone to sleep and that Lorelai was lying on her own bed staring at the ceiling that she let herself think about what she had witnessed this morning.
It had been a perfectly normal, commonplace occurrence: another insane town festival, a normal interaction between a loving father and a daughter who knew his weaknesses. Lorelai had witnessed similar scenes between Luke and Rory for many, many years now. Rory wasn't his blood daughter or even his stepdaughter (and the angry voice inside Lorelai's head reminded her she never would get a chance to be that now) but Lorelai knew he had loved her just as much as if she was. She had known all along that he would love April the same way, even though she hadn't been allowed to see any of it take place.
That wasn't what had pained her so much about watching them. It was that she could sense that Luke was happy, and that she would forever be excluded from what made him happy right now.
At least one of us got to be happy, right?
Lorelai knew that she had chosen this. She had left Luke. She had slept with the one person he hated and feared most in the world. Everything that had happened was a result of her decisions, and she didn't want to take anything else away from him. She wouldn't threaten any happiness that he might otherwise have by forcing her presence on him.
That meant no more festivals. No more town meetings. She'd have to continue ordering in and shopping outside of town. She supposed she could eventually make her way to Weston's and to Al's Pancake World, but they had always been inferior alternatives to the pancakes and burgers that had made up the bulk of her diet as long as she had known the diner existed.
She could never step foot inside of there again.
Seeing him with April had solidified something for her. She didn't resent him anymore for choosing her. She had wanted it to be her walking with them into the diner, but he hadn't wanted that. She had ended things in the worst way possible, and ended up hurting him far more than she had ever intended. And as a result of that, she not only had to give up Luke, but she also had to give up so many of the things that had defined her life for the past two decades.
Would Stars Hollow even feel like home without those things?
Lorelai kept telling herself that that sacrifice was worth it. She had hurt him too much. She had gone way too far. But if he didn't want a life with her, she had to find it with someone else.
The fierier part of her conscience tried to remind her that if only she had tried to explain things differently, if she had tried to suggest some sort of compromise, if she had done anything other than insisting that they get married right that instant, if she hadn't run away and done the one thing that Luke could never forgive . . .
But she wouldn't let herself think about that.
It's right. It's right. I did the right thing.
She repeated that to herself until she collapsed into oblivion.
Lorelai felt differently about it now. Or at least she thought she felt differently. She'd put so much faith into marriage being her salvation, only to find that it crumbled like a mirage as soon as she actually got a chance to experience it. She knew now more than anything that it hadn't solved anything in her life. It had done the opposite of ensuring her happiness.
She sensed Luke being cautious around her on the day leading up that night: he had sailed down to a secluded spot and parked anchor that night, far enough away from anyone else to be able to see them but close enough to see the harbor lights from afar.
He'd cooked for her as usual: salmon he'd caught earlier, a salad she half-heartedly picked at, wine, a chocolate mousse he had picked up in town while she was sleeping earlier that day. She felt nothing but pure gratitude as she sat beside him in her cutoffs and tank top, twirling the necklace he'd given her the night of their reconciliation around her fingers. It felt good to be away from any expectation of what their relationship might mean, any label or obligation that might bring this bliss to a screeching halt. They needed just to be.
Later on, as her limbs got sleepy with alcohol and contentment, Luke carried her off to bed and made love to her tenderly and reverently, his stubble scratching her neck, her breasts, her thighs. He'd held her to him afterwards as he usually did, twirling her hair in his fingers, gazing at her with sated blue eyes as the moonlight danced on their bare skin.
June 3 was going to be fabulous this year.
Lorelai woke early the next morning, her sleep interrupted by the sunlight streaming in through the windows. At home, this sudden incursion of day would be something she'd struggle against, but out here it actually seemed something worth embracing. The blankets were still warm next to her and she could hear Luke walking around outside. Lorelai smiled and got up to fix herself her first intake of caffeine. She toddled outside to join him, gripping a steaming mug of coffee as she emerged from the cabin
Luke smiled at her and looked over his shoulder as she lazily sprawled on the bench just behind him, brushing her hair away from her face. He reeled in his fishing line and sat next to her.
"Morning."
Lorelai leaned over for a kiss, feeling the warmth spread through her skin. "Nothing biting right now?"
"Nah. Maybe we can sail out a little further this afternoon. I think they've caught on to me by this point."
Lorelai placed her hand on Luke's knee. "Sounds good." Luke reached around to toy with her hair, and she breathed a sigh of contentment. She felt Luke's fingers fiddle with the hair on the back of her neck, and looked over at the horizon.
She felt the gulls squeal at them overhead, and unwittingly broadcast her thoughts.
"Today would have been our anniversary."
She felt Luke's fingers briefly pause at the back of her neck.
"That's what last night was all about, right?"
Luke removed his hand, and Lorelai felt briefly chastened.
"I wanted to –" Luke looked at her directly, and shrugged. "I wanted to do something special. I just wanted it to be like if it was. The way we would have celebrated it. If nothing had happened."
Lorelai reached for his hand. 'You didn't have to, you know."
Luke squeezed her hand. "I did."
Lorelai sighed. 'It's not like it was going to be before, you know."
Luke nodded. 'I know. But while we're out here, just you and me, I wanted it to be as close as we could get it."
Lorelai smiled. "I think it was. I appreciate it. I do."
Luke gazed at her with pure adulation, and Lorelai felt a rush of love flow through her veins.
"Good."
She giggled and took a sip of coffee. Coffee, sunshine, and her man. Was there anything better? Could there possibly be anything better?
"So how do you want to celebrate our actual un-anniversary?"
Luke raised an eyebrow. "I have a few ideas."
"How about I sunbathe while you watch, and we'll see where it goes from there?" Lorelai suggested.
"Sounds like a plan."
