"So tell me how you did it," Lorelai said to Luke.

She had thought it would be harder to convince Luke to come to the Inn and eat dinner with her so she could pepper him with questions about bank loans, but amazingly it only took two days of stopping by the diner to bug him.

"How did I do what?" Luke asked. Outwardly, he seemed very preoccupied with his bowl of the clam chowder Sookie had made for the dinner special.

Honestly, his attention was half on Sookie's chowder and half on Lorelai. She had changed out of her maid's uniform before Luke got there, but her hair was still in the French braid she wore for work. Some curly wisps had started to fall out of the braid to frame her face, and somehow it drew attention to the blue of her eyes.

They weren't eating in the dining room, but rather the little sitting room of the Inn, with Rory sitting on the floor happily scribbling on loose pieces of construction paper.

After her GED diploma was securely in her hands—and then framed on her bedroom wall—Lorelai set herself a new goal: Get and actual house for herself and Rory. Not that she didn't love living at the Inn and that she wasn't endlessly grateful to Mia. But Rory was going to be two soon, and the bigger she got, the smaller the garden shed was sure to become.

She was only nineteen—her birthday had been a few months prior to her GED graduation. Lorelai had been a little sad she hadn't been able to complete the program at eighteen, as had been her original goal, but she was happy she got it done nonetheless.

"How did you convince the bank to give you a loan at a ridiculously young age? I mean, how old were you when you got it?" Luke had mentioned to Lorelai that, in order to convert the hardware store into a diner, he had needed a bank loan.

"Twenty," Luke said before shoveling a huge spoonful of chowder into his mouth.

"Nineteen, twenty. That's not that much of a difference."

"Yeah, but I also know the owner of the bank."

"Well, yeah, of course you do. A scale model of this town could easily be one by one, in inches."

"But what I mean is, no sensible bank would give anyone that young with no credit a loan unless they used to deliver papers for the owner on their bike route, which I did."

There was a significant pause while Lorelai looked him dead in the eyes and smirked. "Now that is adorable."

Luke ignored the blush that came up in his cheeks at her taunt. "Well, and on top of that, my father had just died, so I think Reggie would have felt like a jerk for denying me."

"So what you're saying is I need to teach Rory to ride a bike, get her a bike route, make sure this Reggie is on it, then convince Reggie I have aged nearly seventeen years very rapidly, and convince him my father recently died, and the bank loan will be mine?"

Luke was quiet for a long moment, slowly shaking his head while Lorelai smiled at him. Not for the first time, he was wondering why, exactly, he liked to spend time with this loud and off-kilter girl.

"If you just talk to him for long enough, you could probably just confuse him to the point of giving you anything you want. He's pretty old, and hard of hearing."

Lorelai bent over to rummage through her bag. When she sat back up, a large folder was in her hands.

"Is that a trapper keeper?" Luke asked, his voice tinged with a chuckle. "I haven't seen one of those in a while."

"Mock all you want. You already have your bank loan, but some of us who do not have to keep up with a lot of paper work."

Luke watched while she rummaged through it. He noticed she had painted her nails a deep, ocean-blue. Lorelai handed him a newspaper clipping from a classified ad.

"This is probably a really stupid question, but do you know where this is?"

While she made jokes about the miniscule size of Stars Hollow, Luke knew Lorelai didn't know a lot of places in town. More than once since the first time she stopped into the diner, Lorelai had come by to ask Luke for directions.

She always wrote down everything Luke said with a brightly colored gel pen on one of his napkins.

Luke lifted the clipping closer to his face to examine the grainy black and white photo.

"Oh, yeah. This is next door to Babette's house." Just then, Luke felt a tiny hand pat against the fabric of his jeans. Absentmindedly, he handed the clipping back to Lorelai while tipping his head down to look at Rory.

"For you!" Rory told him brightly, a piece of paper in her outstretched hand. "For Luuuu!"

"Oh, thank you," Luke said as he examined the picture. He wouldn't admit it, but even though he often felt unsure of himself around the little girl, it kind of made him feel good when she showed her approval of him.

"What is it?" He asked, turning the paper around in his hands. His question was met with a peal of laughter from Rory before she went back to her paper and crayons.

Luke raised his eyebrows at Lorelai, but she simply shrugged.

"Could you show me where this is?" Lorelai asked, waving the clipping around.

"Sure, when?"

"Can we go now?" Her face was bright with excitement, and Luke found it impossible to say no.

"Uh, yeah. But I drove here, and I don't exactly have a car seat…"

"A scale model of this place would be—"

"One by one in inches, I know, I know. We can walk there, easy."

In late August, they had plenty of daylight left to walk by. Lorelai quickly picked up Rory's mess and then lifted the little girl into her arms.

Luke led them the opposite way than Lorelai expected, away from the town.

"Are you finally going to show me where you hide your murdering equipment?" She asked as Luke held back a tree branch for her to walk under.

"I can't reveal secrets like that. We're taking a shortcut."

"A murder shortcut."

Luke rolled his eyes and walked forward. Lorelai wouldn't have guessed that the house was not far from the Inn at all, if you didn't mind walking through a small forest. The trees and bushes were thick and close together.

More than once Lorelai held Rory out to Luke, not trusting her footing while holding the baby to get over some log or through some shrubbery. Each time Luke went a little rigid, nervous to have Rory in his arms. And each time, Rory made a go for his baseball hat, trying her best to get it turned around on his head. Luke had to right it each time he handed Rory back to Lorelai.

It really wasn't a long walk, and soon the trio broke through the tree line to stand in the front yard of the house.

"Oh," Lorelai said, setting a squirming Rory down to play in the grass. "It looks a lot nicer when it's not in newsprint, huh?"

"It's a good house," Luke told her. "It's not very old, it went up when I was in middle school. This used to just be an empty lot we played baseball in."

Two stories and blue, with a big white porch. It was a pretty house. Luke was surprised it was on the market at all—usually desirable property in Stars Hollow was snatched up quickly, sometimes even before a For Sale sign made it into the ground.

Luke hung back near Rory while Lorelai moved forward to look at the house. He watched as she walked up the porch steps, and he liked how the late afternoon sunlight painted her porcelain skin a pale gold.

Rory chased butterflies in circles around him while Lorelai cupped her hands around her eyes and leaned in close to peak into the windows.

Eventually Lorelai made her way back to Luke, scooping Rory up and coming to stand beside him while she looked at the house some more.

After a moment, Lorelai tipped her head to look at Luke. When she did, the sunlight struck her eyes in a way that made them look like clear blue flames. Even though her face was completely serious as she looked up at him, Luke got the sudden urge to kiss her.

Instead, he swallowed heavily and bit the inside of his cheek while Lorelai said "Mark my words, Luke Danes, I'm going to own this house."

And he believed her.

Because there was something about Lorelai Gilmore, and it had been steadily pulling Luke under without his even realizing it.