THE BIRTHDAY PARTY
April's birthday party brings an unexpected twist that changes Luke's and Lorelai's lives forever. Late sixth season.
Disclaimer: I've been wishing really hard, but I still don't own it.
Chapter Fifty-two: Ghosts of the Past
A/N: Here it is, so you won't all suffer for too long (grin).
Lorelai continued to stand in the hallway staring at the door as the reverberation from it being slammed made the pictures dance on the walls. Suddenly she ran to the door, threw it open and dashed onto the porch only to see Luke disappear down the street. She stood and stared after him for a few minutes and then quietly turned, went into the house and shut the door again, leaning against it for a minute. She dropped her head as tears filled her eyes. "Dammit!" she whispered.
"Mom?" Rory called as she came down the stairs.
Lorelai raised her head to look at her but was distracted by a sight that horrified her. April was huddled by the back door, clutching the collar of Paul Anka who was cowering against her. April's eyes were huge and frightened.
"Oh, April!" Lorelai cried, running down the hall to her. "Oh, honey, I'm so sorry you heard all that." She crouched by the girl and put a hand on her shoulder. With the other hand, she stroked Paul Anka's head. "Hey, it's okay, boy," she murmured. "You're okay."
She was finally rewarded with a lick on her hand and smiled, giving his head one more stroke. "Let him go," she told April softly. When the dog ran off, she put her hands on April's arms and raised her to her feet, then drew the girl into her embrace. "I'm sorry," she said again. "I'm so sorry, April." April clutched at her back.
Rory came to her side and put her hand on April's shoulder. After a minute, the teen drew back and looked into Lorelai's eyes. "What was that?" she cried, her voice trembling. "What was that all about? Why was Dad so mad?"
'C'mere," Lorelai said, drawing her into the kitchen. "Come on and sit down."
They moved to the table. Lorelai was stopped short by the sight of the overturned beer bottle and the puddle of amber liquid on the table. She silently went and got some paper towels, mopped it up and threw them away before she sat down next to April. Rory sat on the girl's other side.
"I've never seen Dad like that," April murmured, calming a little. "I mean, I've seen him get upset and rant about things, but that's usually kind of funny. I've never seen him act like that."
"I know. He doesn't do that very often," Lorelai explained. "He's just upset right now."
"But what about? What happened? I didn't hear the whole thing. I just heard him yelling and crept back in the door, and I didn't want to walk into the room," April breathed.
"You were right not to." Lorelai sank back in her chair. "What happened? Well, remember you asked me a while ago if your dad ever got jealous of Rory's dad?"
"Yeah."
"Well. . .there's your answer."
April's eyes darted from Lorelai to Rory. "This is about your dad?" she queried.
"Yeah, it is, April," Rory confirmed. "He's in town and he called my grandmother and wants to come to dinner Friday to see me and Mom."
"That's all?" April said, her eyes widening. "And Dad got that upset? Why?"
Rory turned to her mother. "I didn't hear the whole thing. What did he say?"
Lorelai sighed. "Well, the jist of it is that he thinks I want to go back to Christopher."
"Whaaaat?" Rory said, staring at her in shock.
"He thinks your dad and grandmother are hatching a plot to replace Luke with Chris as the groom in the upcoming nuptials," Lorelai said bitterly.
"But. . .but that's not true, is it?" gasped April.
Lorelai squeezed her hand. "Of course not, honey."
April looked between the two of them. "I don't get it then."
Lorelai considered her answer. "April, Rory's dad and I have known each other all our lives. We've been close friends since we were kids," she explained. "He was my first serious boyfriend in high school and he's Rory's father. We've just always had this. . .weird connection that neither one of us has ever seemed able to break." She sighed again. "On top of that, my mother has always wanted me to marry Chris and has nagged me about it time and again. She's often tried to push us together."
"Did you ever get back together?" April asked.
Lorelai looked at Rory, her mouth quirking. "Well, we got back together for about five minutes a few years ago," she explained. "But it didn't work out because he found out that his girlfriend was having a baby and went back to her. Your dad remembers that. Then they broke up and my mother started pushing me again. Not too long after your father and I start dating, she set up this situation at a party where Chris started telling me and your dad that he thought he and I were meant to be together and Luke was just a temporary relationship. He let on that Mom had urged him to do it and your dad was really hurt. He was afraid that it was true, so he stormed out and we were broken up for a few weeks."
"Wow," April said, her eyes big. "I had no idea."
"Anyway, your father remembers these things, so he's always been sensitive about Christopher," Lorelai said. "Then, to top it off, Chris inherited a lot of money last year. So now your dad thinks I want to go with him for the money."
"No, Mom, really?" Rory breathed. "I didn't hear that part."
"Yep, afraid so," Lorelai said wryly. "He thinks I'm longing to return to the whole Hartford social world, especially now that I'm getting along better with my parents."
April had been lost in thought. "You know, that's really mean of Dad," she suddenly cried. "You've been so wonderful to him. Anybody can tell how much you love him just by looking at you two! That's really, really unfair. I didn't know Dad could be so unfair." She shuddered. "I don't like that."
"No, don't be mad at your father, honey," Lorelai immediately assured her. "He just has this. . .really insecure side to him that flashes out sometimes and makes him believe crazy things." She thought back to the long conversation they had had after April's accident. "I think maybe it comes from his parents dying so young. He's afraid that everybody he loves will leave him," she added softly.
April just looked at her, biting her lip, her eyes troubled. "Will he come back?" she said in a small voice.
Lorelai suddenly realized that the teen was remembering her mother. "Oh, of course he'll come back!" she cried. "He'd never leave you, April."
"He'll come back," Rory echoed. "He'll calm down and come home. Then he and Mom will talk and she'll explain everything and it'll be all right again. You'll see," she said cheerfully.
April looked at her and the two women could see that her eyes suddenly looked much older than a thirteen-year-old's eyes should. "Please don't baby me," she said in a low voice. "After all I've been through, I don't have to be protected."
Lorelai opened her mouth to object but then quickly rethought it. "You're right," she agreed, squeezing April's hand again. "You're certainly strong enough to handle a lot, and we have to remember that," she said, including Rory in her statement. "But that doesn't mean we won't try to protect you sometimes," she added, leaning her forehead against the girl's. "It's kind of an automatic instinct. Okay?"
"Okay," April finally said and looked more relaxed. "Are you going to go look for him?"
"Part of me wants to," Lorelai sighed. "And I might have done that in the past. But I know him well enough now to know that he needs some time by himself right now. So, I'll wait here for him. Even if it kills me," she added wryly.
The three sat there in silence, smiling gently at each other. "God, I'm hungry," Lorelai suddenly said.
The other two laughed. "Me, too," said Rory. "Since our chef seems to be absent at the moment, how about getting a pizza?"
"Sounds good," April said as she rose. She walked out of the room to find Paul Anka with her head high and Lorelai and Rory shared a long look.
"Do you think she's okay?" Rory asked in a low voice.
Lorelai looked after April's retreating back. "Yeah, I think she's okay," she said.
Rory regarded her keenly. "Are you okay?" she asked bluntly.
Lorelai sighed. "I don't know. I don't know at all."
While they were having their conversation around the kitchen table, Luke was walking the streets of Stars Hollow.
He was walking in no particular direction with no destination in mind. He walked the tree streets and the fruit streets and everything in between. He avoided main roads and whenever he saw someone coming, he'd cross to the other side or duck down an alley.
He walked with his hands in his pockets, his head bent forward, almost unseeing. His mind was in a whirlwind and his anger continued to sizzle as he endured the battle of thoughts and feelings raging through him.
He finally settled in the park by the lake. He began to go out onto the bridge as he had often done in the past when he wanted to think, but hesitated, choosing instead to camouflage himself in a group of bushes where he dropped on the ground and stared at the water.
Already a part of him was realizing how irrational he was being. He knew, deep in his heart, that Lorelai loved him and wanted to be with him. He realized that he had jumped on her when she was trying to explain things and was leaping to absolutely ridiculous conclusions on the basis of no facts whatsoever. He knew that Lorelai didn't care about riches and social status, he knew she'd never return to her life in Hartford. He even knew at some level that she was right, that Emily and Richard had come to accept them as a couple and as part of their family, no matter the misgivings they might still be entertaining. But his anger with Christopher, his fear that she would leave him, gnawed at him like a set of sharp and hungry teeth.
As he sat there, the whirlwind in his mind gradually subsided and centered around one question: Why did Lorelai want to go to the dinner and see Christopher when she knew so well that it would make Luke so unhappy? Didn't his feelings matter to her at all? Was she still so under the man's spell that she had to run when he beckoned? Or was she, indeed, being tricked by her old boyfriend and her mother? He began to go around and around these questions at breakneck speed and could find no answers to them.
After a long while, he got up, his knees stiff and creaking with the effort and began to walk back towards town. The sun was almost gone by then and his pace was much slower than it had been on his walk out.
Instinctively, he headed towards the diner, with some vague thought in his head of working off a little more steam with a good scrubbing of the grill. But it was still early enough that people might be around. Hell, maybe Lorelai was even there looking for him. He felt a little ashamed of the way he had behaved and knew they needed to talk. He needed, in particular, to pose the questions that had been barreling through his head about her desire to meet Christopher at dinner Friday night. And he didn't feel ready to face her quite yet.
So when he reached the correct street, he took a turn and went into K.C.'s to order a beer and let himself calm down a little more. The bar was quiet that night and Luke saw no one he knew. The bartender, who had seen him in this kind of mood several other times over the years, knew enough to leave him alone. There was a Red Sox game on the television and Luke focused on that, letting it push other thoughts from his head for a while. The beer turned into two, and then into three. He was vaguely aware of feeling hungry, too, so he ate some of the peanuts and popcorn sitting in small bowls on the counter.
When the game was over, he stretched his arms over his head and glanced at his watch, shocked to see that it was almost ten-thirty. Suddenly a wave of remorse overtook him. He had been gone for hours and he knew Lorelai and the girls would be worried. With a sinking heart, he suddenly remembered that April had been in the back yard during the argument and wondered how much of it she had heard.
So he paid his bill and shambled his way home. When he came within sight of the diner, he automatically glanced at it but the lights were off and it looked completely closed down.
He went up the front stairs to the house, unlocked the door and entered quietly. The light of the television and the blare of voices from it prompted him to walk into the living room first.
Lorelai and Rory were sitting on the couch, watching TV. Both had changed into nightwear, and there was no sign of April. They stopped talking when he entered the room. "Hi," he said briefly.
"Hi," they chorused. Almost immediately Rory stood up. "Well, I'm going to go up to my room and read," she said. She leaned over and kissed Lorelai's cheek. "Good night, Mom. Good night, Luke," she smiled at him.
"Night, sweetie," said Lorelai.
"Good night, Rory," Luke said gruffly.
She smiled encouragingly at him and left the room.
Luke stood there in silence for a minute, jingling his keys in his pocket as his eyes went to Lorelai. She looked up at him. Luke had expected to see anger and condemnation in her face. Instead, he saw only compassion and concern.
He dropped into a chair next to her as she watched him. "Are you okay?" she finally asked.
"Relatively speaking," he muttered.
"Are you hungry? Have you had anything to eat?"
"I stopped at K.C.'s and had a few beers. And some snacks," he remembered. "They sort of filled me up. My stomach. . .my stomach is a little upset anyway."
She watched him carefully. "Would you like an antacid or anything?"
"No, I'll be fine," Luke murmured, feeling more ashamed of himself every minute.
"Would you like a cup of tea?"
Now he began to feel annoyed and glanced at her sharply. "Stop handling me, Lorelai," he said, again in a gruff tone.
He could see her bite back an angry response. "I'm just asking if you want a cup of tea for your upset stomach," she said gently. "It's just something people do for each other, like you make me coffee when I'm upset."
The shame washed over him again. "Sorry. Yeah, I'd like a cup of tea."
Lorelai turned off the T.V., rose without a word and walked to the kitchen. Luke paused and then followed her. He slumped at the table and watched her as she set the kettle to boil and got out a mug, spoon and tea bag. She stood with her back to him while the water boiled, pouring herself a cup of coffee. When the tea was ready, she brought it to the table and set it before him. "Thank you," he said in a milder tone.
"You're welcome." She sat in a chair across from him, took a sip of her coffee and then crossed her arms and looked at him.
Luke sipped his tea, not looking up, and felt himself calming even more. After a while, he asked, "Did April go to bed?"
"Yeah, I think so. She went to her room, anyway."
"Is she okay?" He couldn't bear to look at her for that question.
"Yeah, she's okay," Lorelai confirmed.
"Did she. . .hear any of that?"
"Some of it." She paused. "After you left, I found her and the dog huddled by the back door, so she heard some of it."
Luke winced. "What did she say?"
"She was mostly. . .surprised, I guess," Lorelai said carefully. "She had never seen you go off like that and didn't understand why. Rory and I sort of explained the situation."
"Oh," he said, feeling like a prize fool. "Was she upset with me?"
Lorelai considered this. "A little," she finally said. "But she got over it quickly." A long pause. "She was worried for a minute that you weren't coming back."
Luke looked up sharply. "Oh, no," he whispered.
"It's okay. It was easy to reassure her." She took a sip of her coffee. "She knows you now, Luke. She knows you wouldn't do something like that to her."
"Oh. Well. Good," he said awkwardly. "Did you guys eat?"
"Pizza," Lorelai confirmed.
"Oh. Good."
They sat in silence for a while longer until Lorelai finally asked, "Are you ready to talk now?"
"Yeah. Yeah, I guess I am," Luke sighed.
She sat waiting while he took a deep breath and finally looked into her eyes. "I'm sorry, Lorelai. I'm so sorry." He shook his head. "I behaved like a total ass."
"Well, yeah, kinda," she said softly.
"I don't really believe all those things I said. About the money and you wanting to go back to the Hartford social world," he said. "I really don't believe them, and I'm so sorry that I said them."
"I hope you don't believe them," she said. "Because that would make me seriously worry about what you really think of me." She paused as Luke dropped his eyes to the table again. "I'm not that shallow, Luke," she told him softly. "I don't care about those things. I'm not some kind of puppet to let my life be run by desire for such things and the people that think they're important. If you know one thing about me, you should know that."
"I do know that," Luke said sincerely. "I really do. Honest, Lorelai."
"Good. Glad to hear it," she replied, a touch of wryness in her voice. "And do you believe that I want to be with you and not Christopher? That I'll never go back to him?"
"I. . .do, yes," Luke said, but they could both hear the hesitation in his voice.
She sighed. "No, you don't." She fiddled with her coffee cup. "I don't know how to tell you, Luke. I don't know what words to say. And I'm beginning to think that there aren't any words to convince you."
"What do you mean?" he asked, looking up at her again.
She considered her response for a moment. "I keep remembering that conversation we had after April's accident," she began. "When you told me that ever since you lost your parents, you've believed that everyone you love is going to leave you. Do you remember telling me that?" she asked.
Luke nodded. "Yes."
"I can't help but think that's at the center of all this," she said, sounding puzzled. "That that's why you can't seem to believe that I'll never leave you, to go with Chris or anybody else. And I can't just talk you out of that, I realize that now," she added, sounding like she was trying to figure it out as she was speaking. "I can't just say a few words and make it all go away, any more than we were able to just tell April to stop feeling guilty for Anna's death. Look how ingrained that idea got into her head in just a couple of weeks. And you've been feeling this way for twenty years." She shrugged. "I've come to realize that the only thing that's going to work is time and just living our lives," she told him. "That you're gonna feel scared and defensive sometimes and I can't stop it." She looked up at him. "I just hope that you can learn to try to listen to me when you're feeling like that. To stop long enough to keep your emotions from ruling your head."
He recognized the truth of her words even as they were coming out of her mouth. "I think. . .no, I know you're absolutely right," he said with some regret. "No matter how well things are going, that feeling just keeps creeping up on me, that the rug is going to get pulled out from under me any minute. It's been worse lately, with the wedding so close." He sighed. "And I think you're right that only time is going to help." He gave a brief, wry guffaw. "Unless I go into therapy, too."
"Well, I'm not saying you should," Lorelai carefully responded. "I hope you can resolve it on your own. But if you did want help with it. . ." she shrugged. "I'd back you up in anything you wanted to do."
"Thanks," he said gruffly.
They sat in silence for a few minutes, concentrating on their drinks. "But Lorelai," Luke finally said, "there is something else that bothers me. I just don't get why you want to go to the dinner and see him if you don't want anything from him. That bothers me a lot, that you would do that when you know how much it pisses me off."
Lorelai sighed again. "I thought maybe you felt that way." She looked him straight in the eye. "I want to go to finish this with him, once and for all, Luke," she firmly. "I want to make him see that I'm happy and settled and that there will never be any chance of him and me being together. I just feel that. . .that I've got to do that before we're married. I don't want to start our marriage with that hanging over our heads."
"Okay, I get that," Luke said reluctantly. "But, Lorelai, it still worries me. You've just always had this. . .this thing with him. This attachment," he told her. "It almost seems sometimes like he's got some kind of power over you. You rail against him but then he calls or shows up and you go running. I'm afraid of that attraction. I'm afraid you'll fall into it again if you see him."
Lorelai sighed deeply. "You're right, there is an attachment," she told him gently. "And it goes beyond just the fact that he's Rory's father." She stared at the table and then spoke again. "I think it's time for me to explain about me and Christopher to you, Luke. Once and for all."
After a long pause he said, "Okay."
"Okay?"
"Yeah. I think you're right. I need to understand this."
"Okay." She paused, looking at him a little uneasily. "You. . .you want to go upstairs?"
"No," he said immediately. "I don't want to talk about him in our bedroom."
"Understandable," she murmured.
"How about the back porch?" he asked.
She smiled. "Good."
They moved to the back porch and Luke dropped onto one of the couches they had brought with them from the old house. She settled in a chair nearby him after lighting a couple of hanging candles in glass globes that they had hung from the ceiling.
She looked at him quizzically. "Some of this I'm still starting to understand myself," she explained, "since I talked with my mother today."
"Okay," he said gruffly, waiting for her to start.
She watched him for a moment and sighed. "I know that when you think of Christopher, you think of him not only as Rory's father, but also as my former lover," she said bluntly. "Right?"
"Right," he said reluctantly, a bit surprised at her straightforwardness.
"The piece I need to explain. . .the piece that I need you to understand. . .is that before he was those things, he was my friend. My dear friend," she told him. "And in a way. . .that still takes precedence for me over the other roles he's played in my life."
Luke nodded, casting an impatient glance at her.
She caught it and sighed again. "I can't remember a time when Christopher wasn't in my life," she began. "Our parents were friends when they first got married. Our mothers were pregnant together and supported each other through it. Chris and I were always thrown together. I've seen baby pictures of the two of us together."
Luke nodded again.
"Despite that, I didn't pay much attention to him until we were six," she remembered. "He was just sort of around before that. At my birthday party, some kid was annoying me and Chris helped me play a trick on her to get back at her." She chuckled a little at the memory. "We caught hell for it but I didn't mind. All of a sudden it seemed like I had a partner in crime.
"We were both only children, growing up in big, cold houses who saw more of our nannies than we did of our parents," she reminisced, growing more somber. "We each had one parent who was distant and uninvolved and one who was hypercritical and controlling. You think Emily's bad," she snorted. "You never met Straub, Chris's father. He made my mother look like a cuddly teddy bear. He had Chris' life mapped out from the minute he was born and his expectations were too damn high for an adult to meet, let alone a little boy. He was always on Chris for something, and the poor kid could never stand up to him, or please him. He got told all his life that he was useless and a disappointment, and yet he was expected to just overcome all that and meet his destiny, as Straub saw it."
Luke began to grow interested despite himself. "What about his mother?"
Lorelai snorted again. "Francine was in too much of an alcoholic haze most of the time to do any good. She couldn't stand up to Straub either so she just sat there acting helpless while he tore her son to pieces."
"Huh," Luke said, not wanting to commit himself to feeling sorry for Christopher.
"So we were both lonely, misunderstood kids. I'm not saying that to garner sympathy, it's just the way it was. As we got older, we got closer and closer. We went to the same elementary school, played together at recess, got our mothers to arrange play dates for us all the time. Christmas, birthdays, we were always together. And sometimes it seemed like we were all the other had," she smiled sadly.
"I remember one time when I was about nine," Lorelai continued to recollect. "I didn't want to do something that my mother wanted me to do and I talked back to her, really badly. She yelled at me and then my father yelled at me for talking to her that way. I just stood there listening as they told me, again, what a disappointment I was. Then they sent me to bed without supper. I had a new nanny. . .Emily couldn't keep a nanny any better than she can keep a maid now. . .and she didn't care about me. She was in a hurry to get me into bed so she could go meet her boyfriend.
"I remember lying there in the dark, my stomach hurting from being hungry, and thinking that the only person in the world who loved me was Christopher." Lorelai finished her story in a voice barely above a whisper.
Luke's heart went out to her. He reached out and took her hand and for a moment he could picture the raven-haired little girl lying alone in the dark.
She smiled at him briefly and squeezed his hand. "When I told Chris about it, I cried," she said. "I didn't cry very often and I know it shook him up. But he didn't show it. He just sat there and held my hand and let me cry as long as I wanted. Then he let me dry my eyes and wipe my nose on the sleeve of his shirt," she remembered with a brief burst of laughter.
Luke smiled and squeezed her hand again but remained silent. He was surprised and a little annoyed to feel a flash of gratitude that Christopher had been there for Lorelai.
"So that's the way it went on," she continued her story. "We just kept getting closer and closer. We went to camp together. We talked about the kinds of lives we wanted. We talked about when we'd be old enough to get out of our houses and live the way we wanted to."
She glanced at him with a mischievous glint. "You remember being an adolescent? How hard it was? Being interested in the opposite sex but being terrified out of your mind at the same time?"
"Oh, yeah, I remember," he said with a chuckle.
She shook her head. "Wasn't that way for us. We had each other. When we got curious about kissing, we had each other to practice on. When we got more interested in each other's bodies, we had each other to experiment with. And when it was time to. . .go farther. . .we had each other."
He nodded in understanding.
"By that time, even I thought maybe we'd marry some day," Lorelai mused. "Not right then, but someday. Chris had developed some backbone by then and we dreamed of running off to Paris and sleeping on park benches." She smiled wryly. "But then the stick turned pink.
"When I found out I was pregnant, I really thought Chris would stand by me, that we'd finally begin to make our lives the way we wanted them to be," she said. "But it didn't happen. He just caved. He melted into a puddle. Everybody was so hard on him. My parents were yelling at him to marry me, his father was screaming about how I had ruined all their lives and how could he let that happen, his mother weeping non-stop in the background. Chris just sort of shut down," she said, shaking her head. "I thought the baby would bring us closer but instead it drove us apart. He stopped coming around to see me during my pregnancy. He came to see Rory when she was born but hardly ever came after that." She was silent for a moment. "The next year, he went to a school out in California. So I not only lost the father of my child, I lost my best friend, too." Tears glimmered in her eyes.
"Aw, Lorelai," Luke murmured, aching for her.
She looked him right in the eye. "The whole thing with the pregnancy just. . .shattered something in Chris," she told him. "It's like he froze at that moment in his development and just never moved on. In a way, he's still that scared, uncertain 16-year-old boy. And I think that explains a lot about why he's still so attached to me. He was just never able to grow up and form a healthy adult relationship. He's been scared to. Look what happened to him when he got into a relationship with me." She shook her head again.
"It wasn't your fault," Luke said firmly. "You don't think it was your fault, do you?"
"Oh, no, not really. It's just that I feel sad for him sometimes, no matter how much he exasperates me. I was lucky, in a way. I had Rory to think about and look after and I had to grow up really quickly. I had to focus on succeeding at a job and making a home for her. Chris didn't have anything like that to push him, until Gigi was born." She stared into space. "Sometimes I look at him and under all his charm and easygoing manner, I still see that scared, lonely little boy in his eyes."
She was thoughtful for a minute while Luke waited quietly for her to speak again. "There was another thing, too, something I didn't quite understand until today," she said. She told Luke about the conversation with Emily and Emily's explanation that she and Francine had harbored hidden hopes that their children would get together as adults. "As I think back, I can see that that was happening," Lorelai continued. "I even remember that sometimes my mother would ask Christopher, 'Who are you going to marry when you grow up?' and he'd say, 'Lorelai.' And she'd laugh and praise him and give him candy or cookies." She sighed. "She and his mother did the same thing with me. I think we were virtually brainwashed into believing we'd get married."
Her eyes wandered to Luke. "But I'm luckier than Chris. I met you and you loved me. He was my best friend as a child but you became my best friend as an adult. Between you and the fact that I broke away from my parents so young, I think I've been able to largely get past the brainwashing. Christopher hasn't been so lucky."
She took a deep breath as she finished her narrative. "So do you understand better, now, Luke?" she asked shyly. "Do you see what this attachment is that I have to him and why it will probably always be there to some degree?"
"I think I do," he said quietly.
"It doesn't mean that I don't love you and want to be with you," she said anxiously. "It's just that Christopher is such a big part of my past. Part of me will always love him for that. Just like, I suspect, a part of you will always love Rachel."
Her eyes sought his, pleading for understanding. He nodded again and took her other hand. "C'mere," he said softly and pulled her to her feet. He settled her in his lap and she buried her face in his shoulder as he hugged her. "I do understand," he whispered. "I do. And I trust you."
"Do you trust me to go to the dinner Friday? Do you understand why I feel I need to?"
"Yes. Yes, I do. I do now."
"Thank you," she whispered.
"No, thank you," he corrected her. "I know that telling that story, dredging up those memories. . .it couldn't have been easy."
She laughed. "I feel like a wet dishrag," she murmured.
They sat silently for a while, Luke rocking her gently in his arms. Eventually she looked up and smiled at him. "I've always heard that engaged couples usually get into a huge fight sometime before the wedding," she said teasingly, sounding more like herself. "I wondered if that would happen to us. I'm sort of relieved to have it over with, so I don't have to look over my shoulder and watch to see if it's coming."
"I know what you mean," he said with relief.
They sat for a short time more, Lorelai's long legs dangling from Luke's lap. Finally he raised his head again. "So, have we made up?"
"I hope so," she smiled.
"Does that mean that now we get to. . .you know. . .make up?" He included a slight leer with his question.
Her laugh rang out. "Do you feel ready to? I mean, I've done most of the talking. Do you have anything else you want to say?"
"Ummm. . .nope," he grinned. "Let the making up begin."
"Well, two things first," Lorelai stopped him.
"What?"
She ticked them off on her fingers. "You need to talk with April tomorrow morning."
"Oh, I will," Luke said, feeling a little ashamed again. "Absolutely."
"And you have to make up with Paul Anka."
A burst of puzzled laughter escaped him. "Paul Anka? Why?"
She looked at him sadly. "You scared him, Luke. You really scared him. He was cowering by April when I found them. And I haven't seen him since. April says he's hiding under her bed."
"Oh." His ears grew a bit red as he considered this and he felt another jolt of shame and regret. "Okay, I will."
"Good," she smiled, and drew him into a deep kiss.
They got up, went inside, rinsed out their cups and turned off the kitchen light. Lorelai waited at the foot of the stairs as Luke went through his routine of locking up the house. Then he put his arm around her shoulders and she slid hers around his waist and they hurried upstairs together, eager to reach the privacy of their bedroom.
