Luke helped Patty walk out of the diner and across to her house behind the dance studio. She had too many vodka punches at Uncle Louie's wake, and the only other option was her sleeping in a chair right there by the door.

"You are a gentle…gentleman," Patty said, slurring it a bit as Luke – who was also a bit tipsy – wrapped his arm through hers to help her steady. The whole day felt like a blur. He started the day angry at his dead Uncle Louie, his grumpy and cranky Uncle Louie, who used to bark at Luke on his dad's fishing trips to grab him a beer and then surprise him with the skeleton of a ripped-apart fish to scare him.

But the day turned around. It turned around mostly because of Lorelai – who was there for him as soon as he found out about his uncle dying, and then somehow used that Gilmore charm to convince the war reenactors to come to the funeral – even after they said how much they hated Louie.

"Ok, Miss Patty, you're home," Luke said, walking her to the back entrance of her house.

"You know I never told you your uncle and I one night after Founder's Day –" Patty told him, winking. "I'd invite you in for a nightcap too …"

"-Oh I better get back to the diner," he said, wanting to get out of there as fast as possible.

"Oh Lucas Danes, I'm only kidding," Patty said. "You have a much better option back at the diner, if only you weren't such a dolt." She winked at him, and Luke looked down.

"I'll see you tomorrow, OK Patty? Drink some water before bed," Luke said.

He turned around as soon as she closed her front door. The wink got him, and it made him blush. Is it that obvious?, he thought to himself. To everyone in Stars Hollow but her?

Luke walked back to the square and he could see Lorelai mopping the diner floors from the gazebo. Slowly, deliberately; he'd never seen her move so slow, used to the tornado that usually whirled into his diner begging for coffee.

"You don't have to do that," he said as he walked inside, the bell ringing behind him.

"It's fun," she said. "Almost makes me want to mop the floors at my house." They both laughed.

"Miss Patty get home OK?," she asked.

"A little slow but she's back," he said. "And she got just inside before I could hear her tell me about the time she and my uncle, well, probably after too much Founder's Day punch."

"So your uncle wasn't alone after all ," Lorelai teased. "He's one of many on Miss Patty's long list of conquests."

She rested the mop on the wall and looked down at her work, then at Luke, who sat pensively on a stool at the front of the counter.

"What are you thinking?," she asked.

Luke's life was waking up, working, dealing with Jess, and then going to sleep. When was the last time someone asked him what he was thinking?

"I'm thinking I'm tired," he said. "But also grateful. And…happy, if that's not too weird to say the day of a relative's funeral."

"It's not weird. It's normal. Hearing all those stories about your uncle, he seemed like a real –" Lorelai stalled.

"-he was a character," Luke said, filling in the gap for her. "He was a lot of things but definitely a character. I didn't know half of those stories. It was nice to hear."

Lorelai went behind the counter, their roles reversed. She grabbed two beers from the cooler set up for the party and slid one over to Luke.

"What do you remember most about him?," she asked, cracking open her can.

"That he was cranky," Luke said. "But he also understood my father better than most people. They had their own language, you know? Gestures. A total brother thing. And when my dad got sick –"

Luke paused and looked down, and Lorelai put her hand on his arm.

" – I knew just how important it was to him to make sure Louie had a proper goodbye. Even if he was a –"

"-Character," Lorelai said.

They both took a sip of their beers and enjoyed a few moments of silence before Luke broke it.

"You know I owe you a lot of thanks," he said. "The rooms at the inn, filling in her at the diner, the casket, the band – it's all you."

"Oh, Luke, it was no big deal," she said, borrowing his line.

"No, you're busy, you got Rory, and you still really went out of your way to help me," he said. "I…I'm not really used to anyone helping me and –"

"You're a helper, Luke. But you needed help. I was happy to be there for you for a change," she said, squeezing his arm.

"You still think you're him?," she asked Luke.

He chuckled.

"On paper, maybe. Unmarried, no kids…I do like to fish. I can be grumpy," he said.

"You can be grumpy makes it sound like it's an occasional thing," Lorelai teased. "Like a once in a full moon type of thing."

"So I'm grumpy more often than not."

"But it's a cute grumpy," she said.

"Cute how?" he teased back.

Lorelai sipped her beer and smirked.

"I didn't know Louie but I'm sure you're very different," she said, ignoring Luke's follow-up. "But do you … do you ever think about getting married?"

"Does thinking about it make it happen?"

"No, I mean … have you ever thought about – "

" – finding a woman who wants to live above a diner?"

With some alcohol in him, Luke could think of one woman who might love to live above his diner. And here she was, sitting next to him inside it. He usually busied himself to not think about how deep the feelings he had for Lorelai were. He'd confessed it once, to his best childhood friend Jeff, who had moved to Colorado for college and stayed.

"So there's nobody you're even remotely interested in?," his friend asked on one of their quarterly phone calls. Jeff had been married for years, had 2 kids; Luke was the youngest kid's godfather, sent birthday checks but never visited. He usually kept it casual on the calls, but that day he had one of those infuriating interactions with Lorelai – he could have sworn she was flirting with him, but he was never too sure – and he thought, Just tell Jeff.

"Well there is … somebody," he said. "She works at the inn here, and she's a frequent customer, and we're friends, but …"

"... but what?" Jeff asked. "Is she single?"

"Incredibly single," Luke said, laughing.

"So what's the problem?" he asked. "Do you think she's not interested?"

Luke sighed. "Some days I think she wants to lean over the counter and kiss me, and other days I think she views me as some sort of errand boy."

"Have you hung out one on one?," Jeff asked, with excitement in his voice. Jeff loved being married, and was a good husband, and he often told Luke just how much better his life could be with the right woman. Luke would usually roll his eyes at this, tell Jeff how it's mostly just luck – and maybe he just wasn't lucky like that. But then he'd think of how of all the towns in Connecticut this crazy woman could have landed, she chose his, and wasn't that its own form of luck? With all the people on the planet, he met her?

"She helped me paint the diner – her idea. I clean her rain gutters," Luke said.

"Just ask her out!," Jeff said. "Just talk to her!"

"It's not that easy Jeff… she's my friend, and …"

"What are you afraid of?," he asked.

Luke sighed; there were hundreds of miles between him and his friend, so why not be as honest as possible?

"Of everything, Jeff. Of her rejecting me, of her being so freaked out she never comes back to the diner. I'm afraid she'll crash her car one day because she gets so distracted while listening to music, I'm afraid she gets heart disease from all the coffee she drinks, afraid she'll meet somebody else, fall in love, get married, move away. I'm afraid he can fix her porch railing and makes perfect pancakes so she'll never need me again, afraid that guy breaks her heart…" He trailed off, speaking out loud for the first time the millions of thoughts that circled in his head whenever he thought of Lorelai Gilmore.

"I've thought of a million ways of losing her and I can't bear to have one of those be because I confessed feelings to her that aren't shared."

"Oh buddy," Jeff said. "You got it bad. What's her name?"

Up in his tiny apartment, Luke leaned back in his chair and shook his head.

"Lorelai Gilmore," he told his best friend. "And I know, man. I know."

Back to reality and the diner, that question hung in the air.

"I know what you're saying, Lorelai," Luke said. "And sure. I think about it sometimes. I think half the time I can't believe how old I am … how long I've been running this diner. Sometimes I still feel like I'm 25."

"Well sometimes I still feel like a teen mom, but I'm now the mom of a teen," Lorelai said.

"How about you?," Luke asked. "Do you ever want to get married?"

"I tried once," she said. "Didn't stick."

"But you can try again," he said.

"I mean…sure. I want that, you know? The middle. I figure, I have plenty of life left, right?"

"Maybe a few years shorter because of all the coffee, but yes, plenty of life left." Luke smiled at her, and noticed she had inched her stool a little closer to his.

"I just hate dating," she said.

"Dating is the pits," Luke said. "Created to torture us."

"So how do we meet anybody?"

"We can hope they walk into either one of our establishments and present themselves to us," Luke said.

Lorelai grabbed another beer for the two of them. At that moment Luke was struck by the fact that the two of them were in the diner with the lights still on, with glass windows all around, right before Rev. Skinner and the town rabbi go on their nightly walk. They weren't doing anything but talking but it occurred to him that it could look ...

"Hey," he said. "Do you maybe want to finish this, uh, upstairs? It's just ..."

"...Almost time for the priest, a rabbi, and an imam go for their nightly walk around town?," Lorelai said. "I'll grab the beers?"

"And I'll close the blinds."

Luke walked slowly up the stairs to his apartment, knowing that Lorelai was up there waiting for him. What would Jeff do? He thought.

No, he thought to himself, as soon as the brief flash of kissing Lorelai entered his head.

He opened the door to find Lorelai looking at the few photos he had on his wall.

"Is this your mom?," she asked, as soon as he came in. It was his mom as a young girl, before she got married. She was fishing.

"I thought you got the outdoorsy thing from your dad."

"Well, it was the two of them," Luke said. "And that's how they met - my mom would come into his hardware store for fishing line. And they'd talk, and, I guess..."

"...So now I know why you're hoping to meet the love of your life at your business," Lorelai said. "It's your origin story."

They both sat down at Luke's kitchen table, Lorelai tracing the edge of her beer with her fingers.

"What's your origin story?," Luke asked. "How'd your parents meet?"

"You know, add this to the list of why I'm a bad daughter but ... I actually don't know," she said. "Does that make me terrible?"

"Not terrible," Luke said. "And you can always find out. You can ask them!"

"Are you suggesting I spend more time with my parents?"

"I'm just saying ... as much of a pain in the ass I know they are ... they're still here."

Something hit Lorelai then, a rare vulnerability from her tough and grumpy diner friend. It was the most basic human feelings of love and grief.

"Do you miss them a lot?"

"Every day," Luke said. "Mom died when I was a kid, and my dad died when I should have been in college, and sometimes I just wish they were here to tell me if I'm doing a good job."

"You are doing a great job," Lorelai told him. "I'm sorry you lost them so young. But you are a reflection of them, in how ... great of a person you are. I mean it."

Luke stared at Lorelai then, and she thought his eyes looked bluer right then, under the light in his kitchen.

"Thank you," he said, staring at her. They held that look for what felt like too long before she looked at the clock on Luke's oven. 11 p.m. She

"It's late," Lorelai said. "I - I should go."

Without hesitation, Luke told her to stay.

"Stay?," she asked. His fear caught him then, but the alcohol seemed to push him past it. And there was something about the way she looked at him tonight that just told him to ask.

"There's plenty of beer, I have pie downstairs, and ... I wouldn't mind the company."

"Well, you ... had me at pie," Lorelai said, and she inched her chair closer to Luke's. There were no expectations that night other than to sit across from this beautiful woman and just talk to her.

"Tell me more about your mom?," she said, and the rest spilled out from there.