__
Luke observes Lorelai's romantic mishaps over the years. He knows a lot more about what goes on with her than she realizes; this town loves gossip and you overhear a lot of things when you run a restaurant.
It hurts, of course, watching Lorelai make the same mistakes over and over, but it rarely comes down to jealousy. The only one of Lorelai's men who has really posed a threat to Luke is Christopher. They have so much history together, and they have Rory, an unbreakable bond, something Luke will never be able to touch. So it's a good thing that Luke is too busy being mad at Lorelai over the car accident to find out about the latest Christopher fiasco until it's already over with and Christopher is safely bound to another, pregnant, woman. Pregnant! Is this guy totally boneheaded? But anyway, crisis averted, although Luke senses it was a close call.
But at the end of it all, he has weathered the Max storm, and has dodged the Christopher bullet, all with his dignity intact.
And so Luke is floored to discover that he is quite nearly insane with jealousy when he first hears about "Alex".
***
Lorelai does not come into the diner the day after the night things went so spectacularly wrong. But it is a Sunday, and this is not unusual.
Luke spends Sunday evening with Nicole. It would seem weird not to, when she calls, after last night. Nicole has rented a bunch of serious movies, independent films, the kind of thing you know you're supposed to appreciate, but instead you end up spending a lot of time looking confused and wishing the plot had a little more resolution. Was the kid really a time-traveler, or just insane? And what did his death accomplish? And why all the Dukakis references? The movies make Luke's brain hurt, and he falls asleep in the middle of the second one. Nicole wakes him up later, and he apologizes and says he needs to go home and catch up on sleep. Nicole just smiles, and kisses him goodnight, and doesn't complain. She rarely complains about anything.
By Wednesday, it is pretty clear that Lorelai is not coming back to the diner anytime soon. It's also clear that Jess knows something, that he's gotten some version of events from Rory, but one black look from Luke shuts him up. Give him credit, the kid knows exactly how far he can push before it's time to cut his losses.
By Thursday night, the feelings of self-righteousness and good old masculine rage that have been carrying Luke along since Saturday begin to abandon him. He begins to feel the first creeping hints of uncertainty, and regret. He fights them off, reminding himself that he was right, but they are too much for him. By 11 p.m., he has picked up the phone and put it down again, undialed, no fewer than eight times. He feels Jess smirking at him from across the room, ignores him. He slams the phone down a final time and goes to bed.
Rory comes in the next morning, and a shot of adrenaline kicks through Luke's nervous system. He holds his breath, expecting to see Lorelai trailing behind at any moment. But she never appears, and Rory walks to the counter like she is walking to a funeral.
"Hey Luke," she says.
"Hey Rory. How's things?"
"Not bad. Could I get some coffee and a danish, to go?"
"One coffee and danish, or two?" he asks, smiling a little, figuring Lorelai is lurking somewhere just around the corner.
"Just one."
"Oh. Sure. Coming right up."
And he cannot help asking: "How's your Mom?" and bracing himself.
Rory looks at Luke, hesitates, and he can see she is weighing her words. The girl really does think too much. Finally she says, "Just between you and me?"
"Of course," Luke says, too quickly.
"I don't know exactly what happened with you two. She won't tell me. All I know is, one day she says it's all her fault, and the next day she says she hates you and she's never speaking to you again and that she's becoming a lesbian and joining a convent. So, on the whole, she's not so good."
"Whose fault is it today?"
"Well, I've only seen her pre-coffee today, so it was your fault. But that could change at any moment." She smiles a little.
Luke nods. "Well, uh..."
"Look, you don't have to say anything," Rory says. "I'm staying out of it, not taking sides, because frankly the idea of getting in the middle of you two right now is pretty scary."
Luke smiles in what he hopes is a reassuring way. "I'm sure it'll work itself out."
Rory looks dubious, but then Jess comes downstairs and that pretty much ends the conversation.
***
To be fair, he's never met Alex. The details that Jess gleefully brings back from Rory to force upon Luke are, at best, yawn-worthy. Even Lorelai herself doesn't seem able to work up much enthusiasm. "He's nice," he hears Lorelai say again and again and again, as though she is discussing a dish at a restaurant that is acceptable but that she wouldn't bother ordering a second time. Like she is describing a bunch of sickly sweet flavored coffees that are nice once in a while but are not what you need at 7 a.m. on a Tuesday.
And fishing? Their second date is fishing? The relationship is clearly doomed, with a misstep like that.
And maybe the mediocrity of it all is what really gets to him. She'd sooner go out with this cardboard cutout of a man than acknowledge the barest of Luke's hints, give him an opening he can work with. He is jealous, dammit, and he twitches inside every time he hears the name Alex and every time Lorelai evades some question, and it is really just getting to be intolerable. Something has to be done.
And that something turns out to be a redhead named Nicole who picks precisely the right moment to walk into his diner.
He's not too sure why she attracts him. He can feel it, though, even before Jess points it out. She reminds him a little of Bethany, his first serious girlfriend in high school, and even a little of Rachel. And she is so clearly an adult, and calm, and Luke is pretty sure Lorelai will never be either of these things. (And though he doesn't really count those among Lorelai's faults, anything that is not-Lorelai suddenly seems good). But the kicker is that she's attracted to him, too. Chemistry. It's not something Luke feels often.
At least, not with anyone but Lorelai.
***
It's been a month now since Luke has seen Lorelai. Rory still comes into the diner; she comes in to see Jess, and she comes in for coffee, and every once in a while, tellingly, she gets an extra burger to go. Luke doesn't ask. They don't mention Lorelai. Neither of them knows what to say.
Luke starts to feel like he's had a limb amputated. Sometimes he wants to call her. Sometimes he wants to write a letter, sneak it into the bag with her burger. Sometimes he wants to show up at Lorelai's front door with a limosine and two dozen long-stemmed roses and beg her to forgive him. The rest of the time, he reminds himself that he did what he did for a reason, that he couldn't stand to be someone's lapdog, and that Lorelai wouldn't have liked him for long if he had.
He continues to see Nicole. They get along pretty well and Nicole doesn't ask a lot of sneaky female questions or make demands of him. They go to movies, they go to dinner, and he usually spends Saturday nights at her place. They get into a sort of pattern.
One night at dinner, Nicole mentions to him a new culinary school that's opened up nearby. "Have you ever thought about becoming an actual chef? You're a great cook."
"Sometimes, yeah."
But she doesn't push the issue, and he doesn't get the feeling that she's trying to manipulate him into leaving the diner, trying to change him; she's just passing along information that he might find interesting. And the next thing he knows, Luke is really thinking about it. Working as a head chef somewhere would be a lot less work than the diner, and probably a lot better money. He suddenly has a vision of a future that doesn't include the diner, and it is terrifying.
He starts to wonder if he should propose to Nicole. Not because he is madly in love with her; he isn't. It's just that, after Rachel and Lorelai, he's starting to wonder if being madly in love with someone is a recipe for disaster. Maybe the successful relationships are between two people who merely like and tolerate each other.
It's a depressing thought. But you have to take what you can get.
***
The night of his first date with Nicole, the last person Luke wants to see while he is busy being nervous and self-conscious and feeling weird without his baseball cap is Lorelai Gilmore. But there she is, when he comes downstairs, sitting and chattering away and demanding coffee and looking beautiful.
It takes a moment before she notices he is dressed up, and then she demands to know where he is going, because she of course considers every move he makes to be her business. Lorelai, the person who wouldn't even admit that her little fishing trip was a date until Luke called her on it. But while he is trying to give her a taste of her own medicine, Nicole walks in. Luke suddenly remembers a day a couple of years past, when Lorelai was sitting at the counter like she is now, only it was Rachel walking in. It's the same sort of feeling, the feeling that his strange friendship with Lorelai is something he should hide from other women in his life if he wants them to take him seriously.
Instead, he does the adult thing and introduces them, and Lorelai does a pretty good job of emulating maturity.
Until Nicole's cellphone rings. And then Lorelai throws a silent temper tantrum behind Nicole's turned back, pointing at the NO CELLPHONES sign and pointing at Nicole and making faces of abject horror, until Luke is forced to grab her wrists and subdue her, like she's a little kid.
And while Luke is a strange mixture of amused and annoyed and embarassed at the time, later on, at the restaurant, he realizes what the cellphone thing was actually all about.
Lorelai was jealous. Lorelai. Was jealous of Luke, having a date, with another woman.
The hell?
Really, he just can't win. But he figures it's time to stop living in the past.
***
Luke hasn't seen Lorelai for six weeks.
A new gourmet market opens up in town, right across the street, which amuses Luke to no end because it pisses off Taylor, who has been helpless to block it. From what Luke hears, the shop is the hobby of some Hartford millionaire's bored wife, and she had endless money and lawyers and Taylor finally had to give in.
Luke decides to pay a visit to the market the Saturday after it opens, taking a break from the diner during the late afternoon lull. He's still been turning the chef idea over and over in his head, and he wonders if he might find some inspiration at the market, maybe try some new dishes at the diner.
As he is rounding an aisle corner after looking at some overpriced pastas, he nearly collides with Lorelai, who gasps in startlement.
"Oh, sorry!" Luke exclaims.
"Sorry!" Lorelai exclaims.
"No, I'm sorry," Luke insists.
"No, really, it was my fault."
And then there is the mother of all awkward silences. Luke laughs nervously. "Well, that conversation sure went to a weird place fast," he says.
"Don't worry, it left me behind too. I think it's in the Bahamas by now, having one of those tall fruity drinks by the pool."
Lorelai is wearing her usual jeans, and a t-shirt that says "BLAH BLAH BLAH", and a long black coat. She looks tired, but pretty.
Luke takes a deep breath and tries to force his heartrate down. "So, how have you been?" he asks.
"Good," she says, and she does an impressive job of sounding sincere.
"Lorelai--" Luke starts to say, not that he has any idea what he's going to say, but Lorelai interrupts him, looking down at the refrigerated case in front of them.
"Look at this cheese," she says. "Creamy French Mountain Cheese. Twelve bucks a pound. How do you suppose they get cheese out of a mountain, Luke?"
"I don't know," Luke says desperately, "But the process is probably reflected in the price. Look, Lorelai --"
But she suddenly turns around and grabs his forearm, like she's trying to get his attention in a crowded room, but there's no one else around.
"I'm really sorry Luke. I'm sorry I waited too long."
She looks at him a split second longer, with the saddest expression, and then she is gone.
***
He's done it again; for the third time in twenty minutes Nicole has asked him a question and he's failed to answer because he is so distracted thinking about his odd encounter earlier this afternoon, in the market with Lorelai.
"Luke?" Nicole asks, and the faintest edge of impatience is starting to creep into her voice.
"I'm sorry, Lorelai, I..."
Oh, god. Surely this is not really happening. He didnotjust call her Lorelai. He winces. He sees from the look on Nicole's face that he did, in fact, call her Lorelai.
Oh, god.
"Oh, god. I'm sorry. She and I, we've just been having a little fight lately. It's no big deal. We've been friends for a long time, you know."
Nicole puts down her menu. "Yes," she says. "I know."
"I just ran into her today, so she was on my mind. It's nothing."
Nicole seems to consider this. "Do you know what being a lawyer really comes down to?" she asks, seemingly apropos of nothing.
"No, what?"
"Watching people lie, all day long."
She gives this a minute to sink in, and gathers up her purse, stands up from the table. She leans over and kisses him on the cheek. "Just decide, all right? And then let me know. I'm going to call myself a cab."
And then she is gone.
***
Continued in Chapter Four