Hello again, I'm back with a new chapter. Thanks again to all who have reviewed, I love you! Here's the next chapter, I enjoyed writing this one so much, I do believe it's my favorite. Anyway, I hope you like reading this as much as I loved writing it!!!!!!

Desperado, oh, you ain't gettin' no younger
Your pain and your hunger, they're drivin' you home
And freedom, oh freedom well, that's just some people talkin'
Your prison is walking through this world all alone

Recipe For A Kiss

Tonight the diner is at it's busiest. The dinner crowd is moving through demanding hamburgers, hot dogs, sandwiches and everything else on the menu. Tonight is the monthly town meeting, meaning the diner will be packed until 6:45, and Luke will only have fifteen minutes to close up, clean up and head out to Ms. Patty's.

Luke rubs his eyes and checks his watch once again, it is only six. Forty five more minutes until he can kick everyone out, his favorite part of the day.

When Jess comes down from the apartment he finds Luke arguing with Kirk over the exact way in which hot cider should be made and at least five customers commenting on the slow pace of the food.

"No Kirk, you boil it before the ingredients are put in." Luke says exasperated, holding two plates in each hand laden with food.

"My mother told me differently." Kirk retorts in a dignified manner.

"Whatever, do what you want Kirk." Luke turns away rolling his eyes and almost stumbles into Jess. "Oh, sorry Jess." He skirts around him and lays the plates on the appropriate table.

Jess grabs a pad of paper and a pen, "I'll help." He tells Luke.

"Jess, no, you really don't have to . . ." Luke trails off realizing that Jess is not listening, he has already gone to a table asking for their order.

Luke stares at Jess' back flabbergasted. Did Jess just start working without even being asked? Luke shakes his head and goes back to the kitchen to retrieve more food orders. The world has been turned upside down.

The bell rings signaling new customers and without turning around Luke says, "We're full."

"Not too full for us!" A very familiar voice chirps.

Luke turns around to see Rory, Lorelai and the boys settling themselves at the bar stools, both of the women holding a boy in their lap due to the lack of seats. He grins, "How was the movies?"

"Disney has yet again earned my approval." Lorelai states.

"And mine," says Rory nodding her head.

"Luke! My veggie burger! I need to be to this meeting on time!" Taylor shouts from across the room in his pompous manner. "I am the town magistrate after all."

Luke scowls, "It's coming Taylor! Hold your tomatoes!"

Rory exchanges a look with Lorelai and they both hold back their giggles.

Jess meanwhile has noticed Rory's arrival and is staring at her back very avidly while Babbette is unsuccessfully trying to talk him into going out with her niece. His gaze does not go unnoticed but will be whispered to Ms. Patty later on tonight while Taylor rants on about the length of grass, "Couldn't keep his eyes off her for a second. I swear there's something going on between them . . ."

Jess finally realizes that he is being spoken to, "What-what was that?"

Babbette winks at him, "I'll have a chicken salad sandwich, hon."

"Right." Jess says and scribbles this down on paper. He turns away still thinking of her face in the moonlight and her hand beneath his.

The phone rings behind the counter and Luke is there to answer it. "Yeah," he says expectantly into the receiver.

Rory shifts Mathew in her lap, "Does he always answer the phone like that?"

"Oh, yeah. Makes him feel more manly I guess." Lorelai shrugs, "I tried to teach him to say 'talk to me' or 'man with a flannel shirt speaking' but it's never caught on."

"Hmm," Rory says, "wonder why."

"Beats me."

Placing a his pen behind his ear, Jess slides by Luke who is handing the phone to Rory, "It's for you." Luke says irritably.

"Me?" Rory says confused, but her eyes catch with Jess' and she remembers the way his husky voice sounded against her ear and the feel of his hand over hers. She looks away feeling her face flushing and says into the receiver, "Hello?"

As Jess places Babbette's order in the window to the kitchen he listens to Rory's enthusiastic response to the caller on the other end.

"Tomorrow night?" Rory says from behind him. "Yeah. . . that would be great . . .I know it's been ages since I've seen Dave . . . How's your mom?"

Rory's laugh chimes through the diner causing Jess' heart to beat faster. His mind is working on overload . . .Dave . . .Dave. Who is Dave? And it hits him. He remembers a band in a garage, a party gone wrong, and the way a black haired girl used to look at a boy playing a guitar. Lane and Dave were still together?

His suspicions are confirmed when Rory says, "That was Lane! I'm going down there tomorrow night for dinner, you guys are all invited if you want to come."

"Can't, I have to work the Dragonfly tomorrow night. But I'll send along some homemade cookies."

"Mom, you can't make cookies."

"No, but a certain man in a backwards hat can tomorrow morning."

"Won't have time." Luke says breezing by them with dirty plates in either hand.

"Yes you will."

Luke disappears behind the kitchen door and reappears seconds later with fresh plates covered in food. "I have to be here tomorrow morning."

"Ugh!" Lorelai rolls her eyes and sighs, "Fine we'll just have to make them ourselves. How hard can it be?"

"Mom, two words, chocolate chip pancakes."

"But that was a long time ago! What'd'ya say boys! Wanna make cookies with Mommy and Rory in the morning?"

"Yeah!" The say together, their grins identical.

Jess is refilling a coffee cup at the end of the counter when Luke says, "Jess can help. I used to have him make cookies all the time."

Lorelai raises her eyebrows, "Are you telling me that you didn't make those chocolate chip cookies six years ago?"

Luke shakes his head, "Naw, that was Jess." He moves away to deliver the plates of food on his arms.

"But those were fantastico!" Lorelai says astounded, "You actually made them?" She looks incredulously at Jess.

He shrugs and refills Lorelai's coffee cup too, "It's not hard."

"Be at my house tomorrow morning no later than nine."

"Nine? You're not going to be up that early."

"Make that ten," Lorelai says looking back at Jess.

Jess nods his head, "Should I bring the ingredients?"

"No, we have everything."

"We do?" Rory asks, her eyebrows raised.

"Hey, don't forget that Luke lives with me now. The cabinets are chock full of things I do not understand. Like what's the difference between vegetable oil and cooking oil?"

"Not a clue."

"I'll be there at ten thirty." Jess says over his shoulder as he walks away to take another order.

Lorelai smiles at his back and says thoughtfully, "Maybe he has grown up."

Rory looks down into her coffee. She can see his face when he asked her, "Did you mean all of it?" What was really inside of him? She looks back up at Jess over Mathew's head, he is speaking to an older couple, his pen scribbling across the paper. Rory looks back down concealing her pained expression and says, "Maybe."

***

"Mom, I think this is salt," I say looking at a measuring cup full of white crystals. I stick my finger into it and lick. "Yuck!" I say and wipe my hand on my jeans, "Yeah, this is definitely salt."

Mom comes over and stares down into it, "It looks like sugar."

"It doesn't taste like sugar."

"Are you sure? Because that looks like sugar to me." She puts a hand on her hip and scowls.

"Taste it." I say.

She stares at the measuring cup with a thoughtful expression on her face, "You taste it."

"I already tasted it!"

"Well, do it again."

"Mom, it's salt."

"But it looks like sugar!"

"So, they look alike."

"Who invented this stuff anyway?"

"Bastards." I say under my breath and we both laugh. "Should we ask Jess?"

She narrows her eyebrows, "But will he know?"

"I think there's a good chance that he might." When Mom nods her approval I call to Jess for help.

Jess, who has been scouring the cupboards for flour, raises his eyebrows and says, "what now?" in an exasperated tone.

"We don't know if this is salt or sugar," I tell him.

Throwing a rag over his shoulder, Jess saunters over and dips his finger into the white crystals. He brings it to his mouth and I can tell by the way his mouth puckers that it's salt. His closeness bothers me.

"Salt." He says and walks away to continue his search for the flour.

Mom promptly pours the salt back into its bag, "We need sugar."

I roll my eyes, "I guess we better start looking for it."

"That might be a good idea."

"You know," says Jess opening another cabinet, "when you said that you had all the ingredients I assumed that we would be able to find them too."

"That just goes to show how long you've been away." Mom says opening a cabinet herself. Her voice is sharp like needles.

I check my watch and am surprised to see that it is already eleven, "We better hurry if we want to finish these before Mathew and Tyler get out of preschool."

Mom sighs and sticks her head into the pantry, her voice sounds muffled, "I know, I have to be there in an hour."

"We could call Luke." Jess suggests.

Mom quickly straightens up and his chin sticks out. "I absolutely refuse to call him!" She exclaims.

"Mom, he is your husband you know."

"He can't know that I don't even know my own kitchen."

"I think he already does." Jess says and flashes a grin at me.

Ten minutes later, when we still haven't found everything to make the cookies, Mom finally gives in. "Fine! Go ahead and call him! My pride will just have to suffer today." She throws herself dramatically into a kitchen chair and refuses to do it herself. "You do it Jess, at least I won't be able to hear him laugh!"

Once the ingredients are found, Mom, Jess and I begin the process of making cookies. Well, Jess does anyway. Mom and I tried to help out Jess in the beginning, but he told us both to just watch when we ruined a whole batch of cookie by once again mistaking the salt for the sugar.

We sit at the kitchen table watching Jess ramble around the kitchen filling measuring cups, mixing flour, and trying ignore our side comments.

"I really never knew he had it in him." Mom says watching Jess stir the mixings of the dry bowl. "I mean I thought, sure, the boy can make take an order, clean some gutters, make sarcastic remarks and successfully read a book. But make cookies? Let me tell you, I am flabbergasted."

"Man." I correct her firmly.

Did I really just say that? I mean sure, I had been thinking it, but to say it!

"Reh?" Mom says looking curiously at me.

Jess looks up from his stirring, his eyebrows raised. He is smirking again.

Oh yeah, I definitely said it. Dumb-ass.

"What was that?" Mom asks, leaning towards me with a twinkle in her eye.

The stirring starts up again, "I think what Rory means," Jess says staring at the fixings in the bowl, "is that I am a man now, not a boy." He catches my eye for a moment and looks back down. He isn't smirking this time.

I knew I would do this again. Completely make a fool of myself.

Mom raises an eyebrow and grins, "Sorry, my mistake."

"Just don't do it again," Jess says. The grin is back.

"Well," I say, "what is that now? The third time I've embarrassed myself?"

"That sounds right." Mom says nodding her head.

But Jess instead says, "Fourth."

"Four?" Mom says thoughtfully. "Spitting coffee, checking out your ass," she counts them on her fingers, "and now with the 'man'," here she makes quotation marks in the air with her fingers. "I only have three."

"Five now." I say my face reddening.

"Hey, you brought it up." Jess says turning towards the stove. "At least you're open about it."

"Wait a tick!" Mom says frustrated, "What am I missing here?"

I can hear Jess chuckling from the stove and I know exactly what he is thinking. Orange pajamas and a confounded phrase on the ass.

"What am I missing?!" Mom nearly yells in a crazed voice.

Jess turns around and I am shaking my head in a warning manner. But of course he has to say, "Joe mama."

"Joe mama?" Mom looks very confused indeed.

I am giving Jess my death stare but he looks right back unaffected. I need to work on this when I get home, it usually makes a point.

Mom is staring at me very hard and I avert my eyes away from her. She lets out a gasp, "Those pajamas!"

"What about them?" I say feigning innocence. I glance at my watch to see thankfully that it is 11:57. "Mom! You've gotta pick up the boys in exactly three minutes!"

"Wait a second missy, when exactly did Jess see you in those pajamas?" Mom asks. A look of realization comes over her visage and she narrows her eyes. She lets out a long, "Ohhhhhh."

"You better get going Lorelai," Jess says waving a spatula at her. "The clock is ticking."

"We'll talk later." She says to me on her way out of the kitchen.

I hear the door slam shut and return to my death stare, "Nice job. Thanks a lot."

He laughs, "The look on her face was priceless."

"Not funny."

"Come on, it was."

"No."

"It was like a scene from 'Seventh Heaven'."

I make a gagging noise, "Do not mention that show around me, you know it makes me sick."

"Precisely," he says.

"Thank God they finally cancelled it."

"Praise Buddha."

A timer goes off and I jump up quickly, "Are they done?" Every thought of orange pajamas flees from my thoughts; chewy, warm, mushy, chocolatey cookies are all I can wrap my mind around.

"Sit down." Jess says opening the oven to check on them. "I don't want you breathing all over them."

I sit back down in my chair watching as Jess bends over to retrieve the cookies from the oven. Nice ass. My mind is branching out. Cookies plus his ass equals two very enjoyable things.

"Stop checking out my ass, Rory," Jess says, his voice somewhat muffled.

I let out a frustrated sigh and roll my eyes to the ceiling. "Hurry up with those cookies," I say.

When he straightens up he is holding a pan full of delectable cookies just waiting to be eaten by none other than me

I stand up again and say when Jess stares at me in warning, "I'm just getting milk. Hold on to your buttons."

He lets out a snort and shakes his head. He begins lifting the cookies off the pan with a spatula onto a cooling rack. I pour a glass of milk, thanking God for Luke, and stare at the morsels of dough and chocolate. I take a sip of my milk and say, "There is nothing better than chocolate cookies fresh from the oven with a glass of milk."

"I disagree." Jess says placing the last cookie onto the cooling rack.

"Hmm." I say not even paying attention to him anymore, I walk over to stand by them. The aroma reaches my nostrils and I breath deeply. "They make me think of home, and being safe, and braided hair, and love." I say rambling and I blush.

Jess stares at me hard, "Cookies do all that for you?" he asks in real amazement. He seems staggered by my statement.

I nod and feel like I am seven years old. "Can I have one?" I ask in a small voice. Now I feel four.

He nods but doesn't say anything. He continues to stare at me in utter astonishment, like I am an alien that just landed in this kitchen or something. I take a bite of the cookie and it's even better than I thought. It melts in my mouth in a mixture of sugar, chocolate and dough. I am thinking of my Mom, warms nights on our porch, reading my first book, and fairy tales of a prince and a princess in love.

It's now I realize how very alone Jess and I are in this house. It's completely empty except for us and my memories. Maybe it's the way he stares at me, or how his energy seems to be radiating from him, or the way the tips of my fingers are tingling; but I feel very self conscious standing there. My legs feel too long and my hair too short, my fingers fumble with my cookie, and the glass of milk in my hand is incredibly childish. I look anywhere but him, darting my eyes around the room looking for an escape. But there is none.

When the cookie is finished, I take a long drink of milk. I wash down the remaining sweetness in my mouth and memories of old. With my memories faded away, there is nothing stopping me from looking straight into his gazing eyes.

"That was very good." I say very softly. My words are warm and chocolate frosting thick, they wish for him.

His eyes move away from my eyes and down my face. Oh God, now he is staring at my mouth. I can tell by the way he licks his lips and his pupils dilate. The last time I saw this I was eighteen in a dark bedroom with a moody boy who wanted nothing more than to be loved, and yet he pushed it away.

"You have cookie and milk on your face." He whispers leaning in.

I put a hand to my mouth, and indeed I do have a milk mustache. But I do not have time to be embarrassed by this because his hand reaches out to clasp mine and his lips lean down to capture my own. I realize it is what I have been wishing for since the day he arrived.

We separate for a moment and he looks into my eyes. Then he tastes me again. I wonder if he can taste the cookie on my lips and in the corners of my mouth. I wonder if he recalls fairy tales and dusky nights and a loving mother.

But these thoughts are swept away as the kiss lengthens. It is sweet and slow. So different from the kisses years ago, which had been rushed as though we didn't have all the time in the world. The pads of his fingers trace the lines of my arms, my neck and come to rest on my cheeks. They linger to dance there, tracing tenderness along my jaw line. And then his hands are on my back; a moan escapes from the depths of my throat as he roughly pulls me closer.

I can taste him now too. The cookie has washed away and now I only think of him and his flavor. He is sticky candy on a hot day when sweat smears your body and all you want to do is swim. He is a cool, sharp blueberry in a tender spring when flowers are budding and an apple pie warms on your open window. He is the spice in the homemade pasta your grandmother makes, and in the fire hot mouth burning chili your grandfather concocts.

His hands bring me ever closer to him until our bodies are crushed against each other. I run my fingers through his thick hair and tilt my head back. I allow him further access to enjoy the soft contours of his mouth, it is sun hot and familiar.

Right now he is mine. At this moment, with his soft lips against my own; I own the spice that turns my body red hot, the blueberry that cools my lips, and the candy that makes my palms sweat. My finger tips tickle with his taste.

We finally break apart and are left staring at each other. We breathe slowly, I miss him already. I finally give in to the urge that has been threatening to take over ever since he arrived; I brush that one lock of curl away from his forehead. He is on fire, as I am.

"That's definitely better." He murmurs huskily, his gaze clouded with desire.

I tilt my head in confusion. Than I realize and say, somewhat breathlessly, "Yes."

I want to say so much more but the door opens and three voices can be heard from the kitchen. I don't want them to know, I want this as my secret. I don't want to share his taste of blueberries, and candy, and spice. It was mine and I want hold it clenched in the palm of my hand like a secret love note.

By the time Mom, Tyler, and Mathew have reached the kitchen Jess is loading another batch into the oven, and I sit at the table chewing on a cookie wishing desperately that I could be tasting something else.

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