Disclaimer:  I don't own anything but the story idea.

A/N:  See Chapter One for full premise.  To sum up, this is an AU (Alternate Universe) in which Jess Mariano never existed.  In his place, Jessie Danes, daughter of Liz, has come to live with her Uncle Luke for the summer.  I am very pleased that so far people are enjoying this.  Reviews are always welcome, no matter how short or long (just in case you're reading and not reviewing…you know who you are).  Thank you to all of you have been reviewing.  It does mean a lot.  A special thanks goes out to Lindsay for letting me bounce all my crazy ideas off of her.  This story would not be here without her.  Literally.  She had to talk me into posting it.  And another big thanks goes out to my new friend Sarah for taking the time to read drafts of recent chapters.

July:  Cowboys and Ballerinas

Chapter Twelve

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Eventually, Luke sat down against the wall that Jessie had been facing during her phone call and pulled her into his lap.  She cried softly against his flannel chest and he pulled her backwards baseball cap off so that he could cradle her head with one hand while the other rubbed her back.  His shirt was caught up in her two little fists and at one point he was fairly sure she used it as a Kleenex. 

After some time, Jessie slowly stopped crying and began sniffling and hiccupping.  She stayed still, though, feeling exhausted and almost immobile. 

"Feel better?" Luke whispered.

Jessie nodded, not yet able to speak.

"You're going to wash this shirt when we're done here," Luke told her.  She cracked a watery small smile and looked up at his face.  "You think I'm kidding?" he asked, giving her an affectionate squeeze.

Jessie smiled a little wider and replied, "Nuh-uh.  I'm sad.  You don't have to do chores when you're sad."

"Ohh," he laughed.  "Is that what the rule is?"

She nodded against his chest and let go of his shirt.  Wiping her eyes and nose with the back of one hand, Jessie shifted and said, "Sometimes I don't like my mom."

"I know," Luke said, feeling much more than just dislike for Liz.

"Did you like your mom?"

"Yeah, I did," he admitted quietly.  "But she died when I was little so we never really had a chance to fight about stuff."

"That's right," Jessie nodded, remembering that her mother's mother had died.  "I forgot.  And grandpa died, too."

"Yep," Luke said with just a hint of the sadness he still felt over their deaths.

A silence crept in around them as each sat with their own thoughts.  Jessie was thinking that the weird wedge between them wasn't there anymore.  Instead of feeling separated, she felt very close to her uncle.  She wondered why he and her mother were so different.  She wondered if all brothers and sisters were this different.  She wondered if all mothers were like her mother.  No, she immediately thought.  Sookie wasn't like that.  She doted over Davey as if he were the most precious thing in the world to her.

And Lorelai wasn't like that, either.  Rory and she were best friends.  They did everything together.  Thinking of Lorelai, Jessie remembered a question she'd had earlier.  "What's 'denial'?" she suddenly asked.

"Huh?" Luke responded, torn from his own reverie.  "What's what?"

"Denial," Jessie repeated.

Luke blew out his breath and looked up at the ceiling.  "Um…denial is when you…or, wait.  It's when you don't admit something that's true."

"So it's like lying?"

"No, not quite.  Denial is when you don't admit something that's true just to yourself," he clarified.  "Nobody else is involved.  It's just you."

"Oh.  So, but you're still lying to yourself, though, right?"

"Well, yeah, but it's not the same thing as telling a lie," he explained.

"Hmmm," Jessie replied.

She was still cuddled on his lap, leaning her cheek against the soft flannel.  She could hear his heart beating slow, steady and rhythmic.  "Uncle Luke?"

"Mm hmm?" he rumbled under her ear.

"Can I have some ice cream?"

Chuckling softly, he asked, "Is that another rule?  You can eat horrible things as long as you're sad?"

Jessie's dark eyes lifted up to smile at him as she nodded and said, "Uh huh."

"Okay," Luke agreed, lifting her up to a standing position.  "Just help me up.  I'm not as young as you."

Smiling a little, Jessie wrapped her hands around one of his and helped tug him upward.  Groaning, Luke complained, "Ah, the knees…the knees don't work as well as they used to."

"You're old," she told him with a straight face.

"Older but wiser," he told her.

"Wiser?"

"Yeah," Luke said as he pulled open the freezer door and got out the ice cream.  Rather than running down to the diner whenever she wanted dessert, it just seemed easier to keep a carton of it upstairs.

Jessie seated herself at the kitchen table still sniffling a little.  Her eyes were red and puffy but she seemed to have forgotten for the moment that her mother had just completely let her down.

Luke set a bowl of vanilla ice cream in front of her and then put the jar of butterscotch topping on the table.  "I can put it on myself?" she asked him with wide eyes.

He nodded.  "Just don't go too crazy with it."

Jessie unscrewed the cap and tipped the jar over her bowl.  Slowly the gooey syrup rolled toward the lip and onto her ice cream.  When she looked up from dousing her ice cream, Luke was sitting across from her with a bowl of his own.

"You're having some, too?" she asked, incredulous.

"I'm living on the edge," Luke said with an arched eyebrow.

Jessie gave him an ice cream smile.  "Keep it in your mouth," he warned, remembering that time with Lorelai.  She slurped it back in and swallowed.

Jessie, who'd also been thinking of that time with Lorelai, asked, "Uncle Luke?"

Here we go, Luke thought before replying suspiciously, "Yeah?"

"If Lorelai said she wanted to date you, would you want to date her?"

Luke gaped at her. Choose your words carefully, he told himself.  "You mean if Lorelai asked me out on a date?"

"Yeah."

"If she asked me out, it would be rude for me to say no.  But," he added at her raised eyebrows, "there is no way she'd ever ask me out."

"How come?"

"Because," Luke said simply.

"Because why?"

"Just because," he answered, getting impatient.

Jessie sighed.  She was getting nowhere with this.  Taking another spoonful of ice cream, she decided to let things alone for tonight.  "What should we do now?" she asked.

"I need to call downstairs and make sure they've got things covered, but then I was thinking we could play some Go Fish."

"Okay," she chirped.

Luke stood and walked to the phone Jessie had abandoned.  After calling to make sure that Lane had shown up for her shift and that they were okay, he hung up and got out his deck of cards.

Back at the kitchen table, they played cards for a few hours and Jessie won five hands out of eight.  After getting ready for bed, they watched Bedtime TV for half an hour and then, because Jessie hadn't fallen asleep yet, they went into her room to read more of Charlotte's Web.  In the dim shadows of her bedroom, Jessie settled under her blankets and listened to the soft rumble of her uncle's voice.  Its resonance had come to mean security and stability and as she fell asleep listening to its rise and fall, Jessie felt his fingers drift down to stroke her temple softly.  In the last few moments of coherence, she shifted closer to him and mumbled softly, "Love you."