Disclaimer: I don't own anything but the story idea. Oh, wait. I own Jessie.
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 Fifteen
~~
By the time Rory and Jessie returned to Lorelai's, they had come up with an initial plan for as soon as that evening. Saturday, after all, Rory explained, was date night. Jessie didn't quite understand the concept of an entire night set aside for daters, but she decided it wasn't worth quibbling over. She was still in a good mood from her sneaker purchase and she couldn't wait to make Uncle Luke take her swimming now that she had her very first two-piece bathing suit.
As they unloaded all their bags from the car, they quickly addressed last minute issues in their plan and went inside.
"Hello!" Rory called.
"Hello!" Jessie mimicked.
"Upstairs!" Lorelai yelled back just as they heard a loud bang and then a crash. Muffled swearing followed and the two girls took the stairs to see what had happened.
They quickly came to the doorway of Lorelai's room and discovered a mess of titanic proportions. Lorelai sat on the floor before her closet with her legs spread out before her and piles of clothes, shoes and accessories surrounding her. The bang and crash looked to be the result of a box that used to sit on the top shelf and now lay on its side, it's contents spilled out before them.
"Wow," Jessie said. "Your room is even messier than mine."
"What happened?" Rory gaped.
"Nothing," Lorelai answered innocently. "I just felt the urge to clean my closet out, that's all."
Rory raised her eyebrows so high they almost hit her hairline and said, "The last time you cleaned your closet was in the aftermath of the Great Easter Fiasco of '94."
Lorelai pointed her index finger at her daughter and claimed, "And I still say, Emily had no right to force you to go to that ridiculous egg hunt! It was all just a clever ruse to get me alone!"
"Conceded," Rory assured her with hands raised, palms out. "But this is now. What happened?"
"Nothing," Lorelai replied a little too innocently. Then, to change the subject, "Show me what you guys bought."
Jessie danced around in her new pink shoes and Lorelai oohed and aahed appropriately, while Rory showed her mother what was in her own bags. When they were finished, Lorelai sat back on her hands and said, "Rory, I told Luke you'd bring Jess home when you guys got back. Can you walk her over?"
Jessie and Rory exchanged a quick glance before Jessie demanded, "I want you to walk me home."
"Me?" Lorelai repeated. "This room is a disaster. I have to stay and finish."
"Please," interrupted Rory. "How many times have you left your room a mess?"
"That's not a very nice thing to say to your mommy," Lorelai chided.
"You can get some coffee if you walk me home and then you'll have energy to finish here!" Jessie told her desperately.
"The child makes a good point," Rory agreed.
"What's going on?" Lorelai ask suspiciously.
"Nothing," they answered in unison. Rory winced, knowing how fishy that must have sounded. "The mall kind of gave me a headache and I think I'm going to lie down for a while, that's all," she added, hoping to distract her mother.
"Awww, honey, okay, you go lay down and I'll take Jess home," Lorelai said soothingly to Rory. On their way out the door, Rory and Jessie smiled at each other. Things were going well.
The walk went quickly and they were each quiet. Lorelai's thoughts were occupied with the events on her front stoop while the girls had been gone. Jessie's were wrapped up in their plans. As they neared the diner, they each became a little bit anxious.
"Okay," Lorelai said when they'd reached the door. "You can take it from here, I think. I'll see you later."
"You're not coming in?" Jessie asked with raised eyebrows.
"Nah, I should be getting back," Lorelai explained.
"Why?" Jessie demanded.
"Gotta clean my room," Lorelai reminded her.
"That's lame."
"Why?"
"Because."
"Because why?"
"Because there's coffee inside. And you want some…don't you?" Jessie ventured.
Lorelai appeared to weaken. "No," she said slowly.
"Are you sure? I bet Uncle Luke has some that he just finished brewing. He goes through it fast so there's always a fresh pot."
"I…." Lorelai began and trailed off.
"But if you don't want any fresh, hot coffee I guess that's okay." Jessie lifted her shoulders as if to say, "It's your funeral."
"You are evil," Lorelai noted as she yanked the door open and led the way inside. They didn't see Luke anywhere so Jessie charged up the stairs in her new shoes and threw open the door to the apartment. "I'm home!" she yelled. Lorelai reluctantly followed her in. Jessie threw her bags on the couch and looked around. Luke was nowhere to be found. Then she spied the bathroom door. It was closed. Lorelai gulped.
Jessie headed for the door and proceeded to pound on it while calling, "Uncle Luke! Are you here?"
"You know what," Lorelai whispered, "I think I'll wait downstairs."
Before she could make for the door, though, Luke flung the bathroom door open and stood before them wearing a towel and scowl. "What is the matter with you?" he scolded. "When the door's closed you let the person inside have their privacy. We talked about this." The steam escaping told Lorelai exactly what he'd been doing in there and her mouth went dry.
"Sorry, Uncle Luke, but Lorelai wanted coffee," Jessie explained.
Lorelai's eyes widened and she started to deny it. "No, no. I was just walking Jessie home. She enticed me in with talk of coffee and I just accidentally followed her up here."
For the first time, Luke saw that Lorelai was in his apartment. One of his hands held the towel together and the other fell to his side as she drank in the sight of him. The droplets of water on his chest and shoulders gleamed and his hair was delightfully messy. She wanted to run her fingers through it. And then she wanted to rip the towel off and have her wicked way with him. No! she shouted to herself. Bad instincts!
Luke caught his breath. She had changed from the jeans and baby t-shirt she'd been wearing on the porch steps into cut-offs and a tank top. "Hey," he said, wishing he didn't feel quite so, well, naked.
Jessie felt the tension heighten as they each looked the other over and she knew she had to do something fast. Distract them so that neither ran away, is what Rory told her to do if something like this happened. "Uncle Luke!" she exclaimed.
Blinking and turning away from Lorelai to look at his niece, he said, "What?"
"Look at my shoes!"
He gazed down past his own bare feet to hers and saw the pink sneakers. "Pink? Converse?"
"Yup! Aren't they the coolest?" She danced around for him, pretending to tap dance.
"They're great," he conceded, hoping she'd get Lorelai the hell outta there soon. He gripped the towel tighter.
"Wanna see what else I got?"
"Can I change first?" he asked a little exasperated.
Jessie rolled her eyes. "Just put your bathrobe on," she demanded. "And hurry!"
With an eye-roll of his own, Luke closed the door of the bathroom and then reopened it a second later cinching the belt of his bathrobe. "Happy?" he asked sarcastically.
"Uh-huh!" Jessie replied, oblivious. She took his hand and dragged him over to the couch. "Come on!" she called to Lorelai.
Carefully, Lorelai had been inching toward the door, hoping to get the heck out of there. Luke in a bathrobe was making her feel uncomfortably warm. Warmer, in fact, that the towel had been making her feel. The deep vee showed off a very solid chest and his bare feet were, God help her, turning her on. There was just something so intimate about seeing something of his that was usually covered up by socks and boots. They made him look particularly exposed. "Actually, I should be getting back."
"No," Jessie shouted. "Come on! You have to see the stuff, too!"
"But, Jess, you and Rory already showed me."
"Not everything," Jessie told her. Luke sat on the couch next to her bags.
"Did you leave anything at the mall for the other shoppers?" he asked drolly.
"Of course," Jessie replied as if her uncle were a little silly in the head. "Lorelai, look at this!" Jessie held up her new purple two-piece bathing suit. "A big-girl swim suit!"
Luke's face turned white and then red. "Is that what I think it is?"
"Yeah," she told him happily. "It's a two-piece!"
"Lorelai, you allowed your daughter to buy Jessie a bikini?" he asked brining his eyes from Jessie to glare at Lorelai.
"It's not a bikini, Uncle Luke, it's a two-piece," Jessie explained.
"Luke, I swear, I had no knowledge of this," Lorelai told him.
"Don't you like it, Uncle Luke?" Jessie asked, a little disappointed.
Luke gaped at the two scraps of purple material Jessie was holding up in each hand. "It doesn't matter if I like it or not," he told her. "You're not wearing it."
"What? No fair!" Jessie howled.
"No fair? No fair? You're eight, not twenty," he said, his voice rising.
"So?" she argued.
"So, eight year olds don't wear bikinis."
"But I'll be nine next month and it's not a bikini," she whined, stamping her foot a little.
"It's close enough."
"But I don't have a swim suit and I've always wanted a two piece. It's been a dream of mine for-EVER!" she cried dramatically.
Luke sighed and crossed his arms over his chest, making the vee smaller. "Why on earth would you need a two-piece bathing suit?"
"They're sexy!" she chirped with a wide, earnest smile.
Luke stood and put a hand to his eyes, trying to block out that image. "No," he said. "Absolutely not. Over my dead body."
Jessie stood now, too, and shouted, "You're not the boss of me! I can wear a two-piece if I want to!"
"No you can't!" Luke shouted back, his temper long gone.
"Humph," Jessie replied, arms crossed over her chest, eyes narrowed, and lower lip jutting out theatrically. "I wish I'd been given an uncle who actually liked me," she tossed at him before stomping into her room and slamming the door.
Luke let out a deep sigh, his anger dissipating. From Jessie's closed door, his eyes moved to Lorelai. He wished she didn't always look so damn good. "Sorry," she offered, trying not to meet his eyes. The trouble with that was her eyes were constantly falling on his lovely chest.
"Forget it," he replied. "Rory couldn't have known and I'm sure Jess did her best starving child impersonation."
Chuckling, Lorelai nodded and said, "Kids will be kids."
"Yeah," he agreed, dragging one hand through his hair, partly in frustration and partly in discomfort. He felt at a disadvantage with Lorelai dressed and he just in his robe. The look in her eyes when she'd seen him in the towel had unnerved him, especially with Jessie around.
"Well, I guess I should…." she trailed off, gesturing to the door.
"Yeah, okay," he told her, bizarrely disappointed that she was leaving.
"So, I'll see you," she said, with her hand on the doorknob.
He walked over to her and held the door open. "I'll be here," he told her with a nod.
Dragging her eyes away from that damn vee, Lorelai waved an awkward goodbye. He returned it with a jaunty wave of his own and when the door had closed behind her, he let out a long sigh. He seemed to be doing that a lot lately. Sighing. Sagging back onto the couch, he found the purple bathing suit and held it up. He wondered idly if he could get away with setting it on fire.