Lorelai settled back on the couch, doing her best to avoid Rory's too-perceptive eyes. Should never have passed freakish mind-reading skills on to my daughter.
"So, any hot new relationships you want to tell me about?"

"Well, there was that whole Dan Rydell thing, but it turns out he's fictional."

"It's not nice to scare Mommy."

"Had to see if you were paying attention." She reached one hand over her head, waving a half-empty box. "Mallomar?"

Lorelai crossed her arms. "No."

"No mallomars? Who are you, and what have you done with Lorelai?"

"I kissed Luke."

The malamars slid to the floor.

"Tuesday. He came over to the fix the closet door and I made him poison lemonade and we sat on the porch and then I kissed him. I mean, he kissed me. We kissed."

Rory was staring. "I'm not sure how to follow that."

"And now everything's wrong. Because when I go talk to him, I'm not normal Lorelai, I'm Pod Lorelai, I'm talking like a pod person and chattering like a pod person and eating like a pod person, and Luke knows I'm crazy."

"Aw, but Luke's always known that."

"Yes, but before he was only letting a crazy woman sit in his diner and eat his meals and drink his coffee, and now, he lets the crazy woman kiss him."

"I thought he kissed you."

"That was the first time."

"That was the – what?" Rory grabbed the remote and paused Marlon Brando mid-sneer. "Alright, tell me the whole story from the beginning. But leave out any details that will send me to therapy."

"Oh, honey, we crossed that line a long time ago."

"Sit. Spill. No details."

"Fine."

Luke mopped the floor for the second time that night. The great thing about owning a diner was that the floor had to be mopped repeatedly, and while mopping you could go down a mental checklist of everything else you needed to do for the night, beginning and ending with never again see Lorelai Gilmore.

The non-asking-out fiasco had been quickly followed by the lemonade-kissing fiasco and now the burger-kissing fiasco, and which was a few more fiascos than he was accustomed to dealing with in any given week. Therefore, the solution was simple: never see her again.

Granted, it might not be the most practical plan he'd ever come up with – and he did pride himself on practical plans – but practicality was clearly not working with The Lorelai Situation, and this would have to be it. Perfect and complete avoidance. So long as they were never in the same physical space, there could be no kissing, no moments, and definitely no almost-asking-out.

It was the perfect plan. Except for how it was never going to work.

Dammit.

He kicked the mop bucket over in frustration and started the whole process again.



"And now, every time I go into the diner, it's like Invasion of the Body Snatchers and this other person starts talking when I open my mouth. And I still had to borrow Luke's truck and use it all day and bring it back to him, and he yelled at me, and then he brought us food, and then it happened again."

"The body snatching? Because I hear that's really rare."

"The kissing! Tonight, before I came over here. He gave us food, and I kissed him."

"Better than paying by check."

"I didn't mean to."

Rory pursed her lips, studying Lorelai for a moment. "Mom, did you want to kiss him?"

"Yes – sort of."

"What do you mean, sort of? You don't sort of want to kiss somebody. You do, or you don't."

Lorelai leaned forward, pressing her palms to her forehead. "Dating sucks and you should have joined that convent when you had the chance."

"We still could."

"I think it's a little late for me. They frown on the whole kid thing."

"Too bad. We'd look cute in wimples."