disclaimer in chapter one
note: I didn't die, and, obviously, neither did the story. I just had the world's most complicated two months in the history of anything. Swear.
In the kitchen on Monday morning, Sookie knows that something is up the moment that Lorelai walks in the door. For one thing, Lorelai is smiling broadly; for another, Lorelai is holding a glass of orange juice. Sookie glances at the coffee maker and is shocked to see that it's more than half full.
"Oh my God!" she squeals. "You guys had sex!"
"Even better!"
As she minces the onion for the pumpkin soup, Sookie thinks hard on what could be better than Luke and Lorelai finally having sex and getting rid of Lorelai's strange hang-up over the matter. She can't conceive of much that's better.
"You're ... getting married?" she offers hesitantly.
"Sook, I've been dating the guy for just over four weeks. I don't think that we're exactly sending out invitations yet."
This causes Sookie to pause mid-chop, as a rather disturbing idea has just entered her head. She cocks a brow at Lorelai and tries to figure out if her friend is really so insane as to be not-telling her that she'd said it.
"You guys said 'I love you' before sex?"
"No," Lorelai says, "but there were heavy implications."
Heavy implications of 'I love you!' This is wonderful news! Sookie puts down her knife, wipes her hands on her apron, and claps them together several times. To top off her joyous mood, she does a little dance right there in the middle of the pumpkin soup preparations.
"And you didn't jump each other right there?"
"I broke a lamp that my mother gave me, and then Rory called. It didn't seem appropriate."
"Lorelai, this is big. I didn't think that Luke would ever, you know, insinuate that he was in love with anybody, even in post-coital glow."
"Isn't our whole situation here based on the fact that there's never been any coitus?"
Sookie laughs. Yes, that is true. She's got a theory that this is the final hurdle in Lorelai's line of stumbling blocks to sex. Maybe after this, there will be the post-coital glow. Heck, with how much pre-coital glowing going on, Sookie bets that Luke will hire someone to write it in the sky after it's all said and done! Oh, Sookie loves true romance stories!
"You've broken the barrier, Lorelai! This is gorgeous! How did he say it?"
"He said, 'Yeah, it wasn't.'"
Sookie waits. And waits (and waits) .
"That was it?" she asks.
"What do you mean?"
"How did it go, exactly?"
"Sookie, you're scaring me," Lorelai says. "Oh, God, let's see. He told me that none of his girlfriends had given up coffee for him --"
"--you gave up coffee?"
Sookie had noticed it! With the orange juice! She had known something was up with that. Lorelai and fruit just do not mix; probably the closest thing that she gets to her daily serving of fruit begins with the strawberry pop tarts that she'll eat if she's ran out of brown sugar covered ones.
"He doesn't know that I gave up coffee because I didn't want the entire town to know that we weren't having sex. He pretty much is running under the assumption that I gave up coffee because I am a new and more healthful Lorelai Gilmore. And I didn't even give up coffee, just am drinking a lot less and eating coffee flavored hard candies all day, which do not do the trick. But, yes, I have cut down drastically on coffee."
"Wow."
"Rory received a phone call at three in the morning my time last night where I expounded on the virtues of caffeine for about an hour before she had to go have brunch with an earl or duchess or something."
"Okay, go on. Nobody gave up coffee for him, check."
"Then I said, 'Well, it wasn't love.' And then he agreed. And we started making out, but then, well, the vase and the phone, and he left, but there was a good kiss before the departure, so I'm not thinking it was an annoyed leaving, more like a 'Lorelai's got a freaking-out daughter on the other end of the phone, I'm going to let her deal with it' kind of leaving."
"So ya gave it to him first," Sookie clarifies.
Lorelai's eyes get big. "Is that a bad thing?"
"No! No, no, no. I don't know!" Sookie wrings her hands together. "It's Luke! Maybe, maybe he wasn't ready and was dodging. Did he say the word love? At all?"
"Sookie!"
"I'm just saying, Lorelai, that the closest that he's ever really come to it is when he talks about his dad."
"Thank you, Sookie, for making me feel so much more better about springing that on him. I am a terrible, pushy girlfriend. Boy, this is a piecemeal way to destroy a relationship."
Sookie feels that she must repair the damage that she has causes.
"He loves you, Lorelai," she says. "The entire town knows that. He's been in love with you for how long? Everybody's seen it. I just didn't expect him to say it so soon, that's all."
"Oh, God."
Oh, no! Sookie searches for something to say to mend what she's done now, however she's done it. She lights upon something that she thinks will work.
"Well, do you?"
"Do I what?"
"Love him? Love Luke?"
Lorelai glances up sharply, looking Sookie square in the eye as if she were able to find the answer to the question with such intense staring. For a moment, she doesn't answer, and Sookie is afraid of the answer and is sorry that she ever even thought of asking it. Forcing Lorelai to look at something too closely so that she sees the truth that is obvious to everyone else is sometimes counter-productive, as Lorelai will oftentimes ignore the truth glaring out at her. It's how Lorelai ignored her obvious attraction to Luke all those years, Sookie thinks.
"Yeah." From the soft smile playing on Lorelai's lips, Sookie knows that she's fixed the problem, because, beyond any doubt, Lorelai loves Luke. "I think that I'm gonna see Luke tonight, talk about it. But not talk about it, you know? Be very circumspect. That way, nobody gets scared off, including me."
Sookie thinks that that last piece that Lorelai added is sage indeed, especially considering that most of the acts of coitus interuptus were of her causing.
The diner is hectic at the moment. There's a large group of middle schoolers eating dinner at the moment, stopping in the town on their way toward Hartford's overwhelming and cheap motel rooms. Maybe fifteen total, coming from two vans, the kids are at the age where food looks better shoved up a nose or slathered in ketchup. Kirk has moved three times, and Taylor's called five to complain about the noise. Luke can't wait until dinner is over and they head over to the Shoppe for desert.
The phone rings (again!).
"Taylor!" he barks into the receiver, "I'm telling you for the last time, if I cannot duct tape these children to their seats, then I cannot keep their noise level down!"
"Sounds like I'm missing something."
"Lorelai!" Luke turned his back to the diner, pointedly ignore Kirk's obvious ketchup-bottle-is-half-empty look. "I haven't seen you in for dinner, though that's not unlikely, as there are about dozen plus kids running around and throwing food in here right now."
"I went home. I saw the commotion from across the street and decided that I'd rather find sustenance on pop tarts and cold fries than try to have a complete meal in that place. Why didn't you recommend Al's Pancake World to them?"
"Al's had already recommended me."
He doesn't mention that he'd spent a good two minutes trying to tell them all the good things that he could think of about eating at Al's opposed to eating at the diner. His top reason was that it was interesting cuisine, but, unfortunately, twelve seems to be the age where kids will only eat things that they are familiar with, and cheeseburgers and fries top that list, succeeded only by pizza, which, sadly, is not to be served at Al's until Friday.
"Devious."
"How are you?"
"Mmm," she says, and he closes his eyes briefly. "I'm good. I actually made myself a ham sandwich with some questionable looking mustard. Is mustard supposed be sort of brown?"
"It was dried out."
"I knew it was a spread like mayonnaise and not a leaf like cheese!" She lets a long sigh out on the other end of the phone. "If Rory were here, I would have been informed of that before I sliced off two sheets of mustard for my sandwich."
"You're so certain Rory would know?"
"Hey, mister, she did work in the food industry this year!"
"She swiped IDs at the student cafeteria," Luke replies, wondering if he should offer Rory a job at the diner when she comes back from Europe with Emily. It isn't like it's terribly hard work, and Lane already works there, so Rory would have her best friend with her to complain about diner smells and grease burns from carrying hot and oily foods.
"Faculty ate there too occasionally."
"I stand corrected."
"You can take it back, you know," Lorelai states without preamble.
"Take it back?"
As usual, Luke has no idea what in the world Lorelai is talking about, so he employs his general mode of operation: he repeats everything that Lorelai says until she expands enough that he's able to grasp some fragment of the conversation and participate.
"Saturday night."
"I can take back Saturday night?"
He's repeating her not because he doesn't understand what she's talking about, but because he hopes that he doesn't.
"It was completely inappropriate, and I sort of sprung it on ya, like a tiger, and it was totally me being me, and you can take it back if you want. I mean, nothing was really said, but there were implications, and you can take back the implications."
"I don't want to take them back. The implications, I mean."
"Really?" And Luke hears her voice, dually hopeful and apprehensive. "Cuz, uh, neither do I. I meant everything that I implied."
"Me too, Lorelai."
"That's good, it's good that we're on the same path."
He can hear something going on in the background; the sound is familiar, but he can't quite place it.
"Where are you?"
"I'm taking a bubble bath."
Visions of her current situation dance through his head, and he gulps audibly. He's tried to stay away from picturing Lorelai in any sort of comprising situation over the years. Primarily out of self-delusion (for example, Luke has never yet found himself wondering what sort of underwear Mrs. Kim is wearing), Luke has kept his imagination at bay. But now ...
Doesn't he have a sort of guest pass at fantasy island? Should he feel so guilty thinking about how the bubbles must be falling off of Lorelai's shoulder and dripping down her back? Is there anything wrong with wondering if his girlfriend is using apple scented bath soap?
Well, yes, when he's on the phone with her. That, and he's still a little uncomfortable with the entire thing, seeing as how whenever he thinks that he and Lorelai are about to go to the next level, she ends up breaking something. At least now he's got Gwyneth Paltrow's baby name choice on his brain, which successfully takes his mind away from subjects less safe while standing in his dinner in the middle of the day.
He hears Lorelai's knowing laugh on the other end of the line, and he hurriedly covers up his silence with a comment about how civilization is falling because people are naming their children after fruits and cars. He's not sure if she buys it, his sudden departure from 'Hey, how ya doin',' to 'Lexus and Disney are the new Caitlin,' when she knows very well that he hates the name Caitlin in all forms and would be glad to see it gone, even if it were replaced by something as stupid as Dell.
"Like Gigi," Lorelai offers.
"Gigi?"
"Chris and Sherry's daughter," Lorelai says, then unnecessarily adds, "Rory's sister. Her name is Georgiana or Georgina or Georganne or something equally long and stupid, and they call her Gigi. It's such a copy on Rory's name that it makes me want to spit. Plus, it's way too cutesy."
"And there's nothing at all cutesy in the name Rory."
"Hey, I'll have you know that Rory is a boy's name, thank you. There is nothing cutesy about sharing the name with the little boy who has a crush on you. It's more disturbing and sad."
Luke nods to himself when he recalls the little boy in question. It had been sort of fun, watching Rory deal with her primary school-aged admirer. It had been even more amusing to watch Lorelai deal with Rory's first follower, or, as she had termed the boy, Rory's first stalker. Luke grimaces at that thought that has just crossed his mind: Jess was Rory's last.
"Yes, but he moved after the Christmas pageant where he kissed Rory on stage. Didn't his father transfer to the West Coast?"
"Yeah. I think he wanted to go some place where the entire town hadn't seen his son get beat up by the little girl that he had just kissed." Lorelai chuckles on her end while Luke snorts at the mental image. "God, it's nice to share those memories with you. That's why you're so good for me, Luke. Because you always were there."
What does he say to Lorelai after that statement? Of course he was always there; he doesn't think for an instant that he would have fain been any other place than with them: watching Rory grow up from a precocious tot to a gangly preteen to a down-to-earth teenager to an accomplished young woman; watching Lorelai raise Rory by herself and work her way up in the staff of a successful business to owning her own inn. He cannot think of a day since he has known Lorelai where she and her daughter have not crossed his mind at least once; little things reminds him of them, like buying glue and remembering Rory's adamant boycott of glue after that horse died (that, he recalls, was Lorelai's fault, her way of assuring Rory that it would still be a productive member of society).
"I wouldn't have missed it, Lorelai."
to be continued ... review, please?
