"No...." She said after a moment. It was a careful, deliberate answer, making up in certainty what it lacked in volume.

Luke smiled at that, surprised at her frankness, and surprised at her answer as well. Of course, it's possible she was lying, it's possible she could be completely freaked out, imagining him as a creepy stalker guy, somebody who would never quite manage to let go of her. But he studied her face and he didn't see a lie painted over it. Her eyes looked away from his for a moment, but it was shyness, not discomfort. She didn't fiddle around with her hands or tense up her shoulders. She wasn't lying to him.

"No?" He asked anyway, the words slipping out.

Lorelai pursed her eyebrows in thought. "Should I be?"

"I thought you would be."

"Did you?"

"Yes." He admits easily. He already told her he's been in love with her for almost a decade. Not in love per se, although that's what he meant, so to obsess over semantics now seemed silly.

"Because it's me?" She asked softly, unconcerned with the waitress quickly refilling their champaigne flutes.

"Lorelai..."

"No, I mean, I understand why you would be...thinking along those lines."

"I wasn't exactly."

She raised her eyebrows in question.

"Then how?"

"I've had time to think, right? There was this book, oh, goddamn the book, forget about the book. Just something I read." He mumbled and she smiled at his poor cover. "Anyway, I started thinking, there's you, and you've been there forever and although I didn't know exactly what I wanted - I'm not one of those guys who plans things and has a mutual fund and tracks the price of oil - I knew it would be you."

He looked up at her, to gauge her reaction and it told him he should go on. She wasn't getting ready to flee or making exaggerated moves to leap to the ladies' room.

"So, I haven't named our children or anything," He watched her eyes grow wider, "But at the same time, I've been standing here in the same place for a while now and you maybe haven't until very recently and it's always scarier in the beginning."

"Wow."

"That's what I meant." Luke clarified and debated grabbing her hand. She made it easy for him when she laced their fingers together first.

"I had no idea where you'd take me tonight."

"What?" He asks, confused by her sudden change of subject.

"I thought, it's Luke, the guy who, I don't know what he does in his off time, hell you come here three days a week and I had no idea about it. I didn't even think you were at a Vulcan convention because I never noticed. And you," She pointed her finger at his chest, jabbing at it, "Are a fine looking specimen, and I've watched you through your windows at the diner this past week, which by the way need a washing. You're looking a bit fuzzy from a distance."

He shook his head, familiar with this Lorelai, whose stories jump from A to Z and back to B without warning.

"And yeah, hello? Luke! Good Luke-ing."

She waited patiently for him to roll his eyes.

"Oh Jesus."

"Right, so, yeah, all sorts of hot and why didn't I follow you with my eyes before and mentally undress you and wonder where you were going? You were going for dinner, which is the peak of the dating spectrum and I didn't even think there was some plaid-wearing hussy out there who might be luring you into her lair to seduce you with her wanton ways."

"Lorelai," He managed before laughing, "I'm not really following you."

"You took me here and I was taken aback. I didn't know Buddy and Maizie even existed."

"I didn't talk about them."

"Or that people named their children after corn."

"What?"

"Maize. Stay with me here."

"I'm not in a hurry to leave without you." He matched her quick reply and she kissed him lightly, because she felt like it and because she could. How nice, who'd have thought?

"So you shock me by bringing me to Luke's Luke."

"But you like it."

"Love it, slight difference in word structure, huge in meaning."

"Gotcha."

"And then we're sitting here and you drop another bombshell on me."

"The horoscope?" He guessed correctly.

Lorelai nods at him, in utter seriousness.

"In your wallet. In your back pocket..."

"Under my ass."

"You said it, mister."

"But you thought it." He pointed out and she didn't try to deny it.

"You kept something I gave you 8 years ago and didn't accidentally wash it in your pants, or lose it or shred it or just plain throw it out. I'm a pack rat and even I can't vouch that I'd have kept something that little for that long."

"It wasn't little, Lorelai."

She loved how he used her name so freely now, and how smoothly it rolled off his tongue. There were other things, like the cologne he was wearing, the way his face was still tanned in the early autumn, and the way his arms ripped through the shirt he wore, but mainly it was the way he looked at her and said her name that struck her.

"No, you're right. You're absolutely right. It's huge, and it's meaningful and it's frightening to stare that sort of devotion in the face."

Luke clenched his jaw for a moment and braced himself for what was coming. He spent most of the afternoon preparing himself for it, it's not as if it was unexpected.

"It's okay." He assured her.

"I know it is." She nodded at him and allowed him to go on.

"If you're afraid or you don't think you can do this - now - we can, I don't know, slow down, do it the way you want to. Eight years, long time, what's a week or a month more?"

"Too much!" She exclaimed and punched him playfully in the chest. He remembered her greeting when he returned the other day and it was the same sort of punch.

"I'm sorry?"

"Are you hungry?"

"What?" He was bewildered at her, even moreso as she grinned and held his hand tighter and closer to her body, and a spark lit up her eyes.

"Really hungry?" She asked, winking.

"Lorelai..."

"I'm not afraid, Luke. I'm completely, totally unafraid, do you get that? And I should be! You had like a miniature Lorelai shrine in your pants and don't look at me like that, it's not what I meant, and you bring me here to practically meet your family and you mentioned children and I'm not running."

She said it all a million miles a minute, one word tumbling out of her mouth after another, excitedly, happily, like she'd just opened a super secret Christmas gift and it was better than she ever could have expected. A real pony, but pink, the kind that existed only in Toys R Us.

"Are you hungry?" She repeated.

He looked at her strangely. "You want to go?"

"We'll be back here. I'm not afraid of you."

He felt that proverbial weight lift from his shoulders and crumble away in a thousand pieces. To be honest, he wasn't absolutely sure she completely understood the significance of all this, but he'd also never before seen that look in her eyes, not directed at him, or at anyone else.

"Good, that's good." They both smiled at each other, widely, freely.

"God, that's good." He told her again.

"I want to do something for you." She declared in a quiet and dignified way.

"You don't have to." He protested.

"It's about want, not need."

"Okay, shoot."

"Did it bring you luck, that piece of paper you've kept all these years?"

"Yes, it looks like it."

"No." She shook her head slowly, standing up and pulling him up with her.

"Where are we going?"

"To teach you about luck."