Disclaimer: These characters are owned by the WB, Dorothy Parker Drank Here Productions, and Amy Sherman-Palladino.

Author's Note: Thanks again to jesouhaite for beta-reading this chapter and giving me such great feedback. I really appreciate everyone's reviews and I hope you enjoy this chapter.

Lorelai couldn't remember if they had set a particular time for their date. No, not date, definitely not a date. It was a talk, and it scared the hell out of her. She wasn't great with words. She said too many of them and said too little with them. She also knew, however, that they needed words if they were ever going to be able to be together again. Thinking about getting back together made her nervous. She hadn't let herself go down that road, for fear of being disappointed. But the auction, the lunch – surely Luke wouldn't have gone through with that if he wasn't at least thinking about being with her again.

Getting dressed was difficult. What did you wear for a "talk date" with your ex-boyfriend who you really wanted back in your life? Comfortable, but not too casual or he wouldn't think she had made any effort. Not too sexy, because as much as she might want to drag him up to her bedroom, that was definitely not what they needed right now. Add to that the fact that most of her favorite clothes were spread among the Luke boxes that were piled the corner of her room, and the job was even more difficult. She finally settled on a pair of jeans, but not his favorite pair, and a comfortable, but not too tight, blue sweater that just happened to set off her eyes.

He showed up around 7:00, and knocked tentatively at the door. When she answered, he said, "I realized that we never said a specific time, so I hope this is okay."

"It's perfect. I'm starving."

"Well, I have food," he said, holding up the take-out bags.

"I'll get plates and drinks. Do you want a beer?" I certainly do, she thought, so nervous now that he was actually in the house.

"Yeah, that sounds good."

She returned to find him still standing just inside the living room, looking around with an odd expression on his face.

"Luke? Are you okay?"

"Where's all your stuff? Movies, books, knick-knacks . . . everything. Where is it?" Lorelai just pointed at the stack of boxes in the corner of the room. "You packed it all away? Why?"

"It reminded me of you."

"Every single movie you own reminded you of me?"

"Well, first I put away just the ones that we had watched together, but then I put away all the ones I could picture you mocking, and then anything with a 'they live happily ever after ending,' and well, you see the problem."

He stared at her with an amazed look on his face. Looking around the room, his eyes settled on a stack of board games on a shelf. "I haven't seen those before."

"Oh, Rory and I have had those for a while. We just haven't played them since she was a kid. We pulled them out recently, since the movies are all packed up. She can still kick my butt at Scrabble, but I get her back with Parcheesi."

"I'm glad she's been around."

"Yeah, me too."

She realized that he was still holding the food. "Here," she said, putting down the plates and beers and taking the food from him, "let's sit down. She gestured to the couch and he sat down at the far end. She debated briefly where to sit and chose the other end of the couch, far enough away to avoid touching him, but turned so that she could face him.

She was relieved to be able to start eating and put off the conversation a bit longer. They ate quietly for a few minutes, Lorelai trying to steal glances at him. The familiar flannel and baseball cap were comforting, though his eyes were tired and sad and his shoulders slumped a bit. She interrupted the silence to say, "Thanks for the burger. I've missed them."

"I'm glad you're enjoying it."

"Oh, I definitely am," she smiled, thinking that it almost felt comfortable, eating with him in her house. Then she remembered the purpose of this dinner. "So, you wanted to talk," she blurted, trying to sound more confident than she felt.

"Why did you lie to me about Christopher?"

"Starting off easy, huh?" she said as she looked up at his expressionless face. He didn't answer, so she thought for a moment and said, "I don't know."

"That's not good enough," he said icily.

"I know it's not enough, but I have thought a lot about it and I don't know if I have a better answer than that."

"How many times did you see him?

"Three. Once when he called after Sherri left because he needed help with GiGi. I went because he was a friend and fellow parent who needed help. About a month later Sookie asked how he was doing and I realized that I hadn't heard from him." Luke almost smiled at that. "I called to see how he was doing."

"You called him?"

"I was worried about a friend."

"Friend? Try ex-boyfriend, father of your only child." His voice was tight.

"Luke, please, let me do this."

"Okay, go ahead," he relented.

"He was going to be visiting his parents, so I invited him to the inn to have lunch, and I invited Rory too, as a surprise."

"You invited him?"

"Yes, I did," she said openly.

"And you didn't tell me because . . ."

"Honestly, in my mind it was nothing but two old friends catching up. He hadn't seen the inn, or seen Rory in a while." She looked up and saw a frustrated look on his face, and sighed. "Then he and Rory got into a fight because apparently Rory had told him to stay away from me so that he wouldn't screw things up with us."

"She did that?" He looked slightly impressed.

"Yeah, and that was when it hit me that I should have told you, because even though I knew that it meant nothing to me, if it had been the other way around and you saw Rachel or Nicole, I would be mad if you didn't tell me. So I told you after and even though you said later that it was okay, I could tell that it wasn't totally. I should have talked to you about it then, but . . . well, avoidance is my MO, so there you have it."

He was still just looking at her with an unreadable expression, so she took a deep breath and continued. "The last time was the night his father died. I went to his house as a friend and ended up staying up most of the night talking."

"And nowhere in that conversation did it come up that you were seeing someone?"

"All we talked about was his Dad and what a jerk he was and about he and Rory. If I had any idea he had feelings for me or if he had said anything remotely inappropriate I would have told him. We just didn't talk about me at all. I still don't really know why I lied to you about it."

"Did you ask Rory to lie for you?"

"God, no!" she said, horrified. "I think she felt guilty because she asked me to go see him."

"She did?" A confused look crossed his face hearing Rory's role.

"He came to see her at Yale a few days before his Dad died, trying to reconnect with her and she blew him off. When we found out his Dad died, I think she felt really badly about that and she knew that he didn't have any close friends to lean on. That morning in the diner she tried to cover for me because she felt badly about pulling me into it and she was worried about you being mad. I was too hung over to protest."

"And later, when I asked you again?"

"I have nothing to say about that except that I suck."

"But why couldn't you tell me?"

"I felt like I was in this hole and I wasn't sure how to get out. I was afraid to tell you because I knew you would be mad and I was afraid to lose you, and look – I lost you anyway."

"If you really thought it was no big deal, why didn't you tell me?"

"By then I realized that it would be a big deal to you. If you had known how I felt, maybe I could have told you without worrying that you would hate me, but I haven't been too forthcoming there, either." She was trying to put it all on the table.

He seemed to recognize her effort. "Well, I can't say that I have either," he admitted. He took a deep breath and asked, "Are you in love with him?"

"No, not at all," she looked right at him for emphasis, then dropped her eyes and continued. "I think that I may have thought I was a long time ago, but I didn't even know what it meant to really be in love until recently. I have loved Chris, but in love, no. There were even times that I thought he might be the one, but when he chose Sherry, that was it for me. And now, I don't even respect him."

She hadn't realized the extent of what she was saying until the words were out of her mouth and she wanted to kick herself for revealing too much. Did he know what she had meant? His face was a jumble of emotion and the only one she could read clearly was relief.

"Luke?"

"Yeah?"

"The most painful thing I have ever experienced is seeing the look on your face before you walked out of the wedding, and having no idea what to say to you. I mean, he was so annoying all night, but what he said about us and my mom, I was so shocked I couldn't respond. I could just see you slipping away from me and knowing that it all started because of something I did...well, it hurt me worse than anything."

She looked at him now, willing him to say something, anything to let her know what he was thinking. She didn't want to push, knowing that had gotten them to where they were. His jaw was tensed and he was working the muscles the same way he had done before kissing her the first time. She couldn't tell if he was angry with her or just remembering the pain of the moment.

She waited a few more moments before asking, "Did you really believe what he said about 'for now?' Did you really think that I wanted to be with him?"

"You've always had this weird connection with him and no matter how good I thought we were doing, there was always this fear in the back of my mind that you wouldn't be satisfied with me."

"Because I didn't tell you how I felt?"

"I guess so, and Christopher and your mother just played into that." Lorelai felt her jaw tightening as he said that.

"You didn't trust me," she said softly, her voice breaking a bit. It was a statement, but he didn't deny it. "You expected me to screw up." She turned away from him and stood up so that he couldn't see the tears in her eyes.

"Lorelai…" he stood and looked at her helplessly.

"What? Is that really what you expected out of this? Is that what you meant when you said you were all in? Did 'all in' mean just until Lorelai screws it up?" She didn't realize that she was shouting until he shouted back at her.

"Lorelai, stop! I screwed up too!" She looked at him, then, surprised by the raw emotion in his voice. He looked at her for a moment, then continued, "I was afraid. I knew that I was falling deeper and deeper into this relationship, and it scared me. Because of that, I held back. I didn't tell you what I felt. If I had, maybe it would have changed things. Maybe you wouldn't have felt you had to lie to me."

She continued to look at him. They were both breathing hard and at a loss for words. The air around them felt angry and tense and she suddenly felt the need to escape the room. "I need a break. Do you want another beer?" He nodded slowly. "I'll go get it. I may be a few minutes."

"Take your time. I'll be here."

Lorelai pulled out the beers and popped off the tops, then sat down at the kitchen table and buried her face in her arms. She felt emotionally and physically drained and she still didn't know where this was going. The admission from him had cut her to the core and stirred up all of her own uncertainties about her relationships. If he couldn't trust her before, would he ever be able to trust her again? She sat there for a few more minutes before picking up the beers and returning to the living room.

She found Luke sitting on the couch, leaning forward, with his head in his hands. She sat down on the other end of the couch. "Hey, here's your beer."

"Thanks." He took a few drinks and then said, "I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"For yelling, for . . . I don't know. For not trusting you with all of myself."

She looked at him then, with new understanding. "It's just hard to believe that something that felt so right was so screwed up."

"Not that screwed up. Just a hairline fracture."

"Do you think we could have fixed it if my mother hadn't interfered?"

He tensed at the mention of her mother, but then shrugged and said, "I don't know. Maybe, if we had looked closely enough." His tone suggested that he didn't think that would have happened, but he didn't say that.

"I've never been so angry with another person as I was that night with my mother. She had no right to shove Christopher in between us like that. It wasn't fair to you, to me and frankly, it wasn't fair to him either. I really don't ever want to speak to her again. I told her we were done."

"Don't say that. She's your mother."

"She's been horrible to you. She puts you down and treats you like crap. And you just take it. You won't let me stand up for you, but it's been so hard watching you just take it on my account."

"Isn't that what you have been doing most of your life, for Rory's benefit?" He looked directly at her and she knew he was right.

She sighed and looked away from his piercing eyes. "It's different. We're all related, we have to put up with it.

"No one should have to put up with it." She could see him start to reach for her hand, then stop. "But Lorelai…I can't let you cut them out because of me. I couldn't live with knowing that I caused something that you would live to regret someday." She started to shake her head but he continued. "Trust me when I say that you would regret it."

The certainty and sadness in his voice struck her and she knew he was thinking of his parents. She sighed softly, thinking how different his parents must have been from hers. She almost didn't hear him continue, "I'll never be good enough for your parents. That's got to matter to you."

"Luke, I've never been good enough for my parents," she said bitterly. "It hardly matters to me whether they approve of you."

"It matters to me. I don't want to come between you and your family."

"Well you don't, because the fact is that whatever this is between my mom and me is about more than you. What happened at the wedding made that much more clear."

"Made what clear?"

"She's my mother. She's supposed to care about me. All my life she has disapproved of me and I have disappointed her. It's just the game we play." She saw him wince as she brushed away the years of pain. "But this was different. She saw me happy, really, really happy. She knew that I cared about you and that this was serious and she deliberately tried to take that away. She's never intentionally done something to hurt me before and I don't know how to forgive her for that." She choked back a sob as tears welled in her eyes. "It just hurts so much that she cares so little for me. We have our moments, but I thought we were getting closer. I thought she needed me, but now that she's got Dad back, she doesn't need me anymore." The tears had started streaming down her face as years of repressed pain fell upon her all at once. She wasn't sure exactly when or how it happened, but she realized at some point that Luke had pulled her toward him and she was resting her head on his chest, sobbing. He said nothing, just held her, smoothed her hair and gently rubbed her back. They sat like that for a while, the only sounds her soft sobs. The moment felt both familiar and foreign all at once. She breathed in the scent of him and felt his strong arms around her, comforted by his presence, while at the same time filled with uncertainty. She didn't know which Luke was holding her, best friend Luke, or boyfriend Luke.

Eventually the reality of what had passed between them hit her and she sat up, "I can't believe I'm doing this again."

"What?"

"Crying on you. I promised you I wouldn't do that again."

"Lorelai, it's okay to lean on people once in a while. You don't have to be strong all the time." He gently pulled her back. "That's what I'm here for." She was too exhausted to resist, and gradually his gentle caresses began to relax her. She wanted desperately to know what they were, where they were going, but didn't want to ruin the moment by asking. She decided instead that perhaps it wasn't too late to starting saying some of the things that needed saying. She murmured softly, "In case I didn't say it clearly enough before, I'm in love with you." She drifted off to sleep without knowing his reaction to her words, and without knowing which Luke held her.

Author's Note: Thanks for reading. I'd love to know what you think.