A/N: Thanks to my lovely beta, LulaBo.
The town hadn't been the same after he left. And Lorelai wasn't sure how she felt about having him there again. Lorelai had always considered Stars Hollow hers since that is where she and Rory had started out, but she had realized over the years that it was more Luke's than anyone else's. People had never fathomed that he would leave and Lorelai could only imagine their reaction to his return.
"Mom? We're here."
"Oh. Right." Still not aware of her surroundings, Lorelai swung open the door of the Jeep and almost hit Luke. "Ah! God, are you okay?"
"Yeah, I'm fine." Luke chuckled. "You missed anything vital." Lorelai glanced up at the house, where people stood chatting on the porch, a big banner hung from the porch railing: "Congratulations, Rory."
Rory surveyed the scene. "Sookie didn't go all out for this or anything, did she?"
"Just imagine the food." And the reaction, Lorelai thought as Luke followed them up the walk.
"Rory!" Lane called excitedly from the steps. "You did it!" She squinted in the rapidly falling dusk to make out who was with Lorelai. "Is that--"
"Hey Lane." At the sound of his voice, Lane launched herself down the stairs towards them.
"Luke, ohmyGod!"
"Take it down a notch," Lorelai advised. "He doesn't need to be bombarded." Luke looked grateful. Lorelai nodded and slipped inside. She needed Sookie.
The kitchen was full of various trays and bowls. Sookie was standing by the stove, surveying something in a pot closely. "Sook?" She called, sidestepping the guests and making it through the entryway relatively quickly.
"Hey babe! How was the ceremony? I bet it was gorgeous and Rory was probably radiant. Where is she?"
Lorelai smiled. "It's not her wedding," she chided lightly.
"Oh, I know," Sookie giggled but caught the look on her best friend's face. "What's wrong, sweets?"
"Well, uh, someone showed up at graduation."
"Chris?" Sookie guessed, frowning.
"Nope."
"Oh geez, Jess?" Sookie gasped, her gaze falling behind Lorelai. "Luke!" Lorelai turned to see him standing in the doorway. Sookie squealed and gave him a hug. "I can't believe it! Is it really you? God, you look great. Doesn't he? You're thin. Not that you weren't before but-"
"Thanks." Luke grinned, blushing. Rory appeared soon after and took him out to be paraded around in front of the other guests, giving Lorelai and Sookie some time alone.
"Are you okay?" Sookie studied her.
"I have to be. I can't let him see me…" She trailed off, giving Sookie a weak smile and a slight shrug.
"I understand. So how do you feel about all this?"
"I don't know. I told him the same thing. How am I supposed to feel? I feel like I should be mad but all I want to do is hug him. It isn't turning out the way I expected. Not that I expected him to show up at Rory's graduation."
"How did he know?"
"Oh, Rory emails him." Lorelai rolled her eyes.
"Oh, right. We're the last to know everything." Sookie shook her head.
Lorelai sighed. "I still love him, Sookie."
"Aw hon, I know. Come here," she gave Lorelai a tight hug. "Get out there and win him back," she teased.
Lorelai managed a smile and nodded, walking out to the living room to find Rory and Lane in deep discussion, Luke sitting on the end of the couch alone.
"I don't know half these people." Luke admitted.
"Oh, well some of them work at the Dragonfly and the others, well, I have no clue." Luke chuckled.
"Sooo…"
"Yeah, about that--"
"Cake!" Sookie announced and Rory pulled her mom along, back to the kitchen where everyone attempted to crowd around and eat the magnificent Y-shaped cake with blue icing.
As the pig out session continued, Lorelai snuck out onto the back porch. She drank in the silence that the evening brought. She strolled down to the end of the drive, just to put some space between herself and the events of the day.
She inhaled the night air, the moon glittering behind the trees. She was ready to return to the party when she heard the crunch of gravel behind her. Of course, she smiled to herself.
"It's a nice night. A bit chilly," he noted Lorelai's bare shoulders. "But a Stars Hollow spring."
Lorelai took a deep breath once again. "It has that certain smell…" She trailed off, glancing at him. "You don't miss it? I thought you, of all people, would. I mean, I know you weren't crazy about all the pageantry, and I'm sure you don't miss Taylor's antics, or Kirk's constant presence but--" They both chuckled.
"I miss some things," he glanced at her and then back down. "But Bar Harbor--" Lorelai let out an audible gasp and he smiled. "Yeah, that's me now. It's a lot like Stars Hollow. A little smaller. Well, until its summer and then the town kind of swells."
"It sounds…nice."
"Are you staying?"
"Hmm?"
"Staying here even if Rory leaves?"
Lorelai ducked her head briefly. "I hadn't given it much thought. I have the inn and I don't think I could—and my house, I love our house. I think Rory would be heart broken if I had to sell it."
"Makes sense," he replied with a shrug.
"We've both grown up here. I don't know how I could just leave, it's weird to consider."
"When is she leaving?" He asks, his voice gentle. Normally, the thought of her only daughter and best friend leaving—and this time not only leaving Stars Hollow but the state—would have made her stomach hurt and her breath come in quick gasps, but now she was used to being alone.
"Whenever she decides. She's going to New York to apartment hunt and I think Logan's dad may give her a starting position if she wants it. I don't think she does." Lorelai shook her head. "She makes it hard on herself." Just like me, she thinks.
"She's probably missing you inside."
"Oh, you're right. We better get back."
"Actually, I think I should go."
"Oh." Lorelai crossed her arms and nods. "Of course. I mean that makes sense." She pauses briefly, studying his profile as he looks at the sky. "Hey wait, it's late. Why don't you, uh, just stay? The night, I mean. The Dragonfly has rooms. Or we can put you up here and stick you on clean up duty…"
He smiles at that. "I don't want to bother you."
"Luke, come on. I've encroached on your space plenty of times. I slept in your bed after the fire at the inn. Let me do this." She shuts up finally, nervous now that she's pushed him too far. Instead, his face softens.
"Wow, that was years ago…the fire at the Independence."
"Yeah, it was." The memory hit them both at once and Lorelai has to shake off the goosebumps and the look he was giving her. Thinking back on it now, she can't believe she was bold as to tell him about her dream with the alarm clocks. She hadn't told him then that most of her dreams seemed to come true. Sadly, that one hadn't.
Luke put his hand on the small of Lorelai's back and led her toward the house.
"Hey Luke?" She stopped at the porch steps. "What did you mean at the graduation when you told my mother you had some things to figure out?"
"Oh, uh, just, well--" Luke shifted awkwardly, looking trapped.
But Lorelai wasn't going to let them miss this opportunity. If it was something about them that he needed to figure out, she wanted to know. "What did you figure out?"
He glanced down. "I'll tell you later."
"Okay." Lorelai replied, trying not to sound too disappointed and not really believing him, but following him inside all the same.
"Rory?" Lorelai hissed into the darkened room. "Rory, I can't sleep."
Click. Rory was sitting up in bed, wide awake. "Good. I can't either."
"There's a man on our couch. Not just a man, Luke." Lorelai smiled, almost giddy.
"I know." Rory whispered, motioning to her mom to shut the door.
Lorelai climbed onto Rory's bed, sitting cross legged at the foot. "I'm glad he's here."
"Me too." Rory grinned. "Maybe you can--"
"He's not going to stay, Rory." The goofy smile slipped away and she glanced down at her hands in her lap.
"He could. People change," Rory said eagerly, her eyes wide. "It took him eight years to kiss you, it may take a few more to realize that he's in love with you."
As much as she wanted to believe her daughter's words, Lorelai knew she couldn't. That it would just hurt that much more if she did. "That's just it. We both knew. We knew that when he left. It didn't make him stay, why would it bring him back?" Lorelai's eyebrows rose. "Unless there's something you're not telling me."
"What are you implying?"
"That you two have had this planned out for months. You did email." Lorelai examines her daughter's face carefully. Rory dropped back on her pillow and rolled her eyes.
"You make email sound like something dirty." Rory sighed. "And I would have told you, you know that."
Lorelai nodded, not really surprised. "The weird thing is he can still read me. He just knows me so well. It's…"
"Nice." Rory finished.
"Yeah," she whispered. "I've…I've been making myself sick over him. But I don't know what to do now….now that he's here."
"Just talk to him, mom."
Lorelai asked her daughter to talk about something else for awhile, so maybe she could calm her mind and stop it from wandering back out to the living room where Luke was sleeping on her couch. She listened to her daughter talk excitedly about possible jobs and moving to New York. She was worried that her friendship with Marty was changing and there was a twinkle in her eye that Lorelai hadn't seen in a long time. For a minute, Lorelai was reminded of how she used to be able to bounce back so quickly from disappointment, from loneliness and heartbreak, and she wished she had retained that quality in her late 30s, but it, like everything else she supposed, changed with time. She kissed her daughter on the cheek and tucked her in like she used to do when she was five and Rory would fall asleep on her shoulder as Lorelai read her stories.
She returned to bed, quietly creeping up the stairs, trying not to glance down at Luke. She was afraid he would be awake, watching her, and she half held her breath, waiting for him to call out to her in the darkness. She let out a heavy sigh when she reached her room and empty bed.
Lorelai didn't think it was possible to miss the tiniest things about someone, but she had with Luke. The way the whole house smelled of grass and sweat after he mowed the lawn, the way he started calling Rory "half pint" as a joke and it stuck, and when they were alone in the diner, the way he would hum and sometimes even sing along to the radio.
She missed the feeling of having a man in the house. There was no one to notice the squeaky stairs or that the back door lock was cheap and needed to be fixed. There was no one to make her coffee or run an errand because she had a meeting with the inn's accountant.
Lorelai had spent the majority of her life being independent, strong-willed, some might say hard-headed, hardly letting anyone in her life help her, but she discovered slowly that there was no harm in asking for help, especially when people like Luke did it so willingly. Now all she wanted was someone there to support her, tell her that she was going to be okay with her daughter so far away, that she would be fine. And he could do that. He could make her life less empty.
Lorelai and Rory offered to take Luke around town, to the school play, to Hartford to see a new home improvement store and even to New York to see Jess. He had been overwhelmed by stories and pictures of the last two years before he announced he had to go.
"Thanks for coming." Lorelai thanked him, smiling over at Rory, who stood watching her mother shift awkwardly in the entryway.
"I wouldn't have missed it." He replied sincerely as he motioned to Rory to follow him out on the porch. He handed her an envelope.
"Luke, I can't take this." Rory insisted, overwhelmed by his generosity.
"Please. Use it. You need it more than I do. New York is expensive."
Rory enveloped him in a hug. "Thank you. And thank you for coming. You have no idea how much it meant to me…to us."
"I have a little idea. Be safe in New York, half pint," he whispered. "Now send your mom out here."
She beamed. "Okay. And thank you again." Rory stuck her head in the kitchen. "Luke has requested your presence out front."
"Oh okay." Lorelai replied, thrown off guard. She stood, smoothing her hair in an almost involuntary motion. She hadn't expected much of a goodbye, so this surprised her. "Hey," she said, stepping out on the porch and closing the door so she wouldn't have to see Rory at the edge of the entryway. "You really have to go back." It wasn't a statement or a question, it was just something to say.
Luke stood with his hands in his pockets. "I don't know what I want, Lorelai."
She froze. Of all the things he could have said, this wasn't one she had expected. But then, she told herself, maybe she should stop expecting certain things from him because she was continually being proved wrong—first Maine, Rory's graduation and now this.
"I never intended to leave." He spoke up again and Lorelai still didn't know what to do, what to think. He hadn't wanted to leave?
She found her voice and was surprised at how bitter she sounded. "Then why the hell did you? It was two years, Luke."
"I know. But I—I was just going to see Liz, I wouldn't just leave you like that.
I--" He bit his lip and turned away from her for a second, trying to gather his strength, his thoughts. "I know I hurt you, Lorelai. I hurt us. And I'm so sorry." Lorelai nodded, knew what he was trying to say. She had wanted to call him, to apologize for whatever it was she had done, but it seemed the longer she waited the more it wouldn't make any difference, that it was too late. And now Luke was saying the same thing. He had never meant to stay in Maine, but then it seemed too late, that he couldn't just go back. That they couldn't just go back. But how she wished they had tried. They stood there for a little while, neither of them saying anything.
"Just promise me something, Luke." She touched his wrist slightly and was glad when he didn't withdraw from her touch.
"What's that?"
"Keep in touch this time," she told him, her tone serious, but her eyes twinkling. "Okay?"
A slow smile spread across his face. "I can do that. Yeah."
She dropped her voice. "I'm glad you came."
"Yeah?" His eyes sparkled at her and she wanted to fall into his embrace, into those comforting arms of his.
"Yeah," she nodded, her lips still curved up into a smile.
"Good," he whispered, drawing her close. She sighed into the fabric of his shirt.
"Be careful on the way back, okay?"
"I'll call you when I get there."
"Thanks. Bye, Luke."
"Bye." He walked over to his truck, stealing looks at her as he went. She waited, standing on the porch until his truck slipped around the corner and out of sight. Rory crept out beside her mom, putting an arm around her.
"Come inside. We'll watch something good."
Lorelai smiled weakly. "Thanks, babe."
tbc...
