Disclaimer: I am in no way associated with Warner Brothers or Dorothy Parker Drank Here or anyone else attached in any way with Gilmore Girls.
Chapter 12 – Tentatively Together
Luke is in the midst of an extremely deep sleep when Lorelai's tossing and turning disturbs him. He unconsciously throws an arm over her trying to still her restlessness. His sleep laden mind merely wants to stop the bed from shaking.
That's why he's stunned when he's awaken by Lorelai kicking him as she throws his arm off of her and attempts to vault out of bed.
Unfortunately, one of her legs is partially encased in the sheets when she makes the attempt to unceremoniously hurtle from the bed thus causing her to fall hard to the floor. After quickly disengaging her leg, she half stumbles, half crawls into the bathroom.
Luke's confused and sleep dulled brain is completely dumfounded by the scene he had just witnessed until he recognizes the sound of vomiting coming from the bathroom. Suddenly it all makes sense.
Feeling a mixture of compassion and guilt for Lorelai's onslaught of morning sickness, Luke follows her into the bathroom. There he witnesses her kneeling down with her face in the toilet as her stomach muscles visibly convulse causing another round of vomiting. It is not a pretty sight.
Without any real clue how he can help, Luke does the only thing he can think of and kneels next to her to hold her hair out of the way while he gentle rubs her back. Feeling just about as worthless as a glass of water for a drowning man, Luke just waits and watches Lorelai suffer.
Eventually, the attack subsides, leaving her weak and exhausted. Luke watches as Lorelai rests her head on the toilet seat and breathes heavily. Perspiration dots her face with the sweat soaking her scalp. Her bed clothes are damp and clinging to her body.
Luke wants to get her back to bed but when he attempts to help her up, she protests by raising her left hand and weakly waving him away. She looks so pitiful with her ashen face and red teary eyes as she clings to the commode for support.
He gets up to retrieve a blanket to throw over her to prevent her from chilling. He also fills a glass with water and dampens a washrag. Luke wraps the blanket around her shoulders as he wipes her face and neck with the cloth. Finally he tries to lift her head to get her to drink the water.
Lorelai just pushes the glass away.
"Come on Lorelai," he pleads, "you have to drink something. You're dehydrated."
Lorelai shakes her head slightly without raising it from the toilet seat where it is resting.
"Please, just a sip." he begs.
"No." she responds with a weak and very hoarse voice.
"You want some club soda? I can get you some club soda."
"No. Tomato juice. "she replies with a voice so gravely that he can hardly understand. He swore she just asked for tomato juice.
"What? You want tomato juice?"
"Yes, fresh tomato juice." she whispers.
"Okay," he agrees classifying this as a weird pregnancy craving. "But I'll have to go to the diner to make it. I won't leave with you lying here. You have to get up first."
That said, he helps her up and half carries her back to bed. She practically falls over when he sits her down. Luke goes over to the dresser to get her something clean and dry to put on but when he gets back to the bed, she looks like she has fallen to sleep.
Standing there next to the bed unsure of what to do, Luke finally decides to just cover her up. As he pulls the sheet over her, she opens one eye and mumbles hoarsely, "tomato juice."
"Okay, I'm off. I'll be back as quickly as possible." Luke moves the trash can next to the bed just in case, grabs his keys and practically runs out of the house.
As he drives over to the diner, Luke says out loud to no one, "This is crazy. Here I am at" stopping to look at the time, "nearly 3:45 in the morning going to make fresh tomato juice for my very pregnant, very nauseous wif...er, girlfriend."
He suddenly realizes that he already thinks of Lorelai as his wife not just his girlfriend. He has never thought of any woman as his wife, not even Nicole, who was legally his wife. "Wow" is all he can think to say.
When he gets to the diner, he unlocks the door and turns on the light before he rushes back into the kitchen. Grabbing a handful of tomatoes from the frig, he quickly begins to wash and peel them. Then he jams them into the blender, thinks about it for a second and throws in some ice cubes then starts pulverizing.
While he watches the blender, Luke mentally tries to calculate the nutritional value of the tomato juice. There's a little protein, carbohydrates, iron, fiber, vitamin A, C, and B6, some calcium and folic acid, that's good for a pregnant woman, some sodium and potassium plus that lycopene cancer preventing stuff. All in all, for a pregnancy craving, this ranks really high as far a Luke is concern. If Lorelai wants tomato juice, he will make sure she gets all the tomato juice she can drink.
He snatches a few more tomatoes and sacks them in case he needs to make more juice, pours the newly made tomato juice into some to go cups, and leaves the kitchen where he is stunned to see Kirk sitting at the counter.
"Kirk, what the hell are you doing here?"
"I want breakfast."
"Leave, Kirk, the diner isn't open."
"But the door is unlocked and the lights are on."
"Kirk, get out before I throw you out. NOW!"
Kirk scurries out the door with Luke following behind. He turns off the lights and locks the door before jumping in the truck with the sack of tomatoes and the cups of tomato juice. He's anxious to return to Lorelai as quickly possible.
When he walks back into the bedroom, he sees Lorelai curled up under the covers apparently asleep. He doesn't want to disturb her so he sits the juice down as quietly as possible on the table next to her.
When he looks at her again, he is startled to find her eyes open and he's concern to see that she looks like she could get sick again at any moment. Lorelai then sits up and reaches for the tomato juice. She takes a sip and waits.
Nothing happens, at least not anything bad, so she takes another sip. Waits again and then chugs the entire contents of the cup.
Luke is amazed at the instant transformation. Sure, she still looks pale but suddenly there is a flicker of the old spunky Lorelai back in her eyes. Obviously, the tomato juice is really miracle juice.
Luke asks, "Better?"
Lorelai looks up at him and smiles (weakly but smiles) and croaks out in her current raspy voice "Yeah, thanks. Water please?"
"Plain or club soda?"
"Plain."
Luke gets her the glass of water from the bathroom and hands it to her. She drinks it down immediately.
Luke is relieved to see Lorelai appears to be able to keep both the tomato juice and the water down. That is definitely a good sign.
Lorelai changes out of the grody, clammy clothes that she's currently wearing into the clean, dry clothing that Luke had got out for her early. Then she gets up and washes her face and brushes her teeth. Looking in the mirror, she is appalled at the ghostly image that stares back at her. "Well," she thinks to herself, "at least I feel more human."
Luke who has been standing around waiting to see what Lorelai is going to do, watches as she crawls back into bed. She turns to him smiling and slapps the pillow on his side of the bed. Luke obeys by getting into bed and pulls her close under his arm to snuggle.
His curiosity gets the better of him and he has to ask, "How did you know that tomato juice would make you feel better?"
"Your mother. Apparently, you made her sick, too; must be something about the Danes' genes. " she whispers and then realizes how that sounded. Lorelai wants to explain better but her throat is really sore from all the puking.
All Luke says is, "My mother? How…?"
"Maisy told me."
"Why would Maisy tell you that?" Luke asks while his mind starts clicking. He remembers Lorelai leaving the table during dinner and she looked a little peaked right before that. "Did you get sick during dinner?"
Lorelai shrugs.
"Lorelai, you have to tell me these things, no matter what. You can't keep these things from me. If you feel sick or have cravings or just feel bad, you must tell me, okay? I need to know everything. We're in this together
Maybe it was just because she's tired and still feels kind of icky or maybe it's because she's feeling kind of cantankerous at the moment, but his little speech sounded too much like some sort of dictate. It struck a wrong nerve when it reminded her of his "no secrets" speech.
Lorelai responds to him with an enigmatic smile but behind that cryptic look she is actually thinking, "You can demand whatever the hell you want, but I'll decide what I want to tell you. I'll start telling you everything when you start telling me everything."
Luke's internal alarm woke him at five. He has no intention of leaving Lorelai this morning since it has only been less than an hour since she got back to sleep. Though she appears to be sleeping soundly, he's still worried. 'The hell with the diner," he thinks to himself, "Caesar will be in at 8:30. He can open."
Making a mental note to call Caesar by 7:30 to explain, Luke let himself fall back to sleep.
Luke has this uncanny ability to just wake up automatically at whatever time he decides. It doesn't always work so he does use an alarm for backup but rarely does he really need it. Normally if he decides that he needs to wake up at a certain time, he just will.
Today unfortunately, his internal alarm was wacko. He didn't wake up until he felt Rory shake him. He opens his eyes and sees her standing over him holding the phone. She whispers, "It's Caesar."
Luke looks over to Lorelai and is relieved to see her still sleeping soundly. He gets out of bed and follows Rory out of the room.
He takes the phone and talks with Caesar. He apologizes for not calling him. Evidently there was an angry crowd outside the diner when Caesar arrived and he is now feeling persecuted. Luke had to promise him a little bonus just to get him to shut up.
When Caesar hangs up the phone, he is confronted with a diner full of inquisitive customers staring at him. Miss Patty, Babette, Tilly, Gypsy, Andrew, Bob, Taylor, Kirk, and few dozen other towns' people had been discussing Luke and Lorelai while they all had stood around outside of the closed diner all morning. By the time Caesar had arrived, the group had worked themselves up into a frenzy of desperation for more information.
They are all dying of curiosity. Ever since Kirk had informed everyone of Luke's strange behavior in the diner earlier this morning the topic of Lorelai and Luke had once again become center stage in all discussions. Not that it hadn't already been topic one on everyone's agenda.
Apparently, according to Kirk, Luke had been making some sort of dark, mysterious potion to manipulate Lorelai in the wee hours of the morning. It was either that or as Caesar theorized, Luke had been mixing a Bloody Mary (Caesar found the blender soaking in the sink with what looked like the remains of tomato juice). Miss Patty and Babette speculated that Luke and Lorelai had been participating in a wild night of drunken sex.
Actually, the saga of Lorelai and Luke had been the main topic of discussion for the last month in Stars Hollow. The town's people had rehashed the entire story from the first appearance of April to the present day over and over and over again.
All known clues had dissected, anatomized, dichotomized, bisected, and analyzed by nearly everyone. Speculations and theories were running rampant. Facts had become almost indistinguishable from conjecture. Everyone seemed to have a different opinion on the causes of the breakup of the golden couple with one noted exception. There was pretty much a consensus of opinion in town that Anna was the villain in the story for keeping April from Luke.
No one knew where Lorelai had spent the last month though most people in town now accepted the theory that she had been institutionalized in a very private upscale sanitarium by her family after experiencing a nervous breakdown.
Luke's own short period of isolation following the breakup was now regarded as the result of an attempted suicide that had failed. Jess's sudden reappearance in town (boy, had that caught everyone off guard) had only added fuel to the suicide speculation. When Luke had finally emerged in public, after nearly a week of hiding, with bruises and in physical pain the town felt they had confirmation of the theory. The current accepted belief is that he had attempted to throw himself off of lover's leap.
The theory that Lorelai was in a mental institution had been supported by Luke's own strange behavior. In the past month, he had been spotted several times leaving town during the day time, mysteriously wearing a business suit. The speculation was that he was visiting Lorelai in this hospital and, of course, everyone knew that expensive mental institutions that people like the Gilmore family would choose would have a dress code for visitors.
Then there is the question of the intrigue surrounding the letters that Luke had received from some law firm. There are two main schools of thought on that. One believes that Gilmore's are suing Luke for causing Lorelai's collapse (alienation of affection). The other believes that Gilmore's had beenholding Lorelai captive in the mental institution and Luke is suing them to release her.
Speculation had gone wild last Thursday when everyone in town spotted Lorelai driving home. The whole town seemed to be holding their collective breath waiting to see what would happen next. No one ventured to talk to either Lorelai or Luke but took a wait and see stance. They were rewarded for their patience.
It had been reported by several sources that Lorelai had been spotted that Thursday night at the diner talking with Luke after closing in her pajamas no less. Then the couple had spent the night together at Lorelai's house.
The oddest incident was reported by Babette, who claimed that she had seen Luke just sitting on the steps of the porch for nearly an hour (her original story had him sitting there less than 15 minutes) that Thursday night. No one could really come up with a plausible explanation of that behavior.
Friday morning, Luke had been in an exceptionally good mood, well good if one compared it to his mood for the last few weeks. Then Lorelai and Rory had appeared in the diner. It seemed for a while that the couple might be back on track though it was noted that the engagement ring was missing from her finger.
Then Lorelai had bolted from the diner and disappeared (again) for most of the rest of the day. Rory and Luke were also missing during that time. Everyone in town felt a sense of déjà vu. Lorelai had run away and Luke was hiding.
Relief and joy was felt by all when Lorelai had been seen returning to her home and Luke had reappeared at the diner later Friday afternoon. Speculation was high that something major had happened between them since Luke's demeanor was almost cheerful.
Babette had wavered between a desire to have a little neighborly chat with Lorelai that afternoon and staying completely clear of any contact. After all Lorelai had been home 24 hours now and it was not normal that Babette had not visited yet. Then on the other hand, Babette knew of Lorelai's reaction to Patty's attempt for a tête-à-tête and did not want to initiate another panic attack. It was quite a conundrum.
Babette had chosen just to watch and wait.
The drama started building last evening when Luke was came out of his apartment all dressed up and left. The initial thought was that he is taking Lorelai out but then he drives out of town without her. There had been panic through out the Hollow and resentment against Luke was at an all time high.
About an hour later he is spotted back in town and at Lorelai's with April in tow. That was big! The entire town had gathered at Miss Patty's which ks the official command post for tracking the Lorelai and Luke mystery. (At Kirk's insistence, they had begun recording all information on a time line posted on the wall much like he saw on that TV show about finding missing people.)
Last night there was a wild speculation that Luke and Lorelai were eloping! Great joy was felt in Stars Hollow until Lorelai and Luke had been spotted returning home around 10. Most believers conceded that the couple would never spend their wedding night at home. Then when Rory was spotted coming home at around 1:30, all hope died. No way would Rory sleep in the house with the honeymooning couple.
There is a consensus in town that these two should just suck it up and get married. They have the rest of their lives to work out all their issues and all this stalling and delay is just stupid.
Earlier in the month, Kirk had even suggested the idea of marriage by proxy. (Lulu had told him how olden times future Kings and Queens would be married without ever having met. Substitutes for the bride and groom would participate in the wedding ceremonies.) The proxy idea had been embraced by some of the town for a while and the idea of a proxy wedding was actually being played with until Taylor pointed out that it would not be valid in modern day Connecticut.
Miss Patty suggested that they simply get Lorelai and Luke plastered. She knew of many happy couples who had tied the knot totally wasted.
There is currently a tentative plan in the works that if nothing positive happens with this couple by July 4 that the town is going to take over. They will get the couple plastered on Founder's Day punch (two glasses each should do the trick) at the annual Independence Day celebration and then the town will throw them a wedding. Luckily there is no waiting period for marriage licenses in Connecticut.
With Caesar unable to provide much new information other than Luke did not expect to be in the diner today, the group decides to adjourn temporarily and relocate to Miss Patty's. They have a lot of planning to do if they intend to throw a surprise wedding on July 4th for Luke and Lorelai. For one thing, it is time to bring Sookie on board with the plans since she will be the key to the success of the project.
Luke is embarrassed that Rory saw him in bed with Lorelai. He knows it is stupid that it bothers him but for some reason he still thinks of Rory as the sweet innocent little girl he first met. He doesn't want her thinking about him sleeping with her mother.
Rory, on the other hand, is thrilled to know that Luke spent the night with Lorelai again. The past month had been hell for her mother; actually the past several months had been hell. Rory is overjoyed that Luke and Lorelai seemed to be mending their relationship quickly.
After some internal debate, Luke decides to have a little talk with Rory. He goes downstairs and finds her sitting at the kitchen table reading the newspaper with a cup of coffee. She grins at him when he walks in (Mom's right, she thought, he looks cute in his tee shirt and sweat pants).
Luke walks nervously over and opens the refrigerator. "Not a damn thing to eat." he thinks to himself making a mental note to go shopping immediately and get some real food in this house. He gets out a glass and fills it with water then sits down at the table with Rory.
"Rory," he starts hesitantly, "I don't want to say anything that puts you in the middle because, well she's your mom, but I want you to know that I love her and want her in my life more than anything. I was so stupid and I hurt her but I am trying to make it right."
Rory chose not to verbally respond but her face told him that she agreed that he had been stupid.
"I want you to know that I would marry you mother today if she would have me. And it's not because of the baby."
"I will be there for my child whether your mother and I can make it work or not. I am trying to be a good father to April and I don't really feel anything for her mother. I mean I respect Anna and I am trying to work with her but I don't feel anything for Anna like I feel for your mom."
"I just don't exactly know what I can do to prove to your mother that she can trust me. If you can think of something, I would really like to hear your idea but don't do or say anything that would make you uncomfortable. Like I said, I don't want to put you in the middle. This is my problem not yours."
Rory got up and walks over to Luke and gives him a big hug. "You know she does trust you, it's the situation she doesn't trust."
Luke looks at her perplexed.
"You know Mom is really confident and self-assured about most things except when it comes to relationships. Grandma and Grandpa and a few other people have really done a real number on her."
"She always feels any failure in a relationship is her fault because she always feels that somehow she lets everyone down. Her mind logically may know that she didn't do anything but deep down she will always feel responsible because she always thinks of herself as just a major disappointment."
"Mom loves you and is in love with you. She has never been in love before with anyone. That's very scary for her."
"She feels that she screwed up not you. Note, I am referring to feelings not thinking. Mom feels she is at fault for the relationship breaking apart, because she's not good enough and doesn't deserve to be loved. It's not just you she doesn't trust, she doesn't trust herself to be worthy of being happy with you."
"Keep doing what you have been doing. Make sure that she feels apart of all aspects of your life. Talk to her, share everything that is going on with her, don't try to protect or sugar coat the truth."
"Once she is confident that you aren't keeping things from her, she'll trust you and hopefully, the relationship. When you get to that point, don't wait. Just run off and get married. Don't give her anytime to think about it. If you do, she'll find a way of talking herself out of it."
Rory start gathering up the paper she had been reading. "I have to go back to work now. Suddenly I am essential at the Gazette. I think it has to do with the fact the half of the staff is on vacation. Anyway, I have to cover two positions today. Tell Mom I'll call later."
As Rory started to head out of the room, she turned back with one additional thought. "You know she won't make it easy for you, don't you? I mean she may feel deep down inside it was her fault but she still will make you pay for the way you handled everything, don't you? I mean she is a Gilmore, we all have a little vindictive streak in us."
Luke looked at her and laughed. "Oh yes, I would expect nothing less from Lorelai. She has always made me suffer anytime I was stupid. I'm ready to take my medicine."
Anna had just got off the phone with her friend Donna. She would have to wait a couple more hours before she could make the next call.
She had spent almost all night working out the details in her head. It really wasn't as complicated as someone might have imagined. This option had been available to her long before Luke walked back into her life and upset everything she had arranged. Anna had just never chosen to exploit the opportunity before since she loved her life in Connecticut.
Now Luke and that woman were trying to ruin everything.
If everything worked as she planned, Luke Danes might still be a factor in her and April's life but definitely only a minor aspect. She could deal with that.
(Tbc)