Rory concentrated on the road in front of her, carefully keeping her white knuckled grip at ten and two on the steering wheel, holding on for dear life as if that were the only thing keeping her steady in this strange landscape. The silence was deafening, oppressive, all consuming. Lorelai, the woman for whom silence was usually anathema, had failed to utter a sound or syllable for close to twenty miles of winding black road. It was unnerving, frightening, the stuff of science fiction, perhaps aptly compared to the road into Dante's realm in its disturbing nature. Rory knew how to deal with a lot of Lorelai moods, angry, ranting, happy, giddy, sad...but this, complete and absolute silence, was something unprecedented in her nineteen years of experience with the mercurial Lorelai. Despite good relations they had endured their share of silent treatments, as mother and daughter that was sort of a given, but the crushing weight that seemed to suck every molecule of oxygen from the atmosphere around them, this was different, this was new. This was a catatonia that Rory wasn't certain could be solved with ice cream despite it's legendary healing powers.
She hated the silence but despised even more the idea of being the one to break it, feared that the wrong word uttered into that echoing chasm could be the one that broke the fragile dam that was holding her mother together. So she waited and tried to breath in the shadow of such smothering melancholia. She only slowed the car when they had passed the happy sign welcoming them to the burg of Stars Hollow, Connecticut and were winding their way through familiar streets. Rory was so tuned to the pale, drawn shell of Lorelai in the seat next to her that she didn't notice the figure of a man on the sidewalk as they drove past but her mother did and she came alive with a start, jolted into alertness by a familiar shape, a memorable walk.
"Stop." The commanding syllable echoed in the unearthly stillness and it took Rory a full second to comprehend the meaning of the word before she slammed on the brakes.
"Stop." Lorelai said again, this time in a whisper as she watched the figure pass the car window, she seemed frozen for an instant and then she was bursting from the car, leaving her overcoat and her discarded shoes without a thought as she raced to catch the man.
"Luke." Her voice seemed to carry a mile in the still night air, like a line in an old Katherine Hepburn movie that somehow floated above the noise of life around it and become the riveting point that could not be ignored. Her appeal flew through the air on wings of desperation and she saw the instant that it reached his ear, the split second that he hesitated before shrugging off the weight of that imploration and turned to enter his diner. She ran with a hell of eternal loneliness at her heels and somehow despite the argument of physics she reached the door a second before it closed with resounding finality.
Her stocking clad foot stopped the lock from clicking home by spare inches and she panted in relief and fear as her eyes met those of the man she loved. "Luke, please." Her voice cracked slightly but she barreled on in her plea for an audience pushing away all thought of what would happen if he shut that door, shut her out. "I have to talk to you. I need to explain."
Luke gave her a sad-eyed look that had her swallowing back the taste of panic but he didn't speak for a long still moment, letting that silence stretch to it's breaking point before he sighed in resignation "I need time Lorelai. You have to give me time. I can't do this tonight."
She felt the cold slide of fear in her gut as his words penetrated the cold shell she had built like a slicing blade. "Why?" she couldn't stop the word from slipping from her tongue. She knew she sounded frantic but couldn't muster the pride to care. Pride was nothing if this man, her friend and lover, locked the door on her tonight.
His eyes filled with pain that was gone in a trice but she saw the reflection of it even when those eyes had gone flat with determination and he repeated his own plea "I need time Lorelai, give me that."
She knew he was right. Knew that after all that had transpired in the space of a few hours she should take her foot out of the door, let him retreat and lick his wounds and hope that he chose to forgive her. She knew that she owed him that much.
She knew those things with her mind, a brain that was quick and agile and fully understood the ramifications of her actions but her heart would accept nothing less than absolution or destruction and in this moment her heart ruled supreme. "I can't Luke. I know it's horrible and selfish and needy but I have to know, what this means for us, what this means to you. I'm sorry." That last apology was tacked on by the brain but didn't budge the foot that had clearly turned traitor and now reported to the heart as master of this doomed ship.
Luke scrubbed a hand over his face in a familiar gesture that had her heart pounding as she waited for her sentence, knowing that reprieve was far from likely.
When he finally met her eyes through the slit of the open door the sorrow and resolve of that gaze cut into something that she had long held aloof, that part of her heart that she had protected as long as she could remember but that now lay in the hand of the man before her.
"I love you Luke, you're the one I want." It came out a whisper, an entreaty for something indefinable; understanding maybe, forgiveness certainly and the impossible ability to snatch back a regrettable moment in time and erase it from their collective memory.
He flinched and it broke something inside her to know that she had caused this man she loved to suffer but she couldn't seem to stop the tongue that had gone rogue on her "I'm so sorry about tonight, about my parents and Christopher, but you have to believe that nothing happened."
Finally he spoke and his tone was unerring despite the regret that shadowed it "This isn't about your parents, they are your family and love them or hate them, they will always be in your life. This isn't about Christopher either. He is Rory's dad and you and he have a history, I know that and I can accept that. What I can't accept is your uncertainty Lorelai. I've always believed that actions speak louder than words and the actions I saw tonight told me that you don't know what you want. You aren't ready to burn your bridges and be left with only me. Maybe you won't ever be ready and I need time to think about that. I told you I was in this for the long haul but I can't be in it alone, being in love doesn't make me suicidal."
There was a deep pause that seemed to all but throb with the intensity of their stare as the weight of his words settled onto her shoulders and into her heart. They echoed there in that cavern with the ring of truth. What did she want? She needed that answer to spring to her lips without thought, needed those words to be indelibly printed on her heart before she could ask him for the same.
Lorelai slowly pulled her foot back and allowed the weight of the door to close with a little thud so that the glass separated them. They stood there for a long moment staring into each other's eyes through that transparent barrier before Luke reached down slowly and turned the lock. It was a tiny noise, likened to the drop of a pin but Lorelai heard it as if it had been amplified a hundred fold and it rang in the emptiness that surrounded her. He held her gaze for a second longer before he turned away from the door and retreated, shutting off lights in his wake until she was left with only empty chairs and empty tables staring back at her through the darkened glass.
She stood there for a long time, how long she never knew because time had ceased to have meaning in her state of suspended animation. Her hand drifted up to the glass and lay there as if trying to reach through that hard brittle barrier to the man that lay beyond. All she wished was for the power to relive a moment in time, the moment where she had hesitated as Christopher had leaned in, the moment where Luke had opened the door and seen them together, seen that hesitation in her eyes, the moment where she had watched the lights of the cab disappear, the moment where she had stayed silent rather than shouting from the tallest mountain her love for a man who had just walked away from her.
It was Rory who pulled her from her silent vigil through the glass, Rory who walked her step by step away from a place that had been all but a second home to her, a place that she went for solace, friendship, entertainment, advice and finally love. It was Rory who shooed away Babette and Morry when all she could do was mumble incoherently. It was Rory who walked her up the steps and into her bed, who gave her ice cream and hugs, funny movie commentary and worried glances and it was Rory who tucked the blanket around her before she drifted into a fitful, nightmare haunted sleep.
Logan's eyes were riveted to the action in the center of the room. It was as if he was linked in some way to Rory and felt the pain that flitted across her delicate features, the disillusionment that cast a sad shadow in her eyes and the anger on her mother's behalf that had her toe to toe with her grandmother. It was disconcerting for those second hand emotions to feel so real, to have his gut clenching and his chest tightening and feel the almost physical need to speak, to defend, to protect her. Long after she had turned on her heel and followed her mother out of the ballroom he still stared at the spot she had vacated.
The ride back to Yale was a little surreal and not what he had expected when he had arrived at the wedding in high spirits only hours earlier. Colin and Stephanie were in the inane stage of new love, cooing and cuddling and generally causing dyspepsia in those with the misfortune to be their audience but he didn't begrudge them their moment, it had been long enough in the making to warrant a bit of celebratory bliss.
Finn and his elf queen had bonded over the thrill of musical entertainment and now were embroiled in discussion of their other shared passions, having covered music, literature and food in their travails it sounded as if they had now landed on art from the few snippets that Logan had managed to overhear. This preoccupation of his usual playmates left him disconcertingly alone with his thoughts and uncharacteristically pensive as he ruminated about the events of a wedding that could easily rival one of Shakespeare's great masterpieces for plot twists.
When they reached the campus Steph and Colin hightailed it out of the car with barely an excuse as to their destination, not that need have bothered since even Pollyanna no doubt would have guessed their plans for the tail end of the evening. A happy wave and a giggle and they were gone.
Finn slapped his strangely quiet friend on the shoulder "Cat got your tongue? Or does Woodward have that honor?"
Logan rolled his eyes and sighed, "Don't you have an elf to woo?"
Finn smiled winningly "I sang, I danced, I spilled my artistic dreams at her feet, magic or not she can't help but fall under my spell."
"Your own personal brand of magic, drown them in charm until they are so oxygen deprived they think you are the second coming."
"Plus I get to give them CPR." Finn cackled gleefully and rubbed his hands together then looked over at Logan and wiggled his eyebrows "This one will be fun though...she is a repressed artist, my favorite kind of soul to save from the shackles of convention."
"Yeah, you're a regular liberator." Logan's tone was a shade off dry.
Finn put a hand top his chest with great drama and his voice carried in the night air "Give me liberty or give me death."
He held out his arm to a clearly enamored Alice "Come my queen we should not tarry in our pursuit of life, liberty and happiness. To the canvas we go."
Finn cast a look over his shoulder smiled his wicked smile "I'd invite you to join us but I think the creation of art is more of a two person activity."
That left Logan as a crowd of one. He stood there for a moment pondering his options. He could go to the Pub but drinking alone didn't hold much allure tonight. He was sure he could scare up a party or two, someone in the LDB was always throwing a bash for something, but he wasn't really in the mood for more people or chaos. The night had sort of set a record for that already. Instead he set out in the direction of his dorm room. He could use some time alone he reasoned after all with the normal amount of time with his zany crew of friends and now the added time he had been spending with Rory it sounded like a nice idea to have one evening to himself. At least that was the story he told himself.
The story didn't hold up for long. By midnight he had discarded both the new biography about Marie Curie and the newspaper, he had gone through ten music selections, most of the contents of his cupboards and had managed less than five minutes of Paris Hilton's Saturday Night Live monologue before giving up in disgust as Rory's amusing remarks about Paris' book overtook the sound on the TV in his head. He flipped the station but found nothing that caught his interest. He was missing something, some little thing that niggled at the back of his brain and was driving him to insanity. He was agitated, unsettled and he didn't know why.
He prowled his suite like a restless cat in the wild and then stopped dead in the center of the room as his eyes lit on his phone sitting on the coffee table. He stared at it for a long shuddering moment fighting an internal struggle that some part of him would not let go. Then he gave in to the urge that had coalesced in his mind, the desire that he had been resolutely ignoring for the last two hours. He dialed the number quickly trying not to think about what this meant for his days as a proud member of the never need anyone club.
He pretended it was just concern that drove him but it was a lie and he knew it the second her voice came over the phone "Hello?"
She was half whispering but the sound still settled into his restless soul like a lullaby, somehow instantly soothing that ragged, unidentifiable edginess that had plagued him. Suddenly that thing that he had been missing had a name. "Hey Ace..." he paused not really sure what to say, he didn't really have a reason to call that couldn't have waited until morning, this whole calling just to hear her voice thing was new for him so he fumbled a bit "I was calling to make sure you got home okay." It sounded like a lame excuse to his ears but she seemed to accept it.
He heard the click of a door and then her voice came across a little louder "Yeah, we made it... we may not be okay yet but we are in one piece. Thanks though. For calling I mean." Her voice was tinged with weariness and something he would call worry.
"You want to talk about it?" the words had spilled from his lips before he thought better of them. He wasn't usually they girl talk kind of guy but it had seemed like the right thing to say.
Her voice came across slightly surprised "No, that's okay, I don't want to bore you with the details. It's not really about me anyway. A lot of its ancient history and it makes for a long story."
He plopped down on the sofa and kicked his feet up on the coffee table before he said what came to his lips going with his heart rather his mind on this one. "I've got no place else to be. I'm here if you want to talk."
There was a long pause "You don't have to do that Logan, I don't expect you to suddenly want to listen to my sob stories just because we are dating. I know you're not usually the shoulder to cry on guy. That's okay. I like you the way you are."
He paused a bit at his own answer but couldn't doubt his own sincerity in this "You're right I'm not usually that guy but right now for some reason I want to be. Don't make me explain I don't think I could even if I tried. Just do me a favor and humor me okay, I don't think I can handle any more self-examination today."
She laughed a little "Well okay, but purely as a favor to you. Don't forget that you asked for it later when you are wondering what possessed you to want to know the tangled saga of the Gilmore clan."
He chuckled lightly "I consider myself forewarned. Spin your yarn dear narrator, I'm sure it's a pot boiler."
"Oh trust me there are pots and cauldrons and kettles of all sorts in this tale." She was warming to her subject now. "It all started in the golden days of yore when two young troublemakers were born into families renowned for their wealth and fine upstanding behavior. Let me tell you that didn't last long once young Lorelai and Christopher came upon the scene."
He listened as she talked with affection about the characters in her story. Her mother, her grandparents and the two men who held equal hold on her heart as a father. It was quite an allegory of real life, the kind that wasn't all neat and clean but got your hands messy and your heart tied in knots. He liked to think that he had lived life to the fullest in his own right but he admitted to himself that there were few people that he had opened up his heart to in the space of that time. Yet somehow this girl spilling her life at his feet had gotten under his skin. At first it had felt a little uncomfortable, like a sliver that irritated and inflamed, now it felt like she belonged there. He needed her there.
"Logan?"
Her voice broke through his thoughts "Hmm?"
"Why did you really call tonight?' her question was a little thoughtful as if she were working on a puzzle and he could all but picture her teeth worrying her bottom lip as she analyzed.
"I don't know." It was an automatic retort to a question he wasn't sure he was ready to answer.
"Oh. Okay." She paused before her tone changed to that of a slightly timorous confession "Well, I'm glad you did."
It was that simple, she was glad and it squeezed something inside of him that was half joy and half fear until it burst and the words tumbled out "I missed your voice." There he had said it.
"My voice?"
Leave it to her to ask one more question...always one more question, her inquisitive brain would be death of him "I missed you, al right. I like having you around and I missed you when you weren't here." He was getting a bit testy now; never all that comfortable with revealing his heart even to someone he cared about.
"You missed me?" she seemed to be having trouble with this concept.
"You know Ace you sure know exactly how to make a guy feel like an idiot about baring his innermost thoughts." His tone had gone defensive.
"I'm sorry, it's just that, well it's only been a couple of hours but I miss you too, don't you think that's a little weird. I mean we were perfectly self-sufficient people a week ago and now suddenly we are apart a few hours and I feel better, happier when I get to talk to you. That's a little scary." She had said exactly what was in his mind and it calmed him. He suddenly understood, she wasn't really questioning him she was questioning herself.
"I'd rather face that fear now than stand at the end of this road and be afraid that I let something really good slip by because I let it stop me." He paused and almost laughed at his next comment, there were legions of girls who would swoon if they heard these words from his lips "I'm not sure how it happened but I need you Rory Gilmore."
There was silence, the deep soul searching kind that had him holding his breath then the words that had him breathing deep of blessed oxygen. "I need you to Logan."
"I never doubted it." He tried for cocky but failed utterly and ended up sounding relieved.
She laughed delightedly now that the scary part was past "Yeah, that tone definitely said I am Logan Huntzberger hear me roar."
His tone was laced with mock affront "Hey, I could make a good Lion King. You want to hear me roar?"
"Save it for when I get back, that I would like to see in person." Her tone had lightened to teasing by now.
His lips took on his sexy smirk all on their own and his retort slid into that smoky seductive quality that made her spine tingle "Don't worry, I plan to have a roaring good time when next we meet. I've got some jungle fantasies that you would star in quite well."
She laughed, "No promises about wearing grass skirts or coconuts but I think I'm game."
"Time will seem a turtle rather than a hare until you return." Now he was waxing a bit melodramatic but it was fun and it felt good to laugh with her, to hear the sadness lift from her voice.
"Well, you know what they say, slow and steady wins the race."
"If you're the prize I'm willing to wait." He was imagining the moment already.
"I look forward to our reunion then." Her voice was a promise of good things to come. "Bye Simba, sweet dreams."
"They will be now Ace. See you soon."
She sat staring at her phone long after it had clicked off and then slowly rose from the couch and returned to her vigil at her mother's side.
When Lorelai woke it was Rory who was there curled next to her holding her hands when she awoke to the watery grey light of a new and decidedly less than brilliant day.
She rolled ever so slightly to take in the morning sky, gray and moody to match the state of her soul. She laid still for a long time thinking about words, Christopher's, her mother's, Rory's and finally Luke's and his were the ones that struck a resounding chord. He was right... actions spoke louder than any of those words. Christopher's drunken confessions, her hesitation, Luke's retreat, her mother's stony countenance in the face of her anger and Rory picking up the pieces, always picking up the pieces of her mother's shambles of a life. Actions, that's what it all came down to in the end, her actions. Rory deserved better, Luke deserved better, they deserved someone who could figure out what they wanted and fight for it without hesitation, without doubt. They might deserve someone better than her but she was the one that fate had dealt them and she was about to take some long overdue actions of her own.
She pulled her hands gently from her daughter's grasp and pushed herself up and off the bed in one fluid motion. There was not time for thought or pro/ con lists when love was on the line. This time she had to face the firing squad without blinking or fear that they would forever hound her with their questions.
She showered, letting the scalding water pour over her in a cleansing rush until she couldn't stand the heat any longer. She dressed in a hurry, for once without thought to the impact of her wardrobe and then she stilled. She sat on the edge of the bed where her only child still lay curled in the throes of sleep and she felt thankful, blessed even, and responsible. Her child was no longer a child but a woman in her own right but she still deserved someone she could believe in. Her hand followed the curve of the hair that matched her own, the line of the cheek that matched Christopher's and she knew where her first stop had to be. Where this whole messed up journey started.
Rory's eyes, so like her own, blinked open in sleepy confusion "Mom..." there was that tone again, the daughter playing mother to the mother "Are you okay mom?"
Lorelai soothed her with a slight smile "Yeah, kid, I'm okay, thanks to you. I just have some things I need to take care of. You sleep, I'll be back later, don't worry about me."
Rory's lids slid closed again with this reassurance and Lorelai felt a little pang at the memory of comfort; her baby wasn't so far from childhood after all.
Lorelai looked at the door in front of her and stamped her feet a bit to ward off the cold chill of the morning. The door was solid wood with a little glass half circle at the top and it was painted red, she supposed in some passing tip of the hat to that ancient science of Feng Shui that claimed some good fortune that was linked inexplicably to the color of one's front door. She took a deep draught from the paper cup in her right hand and shuffled her feet on the doormat that had a cheerful daisies upon it that proclaimed welcome to all who came upon it. She supposed there was some joke to be made about kicking up daisies but for once she was without a punch line and that realization was enough to bring her back around to the purpose of this visit. Lorelai Gilmore without a punch line was a woman on a mission. Taking a deep breath she did the thing she had come here to do and raised her fist to rap on the hard wood of the door.
It took four such raps and the rest of the cup of coffee to rouse the master of the house but at long last the door swung open to reveal him, a little worse for the previous evening, hair askew and wearing nothing but a flannel robe but in one piece across the breach.
He squinted at her as if perhaps he suspected an apparition but his brain finally kicked into gear as he wiped the last vestiges of sleep from his eyes. "Lorelai?"
"Christopher."
There was moment's pause as they considered one another, a habit born of breeding and inveterate survival instincts. Never show your hand until you're certain of victory. Even in this it was hard to break the habit of caution. Finally Lorelai broke the stillness thrusting a paper cup towards him with a little smile "A latte love?"
He gave her a perplexed look but understood the pun the minute he saw the side of the cup that proclaimed a similar motto. He took the offering and backed up a step to welcome her into his home. "I guess we need to talk."
She only nodded "Yeah." She wandered inside taking in again the taste and feminine touches of another woman. Strangely enough this time they didn't chafe, those reminders of another female, this time the only served to remind her of her own choices.
She looked at Christopher expectantly and he took the cue, waving with his coffee hand at the couch in the living room. "Gigi is still with her grandmother so we can talk in here."
"Great, good..." Lorelai preceded him into the room and then sat staring at the cup in her hands for a long moment as he took a seat across from her.
When the silence seemed to stretch ingrained behavior had him speaking "Look, Lorelai I owe you an apology..."
She cut him off with a hand " No, Chris, don't apologize. Let me say what I came here to say."
Despite this admonition her eyes dropped to the cardboard cup that she was rolling between her hands and it took her several minutes to continue. She looked at him but what she saw in her mind's eye was a daughter, a daughter who was falling in love, falling in love with a boy who could be Christopher had he had a few years to mature. She hoped for once that Rory was not like her, that she had not inherited her talent for bungled relationships or at least was smart enough to avoid them. Rory had been right about this one, about how inviting Christopher back into her life was bound to screw things up, and she hadn't listened. She hadn't wanted to hear the truth of that statement, the truth of her own weakness.
So much was changing in her life, with Rory, with Luke, starting her own business, falling in love. Maybe that selfish scared little girl part of her hadn't wanted to let go of one of the things in her life that had always been constant. The banter, the easy connection, despite their parting of ways those things had always come easy for her and Christopher. They shared a bond forged in first of common misery and then of common love, for Rory, for each other. It was hard to see sometimes why she had to choose to leave that behind. She knew what she had to say though, knew that the words that burned her throat and brought tears to the backs of her eyes couldn't be withheld any longer. She looked up at last, looked at the man that she had loved, the man she had made a child with and the man that she had shared so many unrealized dreams with and knew in heart that here was not where her future lay. She took a deep breath. Time to grow up.
When she did speak it was with a tone of wistful nostalgia that he hadn't expected "I sat for a while and watched Rory sleep this morning. I remember doing that when she was just a baby, sort of amazed and terrified all at the same time that she was mine. I was so young, a child myself and I didn't know what I wanted out of life then, not really, all I knew was that I didn't want the life that I grew up in, didn't want that for my daughter. I wanted her to have the choices and the freedom that I never had. I didn't have a clue what I was doing but somehow we got by, we made a life that wasn't my parent's life. For a long time that was enough for me. Then I started to dream. I dreamt at first that you shared that life with us, with Rory and me. It was like an Arthurian legend, and you were my Sir Lancelot. The brave knight come to rescues the princess from every day life, magic and fate and all that crazy stuff that people always wish happened to real people. A version of romance that really only exists in the pages of a Harlequin novel or in a heart that never aged past sixteen and still thinks of all the world as black and white with no gray area."
She looked up at him, at the face that she could picture in childhood and in adolescence and was just now starting to see in adulthood. "You and I, we were always good at black and white. Our parents, they were black as a pirate's heart, no doubt about it, we were the Will Turners of our time, struggling against the black pull of our blood and fighting for another reality. I never saw until Rory got older that it could be different, that there was a middle ground. How was I to know that the freedom of choice that I had struggled to give her would lead her right back to the world I ran from? Maybe if I had seen the gray then things would be different..." Her eyes met his but they were far away from him as she thought about the revelations that had come to her with age, with motherhood "... but then maybe not. I was never very good at the whole balance the teeter totter thing, I didn't believe you could have it both ways, coexist in harmony despite glaring differences. Rory is a peacemaker, I'm an insurgent, always have been. I practically had a rebel flag posted in my crib."
Christopher leaned across the space between couch and chair, the space specified by Marthas, both Post and Stewart and caught her hand as he met her eyes and age old regret spoke "You are not a middle of the ground person Lorelai. It's intrinsic to you to make the world your own and that's what makes you special. Most of us settle for the hand dealt to us, but you always knew what you wanted and you went after it. The thing I admired most about you is that you never believed that you could fail, there was never room in your philosophy for defeat, only for lessons learned. You stood on a lot of ledges that most of us would never dare to brave and you never showed a hint of fear, you jumped and somehow you never doubted that you could fly."
Lorelai was a little stunned by this proclamation so she played it off with a little humor, she had never been good at accepting praise "That's a very nice start for a Bette Midler song but you want to know the truth Christopher? I've failed a lot; I've disappointed myself more times than I could count. I'm afraid every day, afraid of failure, afraid that when I'm fifty I'll still be alone, kept company by the sad stories of old movie stars and empty Twinkie wrappers but most of all I'm afraid of love. It's the classic catch 22; I'm like Scarlet in Gone with the Wind, forever torn between the fear of life without love and the fear of love itself, so afraid that I've spent my life running after the love that was always out of reach and ignoring what was right there in front of my face. I've always been too afraid of letting myself be vulnerable, handing my heart to someone else and giving them the power to crush me. Love has never been one of those things that came naturally to me. Infatuation I do well but every time it started to edge closer to that point of no return I panicked and I ran. Carpe diem I can do, I'm a master of living in the moment but when someone asks me to look at tomorrow the fear always wins. Love is the ledge that I've come to more than once and every time my courage fails me and I back away."
She had been speaking almost more to herself than to him but now here gaze zeroed in on his face "This thing with Luke is different. I sort of got pushed off the ledge when I wasn't even looking and by the time I realized what was happening I was dangling from a parachute floating a thousand feet above solid ground. It should have scared the hell out of me but suddenly, hanging there suspended, I realized that was exactly where I wanted to be. Tomorrow was there staring me in the face and it wasn't as scary as I thought it would be. I won't accept disappointment this time because it wouldn't just be my disappointment, it would be Rory's and Luke's as well."
She set down the coffee and rose from her seat and knelt in front of him grasping his hands and looking up into his face.
She raised a finger to his lips to shush him when he would have spoken "We will always have a connection, you and me and Rory, but I can't keep holding on to Camelot when there is something real in front of me. Masochist that I am, I still want to be happy. I've made my choice, I love Luke and I need you to let me go."
Her tone had turned beseeching and it caused his heart to ache " I need you to go back to the beginning and be my friend. We have lived our lives in emotional limbo because of choices we made a long time ago, choices that were made by children that no longer exist. It's time to let go of the child's dreams and find your own happiness, with Sherry or on your own. I've found mine and I see now what I have been missing. I want that for you too Christopher. I want you to be happy, truly, dancing in the streets, shout it from the rooftops happy. I don't want to settle for the Way We Were, I want the beat all the odds Pretty Woman ending." She gazed into his eyes as if trying by telepathic link if not by her words alone to convey the sincerity, the love behind her words and he could see in those deep ocean eyes that it was too late. Too late for them, too late for the love that he still held in his heart for this indefatigable woman. He was too late.
A single tear gathered at the corner of his eye and shimmered there as their eyes locked, hope in one and acceptance in the other. He clasped his hands tighter around hers and searched her eyes for even a hint of doubt, hoping in some small selfish corner of his heart that there was even a tiny chance for him. It wasn't there, the sapphire of those stunning eyes was more serene than he had ever seen it, resolute, certain, there would be no changing this action she took today. She was offering him a place in her world but that place would never again be the love of her life. He could be there as a friend, as a father or he could choose to walk away.
They sat that way for a long moment, a pivotal spot in their joined pathway where they would choose forever whether to diverge or walk in parallel. Finally he leaned forward, as she remained frozen his lips came to rest on her lips, just a soft parting brush and then they rested on her forehead and his breath was cold against her skin as he spoke "I love you Lorelai Gilmore and I curse the fact that I was always a day late and a dollar short in telling you that, in being that man that you could count on. I'll be the supportive friend and you can be Vivian and go get your prince."
She pulled away and looked up at him brushing the tear from his cheek with a gentle hand and then the matching tear from her own cheek. Her smile bloomed and he thought he had never seen something at once so beautiful and so heartbreaking. Like the sun from behind the clouds that smile lit her face and her eyes until they fairly shone and he felt bathed for that second in that radiance. Then she rose to her feet and leaned forward for one last quick tightening of her arms around him and her words shattered his heart "Thank you Christopher." Then she was turning, walking away from him, walking towards another man, another future, one without him in a starring role.
She sat in her car for a long moment waiting for regret to swoop in and weigh her down but it didn't come. Instead she felt a certain catharsis, a sense of accomplishment albeit it a bittersweet one. She felt good and she was ready for her next stop. She put the jeep in gear and headed for the place that had been her home in name only.
