Lorelai was not a morning person on the best of days.
This room was hot, musty and decidedly not her bedroom, nor a room at the Dragonfly. The heat was turned up even though it was early spring.
A stiffly starched shirt collar edged its way up towards her face, past her chin, and threatened to sneak up over her nose.
'Since when do I sleep in one of Luke's dress shirts?' she thought. She nuzzled the shirt collar, and took a deep breath through the nose.
The shirt was all wrong. The pheromones must be wrong.
In a panic, she recoiled, and then remembered how he'd given her a shirt from his overnight bag.
This shirt was all wrong.
She was used to flannel, to a feeling of comfort. But this shirt evoked none of those feelings. Its scent was alien to her.
She looked up to see Christopher in the doorway leading from the bathroom.
Her panic grew as she hurriedly whipped the covers off her legs, hoping that there would be no evidence of sexual intercourse.
"Don't worry, Lor," he said, "nothing happened."
She was relieved to find that under the shirt, she was still wearing her bra and panties.
-----
Why? She wondered why she was in his bed. What was she doing here, in the worst kind of motel?
Her mind drifted back to the day before.
-----
He'd said that April would be at the diner from four until eight PM.
What he neglected to tell her was that he was apparently throwing a party honoring Lane and Zach.
At ten minutes after eight, Lorelai figured that the coast was clear. As she did every evening that April visited, she waited until "visiting hours" were over before making her way to Luke's. She walked up to the diner, perplexed though by the bright lights, a string of which extended out the door. Music blasted from the open door, and even Taylor's Shoppe seemed bright and cheery, inadvertently participating in the revelry.
Lorelai, curious, slipped into Taylor's and purchased the special of the day. As the young teen behind the counter handed her her change, Lorelai stole a glance towards the window into the diner. A glance that she had sadly become very good at, she thought.
For all the times that she'd sneaked a peek to see Luke patiently talking with his daughter, this particular peek was her undoing.
The happy family. Luke, April, and a voluptuous brunette. All smiling. All three gathered around Lane.
Her ice cream suddenly packed the punch of a fistful of Hatch chili peppers eaten raw with a jalapeno juice chaser. Lorelai left her ice cream on the counter and quickly exited the shop.
She'd tried. She'd tried for months. She thought that after all this time of being honest about Chris, of only minimally freaking out about the existence of Luke's child, of being publicly and privately supportive, of never once mentioning the two-month lie of omission he'd told, that he'd finally see. He'd finally let her in.
"This'll never work…" he began that night that he demanded she pledge her honesty.
He was right--she had to hand it to him. Only he was the one not being honest.
A suffocating sense of dread threatened to squeeze her head into a marble block. She had to leave. Had to get out, get out of Stars Hollow, get out of any place that reminded her of him. Of them.
And that's when she called Chris.
-----
She can't remember exactly how she got here, a bed in a dusty Hartford no-tell motel. She vaguely recalled a bar, but after that, nothing.
Well she sure showed Luke, except he wasn't there to see.
And now that she was in the middle of this mess, she belatedly knew that it wasn't the way to go. Being in Chris's bed would not convince Luke to include her in his life, and would not make Luke love her as much as she loved him.
------
Christopher claimed that nothing had happened, that he'd offered her his shirt for sleeping purposes only.
Yet the evidence was there, right next to her, in the form of a dent in the mattress.
Even the imprint of his body was all wrong.
She remembered the first time she'd woken up with Luke. The joy, the giddiness, the sexiness, the trust. His taste on her lips. His scent all over her body. She was no longer the girl that woke up that morning, draped over Luke. That girl was a confident woman. Now, she was…she didn't know anymore.
Now, she had just awoken in a strange bed in a motel with a man whose pheromones were all wrong. Laying there, she knew that the strange-smelling shirt, the musty air in the room, the man in the room, were wrong for her.
When she proposed to Luke, she'd told him that she just wanted to be happy. How did it all go so wrong? A child coming into one's life should be a wonderful, happy event, not a nightmare of mistrust and subterfuge.
And she was in Chris's bed.
She wondered where Luke was right now. Probably accepting the early delivery of some food or supplies at the diner. Was he thinking about her?
'No,' her inner self answered, 'he's thinking about her. The kid. And possibly the mother.'
"Call a cab for me, Chris?" she asked.
-----
Riding back to Stars Hollow, dressed in the previous day's clothing, she mentally rehearsed what she was going to say to him.
-----
"Luke!"
He looked up, surprised.
Before he could react, she demanded that he go upstairs with her.
"You, me, we need to talk. Now."
The damn bastard had the nerve to hesitate.
"What? You have someone upstairs?" Lorelai challenged, defiantly tilting her chin up towards the stairs, daring him to answer.
Luke opened his mouth, ready to argue with her, then dejectedly led the way upstairs.
Closing the door, she continued. "Come on, Luke, say it. Say it! I'm not supposed to come to the diner unless you give me permission!"
'Come on, say it, Luke, I dare you Luke,' she silently repeated to herself.
"Lorelai," he weakly countered, "it's not like that…"
"The hell it isn't! 'April will be here from three to seven. I'll see you after that.' 'April will be here from two to nine.' 'I just need time to get to know my kid.'"
Lorelai took a deep breath.
"Well apparently, so does everyone else in town! You think I wouldn't find out that Lane's playing board games with your kid, that Babette's teaching her how to crochet, that Kirk is letting her walk the dogs around the square, that Miss Patty's shooting the breeze with the kid and her mom…"
She stopped; the stricken look on his face letting her know that her arrows had embedded themselves in his heart.
Score one for Lorelai Gilmore.
The thought emboldened her. There was no turning back now.
"I seem to remember a certain pledge we took," she quickly reminded him, knowing full well that her words would further twist the arrows into his heart.
Oh, twist they did.
"Right over there, as a matter of fact…" She pointed to where she'd crawled into his lap during happier times.
Score two for Lorelai Gilmore.
She could not stop now.
"And guess in whose bed I spent the night?"
Arrows were flying everywhere.
"Guess, Luke, guess…"
Before she knew what was happening, he was directly in front of her, his blue eyes now black with anger and remorse.
"No one kept you from April." He took a deep breath. "I told you when she was coming over so you would know when to come. But what did I get? Nothing: just a pained look."
Lorelai fought the impulse to take her hand and smack it across his face.
"Do you know how much that hurt? That you didn't want to get to know a part of me? That you avoided her, me, us?"
He took a step closer to her, at the same time lowering his voice. "But the minute your precious Christopher came along with his kid, you couldn't wait, could you…"
Now, her hand whipped out and slapped him.
'There,' she thought, 'happy now?'
But she was not.
The room swirled around her. Her right hand fumbled, and tried to pull off the ring.
"Don't," he pleaded, his eyes now soft, reverting to blue, watery blue.
He reached out to brush his fingers over her tear-streaked cheek. "We can fix this, Lorelai. Tell me how. Tell me."
'No,' she thought, 'I won't let him do this to me. I can't.'
She weakly tried to push his hand away.
"You don't want to do this, Lorelai."
"Dear god, no,' she thought, 'I can't give him up.'
But she had to.
"I have to leave…go clear my head..." she stated, "I can't be around you, Luke, not when you don't see me."
"Please, don't..."
Please don't look at me that way. Please. Please Luke.
"But we're engaged, Lorelai…"
"Maybe you should think about that. What that means."
"Fine, Lorelai." Luke sighed, resigned. "But if you really want to go, I'm not going to stop you. But know this: there's no coming back."
Lorelai wavered.
"I love you Lorelai. You know that I do."
"Then why won't you marry me?"
"April…" The name died on his lips.
"I get the kid thing, Luke, I really do. I can only imagine how painful it must be. And I'm proud of how you've stepped up to the plate. But…"
He inched even closer.
"But what about me? About us?"
And closer.
"I…" Even the sentence died on his lips.
"See, Luke, that's the problem. You can't even look me in the eye and tell me what's going on." She took a deep breath. "Do you know how hard it is for me to respect your wish for space? I'm your fiancée, damn it, not your employee or some random townsperson."
"Lorelai, please..."
"Do you know how it makes me feel when I find out that yet another townsperson has spent time with her? When Babette and Patty ask me about your custody arrangement, and I, the woman you're supposedly planning to spend the rest of your life with, haven't even met your kid?"
He had no more answers to try out on her.
"Do you know how I feel when we spend more and more nights apart? Damn it, Luke, there once was a time when you bought a TV for me and we spent every night together." Her breath hitched, but she continued. "Do you know how long I cried when I saw you with your kid's mother?"
Now, he stood directly in front of, over her. She let him take her hands.
"Lorelai, I'm sorry."
"Really."
"Yes."
"I need you to trust me, Luke. I need you to need me."
He reached up and grabbed the back of her neck with one arm, and pulled her into his body with the other. She struggled, and then heard his repeated, "Sorry, so sorry. I didn't mean to…"
She reached up and kissed him, first pressing, and then crushing her lips against his.
Then she pulled the ring from her finger, and placing it into his hand, curled his fingers around it into a fist.
"I love you, Luke, and I want to marry you."
Stricken, he looked at her.
"But it takes two people to be all in. Keep this," she squeezed the hand with the ring, "and give it back to me when you decide that you can be all in again."
Squaring her shoulders, she turned and left. Turned and left him alone.
-----
People coming to the diner later that morning saw something they'd rarely seen.
"Gone fishing," the sign said.
TBC