I don't know why I'm writing stuff about a show that pisses me off so, but hey, why not right? SEASON FINALE spoilers. Big ones. Actually, this is more of the type of fic that should appear in the summer, the "what happens after the cliffhanger?" But since we already know the cliffhanger, well, let's start now.
She wouldn't cry. She wouldn't cry when Christopher was there, in bed with her, while she was realizing what had happened. She would not cry as she jumped out of bed, the sheet wrapped around her, gathering her clothes, yelling at Christopher for not having the sense to stop her when she was clearly drunk and upset. She would not cry as she went into the bathroom and slammed the door before dressing.
She would not cry as she yelled at Christopher for the second time, after reappearing dressed. She would not cry as he tried to make stupid excuses for his actions, as he tried to place the blame on her, as he tried to reason that she and Luke were broken up.
But when she got outside, into the Jeep, she would cry.
She bent her head, resting it on the steering wheel, and began to sob. She couldn't remember ever crying so hard in her entire life. She couldn't remember ever feeling like she just wanted to burst open. She sobbed long and hard, until there was nothing left to cry out, and then she continued with a dry heave of sobs.
She cried for everything she thought she was that she wasn't. For being the kind of woman that she really was. For repeating the same mistakes over and over. For never learning. For thinking she'd changed, become so much more mature, achieved so much growth, when she really hadn't at all. For being the type of person she had come down so hard on Rory for being. She cried out of guilt. And most of all, she cried because of the undeniable, unbelievable pain that came from hurting the one person who loved her more than anything. For hurting the one person she loved more than anything. For breaking a promise she'd made to herself two years earlier, almost to the day. If you do this, you will not hurt him. You will not hurt Luke. Not like you've hurt the others. He's your best friend. You cannot do anything to hurt him. And now, not only had she hurt him; she had hurt him in the worst way.
"Lor?" she jumped at the voice and the tapping on the window, and her anger returned in tenfold when she saw Christopher standing there. "Are you okay?"
"Christopher, go away!" she yelled. "Just leave me alone."
"You can't drive like this. Just come back inside, and we…"
"I'm not going back inside! God. I need to go," she said, reaching down to turn her keys in the ignition. "I have to go," she mumbled again to herself, but not sure to where.
"Lorelai, you need to calm down first…"
"Damnit Christopher, GO AWAY," she screamed. "Leave me alone. For today, forever! Just go away."
"Lorelai, come on, this is not the end of the world. You and Luke broke up…"
"God, not permanently!" she hissed. "It was never permanent. Until I did this, that is. He will never forgive me, Christopher. Never. And I can't say that I blame him. I thought you wanted me to be happy? I thought you wanted to be my friend? And instead of stopping me from making a stupid mistake, you make the mistake with me. You want me to be happy? So you help me screw up everything that makes me happy in one goddamn night."
"I thought…" he shrugged. "I thought maybe I made you happy."
"Oh my God," she mumbled. "I have to go. Don't call me. Call Rory. You can call her you know, without talking to me," she hissed as she pulled away, leaving Christopher standing outside, confused.
The drive back to Stars Hollow was long and painful. She had tried to listen to the radio to take her mind off her situation, so that she could focus on driving, but everything triggered a thought. Sad songs about break ups and true loves lost? Suddenly, they applied to her. Happy songs about love? Suddenly, they didn't apply to her at all. Talk radio? Keywords like sex, fiancée, daughter, dog, house, burgers, coffee, nephew, science, weddings, ring, and cell phone all reminded her of Luke, of the life she had wanted so badly, of the mistake she had just made that had cost it all.
She desperately needed to talk to someone. She couldn't talk to Rory, because her father was part of the situation, and more importantly, she couldn't bear to see the look on Rory's face when she heard how she'd hurt Luke. She thought of Sookie, but she wasn't sure that was the right thing to do. After all she'd done, the only person that deserved to be told about what she had done was Luke himself.
She spent the whole day working up her courage to go to him, but she didn't know how to do it. She had no idea what she would say. Just walk into the diner and tell him? Was she even supposed to tell him? Were they broken up and it didn't matter? Finally, at 11:00 that night, after she knew the diner would be closed, she worked up the courage. She had to tell him first, now, right away. If she learned anything, it was to not lie. If she ever wanted any kind of chance with Luke again, she had to tell him the truth, now.
When she got to the diner, she found Cesar leaving for the night. "Luke's upstairs," he told her as he let her in. It was so familiar, so reminiscent of their early days as a couple when she'd come to the diner every night and Cesar would send her up to Luke. But it wasn't like that anymore.
She took a deep breath, gathering her courage at the bottom of the stairs. She went up them quickly, before she had the chance to chicken out. This was worse than when she'd had to tell her parents she was pregnant with Rory. This was worse than firing employees at the Independence. This was the worst thing she'd ever have to tell someone.
Knocking on the door, Luke opened it up and smiled at her, his eyes lighting up when he saw her, as if he'd been so lost without her and was suddenly hopeful because she was back. Don't look at me like that, she pleaded inside her head.
"Lorelai," he said. "Hey, what's-"
"I need to talk to you," she cut him off. "Can I come in?"
"What?" he realized he was blocking her way and stepped back. "Oh right, sure." She came in and was momentarily at a loss for what to say, so Luke took over. "I'm glad you came, actually, I've been thinking a lot since yesterday. And being without you suddenly put everything into perspective. A day was definitely long enough of a break, and--"
"Luke, stop!" she exclaimed, finally finding her voice before he went on too far.
"What?" he asked, curiously. She looked up at him and the tears were filling up her eyes. "What's the matter?" he asked softly.
"You don't want to marry me," she said.
"What?"
"Trust me. I have to tell you what I did, and after I do, you won't want to marry me anymore. I wouldn't want to marry me."
"What did you do?" he asked.
"It's bad," she said softly, unable to look him in the eyes, but knowing she should cherish the last time Luke was looking at her in concern and sympathy. "Really, really bad."
"Lorelai," he said firmly. "Just tell me."
"Well last night I was upset," she said, "and I had too much to drink, and I'd been seeing Christopher a lot, he was at my parents' house and everything, and so I went to see him," she said. "and…"
Luke was still looking at her expectantly, like he couldn't even imagine what would come next. Like he trusted her too much to even assume that she'd done anything with him, despite her warnings of how what she did was so bad.
"I slept with him," she blurted out in a rush and then looked up to see Luke's reaction.
He didn't have one. "You… what?"
She finally gave in and let a tear slide down her cheek at his disbelief. "I slept with him."
"You slept with him?" he repeated, still reaction-less.
She nodded. "I'm so sorry, Luke. I'm so sorry. I was drunk, and I was upset, and I don't know what happened."
"So that's an excuse?" he asked. She noted that he was starting to express an emotion: anger. "So I say, 'Oh, okay. Let's go catch a movie?' now or what?"
"No! There's no excuse for it, at all. But I just thought you should at least know it wasn't intentional. I did run off to him in order to sleep with him!"
"God, Lorelai!" he boomed. "How could you do this?"
"I don't know," she admitted.
"With Christopher no less," he angrily noted. "Christopher! The one person you know I can't stand, who I've always been insecure about. You do the exact thing you know I've always worried about."
"I'm sorry!" she said. "But we were apart—"
"For what? Two hours? After two years, two hours is enough time to move on?"
"It's no excuse, I know," she pleaded. "But it's something."
"No, Lorelai, it's not! I can't even believe you're telling me this. I seriously just can not wrap my mind around the fact that you're telling me you really did this."
"Luke, please—"
"No. Don't 'please' me. I trusted you, Lorelai, always. Even now when you told me you'd done something bad and that you were with Christopher, I trusted you. You know how insecure I feel when it comes to him. I can't help it. I've seen you with him in the past, and part of me always was worried you'd run back to him. But I really, really trusted you. I trusted you with the thing I'm most insecure about, and you do this. You fucking go and do it and slap me in the face."
She didn't know what to say to that; it was true. "I'm so sorry," she said, the tears falling freely. "You have no idea how sorry I am."
"Sorry? Sorry that you have to have this conversation?"
"No! Sorry that I hurt you. Sorry that I hurt myself like this—"
"Yeah, I'm sure it really hurt you," he snorted.
"Stop that! Of course it did! You were the only person I planned on being with for the rest of my life. For two years, it's only been you. And I didn't want to ruin that. But I did, and I hate myself for it."
"I was the only person you planned on being with," he repeated. "But apparently not the only one you wanted to be with. Had to give Christopher one more go around, right?"
"It's not like that!" she insisted. "I wanted to only be with you. I love you. I don't wantto be with anyone else!"
"Well, then, funny that you were. I don't want to be with anyone else, so I keep my clothes on. No matter what you say, that's what this comes down to. You slept with Christopher. You went back to Christopher. You weren't done with him yet, despite all those lies that you told me--"
"Yes I was! I was done with him! I am done with him! I didn't mean for it to happen, Luke, I swear."
"'He'll always be in your life,'" he recalled her words from months ago bitterly. "Well he sure will, won't he? For that itch that needs scratching, right?"
"God, Luke, it was a mistake! It's not like I planned for this to happen and I had some hidden agenda when I said that!"
"It doesn't matter if you planned it or not. You did it. That's what matters. I sat there," he pointed at the arm chair, "right there, and I told you that I'm not okay with Christopher being in your life. I admitted how insecure I am by saying that, it wasn't a secret. I guess I should've mentioned not being okay with you sleeping with him either." She looked into his eyes and clearly saw so much pain, she had to look down. "Was it worth it?" he asked bitterly. "Was it good? Was it worth throwing away a two-year relationship and ten-year friendship? I hope it was good enough to be worth that."
She gaped at him. "I don't remember how it was! I was so drunk I can't even remember it."
"Well, that's too bad then. That's definitely not worth the ten-year friendship. Maybe the two year-relationship."
"I know how much this is hurting you, Luke, I do. And I'm so sorry, you have no idea. But I'm telling you the truth. I came here to tell you what happened. Isn't that something?"
"Sometimes, Lorelai, the truth is the actual problem, not the hiding of it."
"But Luke," she pleaded.
"June 3rd. You were so excited about June 3rd, but then you sleep with someone else before it even gets here, whether we were getting married then or not."
"I was upset because we weren't getting married, because we were fighting, because we were apart. If we hadn't been having problems—"
"So what?" he asked. "That's why it was okay? God, Lorelai, the rest of our lives we would have fought and argued and had trouble, but you can't just run off for comfort and sleep with someone else every time that happened!"
She was weary of his use of would have. His use of past tense. "I love you so much," she pleaded. "I love you, Luke. And please, just tell me, is there any way that we can ever get past this?"
He was silent for a long time, until he spoke softly. "No. I don't think there is."
"Luke…"
"Don't, Lorelai. Not after you did this. I can't trust you anymore. Not after you…" he slammed his fist on the table. "God! How could you?" She didn't know how she could have. All she could do was shrug and wipe at the tears that were threatening to fall. "Rachel left me. Nicole cheated on me, too, and you saw how that hurt me and you know she wasn't as important to me as you are, that I didn't love her and you know how much I love you. Anna hid April from me. Amanda in fourth grade broke up with me for Billy and she kept my pencil. They all hurt me, and I never thought you'd be right up there with them, being as careless and as heartless as they were. You were my best friend, before anything else."
"I'm not Nicole!" she pleaded, choking back the sob in her throat that had formed when he'd mentioned her being his best friend. "It was one time, by accident—"
"By accident. So you tripped and fell and your clothes fell off, just as Chris tripped and fell on top of you as his clothes fell off? Or did you fall on top?"
She was shocked at his vengeance, but she knew she deserved it. She knew he was picturing it in his head, by the look of pain on his face. She knew he was thinking about how Christopher had seen her body, and touched her and made love to her, something he had thought was a privilege meant only for him from now on. "It was an accident in that I didn't mean to sleep with him when I went there. I was drunk, I did it when I was drunk, I wasn't thinking straight."
"Good. So then every time you get drunk from now on, should I just check for you at Christopher's place? 'Hey, Chris, it's Luke, Lorelai's drunk again—'" he paused as he mimicked listening to the other end. " 'Oh, she's there? Okay, call back when you're done. Take your time.'"
"That's so unfair," she protested, looking down at her hands with tears in her eyes. She momentarily noticed her empty left ring finger and felt her stomach clench up.
"All this time, I was believing it. That we were really going to get married. That you loved me," she looked pained at his disbelief of that fact, "that you were really mine, that I could trust you. I can't trust you anymore, Lorelai. I can't. Do you have any idea how much it meant that I always trusted you when I was always terrified of the idea of you going back to Christopher? But I did. And you did just what I always worried about."
"I'm so sorry," she said again. "I'll do anything. Anything you want, Luke, I'll do anything to show you how sorry I am and how much I love you."
"Then go."
"What?" she asked softly.
"Leave."
"Leave?"
He nodded. "Leave. I can't look at you right now."
She stood frozen, waiting for him to say something more. She looked into his eyes for the first time since she had seen so much pain in them and looked away, and she swore she saw tears.
He wasn't going to cry. She prayed he wasn't going to cry.
"I love you so much, and you do this to me? After everything we've been through, Lorelai, not just in the past two years, but in the past ten, this is how you decided to end it? I know I've been distracted about April. I know I handled it wrong for a long time. But you never spoke up. When you were upset about Anna buying me the bag?" he asked, looking her in the eye knowingly, "you said you were fine. You lied. You kept lying. You wouldn't tell me how you were really feeling and I tried not to push you. Then you got more and more upset and held it in. You backed yourself right into the corner you're in now. Maybe you wanted to be there."
"I don't want to be there!" she cried. "I never wanted to be there. I didn't say anything to you because I didn't want to be that kind of fiancée that gets jealous of everything and doesn't give her fiancé space—"
"Stop using that word, please," he broke in, his voice flat. "I can't hear that right now."
"Luke," she begged. "Anything."
"Go."
She stood and looked at him for a moment, taking in the cold tone to his voice and the cold expression on his face. This wasn't the Luke she knew. This wasn't the Luke that brought ice to Rory's sixteenth birthday, who built her a chuppah, who let her take over the diner and his apartment after the inn caught fire, who held her on a park bench when she was overly stressed and crying and then loaned her money to finish the inn, who built her an ice-rink and bought her her own TV when it interfered with his REM sleep, who knelt next to her for an hour as she cried in a chair in Rory's bedroom.
This was the Luke she had crushed beyond belief. This was the Luke who was devastated by the one person he trusted more than anything.
She decided she owed him as much as to respect his wishes, so she turned and left without inflicting on him another weak plea.
That was the Luke she'd see for the rest of her life. No matter what happened now, if they never spoke again, if they became friends again, if he took her back-- she knew they would never be the same Luke and Lorelai that they had been ten years again.
As she closed the door behind her, she heard him say, "I'll mourn for more than two hours," behind her.