With the shopping excursion out of their way, the girls and Mia headed back to Stars Hallow, and Emily went on her way back to the Gilmore mansion. Upon getting home, Lorelai hid the wedding dress in Rory's closet, so Luke would definitely not see it before the big day, and then the girls heading to Luke's for coffee.

"Hey Luke!"

"Hey ladies, how was shopping with Mia?" he asks, giving Lorelai a quick peck on the lips, and then returning to balancing the register for the evening.

"Well, I would say that it was… eventful…"

"Meaning what exactly?"

"Well, my mom showed up unexpectedly, and well… we had words."

"Was it bad?"

"No, actually, we had words, and then with a lot of help from Mia and Rory, my mother and I were able to see eye to eye on some things."

Stopping what he was doing, he looked up at Lorelai with a shocked expression, "Really?"

"Yeah, who knew!... She actually even bought me a nice little gift…" she says, glancing at Rory for the support of telling Luke that she got her dress.

"Oh yeah, what'd she get you?"

"Well, don't freak out, but we went to this one place in the mall, and they have really great wedding dresses, and then Mia and Rory made me try on a whole bunch of them… and then Mia found this one, and I tried it on, and I thought that I looked hideous, cause Rory and Mia didn't want to say anything when I came out, but really I looked really good… I mean really good Luke, and then my mom showed up, and she told me that I had to buy it, so then we had our little thing and that all happened, and then in the end I bought the dress, because it was a really nice dress…and I don't know… so yeah… I bought the dress." she says, in one breath, which is only possible for Lorelai Gilmore.

She was still looking down at the counter though, not wanting to look at Luke for fear of seeing him a little bit freaked out about her having concrete evidence for them getting married, which was also why she had broken into her nervous babble.

If she had looked up during her rant though, she would have seen what Rory saw, which was a smile growing on Luke's face while she babbled.

"Lorelai?"

"yeah?" she says, still not really glancing in his direction.

"Look at me…"

She looks up to see him smiling back at her.

"You're not freaked out?"

"You're forgetting that I'm the one that asked you to marry me. I knew that you were going to have to get a dress eventually, or you'd be walking down the aisle in a paper bag, which, to me wouldn't matter, but to your mother, quite possibly."

At this the girls burst into a fit of giggles remembering Rory's comment earlier about Luke being okay with her coming down the aisle in a paper bag.

Once their giggles subsided, Lorelai leaned over the counter and gave Luke a quick kiss.

"Do I want to know?" he asks.

"No, you're just turning out to be more and more like us every day. The next thing you know you'll be watching Willy Wonka with a red vine hanging out of your mouth."

"Highly doubtful Lorelai."

"I don't know Luke, I think mom might be right… I mean you did refer to something as dirty this morning. That's one step away from red vines, or… COFFEE!"

"Yeah, but you told your mother that you were stopping with the coffee…"

"What if I changed my mind?" she said, smirking at Luke.

"Come back to mommy baby!" Lorelai squealed, grabbing Rory around the shoulders and squeezing her tight.

At the puppy dog face being given to him by his soon to be step-daughter, Luke reached under the counter, plopped a large mug onto the surface, and turned without a word to get the coffee pot.

While pouring, he resumed his usual coffee inspired banter, "You know this stuff really is going to kill you one of these days…", and then upon finishing he goes back to closing up the rest of the diner while the girls smile on.

Later on that evening, Luke and Lorelai were curled up on the couch, with Rory leaning up next to them on the floor when the phone rang.

"Luke"

"What?"

"Get the phone…"

"What? Why, Rory's the closest."

Standing up Rory makes it over to the phone after a few rings.

"Hello?"

"Hi Rory, it's your grandmother."

"Oh, hi Grandma!"

At this, Lorelai's ears perked up, and she sat up on the couch watching her daughter talk on the phone.

"I was wondering if I could actually speak with your mother, is she there, or is she at Luke's?"

"Oh, ummm… yeah, she's here, hold on and I'll get her for you."

She tries to hand the phone over to her mother, who made motions with her hands showing someone chopping her head off, and someone hanging her with a noose. Rory, thrust the phone at her again, and finally she grabbed onto it.

"Mom?"

"Oh, Hi Lorelai! I'm sorry to bother you, am I ruining your evening?"

"Oh, no mom, we were all just watching a movie, nothing that the rewind button can't fix."

"We all? Is Luke over?"

"Yes, Luke is over."

"Well that's nice. I was actually calling to talk about him."

"To talk about Luke?"

With this Luke started eyeing Lorelai curiously, wondering what they could be talking about.

"Yes. I was actually wondering if he could come to Friday night dinners with you girls. He's going to be part of the family soon, and your father and I would like to get to know him a little bit better."

"Uh… mom, I don't know… Luke works really hard during the day, and he usually likes to sit and relax after a day at the diner."

"Well, were you planning on leaving your poor husband all alone every Friday night after you were married?"

"No mom, I… sure, I'll talk to Luke, and we'll all be there on Friday."

"That's good then, I guess we will see you then."

The week passed with no great events, and finally the night came. Lorelai was dreading it. Mia had left earlier in the week, promising to come back for the wedding, so her support was gone, and Lorelai wondered if her mother really did intend to change or if she was just putting on a front in front of Mia and Rory. She was also quite curious at her mom's sudden interest in Luke as well.

"So… are you ready to go in?" she asks him as they approach the Gilmore's door.

"Yeah, I am." he says in his characteristic monotone.

"heh… what are you thinking?"

"Rustic equals crap pile, beer is nitwit juice, and charming is doggy poopy, right?"

"Luke, we don't have to do this if you don't want to. When we had our little… incident, I told you that you didn't have to deal with her anymore, and then I dragged you to tell her that we were getting married, and you see how well that went over. Say the word and we're out of here."

"Well, that's Rory's car isn't it?"

"Yeah…"

"Well, I don't want to leave her in there with your parents when we don't show up, so let's do this." he tells her somewhat confidently, reaching over to ring the door bell.

To Lorelai and Luke's surprise, Emily herself actually answers the door. Even more surprisingly, she does so cheerfully.

"Lorelai, Luke! Come in!"

"What'd you do to the maid mom?"

"What do you mean?"

"You were answering the door."

"Oh, well, I thought that it was going to be the two of you, so I decided to answer the door myself."

With a nervous glance to Luke, she smiles back at her mother, "oh, well, thanks mom, that was nice of you."

"Well, come on now, Rory and your father are in with some drinks."

They walk in and see Rory sitting across from her grandfather on the couch in a heated political discussion. Noticing that her mother and Luke were there, Rory stood up to give a hug to both and a kiss to her mother's cheek.

"Hey Luke, hey mom!"

"Hey hon""Hey Rory" they both say at the same time.

Lorelai grabs onto Luke's hand then and sits them down onto the couch. Richard stands up and heads over to the drink tray, asking them what they would like.

"Martini please!" says Lorelai, certainly ready to ride the pink elephant.

"And Luke?" Richard says as he hands the drink to his daughter.

"Actually, I'd just like some water Mr. Gilmore."

"All right then. And son, don't call me Mr. Gilmore, call me Richard…besides you'll be calling me dad soon enough" he says, handing Luke his water and patting him on the back.

Lorelai choked a bit on her martini with that comment, but kept any snide remarks towards her parents to herself. They were both being too nice about this whole Luke thing that she really didn't know what to make of it.

"So, Luke, did Lorelai tell you what she got at the mall the other day?" Emily asks with a knowing smile on her face.

"Yeah, she uh… she tells me that she got her wedding dress."

"Oh, and it really is gorgeous."

"I'm sure that anything would look beautiful on her, so I'll take your word for it." he declares with a loving glance towards Lorelai.

"So, have you two decided on a date yet?"

"Actually, I was talking to Luke about that the other day, and he's all for the Springish wedding, so we're probably going to have it at the end of April. I want to have it April 26th."

"Which I said was perfectly allright with me."

"No, you said that I could pick any date and it would be okay with you… so the 26th is okay with you?"

"Well, if I said that any date was okay with me, then it obviously is okay with me."

"So, did we just settle on a date?"

"I think we did."

Emily chimes in then with a happy tone, "Well that's just wonderful! We will mark our calendars tonight with the date then."

"Same here" says Rory, who had taken in the scene without a word.

"So when are we going to start doing the rest of the planning mom?"

"Well, seeing as it's June, and we have like almost a year to plan, I'm going to take my time with this one."

"So, I'm going to have visions of tule and big butt ribbons for months!"

At this Lorelai started laughing, "You didn't think I was serious about that did you? My wedding will have no dress with such… such… bad tasteness."

"tastness isn't a word Lorelai" says Luke matter-of-factly.

"Since when do you correct my grammer? Little miss ivy league over here is in charge of that."

"Well Luke and I thought that we would both try to tackle your caffeine addiction and your bad grammer… tag team is best you know."

Lorelai sinks back into the couch with a sigh. She never thought that Luke and Rory would team up against her, but liked the idea that they were that comfortable with each other.

The maid came to announce dinner, and it was all going quite pleasantly. To Lorelai though, it seemed to be going too pleasantly. Her mom hadn't made a single backhand slang comment about Luke or anything related to Luke. Only positive things were mentioned about the upcoming marriage, and her mother hadn't even sent a dig her way over the course of the evening.

Finally, when Emily asks Luke if he is excited about the wedding and seems genuine about it, she breaks. "Okay, MOM!"

"Yes?"

"Can I talk to you in the kitchen."

Perplexed she replies, "If you would like, certainly"

They get up and walk the short distance into the kitchen, with Lorelai leading the way.

"Okay, what the hell is going on here?"

"What are you talking about?"

"You! You haven't said anything bad all evening!"

"And you're upset because of this?"

"No… I'm just really weirded out."

"Well, in case you haven't noticed, I'm not the wicked witch of the west Lorelai"

"Yeah, well, the resemblance sometimes is uncanny, so I don't see where this nice streak is coming from."

"Well, I sincerely thought about what that Mia woman said, and realized that I needed to work on my relationship with you."

"So acting to like Luke is just a front, trying to get on my good side."

"No, I do like Luke, I really do." she says nodding.

"Oh yeah, since when mom, cause you sure haven't seemed to like him."

"Since you told us you were getting married."

"As I recall, the first words out of your mouth after we told you that we were getting married were you asking me how far along I was… mom, that doesn't really show me that you like him."

"It was after all of that."

"You mean when I was tearing through the house on my way out the door."

"No, it was later at your house" she says, now finding the tile of her kitchen quite amusing.

"You never came to the house that night. I didn't hear from you until a week later."

"I did come to the house, but you didn't see me."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I was coming to try to convince you that this was a bad idea, and try to get you back on my side, when I saw you and Luke in your livingroom. You had the window open, so I could hear all that you were saying to eachother. All he was saying to you was that he loved you and that everything was going to be okay. You stayed there in his arms, with this look on your face that I can only describe as you feeling safe, even if my words and actions were hurting you."

"And that is why you like Luke now?"

"I realized that night that I was totally wrong about Christopher. He could never be there for you the way that I know that Luke has through the years. He loves you so much, and you return that sentiment. And Rory seems to know him more as a father than Christopher. I can't forget that."

Lorelai was stunned silent, staring at her mother who was still unable to catch her glance. Her mother was finally seeing her life and her choices in a new light, and it scared the crap out of her while making her happy at the same time.

"You're right about that… Luke has always been more of a father to me than dad ever was." Rory says, coming from the doorway where she had stood silently, waiting for the fight that never happened to start.

Both Lorelai and Emily turned to look at Rory as she began to speak, "I know that you already like Luke, but just to reinforce, because while I know that you don't listen to mom all the time, you do seem to care about what I have to say about things."

"Yes, I do care, very much."

"Okay then… Luke is my dad… as much as he can be without half of the genes. I think that our whole town, including me was waiting for these two to finally get together, and I will be the first to say that I was ecstatic when they did. And Grandma, she loves him… and he… he worships the ground she walks on. I couldn't pick anyone better for mom, and I don't think I could pick anyone better for me either. If it matters, I love Luke just as much as mom does."

Lorelai, still glancing towards Rory, now had tears flowing down her face, and after Rory's speech, Emily turned and dared a glance in her direction.

"Then I don't think that I could be happier for you, and I am very proud of you." Emily said in a tone that showed her sincerity but hid any real excitement.

Mother and daughter met eyes in the spacious kitchen and silently smiled at each other. Then, with all the walls broken, the two enter back into the dining room with the gentleman of the evening.

"So, what'd we miss?" Lorelai says with a smile.

"Yes, you gentlemen must fill us in!" Emily says with an equally large smile and a matter of fact tone.

Shocked by the obvious pleasant manner of the two women, Luke and Richard turn with wide eyes to Rory, asking her a silent question about what happened in the kitchen.

"Ah…. weddings…" she says with a smile on her face as she turns her attention to the salad, mentally betting herself as to how long this healed rift would last between her mother and grandmother.

So… what do we think about this one. I don't know guys… having them actually nice to each other is good for a change, and I'm liking that she likes Luke, but I don't know. Is it working? Let me know what you think. I think that I'm going to fast forward a few months, plan for a few surprises down the line… well, that was kind of oxymoronical of me, telling you to plan for a surprise… it doesn't really work like that. hmmm… oh well… R/R and enjoy!