After a request from Lorelai, Luke had agreed to stay the night at the hotel and head out the next day. In the morning, both woke up, packed, paid their bills and got into the truck, with Luke driving, without so much as a 'good morning' to the other. The silence was almost unbearable for Luke, who had actually become so used to Lorelai's chatter, that he was starting to prefer it to the annoying twang of the radio.

Yet, the quiet ride did give him a chance to again go over his thoughts from the night before. He wasn't a quick thinker like he had found Lorelai to be. He couldn't come up with an instant retort to one of her sarcastic jabs. He just had to take it and when he got time alone, he could reconsider what he should have said or done. Maybe she found this annoying, but that was just the way he was and if she really wanted him by her side, in the friendly type way (oh man she was starting to invade his thinking pattern), then she was just going to have to learn to deal with this fault of his.

Since the beginning of the trip he had often found himself wondering why she had wanted him to take this trip with her. It had taken him time to understand that what she wanted from him on this trip was more than his presence as just another body, but him, his friendship, his openness, all he could offer, that's why she had wanted him to come. That was what he had given her from the start with a willingness to let her revel in the amazing sites they had visited so far and an eye for when was the right time to touch her gently and move her to open up to him and let him comfort her when she was silently wishing for things that could never be. But until the last night, he hadn't realized that she wanted this to go both ways, that this wasn't just a trip for her, a way for her to escape Stars Hollow without Rory, but for him as well. She wanted him to finally see her as a person he could talk to, a woman who was willing to listen and actually wished he would find her as the one person with whom he could let down his guard.

For once, he actually wanted to. Rachel had tried to get in, she had known his father, but somehow he knew that telling her would be no use. In the end, she had left him and he was relieved that her knowledge of his painful memories had not left with her. He couldn't have handled finally finding someone to open up to only to have her leave him.

But Lorelai, she was different. Somehow, after just these short days, barely more than a week, he knew that she wanted the same from him as he did from her. He knew that she sought out his friendship because, without him, she would be alone after Rory went away and she knew she could trust him to be by her side for as long as their relationship, whatever it may be, lasted.

So now he was going to give in, do something he had never done before, let someone past that invisible wall he had put up around him. Though it scared him to do so, he knew that it was finally time, he had finally found the right person and if he played his cards right, he might receive more rewards from this than he could have imagined.

As he glanced over at her now, he knew that biding his time was best. She sat silently in the seat, as far away from him as possible, wringing her hands in her lap as if she was worried about something. Maybe she was. Maybe she wasn't sure she should have yelled at him like that last night, but really, he was just starting to realize that was exactly what he had needed.

The odd noises of the truck caused him to turn his attentions from the beautiful woman next to him. He listened for a moment before deciding that these were probably not the best noises his truck had made (somewhere in his mind he was hearing Lorelai's dirty!). Hearing Lorelai's soft huff, he pulled off the road into some small Mississippi river town. Passing a small dusty shop selling who-knew-what he asked some guy standing around where a good mechanic was and drove on over there.

They both got out when they got to the mechanic's shop but Lorelai stayed by the truck with an irritated look on her face as Luke talked to the guy. After talking with the mechanic, Luke unenthusiastically headed over to where Lorelai stood, her arms folded over her chest, looking into the sun. "He said he'd take a look at the truck but he figured he could have it fixed by tomorrow if not the day after." Lorelai scoffed, but Luke wondered if she was just still angry at him from the day before and taking it out on the truck breaking down. "Have you ever seen the Mississippi?"

Lorelai looked up at him with a curious expression on her face. There they were, stranded in the middle of nowhere, and he was asking if she had ever seen the river up close. This was a whole new side of Luke Danes, a spontaneous one, and deep down, she knew she liked it. She shook her head, knowing that if she responded verbally, he'd be able to get her to forget she had been really angry with him not so long ago.

"Well come on then," he said, motioning away from the shop with his head. She glanced back at the shop, confused.

"Don't we need…?" She looked back at Luke, noticing the firm expression on his face. No time to wait. No time for luggage. That's what he was saying. Somehow she felt he was testing her, that he wanted to know if she was really as spontaneous as she pretended to be. Well, Lorelai Gilmore was never one to back down from a dare. "Lead on."

They walked in silence towards the water, stopping only at a small stand they found along the way to get some ice cream. Lorelai didn't even comment with surprise when Luke gave in and got a cone for himself, peach of course, while she got two scoops of chocolate. They walked around, each using the silence to take in the dusty town they were walking through, small like Stars Hollow, but completely different in so many ways.

Finally they reached a hill that lead down to the banks of the Mississippi River. Luke offered Lorelai a hand, which she accepted with an eyebrow raised, moving her ice cream to the other hand so that she could be so nice as to not drip chocolate on Luke. He lead her to a grassy bank underneath a bridge so that they could be partly in the shade. She stared out at the water, suddenly amazed by the view in front of her. She had never been this far West before, never this far South, never this close to understanding Mark Twain.

Glancing back to look at Luke, she's stunned to find that he's removed his flannel and laid it on the ground. "Sit," he commanded, but she can't seem to take her eyes off of Luke. He was standing there in front of her in nothing but a t-shirt and jeans. As her eyes traveled over the tight muscles of his chest and abs, up his arm to the tattoo sticking out from under his sleeve to his broad shoulders and thick biceps, she suddenly wondered if she was drooling. Quickly, hopefully not too obviously, she ran the back of her hand over her mouth and sat down, wishing she could control the blush of her face. It's Luke, she kept reminding herself. Luke was the man who served her coffee with a hint of sarcasm at all times. Course, Luke was also the man who had come on this trip with her to places he probably had never wanted to go, put up with all her crazy ideas, and was continuously by her side as she whined about Rory and Christopher. As she glanced over at him one more time, as he sat down next to her on the ground, she began to realize that maybe he was the only one who had ever really been there for her, always, unconditionally, even when she went on a tear and screamed at him, he was still there, buying her chocolate ice cream, offering her his hand and laying down his flannel so she wouldn't have to sit in the dirt.

"Luke, I…" she began at the same moment he said, "My mother, she…" They both smiled softly, knowing that in an instant their fight was over. She motioned for him to go on.

"You wanted me to open up. You wanted me to tell you things. So if I do, whatever you do, don't you dare use it against me," he said.

She grinned, but she knew there was a little hesitancy in his voice. "Wouldn't dream of it," she answered as seriously as possible, which Luke also found incredibly sexy. How she could be so exceptionally annoying and amazingly alluring at the same time? He had to take his eyes off of her baby blue eyes and smile that could melt the Ice Queen in order to stay focused on what he was saying.

"My mother was from the South. She grew up in Alabama but when she went to college, she decided to go against her family's wishes and go to Brown up in Rhode Island. In her sophomore year she was dating a guy from Yale and went one weekend to visit him. He took her to a pub in Hartford and when she went up to the bar to get a drink she ran into my dad. She gave him her number and the moment she walked into her dorm room at Brown, the phone rang and it was my dad calling. They never went a day without talking after that." Lorelai looked stunned.

"Wow," was all she could manage.

"I guess I just always felt that I would know the woman I would marry because I'd never want to go a day without talking with her. I'd want to be friends with her first." He shrugged. "I guess no one would ever believe I've ever thought about getting married."

"I would." He looked up at her in surprise. "I would," she repeated with emphasis and smiled to herself. "You know, my mother would be surprised that I've ever thought of getting married."

"Because you didn't marry Christopher?" Lorelai nodded. "If he moved back here now, I mean it's years later, would you ever reconsider?"

Lorelai stared out at the water for a moment, considering Luke's question. Did he really want to know the truth? Would he really believe her? Suddenly it almost scared her how comfortable she felt opening up to him. She had always been able to talk to Rory, tell her anything, but she had refrained, especially when it came to her parents and Christopher. Somehow she felt deep down that Rory should form her own opinions about them without Lorelai's influence. But Luke, he was different. He was willing to listen, to hear, to understand and, if necessary, tell her she's a good person in the end.

She couldn't just let his question go unanswered, after all it would be incredibly hypocritical of her after her tirade in St. Louis. "No," she answered softly. "Chris was a wonderful friend, he was very attractive in a physical sort of way. I guess I really should have listened to the people who said that you should only sleep with a man you loved. I loved Chris in an entirely platonic way. And even though he's Rory's dad, he's still my childhood friend that I once slept with in a moment that felt like that scene in Sixteen Candles."

"I would ask what scene, but then that would mean that I'd care to see that movie," Luke grumped. Lorelai laughed.

"I guess, if you would have asked me a month ago, I would have said Christopher would never mature enough that he could even consider asking me to marry him again, but now…" She pursed her lips as she shrugged.

"You think he's changed?"

"Well, I mean, he's trying to be a father to Rory."

"Why do I get the feeling you wish that he wouldn't?"

She smiled to herself. Luke knew her so well. "She's my daughter. She's always been my daughter, mine alone, and I guess, I figure that gives me the right to be a little possessive."

"But not quite to the same extent as Miss Havisham," Luke noted. Lorelai looked over at him with a smirk on her face.

"Right."

"I read!" Luke insisted.

"I never doubted it," Lorelai said seriously but still a hint of teasing in her voice. "It's just that… she's got four years of high school left and then that's it. No more Lorelai and Rory time, no more Gilmore Girls, nor more Lor and Ror partying it up in the Crap Shack."

Luke cleared his throat, trying to decide what to respond to first at this point. "The Crap Shack?" he asked, figuring knowing the answer to that question would be his first hint at where to go from there.

He gave Lorelai a moment to snicker quietly to herself as she remembered the naming of the Crap Shack. "It's what Rory and I named our house," Lorelai explained. Luke raised his eyebrows.

"Good name, almost as good as Buckingham Palace."

"Yeah, we considered that one, but we thought we'd have to fight ole' Lizzy for that one."

Luke chuckled as he put the last bit of his cone in his mouth. He glanced over at her to find her gazing at him and smiling, pleased that her little joke has cleared the air and made him laugh. He nodded to her, just to make sure she knew that everything was all right, that whatever their disagreement was, it was over as of that moment. Leaning forward, resting his elbows on his knees, he thought again about what she was trying to tell him. "You know she'll always come back right?"

From the corner of his eye, he could see her grimace. He lightly pats her upper back, just wanting to let her know that he was there. He had known since the day he met Rory that she was the most important person in Lorelai's life. It was possible that he couldn't imagine Lorelai without Rory more than Lorelai could, to him it was like watching Star Trek without Spock. Who wouldn't miss Spock when he was gone? It wouldn't be the same show without Spock. He might have never liked Star Trek without Spock, well maybe that wasn't true, but he wouldn't have appreciated it in the same way.

"She may be at Harvard, but you'll have the phone, Lorelai. And she'll come home. She'll miss you too," he assured her. She nodded, biting her lower lip. She wanted to believe him, she really did, but somehow his words seemed like those veiled assurances you give a child when you take them to the doctor to get a shot. Seeing her eyes becoming misty, he reached over and tipped her chin up, forcing her to look into his eyes.

"Luke, she…" Lorelai attempted, her words caught in the lump in her throat.

"She's called. You've talked almost everyday while we've been on this trip and she's been across the country, even farther away than Harvard. And you've got four more years with her."

"Four more years," she repeated softly, lost in his eyes for a moment. They're so blue, assuring and warm.

"And you won't be alone when she leaves."

He didn't need to explain what he meant, he could tell that she got his point from the soft look in her eyes. It took all his might not to close that distance between them, not to press his lips to hers and taste her lips that he knew would be so very sweet. He thought it might be like the first time he bit into a strawberry, sugary but not so much that it was overwhelming. As he looked at her lips at this moment, a mix of pink and red, moist enough that they shimmered in the sun, he felt his heart react, though he hadn't actually touched them.

Then she looked away, out at the water, not realizing that Luke is completely entranced by her. "Yeah, I won't be alone. I mean…." She smiles to herself, hearing Luke's unvocalized words. "I'll have the whole town." Luke snorted.

"Yeah," he said and nodded. "Yeah, you'll have the whole town. You're like Athena to Stars Hollow's Athens, they practically pray too you." Lorelai laughed.

"They do not." She shook her head at him, but couldn't stop smiling. "Hey, did I ever tell you the story about the first time Rory met Babette?"

"No, you didn't, but I'm already hooked."

She sat up, clapping her hands excitedly. "You should be, it's a really great story."

"And it comes highly recommended apparently." Lorelai giggled.

"Okay, so it was the day the Misty Alman took us over to the Crap Shack, before it was the Crap Shack, I mean before it was ours, it was still, you know, what it is now."

"Aw, you let Misty Alman show you the house?"

"Not the point Lucas." He rolled his eyes.

"I'll be quiet."

"So we were walking around the outside of the porch because Misty Alman absolutely had to show us that the porch wraps all the way around, as if I wouldn't have just believed her. And besides, with the idea in mind that Rory and I had been living in a potting shed for the past 10 years, I would think I'd be okay if the porch didn't go completely around the house. Anyways, so all of a sudden this music starts playing and this woman comes out of the house next door with a cat in her arms yelling to the guy inside that Cinnamon hates Dizzy Gillespie. Of course she notices Rory and I and comes right over. She asks Rory if she likes Dizzy Gillespie and she insists that she does not, of course I wasn't sure if Rory even knew who Dizzy was but Rory said it so seriously it was hard to argue. So Babette put the cat in Rory's arms and told Rory to go inside and tell Morey that no one likes Dizzy Gillespie. And you know what? Rory did just that. I had to bite my lip to keep from breaking out in laughter."

As she was telling Luke this story, she was watching his reaction. He couldn't keep from smiling, the amusement sparkling in his eyes, or maybe it was the moonlight. As they had been talking, the sun had finished its trek down from the sky and the moon and stars had sprung out above. She had barely noticed, at least until now, until she was staring at the moonlight in his eyes. He was just sitting there next to her, just chuckling softly to her story, smiling with a smile she had never seen before, one she knew that he had never revealed to anyone before and when he winked at her slightly, she felt her heart flutter. Suddenly she was aware of all of this, the beat of her heart, the tingling of her nerves, the fog in her brain, and she knew she was falling in love.

She had already realized how wonderful he was. He was always there, just one step behind her. When it seemed like everything was falling apart, like that afternoon when she had been afraid of the future without Rory, he was the one to comfort her. He was the one who was there, steady as the ground beneath her feet. Though she thought it was a little corny that all she could hear was Bette Midler singing in her head. It wasn't just that she was grateful for his presence and comfort, she saw something in him, something that made her want to know more about him, something that made her heart beat faster and her cheeks flush, and she knew it was much more than appreciation, it was a feeling she had never felt before, it was love.

It was nothing like she had ever experienced before. With Christopher, with any other boyfriend, that attraction had always been more physical than anything. She kissed on the first date. She sometimes even put out on the first date. That was how it was supposed to be, right? When you have a crush on the guy, you're supposed to like kissing them and all of that? But somehow… that wasn't it. She hadn't ever kissed Luke, hadn't even thought about it, but here she was completely head over heels, so very sappy, in love with Luke, in that whole Jerry Maguire 'you complete me' kinda way, like Eponine with her secret love for Marius. How unbelievable it was that she could love someone who she had never kissed, barely hugged, almost never exchanged the slightest of touches with, but it was true. These feelings, the tightening of her heart like a sponge every time she saw that glint in his eyes, heard his tender words, felt the light touch of his comforting hands. Maybe that's what made Luke different from Christopher and the rest of them, he wanted more than to get her into bed, he actually wanted to know her, see her for who she really was, unveil the vulnerabilities she kept so hidden. For the first time, she was actually opening up to someone and letting him see her insecurities, because he cared, because he understood, because he even possibly loved her as well.

"Well, Rory was a pretty serious kid when I first met her," Luke said and she had to stop and remember what he was responding to.

"She still is pretty serious. She's so kind and endearing. She just wants everyone to love her which is so easy because she's so damn lovable. Like Elmo or something."

"That red thing on Sesame Street?" Lorelai gasped in shock.

"You know who Elmo is?" Luke shrugged. Lorelai grinned, loving every new thing she was learning about Luke on the trip.

"I hate Elmo."

"Me too!"

He nodded at her and smiled, that goofy grin on his face that made her heart flip and just made her want to say more crazy things to get him to make that expression again and again. How had she never seen it? Why didn't she ever realize? Well, whatever were the answers to those questions, this trip had been a better idea than she could have imagined, it brought him out of his grumpy, sarcastic, dinerman nature, not that she didn't appreciate Dinerman-Luke because that Luke was so much fun, but this Luke, this sweet, caring, honest, considerate man sitting next to her had caught her heart and she was sure she would never want it back.

"Hey there Honey Bunches," Lorelai said brightly into the phone, sitting cross-legged on the bed in her hotel room.

"Hmmmph?" Rory's voice croaked over the phone. "Mom?"

"It is I, the maternal unit!"

Rory groaned, but Lorelai knew that Rory was waking up. "Mom, it's 6:00 in the morning," Rory whined.

"Not here it's not."

"Yes, but here it is and if you woke up Dad, you're going to regret it."

Lorelai rolled her eyes. "Oh your father doesn't scare me. Besides, waking him at 6 in the morning is like bringing Dear Johnny back from the dead. Impossible." Hearing Rory's giggle over the phone, Lorelai smiled. "I just got back so I thought I'd call you." She hears sounds over the phone like Rory's adjusting herself on her bed for a long talk.

"Just got back?"

"Yeah, I just walked into my hotel room for the first time tonight," Lorelai said, in a suggestive way.

"Are you going somewhere gross with this?"

Lorelai huffed and then considered the idea of spending the night with Luke. Since her revelation in her mind back on the riverside, she hadn't really taken the time to consider what her feelings for Luke might mean for them down the road. In the future she might kiss Luke. In the future she might sleep with Luke. In the future she might lie there in his arms the entire night, comforted and warmed by his body and his love, never again to feel so alone in the world.

"Mom!" Rory exclaimed when Lorelai didn't respond. "If you're going to wake me up, you'd better have a good reason, Missy, otherwise I hope that Lamb Chop haunts you for the rest of your life."

"Ack! Rory, no fair, you know how much that sock scares me!" Lorelai whined. She sighed. "No, Rory, I just got here because we were driving and the truck died and so we took it to the shop and sat by the side of the Mississippi River and just talked, all night, just talking. Rory… it was…" Lorelai let out a happy sigh and smiled to herself. "You're a smart kid, you know that?"

"I knew you'd realize it eventually."

"No I meant…"

"I know what you meant." Lorelai bites her lower lip, still picturing the look in Luke's eyes as they talked and hearing the tender tones of his voice. "So don't wait too long."

"To long?" Lorelai asked.

"To tell him."