Chapter 4: The Second Hand Unwinds

"And how is the Great Gilmore Standoff?" Luke asked.

Lorelai sulked into her coffee. "Miserable."

Almost two days had passed since her and Rory's fight, but word spread rapidly around town - the most exciting thing to happen since Milly McMasters lost a bet and streaked across the town square while balancing a half-eaten cherry pie on her head. People weren't used to seeing her and Rory be at odds with each other. Not yet in this timeline. The Gilmores were still "freakishly linked" in their eyes.

Except were they? They weren't growing together now. Physically Lorelai was once again 32, but her brain was 38. She had seen Rory graduate high school then do things she never thought her little girl would do. Now they were back at the beginning, years away from going on a boat-stealing spree. Years before Rory decided that sleeping with a still-married Dean was a really good idea. Lorelai wanted to hurl herself in front of Rory, keep her away from Dean and from that future heartache.

At least there was no Jess as a romantic interest in this timeline. Maybe that alone would change things just enough to send Rory down a better path.

Lorelai absently pushed her eggs around her plate. Their fight had happened on Friday, and it had distracted her to the point she knew she was forgetting something. She chalked it up to time travel displacement. Rory had spent all of Saturday out of the house, and she knew Luke fed her at least one meal without charging her. "Tell me how much I owe for whatever you fed Rory yesterday."

"Don't worry about it." He stood at the counter going over order tickets, tall and comforting and not mad at her. Lorelai could still barely wrap her mind around the concept.

Luke looked up from his work. Something must have shown in her eyes, because he refilled her coffee mug without a lecture. "It'll be OK."

Lorelai shook her head. "I am keeping a secret from Rory, a major one." And you.

Someone called Luke over, and while he was gone, Lorelai made herself finish the rest of her food and decided to wallow just a bit in her memories. Back when things were still good between them, he had started taking Sundays off after she convinced him of the benefits of having a day off a week. Those benefits involved sheer lingerie, lengthy breakfasts, and other wicked delights that would make those spending Sundays in church clutch their pearls. She smiled wistfully at him and slid off her stool. At the last second, she remembered to pay for her meal. He had made her stop paying shortly after they started dating.

She slid a $10 under her plate and was heading for the door when he came upon her, bearing plates. He frowned down at her, then jerked his head toward the curtain. Puzzled, she followed him into the storeroom. "Wait here," he told her before heading into the kitchen to drop off his load.

Lorelai tried not to think of the times they ducked into this room to make out among the pickles.

Luke came back in, wiping his hands on a towel. He closed the door until only a sliver of light remained, ensuring their privacy. He leaned back against the wall, staring at her until she nearly squirmed. Or lunged at him. Both were equal possibilities at the moment.

"Something's wrong with you," he observed.

It was the same sort of observation he would have made before, except out in the dining area. Why did he bring her back here?

He rubbed the back of his neck, staring at the floor for a moment before huffing a breath. "Look, I know things have been sorta weird with us the past year and a half or so."

"What?" Oh great. She'd manage to piss off Luke in this timeline as well. Were they just doomed to have epic blowouts with each other in every reality?

"Rachel was your friend, and us calling off the wedding caused issues for you at the inn. Even though everything turned out OK, I get that you probably hated me for awhile."

Lorelai just gaped at him. I was friends with Rachel? You were engaged? You were getting married at the inn?

"But you know if you ever need anything, you can come to me. If you're in trouble, I'll help you out." Luke gave her shoulder a friendly squeeze and turned to leave.

"I don't hate you!" The words burst out before she could think about them. But she absolutely, could not let him take another step thinking that she hated him when it was anything but. Even at the very end of their engagement. "I can't hate you."

Luke froze, and she could tell her words had stunned him.

Lorelai felt the tears struggling to break free, and her mind suddenly whisked her away. All she could see was the look of shock and utter loathing on his face when she told him what she had done with Chris. "I always thought you hated me." Even if you did love me at some point.

"Hey." He waited until she met his gaze, halfway expecting to suddenly be back in 2006. But she was still in 2000, and he was still confused. "Listen. I've never hated you. What the hell made you think I did?"

She shook her head. There was no way she was telling him about the laundry list of things she'd done over the years to piss him off, to make him so angry at her that they didn't speak for weeks. Hell, months. She had time traveled back to the past with him still furious and hurt at her.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, knowing that he would have no clue that she was apologizing for everything that had happened between them in a time he knew nothing about. An apology she needed to give him, but he had been too angry to even let her try.

"You're crazy," he said with affection, and she laughed.

When he smiled at her, pleased to see her laughing, Lorelai blinked. She had to blink, because otherwise she would do something insane and timeline altering. Like kiss him. So she really couldn't look at his lips, because it had the side effect of remembering what it was like to kiss him. She missed kissing him, especially in the waning days of their engagement when the strain between them had grown too much. She loved kissing him in the way Nancy Kerrigan had loved ice skating. Nancy had gotten clubbed in the knee for real, and she'd been clubbed in the knee metaphorically, so it was a decent comparison.

She looked in his eyes instead of at his lips, and she saw the uncertainty and the passion he'd banked for years and years in her original timeline. Which meant he had banked it for years and years here too. But she couldn't do anything because what if it changed-

Luke initiated the kiss. One second, she could barely breathe, and the second they were kissing. Hesitant at first in this timeline, not angry since they hadn't been bickering like in front of the Dragonfly. He wasn't desperate to prove this connection to her, because she already knew it. This time, it was like coming home.

So she wrapped her arms around him, kicked caution and timelines out to the dumpster, and just sank into him. She would blissfully live here forever, steeped in all the love she still held for him after everything that happened. When he took the kiss deeper, she worked her hands beneath the loose tails of his flannel to sink her fingers into his denim-covered ass. His hips surged into her, and she could feel him growing hard against her thigh.

She thanked every deity there was that she wore a skirt that day.

She was about five seconds away from yanking up said skirt when a clash of dishes from the dining room caused them to break the kiss. They leaped apart, and she nearly plastered herself against the wall.

Oh god, what have I done?

Luke turned away from her, and she could see him collecting himself. He turned back to her, shirt now buttoned and covering what needed to be covered so he could walk out the storeroom without Miss Patty and Babette swooning from utter joy. "I need to-" he said, awkwardly gesturing beyond the curtain, where voices grew in an alarming jumble.

She nodded. "Yeah."

"Stay back here as long as you need to."

"OK."

He just gazed at her for several seconds, almost as if he didn't want to tear his eyes away. Then another crash sounded and something that sounded suspiciously like a splat was heard. With a groan, he shoved back into the main room. "What the hell is going on in here?" he yelled. "Why is there pie on my ceiling?"

Oh God. Oh God, Oh God, Ohgodohgodohgodohgod. Lorelai sank onto an overturned milk crate, unable to stand. Unable to think.

First Rory. Now this. All within four days of time traveling to the past to fix everything. Had she ruined it all?

Liz had a small storefront where she sold jewelry and other crafts she dabbled with in her spare time. It was where one of the many porcelain plate stores had been in her own time, at the other end of the block from the diner. Lorelai would like to say she walked there in a dignified manner, but really she bowled over three tourists as she tore down the sidewalk as fast as her 3-inch heels allowed her. She tossed apologies over her shoulder: to the tourists, a lamp post, the mailbox, and an errant receipt on the sidewalk that escaped the eagle eyes of Taylor Doose.

She burst into the store, barely taking in the airy front room that contained merchandise. Liz turned from where she was arranging something on the shelf, took one look at Lorelai, then moved past her to put up a "closed" sign. "So, I can offer you coffee, but you look like you need wine."

"God. Yes. Can I just skip straight to tequila shots?"

Five minutes later, Lorelai found herself on a comfortable sofa in Liz's workroom, a martini in hand as Liz poured herself a glass of wine. Lunch of champions. She took a fortifying sip and decided to ease into the conversation.

"How long have I been in love with Luke in this timeline?"

Or just leap in with both feet and arms.

Liz laughed and sat next to Lorelai. "I think the better question is when weren't you in love with him? Think you fell in love with him the first time you two met. Dr. Peterson's office back in '87. You threw up all over his jeans and shoes because you'd caught the same bug Rory had. He was there with Jess, who had already puked on his shirt. He wound up wearing hospital scrubs back to the house because between the two of you, his clothes were so ruined that he was practically a biohazard. But, my brother made sure you and Rory got home because you were in no condition to drive."

Oh, so that was the story Rory was referring to. Yeah, she would be halfway in love with Luke for him being … well … Luke.

Lorelai gulped down another large swallow of martini, deciding that pacing herself could come another day. She would call into work tomorrow and deal with the hangover. She had enough days off banked that she and Rory could tour Europe for months and not use it all. Feeling slightly more steady, she drew in a deep breath. "Please, please, tell me about Rachel."

Liz frowned, and Lorelai wondered if she was violating another time travel rule. Hell, at this point, what was one more in the grand scheme of things? "You didn't know her in your time?"

"Just a little bit." Lorelai summarized Rachel's brief appearance in their lives the spring of Rory's sophomore year of high school, editing out how the revival of the Luke-Rachel Show caused her to seek out Max. "I always liked her," she admitted. Unlike Nicole. Or Anna. Especially Anna.

"You two are pretty tight now," Liz told her. "So, yeah, you're going to be foundering there a bit. They dated a long time, a real long time. They were high school sweethearts and stayed together until after our dad died. But they were growing apart. Rachel had gone to UConn, but Luke stayed here to help our dad. He did manage to finish college though. The same community college you go to in Hartford. Actually the same business degree."

Lorelai wracked her brain and realized she never even asked Luke in the other timeline if he had gone to college. He'd always been a huge advocate of Rory and Jess completing their educations, and he had started a savings account for April by the end of their engagement. He mentioned taking classes a couple times, but she hadn't paid attention. "I don't even know if he went in my time."

"Probably not. He only kept going because I was here to help. But anyhow, Rachel wanted to travel for her career and he didn't. She ended the relationship, and even though she tried to do it easy, it wasn't. You know?"

"I know." From what she knew, it had been the same in her time.

"So Rachel was gone for about … six years? She came back right around the time you moved into the house. She expected to pick up right where she left off, and considering that some brothers of mine hadn't made a move in that time, he just went along with it."

"Luke had girlfriends while Rachel was gone," Lorelai pointed out. Examples A-Z: the existence of April Nardini.

"Yeah, but none of them stuck. Either didn't like the town, didn't like his job, didn't like me or Jess, or it just fizzled out." Liz shrugged. "It was the same way for me, except I've got a kid. You know how that one goes."

"All too well." Lorelai toasted Liz and downed the last of her martini.

Liz, bless her, made her another. "So they decided to get married. Mia gifted them with use of the inn for the wedding … and with you. Your first wedding planning gig."

Lorelai forgot all about the martini.

"Now, see, my brother and Rachel loved each other. But some time in the past few years, I suspected he wasn't in love with her. He was content to go along because he thought the one person he actually wanted wasn't interested."

History, Lorelai decided, was like a washing machine stuck on spin cycle: the same thing happening time after time again, just seemingly faster each time. Or maybe it was the martini getting to her.

"You three were having a blast planning the wedding, but there was something about it that made Rachel realize that the marriage wasn't going to work out. So she broke off the engagement and took another field assignment. It wasn't anything like the first breakup, and I think everyone involved was relieved. Except you. You were pretty upset because you thought it was your fault. Your first wedding and the bride and groom broke up before the big day."

Lorelai knew this was leading up to something. She set the martini aside.

"Everything had been booked, but Luke told you to keep the date and don't cancel anything. He disappeared that morning. I thought you were gonna murder him. So was I. It was last May, right when Rory was graduating middle school. All of a sudden, these kids began to show up - all of Rory and Jess's friends from the school. We were trying to figure it out when my brother showed with Lane. He'd been trying to talk Mrs. Kim into letting her go. He explained that he was giving everything to Rory, Jess, and Lane so they could celebrate their graduation from middle school with a big party."

Lorelai swiftly pieced it together. "Rory was devouring the Sweet Valley and Baby-Sitters Club books back then, because Lane was also reading them. We hid the books at our house so Mrs. Kim wouldn't find them. Those books were huge into those celebrations."

Liz nodded. "He'd gone to the school with the idea, and they loved it - especially since they didn't have to pay for anything. The school told the parents. It turned out to be a really rocking time. The kids loved it. So did the parents. This year, the parents banded together to do it again, but I know Luke donated money to it."

Tears burned in the back of Lorelai's eyes. He'd given his canceled wedding to Rory, to help her live out one of her book fantasies. She sucked in a breath. It caught on a sob.

"Oh, honey, drink your martini." Liz pressed the glass back into her hand.

"He made me a chuppah," Lorelai sobbed. "He hand-carved the thing, even though I was marrying someone else. He made me an ice-skating rink when I was having a fight with snow. He made mashed potatoes for a week when Rory had the chicken pox and refused eat anything else. He hauled mattresses for Rory into her college dorm and out of it and into it again. He taught me to fish, even though I was using the knowledge to date someone else. He gave me $30,000 so I could realize my dream and …"

"You love him just as much," Liz said quietly.

Lorelai nodded through her tears. Then she decided, to hell with it, everything else in this timeline was already borked. She told Liz everything: about the fight with Rory after she and Logan stole the boat, about how Luke didn't tell her for two months how he had a daughter, how that incident started the ball rolling that had blown up into the end of their relationship.

She confessed about sleeping with Christopher the night she broke the engagement off.

By the time they finished, Lorelai was on her fourth martini and Liz on her third glass of wine. Liz had moved to a large recliner and kicked back. Lorelai was sprawled on the couch, staring at the ceiling. "I don't blame you if you want to kick me out."

"Nah. I've done stupid shit like that." Liz saluted Lorelai with her wine glass. "Especially in my original timeline. Besides, you're so stupid in love with my brother, I can tell it was a mistake. He was being an ass."

"So was I," Lorelai admitted. She sighed and let her mind drift in a pleasant alcohol-induced haze.

"He was being a worse ass. I'm his sister. I know these things."

"I did the bigger asshole move in the end. But I'm gonna fix it. I'm gonna get him and April together, and he'll know his daughter now. I'm gonna do one thing right here." She turned her head to Liz. "I think Rory knows."

"Oh. Well. Shit."

Exactly, Lorelai thought.