Disclaimer: You all know I don't own them.
Author's Note: It bears repeating that my betas are awesome. Thanks to CineFille, iheartbridges, and lulabo for their questions, corrections, and suggestions, which, as always, have made this story better.
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She hasn't cried since Luke left. Since the night before he left, to be precise. She really had needed to work that morning, so when he'd handed her the coffee and walked out the door she'd steeled herself against the tears, then turned and walked straight into the bathroom and flipped on the shower.
Thirty minutes later, dressed and fed, she'd given Paul Anka a loving pat on the head, fixed a smile on her face and pulled the door closed behind her as she'd headed for the front of the inn. If the rest of the staff had noticed the way that she'd buried herself in her work, the way that she'd occupied every second of every working hour, they hadn't said anything. They'd have been hard-pressed to muster a complaint. She'd been efficient, professional, and if not overly friendly, at least courteous.
It had been the only way to get through the days. To keep herself so busy that there hadn't been time for thoughts of him, of them, of what-ifs, and if-onlys.
Rory would tell her she should wallow, that she needed to acknowledge the grief. But wallowing was for acute pain, for the kind of pain that you felt in the aftermath of an event that you'd eventually recover from or move on from. She'd wallowed when she and Luke had broken up after her parents' vow renewal, because a little part of her hadn't given up hope that it was temporary, that they'd come to their senses and find their way out of it. The obstacles then felt surmountable, the mistakes she'd made less egregious.
Wallowing now means moving on and she isn't ready for that, not because she has any hope of reconciliation, but because she isn't ready to set aside the heavy burden of guilt that has settled on her shoulders. She's earned that guilt, needs to carry it around with her for awhile. Call it penance, call it punishment, but now that she can finally feel the full brunt of her spectacular stupidity, now that she has seen his pain up-close-and-personal, she can't bring herself to feel her own pain. At least not yet.
She lets her work distract her. It helps that these people don't really know her, that they're somewhat anonymous. They don't know how hard it is for her to hold herself together during the day. They don't know that she's not fully herself right now.
She doesn't think she could be around Sookie right now, which she knows is an awful thing to think, but her friend knows her well enough to know that everything is not right, and Sookie is too close to all of it to give her good counsel. When Sookie called to tell her how worried Luke was and to ask why she hadn't talked to him, it was only because of her distance from Stars Hollow that she was able to confess the full multitude of her sins to her friend. After a series of 'what were you thinking?' and 'how could you do that to Luke?' outbursts, Sookie had attempted understanding, though her words were tinged with disapproval. It had been no more - and no less – than Lorelai expected, and now when they check in with each other over the phone, in short installments, Sookie's disappointment feels bearable, deserved even.
Even though she misses the familiarity of home, it's easier to be here among the comfort of strangers, at least for a little while. As long as she can get through her day, and make it back to her room without thinking about him too much, then the day is a success. She spends the evenings immersing herself in the most amusing television she can find. She's got a line up of sitcoms in the early evening, and once that stretch of the evening ends, she digs into her DVDs. She's working her way through the UK version of The Office, and season one of the US version waits patiently for its turn.
It doesn't really stem the guilt, but it does balance it somewhat. It's a coping mechanism, nothing more, and she knows this, knows that she's existing rather than living, but for now that's enough.
During this week of carefully programmed distractions, she tries to pretend that she's not waiting for him to call again. But her phone is closer to her than it needs to be, and she glances at it too often, checking the little bars that indicate good coverage. There are always three bars, no more, no less, and her battery is always full. When she thinks about how pathetic she is, she wants to turn off her phone and bury it in her purse. Except that he has called. And when he does, every few days, she's disgusted at how happy she is to hear from him, at the way she hangs on to even this little bit of stilted contact.
He's called twice and it doesn't make her feel any better. There's really no way that it could. She steers clear of anything other than the most mundane conversation, and yet she's always disappointed that they haven't really said anything. Luke asks how she's doing and then they quickly move on to her work and Paul Anka. She wants to ask about him in return, or about April, but it all feels too sensitive, the pain too fresh to delve into quite yet. She tries to tell herself that it's enough to hear his voice, to know that he cares enough to call. But it's not, really.
The days after he calls are the worst ones. Today is one of those days. Even after only talking to him twice, Lorelai can sense a pattern developing – three days between calls – and Luke is nothing if not predictable. So there's no point in looking forward to the phone ringing today. In fact, it's ridiculous to even 'look forward' to his calls. They only make the guilt weigh down more heavily. They only remind her that this is the guy who will still look out for her even though she's trashed everything that existed between them. These are the days she feels the most pathetic.
Rory had offered to come up and spend this weekend with her. She hadn't said why, but Lorelai knows she wants to be with her tomorrow, June 3rd, to take care of her and wallow with her. She'd had to plead out of it, though. Rory wouldn't approve of this purgatory of existence, and Lorelai doesn't have the energy to make it more than that, even for a couple of days.
She's got her own plan for tomorrow, to distract her from the wedding-that-isn't. It's something she's given thought to because she's not naïve enough to think that it's not going to hurt.
She has scheduled herself for as full a day as she can, starting earlier than usual and working through dinner. She's gotten a few concerned inquiries, but she's brushed them off, saying she'll take some time off later in the month, hoping they'll forget by the time 'later' rolls around. The day itself is one of her harder ones, but by now she's perfected the smile that looks genuine but isn't.
Lorelai spends the day moving from the front desk to the dining room to the kitchen, doing everything from answering the phones to pouring coffee. She confirms the menu for the following week with the chef and goes through the details for a small luncheon with the inn's manager. When there are absolutely no more tasks to justify her hovering around the rest of the staff, she retreats to the office and tackles the pile of monotonous paperwork that she'd saved for today, crossing off her accomplishments on the never-ending list as she goes.
When she returns to her room at the end of the day, she calls Rory. She needs to do it now, to get it over with while she's still got the veneer of calm covering up her emotions.
When Rory answers with a surprised, "Mom?" Lorelai realizes that it's the first time she's called her daughter, though Rory has called a few times to check in. "How are you?" Rory's voice softens, her tone concerned. "Are you okay?"
Having spent the whole day distracting herself, Lorelai is able to say fairly convincingly, "I'm fine. I just got done working and I'm reheating my dinner." It's not quite true. She knows that she's using every last bit of her reserves to hold herself together, but she can't bring herself to show Rory her pain. Talking to Rory makes her feel a shame that's not the same kind of raw guilt she feels when talking to Luke, but rather a mother's shame at having so carelessly and needlessly complicating her daughter's life. It doesn't feel right to lean on her, to need her, when she's the one who has screwed up so enormously.
"That's a long day," Rory points out knowingly.
"A few of the staff needed a day off."
"Needed? Or did you schedule yourself like that on purpose?" Rory's words are direct, but her tone remains gentle.
"It was good to be busy," Lorelai admits reluctantly, "and I got a lot done." She pauses for only a moment before deliberately changing the subject. "How are you? Have you talked to Logan recently?"
Rory sighs at the obvious attempt at distraction. "He's fine. We talk almost every day. I think he actually likes some of the work he's doing."
They talk a little longer, Lorelai relieved to have the focus off of her. Rory and Luke always ask the same questions about her work and about Paul Anka, but at least discussing Logan's job and Rory's summer class schedule doesn't bring on the same uneasiness she feel at the prospect of asking Luke how things are going for him, or for April.
Lorelai's not sure how convincing she is, but she manages to bluff her way through some more small talk and a few more of Rory's worried questions. After several minutes, Lorelai begs off, having sufficiently heated the dinner she'd set aside earlier in her shift.
She's only one episode further into the Office marathon, her picked-over dinner already set aside for Paul Anka to finish, when her phone rings. She wonders again, as she's done every time he's called, why she hasn't changed his ring back to something more generic than Monty Python's "Lumberjack Song."
She's still thinking this as she answers the phone, so it's not until she says his name that she realizes he didn't wait three days between calls this time.
He asks about the inn and Paul Anka, and she asks about the diner, and the whole time she's wondering what it means that he's calling today. She's impatient to know, actually physically bracing herself for that part of the conversation, but at the same time there's comfort in the routine of small talk.
"Lorelai," he says, his voice suddenly serious, and a little sharp, as if he wants to make sure he's got her attention. She holds her breath, her body still, waiting to hear what it is he called to tell her. She hears him take a breath and she wonders where he is, whether he's sitting or standing, if he's scratching the back of his head like he does when he's stressed. "I'm sorry." The words come out in one exhalation, in a puff of relief and sadness.
"For what?" To her ears, her voice sounds strangely calm, almost curious. She's not sure how she managed it.
"I'm sorry I couldn't give you June 3rd." His regret is palpable. She can feel it in his words and she tries to imagine his expression – wrinkled brow, eyes turned down at the corners, the neutral set of his mouth pushed just over the edge toward melancholy, and maybe his left hand moving from the back of his neck to massage his temples. "It wasn't too much for you to ask. I should have been able to give it to you."
She can't speak. It's too much and not enough, too late and too soon. Her brain can't put together a coherent thought or reaction and she has to remind herself to breathe.
He finally says, hesitantly, "Lorelai?"
"I don't…I don't know what to say," she answers, and it might be the most honest thing she's said during one of these calls.
"You don't have to…" he starts, his voice losing steam before finishing his thought. "But that's why I called. I just wanted to tell you-"
"Okay," she cuts in, knowing she would not be able to maintain her composure if he repeats it. She can feel how stiff her fingers are as they grip the phone, and though has no idea what to say, she's not sure she could force any words through the tightness in her throat if she tried.
There's another lull that she doesn't know how to fill, and he says slowly, as if he wants her to protest, "Well, I should go."
She wants to hold onto him, to try to make sense of this moment, but knows that she can't do that without breaking into tears. She nods as she says, "Okay, goodnight."
"Goodnight." She barely hears his response as she closes her phone and dissolves into sobs.
She'd spent the last week carefully hiding away her loss and regret, packing it tightly and holding it just out of reach, close enough that she can still feel the guilt, but far enough to keep the rest of the thoughts safely tucked away. The mental effort has made her physically weary, no more so than today, when the package feels particularly unwieldy.
But Luke's words untie the metaphorical strings and pull away the wrappings, letting loose a stream of feelings that hit her like an avalanche. She feels the loss of all she had imagined with Luke - all the should-have-beens and never-agains - and the pain is more wrenching for the guilt that accompanies it.
She can't stop the images from flashing through her mind: the look on his face when he saw her in her dress, the perfect little church, wedding bands on their intertwined hands, tiny brown-haired, blue-eyed children running through the yard of the house her parents had found for her, grandchildren, happiness, love, contentment. And she knows she'll never have any of it. She and Luke had their work cut out for them. They'd had their struggles, their differences. But she's the one who'd made them irreconcilable.
The next day she can barely find the strength to pull herself out of bed. It's only her concern for Paul Anka that gets her moving, and after filling his bowls and letting him out, she collapses again, falling onto the sofa into the safety of television comedy. She hadn't carefully planned this day; she'd only worried about getting through the 3rd of June, not the 4th as well. But as she sits on the couch, she's suddenly hit with the full reality of her life. She can hardly move for the rubble that's settled around her, and she's sure it would be easier to just lie here among the shattered pieces of her future.
It takes every ounce of strength to get herself to work the next morning, and she feels the fatigue in every movement. It's harder and harder to force the required smile.
And she can't stop thinking of Luke. The degree to which she anticipates his next call scares her. As much as she tries to quash it, his words on Saturday leave her with what she knows is an unreasonable hope. His words are a tease, like an unattainable prize at a county fair. She knows that they are over; things have gone too far for reconciliation. But she can't stop thinking about that enormous stuffed teddy bear that costs more tickets than she could earn in three lifetimes of throwing rings over bottles. Luke's apology isn't enough to change their hopeless situation and instead it serves only to remind her of what she destroyed. It confirms what she's figured out already – that she doesn't deserve him, that maybe she isn't meant to have that kind of happiness.
But the expectation is there nonetheless, and by the time her shift ends on the third day she's almost jittery with nervous energy. It's a frightening, out-of-control feeling, this need to hear from Luke, and to talk to him.
When he does call that night, she knows not to have any expectations for their conversation, understands that they still need the small talk, but when it is just that, and no more, it doesn't stop the emotional crash from coming. It's as if he hadn't called on Saturday, hadn't made his out-of-the-blue apology. It hurts to have it unmentioned, but she rationalizes that he probably has no more idea how to talk about it than she does, and that even if he did, it wouldn't change anything. They are still irreparably broken. It's then that she knows that what she's set herself up for is unhealthy, that she's got to break this cycle before it breaks her further.
So, the next morning, when Alicia, the friendly, down-to-earth graduate student who waitresses for extra cash, asks her to come out to help celebrate the chef's birthday, she resists the overpowering urge to refuse and finds herself squashed around a big table with the eclectic mix of relative strangers she's been working with for almost a month.
The restaurant they go to is as much bar as eatery, with a beer selection to rival any pub she's ever been to, and the food is wonderful. It's such a relief to talk to people who don't even know Luke and she has whole stretches of time in which she doesn't think of him. It's an interesting group of people. There are the obligatory college students working at the inn during their summer vacation: the chef, Frank, with a man he introduces as his partner; the owners, a couple who'd left behind the stress of city life and high-powered jobs to buy this inn; and a few others who'd lived in Burlington all their lives.
Lorelai ends up sitting next to Stella, the dining room hostess she thinks could be anywhere between 35 and 50, who turns out to own an organic dairy farm with her husband. After a few polite inquiries, she begins to regale them with tales of learning to live with the forty-five cows that came along with the guy she married.
The evening is pleasant, fun even, and on the short walk back to the inn, Lorelai realizes it's the first time in a long time that she's laughed, that she's felt like more than just a shell of a person. She'd very intentionally left her phone in her room, both as an attempt to resist the need to check it constantly, and because it was a 'day-after' anyway. When she returns at the end of the night, she resists the temptation to check for messages, and feels just the slightest bit of self-control returning.
When she wakes, though, much of that strength is diminished, and she checks her messages, the action a connection of sorts and yet futile at the same time. The disappointment about the lack of messages is exacerbated by the fact that she should have known better than to hope there would be. She spends the day alternately looking forward to his next call and hating herself for being so pathetic. It takes her until the next day to admit to herself that she needs to break the dependence, that she needs to, at least for a little while, stop talking to Luke.
Though she expects him to call later, she knows that she needs to do it now before her resolve wavers. She dials his number out in full, speed dialing feeling somehow too familiar for where they stand now.
"Lorelai? Are you okay?" His immediate jump to concern startles her, and yet at the same time, it doesn't.
"Yeah, I'm fine." Just hearing him speak throws her into a partially numbed mood and she hears the hesitation in her voice. She pauses, and the emptiness between them prompts him.
"Did you…what…" She knows he must be struggling to figure out the reason for her call.
"I just," she pauses, selecting her words. "You're off the hook, Luke."
"What?"
"You don't need to check on me anymore."
His voice takes on a suspicious tone. "Lorelai, what's going on?"
She takes a breath, then lets the words tumble out, hoping that if there are enough of them that he'll just accept them without questioning, without pushing. "I appreciate you looking out for me, calling to check in and everything, but you don't have to. You shouldn't have to…"
"It's not a problem." His words sound cautious, tentative.
"But you don't need to," she insists quietly.
"I don't need to or you don't want me to?" There's a sharp, bitter edge to his voice now.
She doesn't answer immediately and she hears an angry huff that she knows is covering his hurt. Her head dips forward and she closes her eyes against the knowledge that she is once again causing him pain. She doesn't know how to explain this without telling him how hard it is to talk to him, to have him so close and yet so far away.
She can hear him breathing as he waits for her to pull together her thoughts. "I just need to be by myself for a little while, to figure things out," she says finally.
"How long?" he asks, his words brusque.
She closes her eyes tightly, saying softly, "I'm coming back to Stars Hollow on July 1st." It's not exactly an answer, but she prays silently that he'll let it go.
When he speaks, there's a finality in his voice that makes her want to retract her words, to go back in time and not make the call. "I guess I'll talk to you then." He pauses a beat, then says abruptly, "Bye, Lorelai."
She wishes for a moment that she didn't know him well enough to hear the sadness and pain hidden behind the anger and resentment.
It's enough to make her hesitate ever so slightly before closing her phone, but when she hears it snap shut, she knows that she's taken one small step toward digging herself out of the hole her life has become. That she might be able to find a way out of the wreckage after all.
To be continued