Disclaimer: I don't own Gilmore Girls.
Author's Note: I'm sorry to have left this story for so long, but I was to sincerely thank the many kind reviewers...otherwise I think this story might have died out completely.
With his hands stuffed deep in his jeans pockets, Luke strolled along side Lorelai. He tried to make a conscious effort to keep his face neutral, to keep his eyes moving about the busy sidewalk and adjacent street, as if he was just taking in the city, mindlessly absorbing just another day. Inside, however he was concentrating. Concentrating on not thinking things through because she had asked him not to, not yet. Concentrating on how ridiculous that was because the longer they waited to talk the harder it was bound to be. Concentrating on whether he had a right to be angry with her at all, or if he should just feel relieved to be here with her. Concentrating on how much of a right she still had to be angry at him, hoping that perhaps she was grateful for this second chance, if you could call it that. Concentrating on where the hell she could have been all this time and how she could have not even once called. Concentrating on how if it was him who had run, would he have had the guts to call, to reconnect?
"Oh!" she stops beside him and he looks over at her in time to watch her bend down and scoop something up off the sidewalk. Grinning she holds it up to the light, blows some dust off and sticks it in her jeans pocket. "It's good luck," she tells him.
"What is it?"
"A fake buffalo head nickel!"
"A what?"
She looks at him like he should be riding the short bus to school. "A. Fake. Buffalo. Head. Nickel." she repeats slowly, shaking her head at him.
He feels his eyebrows raise as he crosses his arms in front of him and wonders if she does this on purpose, actually plans these goofy moments out, or if she really does just create this madness up on the spot. If there's one thing he knows for sure it's that with Lorelai Gilmore any and all things are possible. "Care to explain?" he prods her, as he always does, and then immediately wonders why he feeds into her craziness, just as he always has.
Her smile widens and her eyes sparkle, specks of reflected sunlight dancing in a sea of blue, and he knows she was hoping he would ask and he is glad he did, even if it makes him almost as crazy as she is. "Well," she begins, her dark curls bouncing a bit in all her excitement, "see there were real buffalo head nickels back in, um," she pauses, looks skyward, "1892 but now there aren't and that makes what is left rare, right?" She doesn't wait for him to answer. "Well, and it's a good thing I'm here to tell you this Luke Danes, modern conspiracy theorists have it by reliable sources that the government is producing fake buffalo head nickels—coins that resemble pennies, but Lincoln's nose is twitched up and, ok it's not a buffalo head, or a nickel, but it is a rarity so, in essence, it's like the 'new age buffalo head,' you know, so the term still fits, and these poor, deceived, hard-working people will be running around trying to find the twitching nose Lincolns and…"
"Aw, jeez," Luke shakes his head, cutting her off as he takes off his cap and runs his fingers through his hair.
"What?" she asks innocently.
"Lorelai…tell me you just made that up. You can't possibly believe that."
"Luke, it was in the National Enquirer!"
"Since when do you read that trash?"
"You never know Luke, you never know…you gotta get all the information you can these days. That's what Rory's always saying."
"Rory's telling you to read the National Enquirer?"
"Well, no, Rory reads like seven different national newspapers and watches three different TV newscasts before going to bed, but the advice holds." She gives him one of her 'I win' grins. "Besides, not only am I well informed about the latest alien sightings, but the entertainment value of the thousand pound Siamese twins giving birth to cat head babies is unrivaled. And to think my daughter is wasting her time with CNN…"
"Lorelai…" he starts, but then, for the life of him, he can't come up with anything to finish the sentence with. What does one say to a lunatic he wonders.
"Yes, Luke?" she says so sweetly it almost comes out as a song.
He shakes his head as they continue walking again. "Nevermind, Lorelai, nevermind."
"Don't worry Luke," she sing-songs beside him. "We'll find you a fake buffalo head nickel if it's the last thing we do. Afterall, this is New York and all good conspiracies start in New York."
He gives her a sideways glance. "Lemme guess, National Enquirer told you that too?"
She rolls her eyes at him in the most dramatic fashion she can manage. "Of course not Luke. It was in Star."
He laughs in spite of himself. "Of course," he repeats.
Now, he's not sure how exactly it happened, but next time he looks up they're in a park. Probably not Central Park, this doesn't seem to be the right location for that, but it's green and has gravel paths and wooden benches and a few scattered maple trees and even a dad and his kid playing catch over by the fountain to the far left. It's not what he thinks of when he thinks 'New York' and he'll never understand how such evidence of, well…normalcy? humanity?…can just appear in the midst of this city of concrete. But it does. And it gives him hope.
Their toes hit the grass, his shoes sinking just hair into the ground that's still soft from the rain of yesterday, the pouring that had left him on his knees staring after the retreating figure of the only person in the world that could make breathing feel like a gift. Now though, the rain had gone and the aftermath of softness remained. He looked around. He knew this—he knew the give of the green blades beneath his feet, he knew the smell of maple sap, he knew the steady stwack of a ball hitting a well oiled leather fielder's mitt. Oh, they were in her city still, but they were on his territory now.
He's not sure who steers who, but somehow or another they seem to guide each other to a nearby bench and he smiles with an almost unfamiliar ease as their weights creak the wooden boards and their backs settle against the heads of rusty nails. The boy, in a yellow t-shirt a size too big and blue cap that fits him just right, is now straight across from Luke, shielding his eyes from the sun as he traces the path of a pop-up a mere fifteen yards away.
They sit in a comfortable silence for minutes—maybe three, maybe nine—Luke's not sure and he doesn't really care. Pigeons peck at the path near their feet, two squirrels chase each other up, down, and around an adjacent tree.
"So have you played catch with April yet?" Lorelai breaks his daze and what surprises him more than her willingness to discuss his daughter, the symbolic figure, he knows, of the gateway to so much of her pain, is the fact that, of all the places her eyes could have been wandering, it is the boy and his father playing catch that she has chosen to watch. He is not sure what that says to him, but he feels it means something.
He clears his throat and replies, "No, no I haven't." He wants to keep talking, wants this conversation, any conversation to continue so he adds, "She's not exactly the outdoors-y type." He chuckles.
"Nor the athletic type?"
"No," he agrees, thinking of baseball, but then quickly refocuses, remembers, and corrects himself. "Well, no and yes. Depends on the athletic, I suppose."
"Oh?"
"Yeah. She still swims actually. She's pretty good too. Really likes it."
"That's great, Luke."
"Yeah," he smiles, genuinely. "It is. Figures out of all the sports I know things about she picks one I've never had anything to do with. I was back to getting books from the library again…ducking into the kitchen to figure out the jargon she's using. But it's not a bad thing, you know? Like it sounds like it should be, like it should be bothersome, or disappointing maybe, but it's not. It's fun actually…" He laughs. "I've never understood exactly why that is, but that's how it is."
She laughs too and he knows that they're sharing something. He's inside something, a part of her, that he could never have understood before. He's inside this world of parenting that is her life at its core and it amazes him and overwhelms him that there is still so much he can discover about her. So much he can still discover about himself. "It's a very fun thing," she agrees. "God, when I had to research King Whoever the 27th in school I just wanted to beat myself over the head with the textbook. But when Rory read King Lear and decided we must have royal blood somewhere—she was probably in middle school, or something equally surreal in terms of youth, and still perceived my parent's house as a castle—we spent an entire summer researching every king, queen, and court jester—that one was my idea—in the history of England, France, Spain, and Portugal—don't ask me how Portugal got in there, apparently Rory thought they were overlooked. It was the summer of history research projects—it was books and books on tape and history channel documentaries. It was everything I've always hated. Except this time I didn't, this time I loved it. And when the phase was over and she had moved on to the poets of the beat generation, you know what? I missed King Henry and the serfs and the armor and the "Let them eat cake!"" She laughs and shakes her head. "Who would have thought, right?" Looking up, her eyes trace his face and she smiles at him, "It's always different when it's your kid, Luke. It changes everything."
He smiles back because she's not telling him, but she's agreeing with him somehow. He's a parent. He's in the club. And man, oh man, if that membership card, the one signed and dated by Lorelai Gilmore, mother of the century, didn't mean the world in a bucket, he didn't know what did. "Yeah," he agrees back. "Yeah."
She takes a breath and when she speaks again her eyes are in her lap. Her fingers are wrapping and unwrapping themselves around the strap of her purse. "I think, um, you know, maybe she should…play catch with you, I mean. Just, some time…"
He shrugs, eyes on the airborne baseball. "It's not a big deal, Lorelai…"
"It is." And the way she rushes the words out surprises them both. "I mean, I know she's a kid and she probably doesn't really understand yet, it…it takes awhile to learn, but it's just…sometimes you need to play catch, even if you hate the way your hand does that been-in-the-bathtub-too-long wrinkly thing every time it sits inside one of those gloves and you hate the way it smells like old gym socks in there even though God knows why there'd be a gym sock in a baseball glove and you hate that you know there is no way on earth you can catch that stupid little spinning ball rocketing at your head at lightening speed while you stand in front of it with your eyes squeezed shut like a blind man with a death wish…" she stops for a moment, breathes, and restarts. "The point is, catch is important to you, so you should have someone who is willing to play catch…"
Luke was lost, which wasn't unusual when talking to Lorelai but given the circumstances he wished she'd give him something to grab onto. He had a distinct feeling they weren't really talking about April anymore. He continued with the cover conversation anyway. "I don't want someone willing to play catch, I want April. My April. Catch, no catch, it doesn't make a difference. Some things just aren't that important."
He thought he saw her bite her lip, but he couldn't be sure as he watched her stare off into father-son game. "Some things are."
Luke tugged a bit on the brim of his hat, leaned his elbows onto his knees, hunched his shoulders, and balled one hand into a fist, letting the other curl around it, giving his chin a place to rest as he turned to look at her. He knew she felt guilty—guilty about some things that were her fault and guilty about some things that weren't her fault. She had that look, that protective mother look going—the one that indicated self-sacrifice and a small twist of martyrdom. He didn't know what exactly was going through her head, but he sure didn't like where it was going. "Lorelai, I don't know what to tell you," he replied honestly, very honestly, "except that I know what I want. I know what makes me happy and, these days, I go after it."