So, this is it. It didn't turn out quite how I wanted, but it took itself there, so I figured I had to go with it.

I hope you enjoy.

~G.G~

Part 8: Just Like Jerry

Rory had seen the fight - or non-fight - between her mother and Luke, and she was nervous. She had lied to her mom. And she had lied to Luke. But she thought she was helping by doing what she did. She thought they just needed time to figure things out and make them work.

She didn't know much about family, and she would admit to spending more time than was healthy imagining her parents getting together. But now, seeing her mother and Luke together, she realized how much better reality was to her childish fantasy.

Then she had seen them at Miss Patty's - seen them give up and walk away when they should have celebrated being together. The determination in Luke's walk, the slump in her mothers shoulders… it told her everything she needed to know. What she had thought was reality was just another fantasy, was just adults playing make believe as children playing house.

She had been as wrong about them as she had been about her parents. No wonder her own relationships ended badly - she really didn't know anything about love.

Hearing the crowd behind her murmuring, knowing that by tomorrow everyone would again be buzzing with the probable end to the sudden relationship, and Taylor would be crowing at being vindicated for his fears, she felt sick to her stomach. She needed to talk to her mother. She needed to set things right, no matter how wrong it seemed to her to be.

She inhaled deeply as she tried the front door, not surprised when she heard the television going inside.

"Mom," she said in a worried tone, not sure what kind of state she would find her mother in after the fight that was turning her town into a mill specializing in rumours.

"Hey Hon," Lorelai called, coming down stairs wrapped in an over sized sweater and her comfort sweats. And Rory's worry grew: those were signs that her mother was set for a marathon mope.

"Are you alright?" She asked, surveying that sea of junk that was already setting on the coffee table, The Way We Were primed on the television. Things were definitely worse than she thought they'd be. There was a knot in her stomach, and she couldn't help but hope, in that place where there was a happy ending for every love story, that she knew the reason why.

Lorelai tightened her arms around her, her eyes red from tears, "Yeah, I'll be alright." She paused, knowing her daughter better than she knew herself some days. They were more alike than was probably healthy for the younger woman. And Lorelai knew the look that her daughter wore. The look of trying to stay put together when you were quickly unraveling at the seams. "Hey, what is it? Are you okay?"

Lorelai moved to the couch, her own emotional state falling into the backseat when Rory resisted joining her. There was no mistaking the hurt and the confusion and worry in her eyes. Was she upset about what happened with Luke? This was why Lorelai tried to keep her relationships separate, she reasoned as she dragged her daughter down onto the couch, everything else forgotten. She never liked to see her daughter hurt, especially when she was at least part of the reason for her being hurt. And, considering her own pain that wanted her to wallow in it, she was glad to focus on something other than her own unraveling seams.

"I'm so sorry," Rory rushed when she finally forced out the words, not looking from her shoes, guilt lacing every hurried word. "I was stupid and selfish and I didn't think that you might not want it too. I mean how could I do that to you and to Luke?"

"Whoa! What did you do? Talk to me. And breath, remember to breath."

Waiting until she was calmer, Rory finally endeavoured to meet her mother's eye, "I lied to you."

Lorelai blinked, surprised. "What?"

"It was more withholding the truth. Last week at the party, Grandpa gave me the cheque for school. I was suppose to tell you. And I didn't. I'm so, so sorry. I shouldn't have tried to force you to stay together if it wasn't what you really wanted. I thought it was, though. You were happy, you both were happy playing along. I thought that maybe with time, it could be real. But that was stupid and childish and I ruined everything."

Lorelai frowned, pulling her daughter closer, her sadness edging through the cracking seams of her self-control, "Oh Rory. None of this is your fault. Everyone just got caught up in the moment, in the thought of me and Luke together. I did too, Kid."

Rory pulled away, studying her mother's expression closely. "You did? It was real?"

A sad smile spread over her trembling lips. "Yeah. It was nice. It was easy. It was… Luke. All along." She gave a sad shrug, not knowing how else to put it, "He's Kevin Spacey in Usual Suspects."

Rory fell silent, putting together all the pieces that she hadn't thus far connected: The smiles that stayed long after they went home, the humming for no reason at all, the care in picking her clothes... and now the depression that was quickly eating away at her mother. Rory had never seen her looking so sad. Not even after Christopher or Max or when Mia left or when the Bangles broke up. For the first time, Rory understood what it meant to really be in love. "Mom, you love him?"

Lorelai's throat caught as the last of her walls fell and her heart was drowning in sorrow. She could only nod.

"Oh, mom."

"I- I hope you aren't mad at me for ruining everything. Again."

Rory held her mother, her best friend, close, trying to solace the pain that neither of them could reach the source of. "I'm sure you didn't ruin it."

"I did." She said between sobs. "I made him stay in this stupid marriage. I let myself to get close to him. I made him get close to me."

"He wouldn't have done anything he wouldn't have wanted to do. You know Luke. You can only make him agree to the things he secretly wants to do."

Lorelai sat up, not wanting to be comforted, not when she felt she deserved to feel bad. Not when she didn't want to believe the words her daughter offered. There was too much danger in thinking happy thoughts. "Then why did he walk away? That's not what we do. We push. We fight. We argue and yell and hate each other for a time, but we don't just give up and walk away... Besides you and Sookie, he's my best friend. And I lost him."

She broke, and held Rory as tightly as she was being held.

"What are you going to do?" Rory asked after a long moment of being afraid to bring reality back to the shield from reality they often found when together.

Lorelai could only shrug, her frown deepening. "He didn't want to fight with me. That has to mean something."

"You could ask him."

"And risk his not fighting again?"

Rory rolled her eyes. "That doesn't make any sense."

"Neither does his not wanting to fight with me. That's our thing. No matter how bad things got, I knew that we were all right when we fought. When he ranted. When I raved. Without that…" she looked around, pulling herself together, knowing that there was only thing left for her to do. The one thing that would finish the job of breaking her heart completely. She knew that it was the easy way out, but the other option - that of pushing further, that of hoping she was wrong - wouldn't just break her heart, but crush it entirely. Rory wasn't the only one who was learning the depths of real love. "I have to tell him."

"That you love him?"

She shook her head. "That the money came through. That he's getting his divorce."

"Is that really what you want to do?"

Lorelai studied her daughter's hopeful expression, the love and the want that lived there. The hope that everything would still work out. The hope that, somewhere out in the world, there were still Prince Charmings and happily ever afters. "No," she admitted, tired of the lies that she had been telling everyone for so long. Even herself. "You were right, and he's been a part of our family for a long time. So long that I don't know how to be one without him in it." She felt herself wanting to cry again. "But if he won't fight with me over something as important as us, then what's the point? Obviously it's not that important to him. We're not his family."

~G.G~

How had he gotten here? Exactly where he had always thought he wanted to be. A living dream. And the one place where it seemed he wasn't suppose to actually be. With Lorelai.

He'd been a part of her life for a long time, and had known her - really known her - for what felt like forever. It was easy being in her life, she drew him in in a way that he hadn't felt in a very long time. Not since his father died and his sister ran away and he found himself having to stand on his own, for his family that was falling apart around him. He was the strong one. At one point in time that thought used to make him laugh, or want to run and drink and hide. He never thought he was ready for the life he found himself living. Never thought he was really the man that everyone thought him to be.

And then he met Lorelai and all the pieces fit. All the different parts of him that he had fought or couldn't understand suddenly made sense. His life, everything in it, all the trials that he's faced, everything that made him into the man he now was, was all to prepare him to be the man she could be with.

But even after two weeks on the cruise and a further two married to him - one of the best months he could remember - that was something she still couldn't see. She was still lost in the world that she had fought her entire life against: the world of her parents and Hartford and Christopher.

Luke wasn't stupid. He knew the relationship they had. He knew the escape that they had offered one another growing up. He knew that in an alternate universe, they were together in a house that cost more than he would ever earn. They'd give Rory multiple siblings that would reek terror on all their peers because there was too much of their mother in them. and they'd be happy. A family. The family that he knew that Lorelai had always missed. The whole package that she longed for.

He understood that longing. He wanted it too. More than he had ever thought. He wanted the house and the wife and the kids. He wanted the world, whatever world, that would come from a life with Lorelai.

If only she wanted that life with him.

Was he really going to risk what they already had - their friendship - to try to convince her that that life with him's what she really wanted? Would he be satisfied with just having those stolen moments after having so much of her? He had come so close to having her all. Should he give up that easily? Without a fight?

No matter what happened, he knew, he was the one who was going to lose. He loved her. He'd been aware of it on some level for years. But over the past month he'd learned it again and again every single day. And every day he learned that there was only one thing that really mattered to him. That was that Lorelai Gilmore was happy.

~G.G~

Lorelai stalked back and forth in front of Kim's Antiques, staring down the diner. Lane had been right, and she really did have a clear view of everything that was going on inside. She could see Kirk and Andrew and Reverend Skinner and Caesar. And every so often a flash of blue plaid - the shirt Rory had given him years before as a thank-you for helping teach her to drive. Lorelai remembered helping Rory to pick it out. The colour matched his eyes.

She wished he was wearing something else. Anything else. It would have been easier had he been wearing something else instead of the slap in the face reminder that she was losing the family she had built for herself. The family she needed. Too bad she couldn't say the same for him.

She watched him for a moment. He didn't look happy. Good. at least she wasn't suffering alone.

She knew she was going to have to make her move soon, and actually cross the square and talk to him. But luckily soon wasn't now.

She paced back and forth a few more times before gathering her nerves and turning towards the diner. She made it past the gazebo when she coaxed herself to look up from the ground in front of her. Just in time to watch Luke step outside. He seemed surprised when he noticed her standing there. And then, she couldn't move. She was just standing there, watching as he made his way to her, moving almost in slow motion.

"How long have you been out here?" He asked, looking around anywhere but at her. There was pain reflecting in her eyes. Pain that he had caused. He hated himself for knowing that had hurt her. No matter how much torture she put him through, knowingly or not, the last thing he ever wanted, was her to hurt in kind.

His hands were in his pockets, his body rigid. Her shoulders were slumped and her arms crossed in front of her. Both of them deal with the uncertainty that came with that moment.

"A while," she admitted, watching the ground. "I didn't know if you wanted to see me."

"I didn't know that either," he confessed, his tone tight, not giving anything away. "Why are you here?"

"I just... Look, I get that you're done, and that you want to get rid of me. I'm sorry about all of this, but I need you to know that that night, was not what you think it was. My mother sent Christopher over to make sure that I was going to go through with the divorce. I didn't kiss him. He kissed me. And I-I didn't let it go on. Luke I..." she saw the confusion and pain mixing in his expression at the reminder. Had she been able to see past her own hurt feelings she might have looked for a reason behind it. Instead she did the only thing she could think of to make everything better for him, she finished what she had gone there to say. "Rory cashed the cheque this morning. So, you're getting your wish. You're free of me. And don't worry because I'll do all of it."

"All of what?"

"Deal with the divorce lawyers and the red tape. Everything. This isn't your mess. It's mine. I'll take care of it. You don't have to worry about it. You don't have to deal with any of it. Not my parents or my ex or me or anything that comes from it."

He sighed, but she wouldn't look at him. "Lorelai..."

"Just promise me one thing?" She asked, her voice unsteady, her arms wrapping tighter around herself.

"What?"

"That no matter what you feel about me, no matter if you no longer want to be my friend or ever see me again, promise me that you'll still love my kid?"

He swallowed back the lump that tried to stop him from speaking. "Always."

She held back the emotion that was spilling through her words. After so many of them, Lorelai was finally learning how much hurt came with goodbyes. "Good, because if anything happens to me, she'll need you."

"I'm here," he told her. "Lorelai, you don't have to do this alone…"

"Yes I do. I owe this to you. Just give me the information I need. You said you knew a lawyer. I'm assuming it's not Nicole."

"No, it's not."

"I'm sorry about that too. Ruining getting back with her, if that's what you wanted."

Sighing, feeling the defeat of the moment, Luke pulled his wallet out and took out the card from the back slot in the aged leather. Without looking at her or it, he handed it to her and then turned to walk away, telling himself over and over that it was better this way. At least now there was a chance to still be on the edge of her life instead of where he feared he'd be otherwise: forgotten.

"It really wasn't what it looked like," she called after him, glad when he paused in his retreat to listen to her words, "I will always love Christopher because of our history together. Because of Rory. But that's it. It's all past tense, finished, that's all folks. And I'm sorry if seeing that hurt you because I don't want to hurt you. Ever. And I- I really am sorry."

She looked down to the ground when he started back towards the diner. There, right where he had just stood was a folded scrap of flattened paper. Curious, she stooped and picked it up. Her throat tightened as she saw what was written on it. It was a hastily written horoscope under the Scorpio sign scrawled in her own hand. And she remembered it. She remembered giving it to him in order to win him over enough to give her coffee. It was the first time they met. It was the beginning of them.

And he had kept it!

Why would be have done that if he didn't care - really care - about her?

Egged on by the hope in that knowledge, she rushed back to the diner, ignoring the traffic light as she jogged across the empty lanes of traffic, up the stairs and through the door, breathless for nerves and encouragement.

She met his eyes. He didn't move from where he stood, at the end of the counter, near the back room, coffee pot resting on the clean counter top. And he waited. With a shaking grip she held out the scrap, "You dropped this."

His eyes dropped to the floor. He had been caught.

A smile curved her lips. "You kept this? All this time? Why?"

He looked up and sought her eyes and held her gaze and she knew. She knew that everything everyone had told her was right. He had waited and he had watched and he had cared. For all these years. He had cared. And he had carried a piece of her with him.

"You should know why," he said in a low tone that brought a smile fully to her lips to hear. It was the tone that she swore he saved just for her, for those moments when they weren't fighting or bickering or teasing. The tone when all the walls came down and they were there, just them without lies or armour or excuses, bare for each other to see. He shrugged, taking the paper from her fingers.

Eyes blinking clear, she looked around, seeing the eyes watching her far too closely. "Can we talk? For a minute, please?"

He paused and she was afraid that he was going to say no. And then he nodded, called to Caesar and then led the way upstairs, holding the door open to his apartment for her to pass through. She looked around as he closed the door. And she smiled. He had gotten a bigger bed.

"You wanted to talk?"

She nodded, taking the card with the lawyer's number out of her back pocket and tore it in half. "I changed my mind on the divorce."

He crossed his arms, not sure what she was doing but knowing that he had been found out enough to have no other choice but to hope and to hear what she had to say. "Oh?"

"Yes, because I discovered some things recently. I discovered family. And I discovered how terrifying it is to really fall in love. It's something that I never had to worry about before. Before you. And now when I think about getting a divorce, when I think about losing you, of breaking our family, it hurts. Physically hurts. So, I'm sorry but if you really want that divorce, you're going to have to fight me for it."

"Are you serious?" He asked, hope dancing in his blue eyes.

She nodded, glad to see his arms fall to his sides as she stepped closer to him. "Very."

"Because you can't just say this and then go and change your mind later on." He said, his tone leaving no room for arguments. Not that she had any. "After right now, the only way you'll be getting out of this is by driving me crazy."

She paused, taking in the annoyed and yet happy seriousness of the man before her. She knew that if she stayed silent for long enough he would launch into a rant, or start what would becoming an argument. A fight. And she knew that there was no where else she'd rather be. "Ten years?" She smiled, "It's a start."

~G.G~

The house was chaos. Everywhere you looked and went to step, there were boxes. So many boxes. Some were put together neatly, labelled with post-its and coloured markers while the others were basically tossed together. That was the only way to know for sure which were coming into the house and which were preparing to leave.

The chaos inside the house was reflected by the chaos of Lorelai's emotions as she entered her kitchen, where Luke and Rory stood, side-by-side, talking about the schedule for tomorrow's move as she helped him prepare dinner. Who knew her daughter wasn't helpless in the kitchen?

"Are you sure about taking the time off? You really don't have to help," she was assuring him, "I'm sure mom can convince enough guys to help move my stuff into the dorms. That way you can stay and unpack. Settle in."

"Rory," he sighed, stopping mid-chop, once again reminded of whose daughter she was. "I'm helping to move you into the dorms. That's it. No arguments. Not only do I want my truck back in one piece - I have seen your mother drive a stick - I want to make sure those guys that you seem to think are so willing to help you move are really the kind of guys you should have around. Again, I've seen your mother's taste in men."

Rory's smile widened, "She seemed to pick you just fine."

"Well, law of averages," he told her with a smile and a wink, "She was bound to get one right eventually."

"Hey now," she called, coming into the room fully, sitting at the table with a content smile, "I'm right here you know."

"Television all set?" Rory asked, turning to her mother.

"All three Godfather movies primed and raring to go. Just waiting on you two and dinner."

Rory turned to look at her step-father, "I still can't believe you've never seen the Godfather."

"Don't worry, by the time you graduate we'll have him up to speed on all the classics."

He sighed, "Can't wait. I suppose there is no way I'm getting out of movie night, is there?"

"Not unless the diner catches fire. Just wait til you watch Sophia die over and over."

Rory frowned, "You're pretty much in a lose-lose situation."

Lorelai focused on her daughter, "Speaking about losing, how am I going to live without you here oh child of mine? How will I go through the day without your presence showering sunlight down upon me? And, more importantly, what am I going to do with your room?"

"My room?" The teen asked, sharing a confused look with Luke. "What do you have planned for my room?"

"Well, Jackson wanted to rent it for storing his antique tools in, and Sookie suggested I turn it into a sewing room. And I won't even suggest what Patty suggested we do upon hearing Luke was moving in."

"Very funny."

Smiling wider, Lorelai continued, "But finally, after weeks of deliberation, I have it! I know what I'm going to do with it."

"What is she talking about?" Rory asked Luke.

He shook his head. "She's your mother."

"Okay, I'll bite. What have you decided to turn my room into?"

Eyes sparkling, her smiling knowing, she look at each of them in turn, drawing out the moment as long as she could. "A nursery."

Rory reacted first, yelling and jumping excitedly with her mother while Luke came to terms with the news. There was going to be another Gilmore. "Replacing me already?" Rory asked, pulling Luke into a hug with her mother.

"Well, you're 18, you can get your own house." She looked to Luke. "You okay?"

He just nodded.

"Are you really going to make my room a nursery?"

Luke turned his attention to his wife, "This is why you mentioned doing an addition?"

"Surprise!"

They soon settled down on the couch, Lorelai between her daughter and her husband, with another child growing just under where her hand rested on her stomach. Her family. After so long of wondering what had been missing from her life, she found it: the word to describe what she already had.

~END~

Thank you to everyone who read and reviewed.

I have a couple more fics that I'm working on, slowly. But if you have any ideas or prompts, please send them my way. I love those!