Luke wasn't surprised to pick up the diner's phone a week later and hear Lorelai's voice. They called each other often now, sometimes several times a day, so getting a call from her wasn't unusual. What she was actually calling about, however―that was often a surprise.

"Hey, Luke, what's your truck doing tomorrow?" she asked, as soon as he said hello.

"Well, considering that fact that it's―what's the word? Oh, I know, mine―it'll be parked where it usually is, waiting for me to need it."

"You're sounding like an automotive dictator there, Luke. You don't want to be like that, do you? Think of your poor truck, just stuck out there in the street day after day, always hoping that today's the day maybe you take it someplace fun. Like Hartford, say. Don't you want your truck to have fun, Luke? Are you really going to stand in the way of it having a chance to go to Hartford?"

"Do you even know how to drive a stick?" he asked, doubtfully.

"In deference to our friendship, I'm not even going to turn that into something dirty," Lorelai replied, magnanimously. "And you know I could, so easily. So the answer is yes, I can drive a manual transmission." She paused just a beat. "Theoretically."

He looked around and saw that several customers were waiting on their orders. He knew he needed to finish up the call. "OK," he reluctantly agreed. "You can borrow the truck."

"Thanks, Luke. Your truck will be so grateful to have a day away. You won't be sorry. It'll be like a new truck when it gets back."

"That's what I'm worried about," Luke muttered.

"Now," Lorelai blithely plunged on, "I was wondering if I could borrow your legs, and your arms, and your manly strong back tomorrow—and, oh, what the heck—the rest of you, too."

There was a pause. A pause that stretched out so long that Lorelai finally gasped in shock on her end of the conversation. "Oh, my God! Luke! You were thinking something dirty! Weren't you? Admit it!"

There was another short pause before Luke finally muttered, "No," not very convincingly.

"I'm so proud!" Lorelai chortled. "I knew I'd rub off on you sooner or later!"

Luke squeezed his eyes shut. Suddenly the whole conversation seemed to have tottered off down a dirty path. "What do you need my body for?" he asked, wincing as the words came out.

Luckily for him, Lorelai decided to continue the conversation without pointing out the salacious content of his words. "I need to go to Hartford tomorrow."

"Yeah, I figured that part out," he said gruffly. "What for?"

"Mia found this incredible breakfront at an auction and got it for a steal. She wants it to go in the dining room here at the Inn. She thinks it'll great for buffet items. Apparently it's got some damage to the back of it, so she thinks we can run wiring through it and set some warming trays right into it. Anyway, it was supposed to arrive last week, and I have the carpenter scheduled for the day after tomorrow to install it. But it got as far as the freight company in Hartford, and they've got some sort of problem with one of their trucks and they don't know when they can actually deliver it to us. The big problem with that is that the carpenter I hired is really busy, and if he doesn't do the work this week, there's no guarantee when we can get him back. So that's why I thought maybe if we could just go get it ourselves we could keep everything on schedule."

"You know," Luke pointed out, antsy to get back to the kitchen, "if you just would have explained that to me to start with, I would have agreed to go right away."

"Aw, where's the fun in that?" Lorelai groused. "You'll go then?" she asked, hopefully.

"Lorelai," he sighed, impatiently, "of course I'll go. Anytime you really need help, of course I'll help." He couldn't believe he had to spell it out for her. "When do we need to be there?"

"The place closes at 5, so anytime before that is fine. You decide what fits best into your schedule." For all of her implied selfishness, she was always careful to inconvenience him as little as possible.

"I'll look at tomorrow's hours and get back to you, then."

"Thanks, Luke." The happy, warm note in her voice absolutely made his day. "Man, this friendship thing just has all sorts of perks to it, doesn't it?"

He wanted to roll his eyes but found himself smiling instead. "See you later," he said. He turned after hanging up the phone and discovered that Miss Patty and Babette had their eyes glued to him.

"Eat!" he thundered at them, weary that they were still trying to make him and Lorelai into something.

"We would, Dollface, but…" and Babette pointed to their table, noticeably lacking in food.

"Oh," he muttered, feeling foolish, and hurried to the kitchen to get their order.

Once he was out of earshot, Miss Patty leaned towards Babette. "Did you see that smile?" she asked, conspiratorially, to her comrade in arms.

"Yeah, she's still the only one who can get him to smile like that," Babette agreed. She raised her iced tea glass towards Patty. "Here's to hopin'."

Miss Patty chuckled as she clinked her water glass against Babette's. "Here's to hope, indeed!"

The atmosphere in the truck on the way to Hartford the next day was totally different from that horrendous date night that now seemed so long ago. Lorelai did her usual stream-of-consciousness chatter, and Luke had learned how to jump into the conversation when she paused for breath. The miles clicked away briskly and it really didn't matter that the old truck's radio was tuned to a baseball game.

Lorelai pulled out the directions and navigated the last few miles to the freight depot. Luke stopped in front of the business office and Lorelai jumped out.

"Wait," he said, pulling on the parking brake. "I'll go with you."

"Nah, I'll just be a minute." She smiled at him before rushing off.

He fumed as he watched her attractive backside, clad in tight jeans today, disappear into the front office. He always worried about what guys who didn't know her would try to pull because of how pretty she was and how provocatively she dressed. And how fearless she was. He knew it wasn't his place to worry, but he did it anyway. You worry about your friends, right? And it was worry, after all. Not jealousy. Definitely not jealousy.

Just a few minutes passed before she reappeared, happily bouncing back into the truck. "We need to go around this way, back to the loading dock," she told him, pointing.

He circled around behind the building and backed the truck up to the ramp. They got out and Luke put down the tailgate.

Lorelai pointed to the rope and pads he'd thrown into the back. "Smart," she observed.

"I've done this a time or two," he told her.

She grinned, angling her eyebrow suggestively. "I like a man with experience."

He sighed and shook his head, but before she could take it to a really dirty place, a worker pushed a large cart out through the plastic flaps of the loading area, bearing at least a half-dozen wooden crates on it.

"Wait, wait!" Lorelai rushed up to him at once. "This can't be ours. We've got a piece of furniture, not this."

The worker shrugged, pointing at the numbers on the crates and the one on Lorelai's receipt. "This says it's yours, lady."

She looked from one crate to another, frowning in confusion. "There's got to be a mistake." She looked to Luke for confirmation.

Luke grabbed a crowbar from the back of the truck and approached one of the boxes. "OK?" he asked, both of the freight employee and Lorelai.

Lorelai nodded approval and the worker said, "It's your stuff. Knock yourself out."

Luke pried the top off of one crate and he and Lorelai anxiously peered inside. She cleared off the packing material and pulled out a carved piece of dark wood that might have been the front of a drawer.

They stared at it a moment, and then at all of the other crates. Lorelai started to giggle.

"No wonder Mia got such a good deal on it!"

"I have a feeling your carpenter's going to need more than one day on this job," Luke commented.

"It's like IKEA, the old-fashioned way!" She couldn't stop giggling. "Oh, Mia, what were you thinking!"

In short order the crates were loaded, the tailgate closed, and they were on their way again.

Lorelai was unusually quiet as she tried to salvage a plan to make this unexpected development work.

Luke reached the highway that would have taken them back to Stars Hollow, but an idea made him pause. "Hey," he said, nudging Lorelai, "show me where you lived."

"What?" Her mind was still working on how many days it was going to take to put together this piece of furniture, times the carpenter's going rate, plus the days of disarray in the dining room. "Where?" she asked, distracted.

"I want to see your house," Luke clarified. "Show me where you lived when you were growing up."

She started shaking her head. "That's probably not a good idea. It's bad enough I have to see it every Friday night for the rest of my life."

"Come on," he cajoled, giving her his one-sided smile, his eyes twinkling. He'd once told her she wasn't the only one who knew how to flirt.

She bit her lip, staring at him. "Why?"

"Why not?" he challenged. "You wanted to know all about my life before you knew me. I can't know about yours?"

He couldn't help but notice that all of the customary sparkle had drained right out of her. He was ready to tell her to forget it when she sighed and jerked her head to the right. "Turn here," she told him. "Turn left at the second light."

As he drove he kept waiting for her to tell him something about the streets they were traveling on or the buildings they were passing. Lorelai usually had a story about everything, and he'd expected to hear all sorts of hair-raising tales from her growing-up years here in Hartford. But she was silent, merely muttering directions to him from time to time. Finally she tapped her finger against her side of the door.

"Pull over here," she instructed.

He put the truck in park and craned his neck, looking out through the windshield. He studied the gray wall and the gate blocking the drive that curved up to an imposing gray mansion. "What's this?" he asked, curious.

"This is it," she replied dully. "This is my parents' house."

He felt his mouth drop open in a decidedly uncool fashion. "You're kidding? This is your house?"

"It was," she said, shortly.

"Wow." He marveled at the size of it. "It looks like the sort of place that'd have maids and butlers."

"Maids, anyway," Lorelai agreed, stiffly. "Notice the plural. My mother goes through help faster than Patty goes through husbands."

"Geez, Lorelai," he muttered, still staring at the house.

"Can we go now?" she asked, clearly uncomfortable.

He shook his head at her, a little irritated. "What's so bad about me wanting to see where you grew up?"

She snorted in disgust. "I only lived here for awhile, Luke! I grew up in Stars Hollow! You know that!"

He studied her for some long moments, deliberately calm, while she battled with her inner demons.

"Come on, Lorelai," he finally said. "You really want me to believe that it was that bad living here? It was so awful that you had to take that little baby and run away? I'm not buying it!"

She curled her fingernails into her palms, trying to stop herself from yelling at him. "I think you're confusing my family with yours. It wasn't the same."

"It was that bad here?" he asked, skeptically. "You had help, money, every advantage? Your only choice was to run away from all of this?"

"Did you play baseball?" she asked, out of the blue.

"You know I did," he said, shrugging. "You've made fun of my trophies."

"I don't mean high school. I mean when you were little. Like grade-school age."

"Sure. You mean like Little League? Or games in friend's backyards? I think the church even organized some teams one summer."

She nodded. "And why did you play?"

"Why?" He laughed at her. "I was a kid. It was fun."

"Fun is irrelevant, Luke," she told him, her voice hard. "What were you going to gain by playing on these teams? Who were the other boys on the teams? Did some of them have dads that could help your dad in business? Come on, that's the only consideration. Fun," she scoffed, sarcastically.

"I was eight!" he protested.

"Doesn't matter. If there's nothing to gain socially from playing, you don't play."

"Who thinks like that?"

"They do!" She jerked her arm at the big gray gate. "Everyone up and down this street thinks that way! Everyone at the club thinks that way," she said, her voice taking on a haughty tone.

He looked at her, the disbelief still written on his face. "You're trying to tell me you never got to do what you wanted to do?"

She sighed. "Luke, I never had a playdate that wasn't arranged for some greater purpose. Everything was done with an eye to the future. Their future; not mine, necessarily. Will this help her get into the right preschool? Will that lead to the right elementary academy? Will she have the contacts necessary to be accepted into the right high school? College? And finally, marriage. The right marriage, to an old and high-placed family, preferably with old money, too. That's all that matters." She paused and rubbed at her forehead. "You know, my parents even walked in on me and Christopher doing 'way more than we should have been doing one time, and after they got over the shock of it they were practically gloating because Christopher was a catch. His dad could help my dad. It was acceptable, right up until he got me pregnant," she added sourly.

The disbelieving look on Luke's face was now mixed with disgust.

She sighed, preparing to continue. "I loved horseback riding lessons. I was really good at it, too. But after a year my parents made me stop because it wasn't going to get me any further. They wanted me to know how to ride just in case I ever got invited to someone's fancy weekend estate and needed to be able to do it. They didn't care that I loved it, or that it was fun to me. They made me stop, even though my instructor came to see them and begged them to let me continue. There was plenty of money for lessons - that wasn't the problem. It just wasn't useful. And if I stopped then and started taking tennis lessons, I could partner up with a girl whose mom could help my mom in the DAR hierarchy. It didn't matter what I wanted to do. You know what a lousy athlete I am. You can imagine how much I sucked at tennis. And we won't even go into the five years of ballet lessons, where they tried in vain to teach me to be graceful. It was part of the master plan, so I had to do it."

She looked over at Luke, hoping that he understood how she'd always felt like an outsider in this house.

Instead he gave her his smirk. "Poor little rich girl, huh?"

She jutted her chin out at his coldness before tucking it back against her chest. She folded her arms over herself and turned as much as she could towards the door.

"You can't understand," she muttered. "Can we…Please, can we just go?"

"Sure," he agreed curtly, getting the truck moving. He tried to appear unruffled, but something was poking at him, worrying him. This wasn't the way he'd wanted this afternoon to end.

Just before he was ready to turn onto the highway home, he looked over at Lorelai again. Now that he knew how to read her so much better, he realized that her shoulders were hunched over in sadness, not anger. Her lips were turned down in misery. Talking about what had been her life here in Hartford had torn away the shiny façade she always kept in place. He felt responsible for her melancholy. He'd hurt her feelings, and he was ashamed.

Abruptly he turned into a McDonalds and headed for the drive-thru. "A large chocolate shake," he said into the speaker. "Anything else?" he questioned her.

Her eyes jumped over to his. "Fries," she added, the placid tone of her voice making him hopeful that she'd talk to him more.

"Large fries," he ordered.

He handed her the shake and the sack with the fries before pulling into a parking space at the front of the building. He watched her take a long pull at the milkshake straw before he said anything.

"OK," he said, settling himself against the door, so that he could see her better. "You're right," he conceded. "I don't understand. You're the one with all the words, so use 'em. Make me understand."

"Luke," she said, hesitantly, her brain floundering at how she could possibly enlighten him. She shoved a handful of fries into her mouth, shaking her head.

He sighed too, glancing out the windshield. "Just tell me why you left with Rory. Start there."

She swallowed and wiped off her mouth and fingers with the flimsy napkin she found in the bag. She looked off into the distance, gathering her thoughts.

"I came home one afternoon from class. My parents had made sure I'd gotten my GED and they were making me take some introductory college classes. You know, because we couldn't deviate away from the grand master plan, even though there was a baby to care for. That's what nannies are for, after all. So I came home, and both Mom and Dad were home, which was unusual. They were entertaining, which wasn't unusual."

Lorelai paused, squeezing a French fry between her fingers, scowling as she remembered that particular afternoon. "I found out that the people scarfing down the salmon puffs were the board members of a premier preschool that they wanted Rory to attend. And it just hit me, you know? It was starting all over again. I wasn't going to have any say in raising my daughter. They were beginning to pull the strings again. Rory wasn't going to get to play with the little girl in pigtails who got her jokes, because she was just there on a scholarship. She wasn't going to get to take riding lessons, or whatever her thing was going to be. They were going to force her into the same mold they'd tried to fit me into, and I just couldn't stand it. I wanted better for her. I wanted happier for her."

She chanced a glance over at Luke, hoping he was more sympathetic now.

"But, Lorelai," he started, trying hard to find a way to voice his opinion without hurting her feelings, "you were just a kid. They could have helped you. They wanted to help you!"

She nodded, accepting that. "But their help came with so many strings, Luke. So many rules. I wanted Rory to have so much more than I did. Not in things, because I knew I couldn't give her many things. But in feelings. I just wanted her to have a chance to be a kid. Just a normal kid."

He rubbed his finger over his upper lip while he contemplated that.

"There was another day, a couple of weeks after the cocktail party for the preschool people," Lorelai continued. "It was such a beautiful late summer day. I came home and all I could think about was grabbing Rory and taking her to the park to enjoy that day. I wanted to see her big eyes taking in everything and hear her little giggle as she crawled through the grass. I ran upstairs and got her. She had on some frou-frou outfit my mother had picked out, so I needed to change her into her little jeans and a t-shirt to go to the park. But I couldn't find them. I couldn't find any of her real clothes. Everything hanging in her closet was full of scratchy ruffles and lace and was just ridiculous. The longer I searched the madder I got, so by the time I found that week's maid I was absolutely furious. The maid cracked instantly and told me that my mother had made her take all of the clothes I'd gotten Rory and stuff them into a box and push them under my bed, so there'd be room for all of the proper clothes she'd gotten her. They wouldn't even let me dress her, Luke. My kid, not even a year old, and she had to dress all the time like she was going to a cocktail party. It was insane!"

He pressed his lips together and gave a curt nod. "But it was just clothes, wasn't it? I mean, was that really such a big deal?"

She dumped the French fries back into the bag and folded the top down forcefully. "What finally made up my mind to leave…" She trailed off, as the memory made her pause. "I was carrying Rory into the dining room for dinner one night, and of course, both of us had to be dressed properly for dinner. I was carrying her, and I could feel myself getting all tensed up, like I was preparing for battle. And I looked over at this perfect, beautiful little angel I was carrying—" She had to pause again, as her throat suddenly closed up on her. She blew out a breath and looked over at Luke, silently begging him to understand what she was going to say. "Rory had pressed her tiny little hands over her ears. She couldn't even talk yet, Luke, but she knew what was going to happen in that dining room. She knew it was going to be loud, and angry, and hurtful. It just killed me. You can't imagine how it made me feel, to know that I was subjecting my daughter to that hateful atmosphere every night. It made me sick. I'd promised myself it was going to be different for her, that I was going to take care of her. But I wasn't. So I had to go. I had to try. I had to be better. For Rory."

Luke turned and looked out his window, his fingers drumming tensely on the steering wheel. She could see the muscle in his jaw flinch.

She leaned over and lightly touched his arm. "I know you think I was wrong, because of what happened with Liz and her baby. But it wasn't the same, Luke. I know you and your dad would have done anything to help her, but it wasn't really help that my parents were offering me. It was complete control over me and over Rory. I had to take the chance, Luke, to make a better life for Rory. I had to."

His jaw was still working, and he couldn't look at her fully yet. "You were just a baby," he said, gruffly.

"Yeah." She gave a short little laugh, and he was relieved to hear it. "Inside I felt all grown up, but when I see pictures now, I realize I was just this little twerp."

His face was somber. "Don't you ever think about what could've happened?"

She drew in a sharp breath. "Oh, yeah. Do you remember being 17? How that felt? Like you were absolutely invincible? I mean, even if you were smart and you knew, intellectually, all of the stuff that could happen, you were just convinced that it'd never, ever happen to you?"

"Yeah," Luke agreed, remembering.

"I think that's the only way I did it. I was convinced that I could do it, so I did it. I didn't believe that I could fail. It's the only explanation. Now there are nights when I wake up in a sweaty panic from some nightmare about all the stuff that could have gone wrong if I hadn't stumbled into Stars Hollow and Mia's protecting arms. I think about all of the awful things that could have happened to Rory, and to me, and I just panic. If Rory'd ever try to do something like that, I'd freak out. But luckily Rory's not me, so I don't think I have to worry about that." She gave him a shaky smile.

"You've given Rory a good life," he commented.

"I hope so. I worry about that, too," she admitted, slowly, her defenses now completely down with him.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, it's just like I said, Rory's not me. I worry that someday she's going to look at everything I took her away from and she's going to blame me. Her life could have been so much easier if I'd kept us in Hartford. She'd have been in Chilton from the start. These kids that are giving her such a hard time now would have been her friends since preschool. She likes some of that stuff, Luke. I see it when we're with my parents. It doesn't turn her stomach like it does me. I worry that she's going to grow up someday and want the country clubs and the golf lessons and the DAR. And she's going to resent me for keeping it all away from her."

Luke was shaking his head vehemently. "Not gonna happen," he said, firmly. "Look at what she's had, Lorelai. She's had you. She's never gonna regret that."

She smiled tremulously at him, gratefully.

He pointed at the crumpled bag of fries. "You don't want them?"

She tightened her mouth into a line of disgust. "They're not yours. Can we just go home now, please? I don't want Hartford fries. I want yours. Please?"

"Sure," he said, secretly pleased. He turned the key to start the truck, but rather than backing out of the parking spot he turned to her. "Look, Lorelai, I know that in the past, all we've ever done is sort of snipe at each other, like we really didn't want to admit that we cared about each other. We never said what we really felt. But I want you to know, now, that I'm really proud of how you've raised Rory. You're a good mom. You've made a good life for both of you." He stopped talking for a moment, convincing himself it was OK to continue. "I'm glad…I'm thankful you're my friend."

Her hand involuntarily clasped itself around the clear crystal heart hanging from her neck. "Thank you, Luke," she said softly, touched beyond measure at his words.

He nodded, his own heart soaring at how the afternoon had redeemed itself. He smiled, completely satisfied, and he started the truck heading towards home.