Lit-ness is always good; I forgot.
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Luke was lying across his bed, staring at the ceiling. He had no idea what he was feeling, but he knew that his mind was racing, a million miles a minute.
Lorelai was pregnant. His girlfriend of six years, whom he'd met at her first daughter's funeral, was pregnant. She was devastated, too--she'd just started a new job, just moved into a new house, and was planning on saving up to buy a couch, a piece of furniture she'd never needed before. But now she was going to have to support a baby, and she felt alone, and she felt desperate, and it had to be the second saddest he'd ever seen her.
He'd tried to make it better, by proposing, but she'd freaked out and locked him out of her house, not allowing him to repeat it. He had half a mind to call her parents, whom he'd never met, and ask what the hell was wrong with their daughter.
His own phone rang, and he sat up quickly. "I'll call you." Those were the last words she'd said to him.
He sprinted from his bed to the phone and grabbed it quickly. "Lorelai?" he asked gruffly, breathless.
"Yes," she said quietly, sadly. He could almost see her tear-streaked face, with shining eyes just poised to burst.
"What?" he asked, wondering if she was answering to her name or his proposal.
"Yes," she said with a sigh, a little louder. "I'll marry you."
"Oh, Lorelai, really?" he asked, excited.
"Yes," she said, with a slight laugh at his excitement. "I mean, why the hell not?"
"Oh, Lorelai, this is great!"
"Yes, it is," she said, laughing a little more. "Come over here and we'll celebrate."
"I'll be right over," he said, practically stumbling in his haste to hang up the phone and rush out the door.
"Huh," Jess said quietly, staring at the floor.
Rory, sitting across from him, reached out and touched his knee softly. She'd just finished explaining her story to Jess--what she knew of it, anyway. "You understand?"
Jess glanced up at Rory, and then continued staring at the floor. "Huh."
Rory sighed. "Is that all you can say?"
Jess looked back at Rory. "You just told me that you're from a parallel universe, basically, and I'm supposed to be your boyfriend. It's a little weird. I'm still processing."
Rory rolled her eyes. "I'm still processing, and I've had longer than you have. But can you go along with this?"
Jess sighed and leaned back in his chair, his hands over his face. He let out a slight groan and dropped his hands. "Why?"
"What?"
"What's in this for me? I mean, why the hell should I help you? I don't know you. You don't know me. And yet, we're supposed to be so involved that I send you to Stars Hollow before I decide I want to live here? I repeat: what's in it for me?"
Rory, stunned, just shook her head and stuttered. "Uh," she started, "I suppose just for the joy of helping your uncle?"
"I don't have to stay here. I can go home. I know I haven't pissed my mom off too badly lately--she'll probably take me back."
Rory sighed. "Can't you just help me? I don't want the gossips all over me about this. It's bad enough when they're all over me for something I can explain."
Jess suddenly looked at Rory, his interest piqued. "Do we know each other in this parallel universe?"
"Uh...what?" Rory asked, a little flustered.
Jess scooted his chair a little closer to Rory, so that their knees were touching and their faces were inches apart. "Are we dating in this parallel universe? Or maybe you just want to. Is that why you're pushing this so hard?"
"Uh, no. In my real life I didn't even know you existed. As a matter of fact, I have a boyfriend," she finished, puffing her chest out in proud defiance.
"Oh, really?" Jess smirked. He placed his hand on her cheek, and then pulled her lips towards his and closed the space between them.
She was halfway into her second trimester when they started. The pains. Tiny little shooting pains on the underside of her steadily growing stomach. The first time they happened, she ignored them. The second time, she was with Luke, and he started worrying, but she never mentioned them again, and so he stopped worrying.
When she started bleeding in the middle of her sixth month he blamed himself. He said it was his fault; he said he should have ignored her protests and rushed her to the hospital right away.
But he knows he couldn't have done anything without her consent. He couldn't even make a simple phone call to her parents without her expressed written consent, she said. But that was only after he'd called them once, right after she'd said yes, to tell them that she'd said yes.
Lorelai was only mad because Emily wanted to take over the wedding right at that moment. Lorelai protested, and told her mother that they were putting it off--as soon as Lorelai was settled into her new position and Luke's Diner really got off the ground, they'd start really planning it.
Lorelai refused to allow Luke to tell Emily anything about her pregnancy. She said what they didn't know wouldn't hurt them. And as soon as they saw the kid, the couldn't be mad at it, so they wouldn't be mad at her. They could always be mad at her while she was pregnant.
He thought over all of this while he sits in the hospital hallway, his father's cap in his hands. He hated hospitals. Always had. His distaste got worse every time he lost a family member. Which, so far, had been every time.
God, he really hoped Lorelai didn't lose the baby.
Lorelai had very slowly come around to the idea of being pregnant and having another child. Once they passed the first trimester, and the baby started to take shape under her skin, she was esctatic. She ran out one weekend and bought every baby thing anyone could ever need, and then spent the next weekend directing Luke as to where everything should go. She set aside a small room on the top floor of her house, just large enough for a crib, where her baby could be when it wasn't with her. Which, of course, would be never.
Lorelai was planning on holding onto this one with all her might to make up for the other one.
Luke knew that if she lost the baby, she might never recover.
Rory practically floated down the stairs, her hand nestled tightly in Jess's, who smirked down the stairs after her. They settled on two stools at the counter, and he draped his arm across her shoulder.
Lorelai watched as her daughter beamed up at this guy, before suddenly leaning towards him and kissing him quickly. Lorelai raised her eyebrows and walked up to the couple.
"How you guys doing? Good?" she asked, keeping her eyes locked on Rory's. Rory just grinned, and nodded fervently, while Jess gave one curt nod. "Uh-huh," Lorelai said. "Well, Luke's having dinner at my house tonight. So you can head on over there if you want to. Leigh here knows the way."
"Right. Leigh," Jess said, smirking at Rory, who blushed.
"Yep," she said. "Leigh...Hayden."
Lorelai raised her eyebrows at Rory's choice of last name. "Hayden. Where have I heard that name?"
Rory looked a little confused, and then said, "Hayden is my dad's last name."
"Oh!" Lorelai said, realizing. "Yeah. Of course. And Jess here has told me all about you, and that's why I know your last name."
"Of course," Rory said, playing along for the town.
Jess rolled his eyes. "Come on, Leigh, let's go to Lorelai's and find something to do."
The couple dropped from the stools and headed out the door, their fingers intertwined and identical grins on their faces. Luke walked over to Lorelai and whispered in her ear, "Whaddaya think? Is it working?"
"Oh, it's working," Lorelai said, keeping her eye on Jess and Rory as they wandered down the street. "A little too well, I think."
The third funeral she'd ever attended. The second funeral of a child of hers.
Sitting in the front row of the church, a tiny wooden box in front of her, she was in devestated shock.
A boy. She'd had a tiny boy.
When she started bleeding, her doctor put her in the hospital, and kept her there for a month before telling her the baby was gone. The doctor explained to her, in gentle yet piercing tones, that they were going to have to induce labor, at which point the child would be stillborn.
Luke was currently sitting next to her in the pew, close enough that she could feel his heat.
She didn't want to feel his heat.
She wanted to move, away from Luke, away from life, but she didn't dare ruin the sanctity of her baby's funeral. Her baby had no name, even though she had lists of names at home. When her boy had been delivered, she didn't want to name it, because she felt it was giving a name to death, to grief.
After the funeral, she left Luke at the diner and walked to the Inn, to the site of the other funeral. She sat on the bench overlooking the lake, where she'd sat six years before. The lake was like a mirror, reflecting the bright blue sky.
She was mad at the weather. It was completely illogical, but she was mad at the weather. It seemed like when the skies should be black with tears, they were always bright blue. At Rory's funeral, the sky had also been completely clear.
He sat down next to her, like he had six years before, but this time she didn't speak or cry on his shoulder. She simply slipped his mother's engagement ring from her finger and set it on his knee, all while staring at the lake. He glanced at the ring, and then at her, but she ignored him and remained silent. Resigned, he wrapped his hand around the ring and followed her gaze.
She gave one curt nod, stood swiftly from the bench, and walked away.
He remained on the bench until he knew she was gone.