Author's Note #1: For those of you who have read this story before, there's a special note for you at the end of the chapter.
#2: Thanks to all of you who have been so encouraging and supportive about this story. It's greatly appreciated! And don't worry, if I'm not posting, it's usually because I'm working on something new. A special hug of thanks to Nancy, who wrote such a lovely review on the last chapter. Since you signed in as a guest, I can't PM you, but I wanted you to know how much what you said warmed my heart!
#3: And last but not least, a big thank you to Eledgy, my incredible writing buddy. Thanks for holding my hand and coming through with such great suggestions! I owe ya!
There was a strange car parked where Lorelai's should have been.
For just a moment Luke scowled, thinking that Lorelai didn't need unexpected company. And then he felt foolish. Once again he'd forgotten that this strange red van was their car.
He'd tried to convince her for months that they needed something other than the Jeep once the baby came. Lorelai insisted that the Jeep would be sufficient. Finally one day in late January he simply handed her the new baby car seat and told her to try it out. He watched from behind the living room curtain while she struggled for 45 minutes to fit it into the backseat. It practically killed him not to go out and help her, but he was starting to understand the whole 'tough love' thing. When her patience ran out she stormed inside, throwing the seat into a corner of the foyer before stomping upstairs. At dinnertime she came back down, polite but distant, and made no mention of her failed attempt at car seat installation. The next morning Gypsy phoned him at the diner, saying that she understood they were looking for a family-friendly car and she knew a guy in Middlebury with a great deal on a used van.
By the end of the week the van was home with them and the Jeep had found a new parking place on the far side of the garage. Privately, Luke didn't think there was any need to keep the Jeep, but he understood Lorelai's attachment to the vehicle, and he'd also learned how to pick his battles. The Jeep could live beside the garage for now and everyone was happy.
Luke pulled the keys out of the truck's ignition and pocketed them as he quickly stepped down to the ground. He expertly skirted the melting mounds of late-February slush as he hurried to the porch.
Sookie had called him about thirty minutes ago, letting him know that she'd sent Lorelai home to take a nap, and amazingly, Lorelai had meekly agreed. The baby was due in just a few weeks and that uncharacteristic behavior was alarming enough for Sookie to tip him off. He hadn't asked her to, either. He'd learned his lesson about that, too.
He entered the quiet house and immediately scanned the living room. She wasn't on the couch, and the kitchen was unoccupied, so he tiptoed up the stairs as softly as he could.
The door to their room was ajar. He pushed it open just a little bit further until he had a clear view of her asleep on the bed, a pillow squished up against her side to help cushion the load. A confusing mix of love, panic, fear, and sympathy flooded over him as he watched her trying to get the rest that eluded her at night. Between the heartburn, the regular trips to the bathroom, and the baby's penchant for doing Rockette-worthy kicks every time she tried to drift off, Lorelai wasn't getting much sleep. Nightly he rubbed her back and tried everything he could think of to help her find comfort, but he understood they were in the homestretch now and there wasn't much he could do. But still, her weary face troubled his heart.
He watched for a few moments longer, not able to contain a grin. Lorelai had taken to wearing one of his shirts while she was at home, and right now the blue-plaid flannel was bouncing over her stomach because the baby once again had the hiccups. The grin faded when he realized just how tired she must be, if she was able to sleep through the little earthquakes shaking her belly.
With a sigh he turned and headed back downstairs as quietly as he could. He stood in the living room for a few minutes, unsure of what to do next. He didn't want to leave her here alone and go back to the diner, but on the other hand, she was fine, and he didn't want her to catch him hovering, either.
He paced around the room a few times, jingling the car keys. Finally he stopped beside the desk. He decided he'd write a note and leave it on the bedside table with her phone, saying simply that he'd stopped by and that she should call him if she needed anything at all. Or maybe he should just say to call him with her dinner request. He nodded. Yeah, that was better.
He was still searching for a pen when he thought he heard a car outside. He turned to the window and caught a glimpse of the Prius.
A huge smile broke over his face. An unexpected visit from Rory would rejuvenate Lorelai like nothing else. Plus, she'd be here to watch over her mother, and he could go back to the diner with a clear conscience.
He pulled open the door just as Rory was climbing the steps.
"Hey, stranger," he grinned at her. "This is a nice surprise!"
She nodded at him, but didn't smile. She pushed her hair back behind her ear, in that same nervous gesture her mother used. Her eyes skittered over the porch and back to her car, anywhere but to his face.
"What's wrong?" he asked, instantly sober. He put a hand on her shoulder, squeezing it. He tried to get her to look at him. "Tell me what's going on."
"Oh, Luke." She put her hands over her face, briefly, before once again looking nervously back over at her car. "I didn't know what to do. You need to know. Mom needs to know, but I don't want to upset her. I just…I didn't know what else to do." She finally looked at him, and the edgy look in her eyes at once put him on protective alert.
"We'll fix it," he told her automatically, trying to draw her inside. "Come on, it'll be OK. Whatever it is, just tell me, OK?"
She pulled away, resisting his attempts to get her inside the house. Once again she looked apprehensively towards her car, so he looked too, and was surprised to see that someone else was in her car.
Luke watched the passenger unfold himself from the car. He shook the wrinkles out of his expensive coat and slowly walked around the front of the car, scanning the neighborhood casually while he headed for the house.
Luke felt his body seize with shock. His jaw tensed and his hands automatically clenched into fists at his side. He turned to Rory, seething.
"You brought him here?" he hissed.
"Luke." Rory tried to find the words to explain, helplessly shaking her head.
"Hello, Luke," Christopher said in his usual trying-to-be-charming way, climbing up the steps as though he had a perfect right to be there.
"You will not enter this house," Luke growled like Gandalf, planting himself firmly in the middle of the doorway.
Christopher quirked an eyebrow at that. "Oh, it's your house now, is it?" he asked, sounding amused.
"Yes!" Luke snapped. "And you are not welcome here. Ever!"
Christopher put his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels, smiling. "We'll see about that, I guess."
Luke continued to growl and took a step towards him but Rory blocked him. She put both hands on his shoulders and tried to push him back. "Luke," she said somewhat desperately, "remember that no matter what, he's still my dad."
Luke glared, but had to concede that point.
"You've got to listen," Rory urged him. "You've got to hear this, and then you've got to decide if Mom can hear it or not. I know she's got to sometime, but I don't want to tell her right now if you think it would be too much."
"Tell Mom what?" Lorelai's cheerful voice suddenly came from just inside the doorway. "Oh, I think I recognize that navy blue coat! Could it be my own long-lost daughter?" she asked, playfully dramatic. She poked Luke in the ribs as she made her little joke.
"Hey, Kid!" she cried out, delighted, trying to peer around Luke's shoulder. They all heard her gasp a split-second later. "God," she choked out, stunned. "Christopher."
Working together on some psychic level, Rory instantly spun around and she and Luke met shoulder-to-shoulder, blocking Lorelai as much from view as possible.
"Good to see you, Lor," Christopher said in a lazy, sweet way, as if he'd just seen her a few days ago.
"Her name is Lorelai," Luke blazed out at him. Geez, that nickname bugged him!
"Hey, she's been Lor to me since we were G.G.'s age," he told Luke with a self-deprecating grin. "No way could I keep myself from calling her that. I mean, that's who she's always been to me."
"You need to get out of here now," Luke seethed, taking a step.
"Luke, once again, he's my dad, remember?" Rory turned partway, putting a cautionary hand on Luke's arm. "And besides, you need to hear this first."
"Yowzer." Christopher had caught sight of Lorelai's figure. His hands went to his hips as he studied her roundness, shocked. He laughed a little, shaking his head in disbelief. "Yeah, I can see that my little prank really tore up your lives. What, you managed not to touch each other for a full 24 hours afterwards?"
Luke made a sudden lunge towards him but Lorelai threw an arm around his shoulder. "Don't!" she warned, and Luke stopped in his tracks, still glaring.
Christopher's mouth dropped open, spying the rings now visible on Lorelai's hand. "And they're married?" he questioned Rory, confused. "Why didn't you tell me that?"
"Yes, we're married!" Lorelai said desperately. "So just go, Chris, please!"
Christopher was still staring at Rory, trying to figure it out. "You made it sound like this was a big deal. Looks to me like they're just fine. What's all the drama about?"
"You slimy sonofabitch," Luke said precisely, folding his arms tightly across his chest. "You have no idea the pain you've caused."
"Dad," Rory cut in, bluntly, realizing that time was running out. "Just tell them."
He studied Rory for a moment, then put his hands back in his pockets, rocking back on his heels. "Fine," he said, shrugging. "Nothing happened," he said, with one of his 'aw, shucks' smiles on his lips.
Lorelai's hand tightened on Luke's shoulder. "What are you talking about?"
Christopher shrugged again. "That infamous night in Boston that apparently got blown up into some huge deal. Nothing happened."
Lorelai glanced over at Rory, trying to read her anxious face. "I don't understand. Are you just saying that because you think it's what I want to hear, or something?"
He rolled his eyes. "No, I'm saying it because it's the truth. Nothing happened," he said again, sighing.
Lorelai took a step out from the doorway, pushing herself between Luke and Rory. She was shaking her head. "I don't know what you think you're trying to pull!" she said, becoming irritated. "I was there, remember? You can't go all conveniently revisionist on me now!"
"You don't remember though. Do you?" he questioned her gently.
She looked at him for a long time before slowly shaking her head.
"That's because there isn't anything to remember, Lor," he explained. "You came to my door in extreme pain, because of Mr. Wonderful here. I medicated you with tequila, just like the old days. You matched me shot for shot and pretty nearly cried yourself sick. When you couldn't hold your head up anymore you crawled down the hall to bed. I sat on the couch and downed a few more in your honor. I crashed on the couch and didn't wake up until Nanny got there in the morning."
"But that's not…" Lorelai stared at him, trying to evaluate his words and expression. She worried her lips and shook her head stubbornly. "In the morning…I was…and you were…G.G. said," she pointed out, her voice tormented.
"Well, yeah, in the morning, all bets were off." He still was giving her his charming, rakish smile, the one that always served to get him out of scrapes. "You weren't drunk and crying over this jerk anymore. I thought maybe it would be possible to convince you that you had other alternatives in the morning."
Luke flinched and Lorelai drew in a sharp breath. "Are you telling me the truth?" she demanded.
"Why in the world would I make up that nothing happened?" he demanded back.
"I don't know," Lorelai said, slowly. She studied him some more. "Nothing happened," she repeated faintly, trying out the idea.
"Nothing happened," he confirmed once again. "Thanks, though, for thinking that I'm such scum-bucket that I'd try to take advantage of you like that. I can't tell you how good that made me feel," he chastised her.
Luke wondered if this was what it felt like, to be in shock. His brain seemed to be lagging several steps behind the conversation, and his chest didn't want to allow enough air into his lungs. "But why would you lie like that?" he asked, trying to make sense of it. "Why would you do that?"
"First off, I didn't lie. Not actually. Lor assumed the worst and I chose not to correct her. And secondly, why did I do it?" He looked at Luke smugly. "I did it because in that split second, when she jumped out of bed all horrified, I realized I'd stumbled on a way to keep her away from you! And as far as I was concerned, that's exactly what she needed to do."
"Why would you want to hurt her like that?" Luke could barely comprehend what he was hearing.
"Me? Me hurt her?" Christopher gave a sarcastic laugh. "I wasn't trying to hurt her! I was trying to help her! Keeping her far away from you was the best way to help her! When she came to me that night I didn't even recognize her, you had her so broken. She wasn't the same Lorelai anymore. You'd turned her into some poor, colorless creature, scared to even say boo. I couldn't stand to see her like that. And then, boom! The next morning I realized I'd found the one way to make sure Mr. Self-Righteous wouldn't get close to her anymore. I knew you wouldn't want anything to do with her if you thought she was damaged goods. Tell me," he wondered, turning to Lorelai, "did he kick you to the curb as soon as he found out?"
"Chris," she cautioned, still reeling.
He spun back to Luke, sticking his chin out in a superior way. "What I don't understand is how you could be stupid enough to think she'd cheat on you in the first place!" He shook his head at Luke. "That night, even though you'd destroyed her, she still wouldn't say anything bad about you. She just kept sobbing about how you didn't want her anymore and somehow that was all her fault."
The fight had all gone out of Luke. "Because… she told me so," he muttered, staring at the floor. He glanced quickly over at Lorelai, wetting his lips. "And I saw her eyes. Her eyes always tell me everything." He rubbed a hand over his own.
"But why did you let this awful mess go on for so long?" Lorelai insistently asked Chris. At the same time she put a comforting hand on Luke's arm. "If this was some sort of…of a…scheme, when you knew it didn't work, why didn't you tell me?"
Christopher shrugged. "Rory said you guys were back together anyway, so I figured it hadn't made any real difference. Why bring it up?"
"Why bring―" Lorelai started to scoff. Luke shook off her hand, his anger back.
"I don't understand you. I've never understood you, and thank God I don't, because I wouldn't want to be anything like you! You're always proclaiming how much you care about Lorelai, but yet your actions always harm her! You've never tried to take of her! You've never tried to protect her! You don't care how much she gets hurt! No, it's fine if she's hating herself, just so good ol' Christopher can try to get his way!" Luke suddenly flung an arm over to where Rory was standing, pale and quiet. "And then there's your daughter, somebody you never give a damn about at all! How do you think she's felt for all of these months?" He tried to ignore the overwhelming desire to cross the porch and rip Christopher's well-coiffed head off of his body. "How can you be such a constant selfish bastard?" he asked heatedly.
"Whoa there. Calm down!" Lorelai wrapped her arm around Luke, got him to turn to face her. Her eyes were glowing and her mouth was gently curving into what he always thought of as her 'angel smile'―something that didn't grace her face very often. Her luminous serenity drew him in; calmed him enough to hear her. "Luke," she said, her voice wrapped in sheer delight, "I didn't do it!"
"I know," Luke gulped, "but he―"
"Doesn't matter," Lorelai insisted. "What matters is I didn't do it! I didn't do it! I didn't do it!" She was giddy with joy and tried to jump up and down, but the baby put a stop to that. She looked at Luke, her face shining with relief, as her arm cradled the baby inside her.
He blinked into her happy eyes and tried to reach for her, but Rory got there first. She raced over to her mother, hugging her tightly.
"It's all OK now, right?" Rory's voice was muffled against Lorelai.
"Yes, Sweets, it's OK," Lorelai confirmed, her eyes still locked onto Luke's.
He stepped closer to them, wanting; needing to be with them.
Lorelai moved her head from nuzzling against Rory's to Luke's shoulder. She looked directly at Christopher. Luke felt her draw in a huge breath.
"Thank you for coming here today. Thank you for telling us the truth. But now I don't want to see you or hear from you or even hear about you for a really, really long time. You should leave, Chris. Now."
Chris opened his mouth to protest but Luke beat him to it.
"That's it?" he fumed, angrily stabbing his finger at Christopher. "He gets off once again scot-free? He doesn't have to suffer any consequences for what he did?"
Lorelai's gaze shifted to her daughter's stony glare, which was directed at her father. "He's not getting off scot-free," she assured Luke, softly. "He doesn't even realize what he's lost here today."
"We'll all laugh about this someday," Christopher grinned. "You'll see."
"Get in the car, Dad!" Rory's voice wrapped 'dad' in several layers of exasperation. "Get in the car now!"
Christopher sighed and reluctantly turned to exit the porch. "We'll talk later," he said lightly, giving a backwards wave to Lorelai.
"No we won't," Lorelai said staunchly.
"Mom," Rory started, once her father had left the porch, sounding distressed.
"Come inside," Lorelai suggested, and all three of them stepped over the threshold into the house. Luke shut the door and they all breathed in the tranquility of the foyer.
"Oh, Mom, I'm so sorry!" Rory wrung her hands. "I made a deal with Dad that the only way I could be around him was if we didn't talk about you. I told him that I'd voluntarily tell him if you were OK, but that was it. I didn't want him to know about the baby or about you being married, because I was afraid he'd just make more trouble if he knew. But maybe if he'd known, he would have told the truth sooner! Oh, Mom, I think this was my fault. I'm so sorry!"
"Aw, Rory!" Lorelai hugged her troubled daughter. "Nothing that happened was in any way your fault! It's not your fault that your father usually can't see beyond his own nose!" She tipped Rory's face up. "Thank you so much for bringing him here and making him tell us the truth. I know it wasn't easy to stand there and listen to that. You're a good kid!" She said the last words in a heartfelt whisper while squeezing her as tightly as she could with the baby being in the middle.
Luke patted Rory's shoulder as she pulled away from Lorelai. He cleared his throat, trying to get his runaway emotions under control. "Are you going to be OK in the car with him? We could always call a taxi or something," he gruffly offered.
Rory's chin came up. "I'll be fine," she said confidently. "Believe me, there are still some things I want to say to him."
"That's my girl," Lorelai said in approval.
The air hung thick between Luke and Lorelai as soon as Rory left. They warily entered into the living room, and Luke collapsed onto the couch, leaning his head back against it.
"He's right, you know." He spoke immediately, his words drenched with the wretchedness he felt. "I should have known. I should have known you wouldn't cheat on me."
"Don't." He raised his head to see that Lorelai was directly in front of him, awkwardly leaning over her huge baby bump to tenderly stroke his face and arms. "Don't do this. I believed it, too, remember? I'm the one who made you believe it."
He sat up straighter and pulled at her arms, wanting her to sit on his lap.
"No." She reared back, shaking her head regretfully. She stroked her ever-expanding belly. "Two-Ton Tillie here, remember? I'd break your legs."
"I can take it," he manfully insisted, still pulling at her. "Just come here, for a little bit. I need to have you close right now."
She carefully lowered herself down and he wrapped his arms around her at once. "I'm so, so sorry. I'm sorry I doubted you. I'm so sorry, Lorelai." He buried his head into his own soft flannel shirt that was covering her, clutching her to him, trying not to think how close they came to losing each other.
She hummed some soothing noises and took off his cap so that she could run her hands over the back of his head. "You have to remember, we'd gotten to the point where I believed I'd cheat on you. Things weren't good, Luke."
"No," he was forced to agree. He remembered just how bad it had been. He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his head against her, listening to her heart. He rubbed his hand over her and felt the baby move. He tried to focus on the here and now.
She was silent for a space of time; a long time, for Lorelai. "What do you think would have happened, if I hadn't gone to Boston? The next morning, you still would have shown up here with the truck packed, right? You still would have been ready to elope, right?"
"Sure," he nodded.
She pulled back a little way so that she could look at him. "And I would have said yes, you know. There's no way I could have resisted. So we would have run off to Maryland and gotten married."
"I guess," he weakly confirmed.
"Yep, we would have run off and gotten married, but we still would've had all of our problems." She shook her head sadly. "We still wouldn't have talked about any of the things that were wrong. We still would've had the April thing, and the problem with Anna. I would've still been sad and heartsick, trying to cover up everything that was bothering me."
He could only nod, knowing it was all true.
"If we would have gotten married then, you know we'd be miserable by now. Possibly even divorced. It would have been a huge mistake to get married then. We needed something to shake us up; to make us confront our problems. We needed to lose everything and build it all up again from the beginning."
"So you're saying he did us a favor?" Luke was incredulous.
"No, no, not at all," Lorelai calmed him. "What he did was so self-centered and, unfortunately, so true to his character. That's Christopher, only living in the moment, not thinking about how what you do today can come back to bite you later. But look at where we are now, in spite of his crazy scheme! We still found a way to forgive each other; we found a way to make a happy life with each other. I'm not sure that would have ever happened otherwise."
She traced over his face with her fingertips, and he watched her eyes darting over him. "No matter how many awful things we still may have to face in life, we know where we stand," she told him. "We've already conquered one of the worst things life could throw at us. And…we're happy," she summed up, grinning. She giggled and bounced on his knees. "If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands!" she sang, clapping her hands enthusiastically.
He had to smile. She always made him smile. "That we are," he agreed, pulling her to him for a kiss. He kissed her as tenderly as he could, wanting her to know just how much he was in love with her, not just in this moment, but always.
"The one thing I don't understand," Luke said slowly, when his blood pressure began to drop to normal levels, "is how you can forgive him for this. He nearly ruined our lives. Aren't you angry? How can you not want to rip him apart?"
She sighed and took her time replying. Luke could tell she was carefully choosing her words. "It's not that I'm not angry at him," she finally mused. "It's just, what good would it do? He's not evil. I know him, Luke, and as misguided as it was, he didn't do it to hurt me. In some weird way that only made sense to him, he did believe he was helping me."
"And he thought it might help him to have a chance at you again," Luke grumbled.
"Yes," Lorelai admitted, sighing again. "That is the Christopher way. And I promise, from here on out, he will always know where the boundaries are. He will never get any sort of mixed signals from me again. You trust me on that, right?"
"Of course. Always." He rubbed her back, knowing just where it probably hurt.
After a moment Lorelai started to chuckle.
"What?"
"This is like the best day ever!" she enthused. "Seriously, Luke, every day I've wished that somehow that night could just be erased, and today I actually got my wish! How often does that happen?"
"Not often," he agreed, mentally vowing to at least attempt to let Lorelai's unremitting sunny view of life influence his own normally grumpy outlook.
"OK, Two-Ton," he said then, "time to move. I can't feel my legs."
"Nice," she hissed at him, affronted.
He chuckled and slid down on the couch, holding out his arms for her to cuddle on her side in front of him. Pleased, she spooned herself into him, and he put his hand on her stomach. His warmth apparently calmed the baby, and all three of them started to drift off to sleep, exhausted from the drama of the afternoon.
"Luke," Lorelai whispered drowsily, and he pulled her tighter against him, rather than speak. "This feels so right. It feels so good."
He soon fell asleep, with her contentment settling over him like a blanket.
A Note to Previous Readers: When I began going over this story again, I was surprised at how sinister and nasty I'd written Christopher in this chapter. That wasn't my intention. Maybe it was my inexperience with writing and my desire to provide some drama showing through. In any case, I felt the need to tone him down and try to bring him back around to the usually clueless, but still charming Christopher we knew from the show; the one who wouldn't see that his little deceit would cause such harm to the woman he always professed to love. Please forgive me for what I saw as most necessary editing!