Author's Notes for July: Hi everyone! July is vacation month for a great many people, as it is for me, too! Because of getting ready for a trip, I wasn't able to complete the entire story I had planned for July, so I've broken it up into two pieces. This first chapter deals with Luke and Lorelai and Rory during the daylight hours of July 4th, and later in the month there will be another chapter exploring the nighttime and the fireworks, and delving a little bit into another happening for our favorite Stars Hollow residents. Hope you don't mind that you're getting two chapters instead of one this month! Happy 4th of July - and a belated happy Canada Day to all of my pals up North! (And a big smoochy hug goes to Eledgy, for her help in nailing the titles for these chapters!)

"Look, Rory, there's my very own Anne Bancroft!"

Of course Luke heard the voice that was right behind him. It would be hard to miss that voice: insistent, annoying, and ending in a high-pitched squeal. But he ignored it for as long as he could while painstakingly filling up the coffee mugs on the table before him. Finally, knowing he could no longer put it off, he turned around.

Two beaming faces greeted him, both with straight dark hair falling to their shoulders, both with shining blue eyes watching him carefully.

"You're comparing me to Mrs. Robinson?" Luke asked, not looking at either of them as he filled up Lorelai's perpetually empty mug.

"Hmm, I don't know. Show me your leg," Lorelai ordered, peeking under the table at his feet. "You know, do that angle-y thing."

"Sorry. Didn't shave today. Wouldn't dare to roll up my pants leg." He started to walk away.

"Luke, wait! Anne Bancroft. Don't you get it?"

"Nope," he said, as if he didn't care, but he didn't move any farther away, either.

"Anne Bancroft," Lorelai repeated with a touch of impatience. "Patty Duke? You know, the movie about Helen Keller? The Miracle Worker?" She waited for Luke to acknowledge her reference, while Rory's attentive gaze bounced back and forth between the two of them.

Luke forced himself to stay still, to keep his face unreadable. In the few weeks since Father's Day he'd learned that playing dumb to her pop culture quizzes drove her crazy. And, he'd further learned, driving her crazy was sort of fun. He barely shrugged his shoulders at her, trying to look slightly puzzled.

"Luke!" she chastised him. "The Miracle Worker! And, come on, what are you to me? My very own Stars Hollow miracle worker, right? Man, are you a lot of work," she complained, shaking her head when he still made no response.

He was feeling pretty stoked about how the whole exchange had played out until Lorelai tilted her head at him and did that pouty thing with her mouth, causing his heart to momentarily thud to a stop.

Apparently she'd learned something about bedeviling him in the preceding weeks, too.

"Speaking of work," he said, keeping his eyes firmly on Rory, "have you given any thought about where you'd like to put up your birdhouse?"

"Yeah," Rory said happily, glancing at her mom. "There's a post behind the garage that might work. There are a couple of bushes back there, so the birdies would have a little bit of natural habitat close by, too."

"Sounds good. Do you want me to come over and nail it up?"

"Yes!" Rory's response was immediate.

"Would the 4th of July be OK? I'll close up here after lunch, so I could come on over afterwards."

"Mom?" Rory looked eagerly over at Lorelai for approval.

"Well, I'm at the Inn for part of the day, but Rory's going to stay right next door, so it should be OK."

"Where do you live?" Luke frowned, not able to remember if he'd been told or not.

"We're the blue house on Maple," Rory quickly informed him. "We're exactly five minutes away from the diner if we walk."

"Or four-and-a-half minutes away if the Rosen's dog chases us," Lorelai added.

"You're down at the end of the street, right?"

"We're next to the Dell's house. You know, the one with the gnome infestation?" Lorelai explained.

"Babette?" Luke asked with a grimace. Babette wasn't as suggestive as Miss Patty, but she was certainly louder, which made them pretty much equal on his people-to-avoid scorecard.

"Right, Babette and Morey. They've been so good to us since we moved in, and for some reason they really seem to like my little Quasimodo here." Lorelai tried to pinch Rory's cheek, but the girl batted away her hand, so she sat back then and smiled at Luke instead. "Babette takes offense if she doesn't get to watch Rory a couple of times a week."

"Passed the vetting process, did she?"

Lorelai laughed. "With flying colors."

Luke nodded, seeing no way to avoid interaction with Lorelai's neighbor. "OK, well, I'll be over on the 4th, then."

"It's a date!" Rory declared, enthusiastically smacking her hands down on the table. There was an awkward pause, and then a moment later Luke began to walk away.

As Luke moved towards the kitchen, he noted with some interest that talkative Lorelai had said nothing to offset the uneasy silence brought on by Rory's innocent choice of words.

Luke pulled up in front of the blue house on Maple on Monday afternoon. After a moment of doubt, he went ahead and parked in the driveway. He had a lot of supplies in the bed of the truck and he didn't especially want to haul them farther than he had to.

Feeling like he was heading into battle, he dragged his feet over to the house next door. On the way to the Dell's front door, he noticed a shin-high ceramic statue poking out of a geranium bush by the sidewalk. Then he saw another red pointed cap by the porch step, and yet another peeking around the edge of the house. He finally understood what Lorelai had meant by 'gnome infestation.' Grinning belatedly at her comment, he knocked on the door.

"Well, hiya, handsome," Babette Dell gushed, throwing open the door. Rory squeezed out past her, smiling up at him.

"Hi, Babette," he said, but he directed his own smile at Rory. "Oh, hi Morey," he added, seeing Babette's quiet husband standing back in the shadows.

"Luke," Morey replied calmly.

"Happy 4th of July!" Rory said in greeting. "Is the diner really closed?"

"It's really closed," he confirmed.

"I didn't think the diner ever closed," she speculated.

Luke chuckled while Babette cackled. "I close it every night," he reminded Rory.

"I know that," she said, her cheeks flushing. "But it seems like it's always open during the day. I didn't know you ever shut it down during the day."

"Sometimes on a holiday, or if the town's having a celebration that pulls away too many customers, I do. It doesn't seem very cost-effective to stay open then."

"Well, whatever the reason, we're happy to see you over here with us," Babette told him warmly. "It's good to see you getting away from the diner for once. Out exploring what else the town might have to offer." She all but winked.

"Rory, why don't you show me the post for the birdhouse?" Luke requested, steadfastly ignoring Babette.

"Sure, follow me." Rory immediately darted out of the doorway, heading for the porch steps.

Luke started to say goodbye to Babette, but to his surprise she started across the porch too. "I thought I'd supervise," she commented. "Seeing as how Lorelai's not here and all."

Luke's heart sank. But his mother had drilled good manners into him as a boy. "Of course," he mumbled, head down as he trudged across the yards.

Petite Babette had to hustle to keep up with his long strides, but that didn't keep her talking at a minimum. She kept up a steady dialogue, interspersed with panting for breath.

"You know that Lorelai works at the Independence, right? Mia gushes on and on about that girl, and I can't blame her. Hard worker, and always such a good mother. Rory's an angel, an absolute angel, and you know who's responsible for that? Lorelai, that's who. And what a looker that gal is, too. Good lord, if I'd have looked like her when I was that age, I wouldn't have sat home one night outta the week. You know what I'm sayin'? I mean, have you looked at that girl's legs?"

Luke wasn't sure how he was expected to respond to that, or if Babette even expected him to say anything. Maybe it was more like Lorelai's conversations, the words pouring out sometimes just so she could hear herself talk. "Is that it?" he said instead to Rory, as they came within sight of the garage, having navigated through the Gilmore's backyard.

"Yeah. Will this work?" Rory pointed to the post next to her, which was just a tad taller than she was.

Luke put his hands around the post and gave it a good shake. "Seems sturdy enough." He spanned his fingers across the top, judging whether or not it was big enough to hold the birdhouse. "It should work," he decided. "Where's the birdhouse?"

"Oops! Still in the house!" Rory took off to retrieve it.

Luke noticed that she pulled open the unlocked door into her house. True, it was the back door, and this was sleepy Stars Hollow, but even so…He resolved to say something to Lorelai about it.

"This is sure nice of you, Luke, to take on doing something like this for Rory. Poor kid. That dad of hers sure doesn't seem to be worth much."

That got his interest. "You know him?"

"Nah. He's never been around. That's the problem, ain't it?"

Luke shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe it's better that he's not around, since the guy doesn't seem to be too reliable."

"She does this all on her own, ya know." Babette's voice dropped down a notch, turning serious. "Raisin' Rory, the house, working all hours. Nobody's helping her, not the fancy parents, not the dad. Just her. She's a feisty one, though. She's determined to make it all work."

Luke just nodded, afraid that if he said anything at all, he would accidentally give Babette some sort of ammunition to add to her gossip cache.

"I know Mia watches over 'em, and Morey and I have been trying, since they moved in here. And now, if you'd take an interest in them, too…" Babette trailed off. "It'd sure be nice if Lorelai had a big strong hunk o'man that she could depend on."

"Got it!" Rory slammed the back door and came running to the garage.

"You should think about it, Luke," Babette said hurriedly, trying to get in one last piece of advice before Rory got too near. "You gotta admit, maybe it's time to stop lookin' backwards and see what pretty thing's available right in the here and now, you know?"

Rory ran up to them panting, holding out the birdhouse. "Here, Luke. What do we do first?"

Glad for the interruption, Luke held the birdhouse up on top of the post. "What do you think? Look OK to you?"

"Perfect!" Rory said in approval, sort of hopping around in excitement. Suddenly she stopped, looking at Babette. "Oh, look out, Babette! There's some sort of big bug flying around your head!"

"What? Where?" Babette was now the one to hop around, frantically waving her hands around her bobbing blonde curls. "Is it a bumblebee?"

"I don't know. Maybe." Rory waved her arms at Babette too, trying to be helpful. "You know, I read something about how bugs are attracted to hairspray. Are you wearing hairspray?"

"'Course I am! Can't keep this hairstyle up without –" She stopped and began frantically dashing her hands about her head again. "There! I heard it! Oh, get away!" She ducked and covered. "Is it gone?"

"Yeah, I think so," Rory nodded.

Babette held her hands protectively over the top of her head. "I think maybe I'd better go on back to the house. That is, if you two think you can get along without me."

"We'll be fine," Rory promised. "You go in. Besides, wasn't Morey getting ready to play the piano for you?"

"Yeah, he was." Babette got a dreamy look on her face. "Well, if you're sure…" She began to back away. "Rory, you come in if you get too hot. Luke, sugar, always a treat to see you in our neck of the woods. You'll think on what I said, right?"

"Nice to see you, too, Babette," Luke said blandly. When she had disappeared back into her house, he turned to gaze sternly at Rory. "Did you just trick her into leaving?"

Rory looked at him with big, innocent eyes. "Me?"

"There was no bee," he said with certainty.

"Huh, I thought for sure there was."

"Rory –"

"She was trying to convince you that Mom's a catch, wasn't she?"

"Well, uh…"

Rory sighed. "She and Miss Patty – Do you know Miss Patty?"

Luke sighed too. "I sure do."

"Well, they seem to think that it's their responsibility to find Mom a boyfriend. They're always trying to fix her up with someone. I figured it was only a matter of time before they finally got to you."

Luke wasn't sure how he felt about being in the 'finally' category. "They've always fancied themselves as matchmakers. That's nothing new."

Rory looked uncomfortable. "Just ignore whatever she said, OK?"

"No problem. I've ignored everything they've said for at least 15 years. No reason why today should be any different."

"Good. I don't want them to make this weird with us."

"I don't either," Luke agreed, smiling at her scowling seriousness. "You ready to help me with this chore?"

Rory nodded vigorously.

"OK then, here." Luke handed her a screwdriver he'd stashed in his jeans pocket. "Remember how we put the front on with the wood screws? Go ahead and take them out. Be careful not to lose the screws in the grass."

"OK." Rory sat down cross-legged on the ground, diligently fitting the flat blade of the screwdriver into the top of one of the screws.

Luke left her hard at work and walked to the truck to get his toolbox out of the back. When he returned a short time later, she'd already made good progress.

"Why I am taking this apart?" she asked him.

"That way we can reach the bottom of the birdhouse and nail it to the top of the post," he explained.

Rory stopped work for a moment, concentrating on what he'd said. She looked at the birdhouse, then the post. Her face lit up. "Oh, yeah, I get it! I see how that will work!"

"Smart girl," he praised her.

When Rory finished the deconstruction, he took the birdhouse from her. "In spite of your recent growth spurt, I still think you're a little short to do this part. Why don't you hold the nails for me?"

Luke placed the birdhouse square on the post and quickly put a couple of nails through the bottom of it, firmly anchoring it down. "Give me the front piece now, and the screwdriver, and I'll put it back together."

Rory watched him, assisting by handing him whatever he needed.

"That looks really nice there," she said with satisfaction, viewing the almost-completed project.

"Yeah, it does. You picked out a good spot." He was slowly replacing the last screw. "So, about your mom and Miss Patty and Babette…Does she ever go out with these guys they pick out for her?"

"No, she says that so far she's managed to successfully dodge that bullet."

"Are the guys that terrible?"

"Don't know, it's never gotten that far." Rory sat back down on the grass and started plucking clover flowers out of a clump by her side. "Mom says she's got enough on her plate with me and the house and the Inn, she doesn't need to have a guy to try and keep happy, too."

"Not interested in dating, huh?"

"Not right now, I don't think. And…" Rory looked up at him, obviously trying to decide whether or not to say more. "Even though Mom mocks the chick-flick movies relentlessly, I still think she's a romantic at heart. I think she secretly believes that someday the right guy is just going to show up at our door."

Luke snorted. "Yeah, good luck with that."

"I guess that's not how real life works," Rory agreed, albeit sadly.

Hands on his hips, Luke looked around the backyard, having no desire to discuss romance any further. "So, Rory, I guess I sort of need to ask a favor of you."

Rory instantly perked up. "What?"

"I need you to show me your back porch."

She looked perplexed. "Well, it's right there," she said, pointing.

"I mean, show me what's wrong with it."

"Why?"

"Because – Can you just show me?"

"Ye-e-a-ah," she said slowly, getting to her feet and leading the way.

Luke chuckled as he followed her up the steps and got his first sight of the structure. "You weren't kidding. She really did put a traffic cone over the bad spot." He picked up the orange plastic cone, studying the board underneath it. He walked back and forth across the whole area, putting his weight on some other suspicious boards, frowning as he felt them give underneath him.

"I wouldn't make stuff up." Rory sounded offended, even though she had just lied to Babette about the non-existent bumblebee.

"No, I know that." Luke said distractedly. He wanted to soothe her, but he was more interested in the rotting boards under his feet.

"Is it bad?" Rory asked, watching him.

"Yeah, worse than I thought it might be. I don't think I have enough lumber with me to replace them all." He was already lost in the to-do list in his head, hardly taking note of Rory standing two feet away from him.

"What are you talking about?" she asked sharply, bringing him back to the present.

"I thought I'd fix this for you, but I'm not sure I've got enough new boards in the truck. I can make a good start on it, though."

"Wait. Did you talk to Mom about this?"

"What? No." Luke smiled reassuringly at Rory. "I thought we'd surprise her."

Rory was shaking her head at him. "She won't like that. Mom's real funny about accepting help sometimes. Especially with the house."

"Well, you guys can't keep on living here with it like this." Luke pointed at the worst board, with the warped end pointing up a good three inches into the air. "That's dangerous, and putting an orange cone over it is not a long-term solution." He tromped over and stomped on another weak point, showing Rory how much give was in the board. "See that? It's not strong enough to even hold up a little girl like you. I can't go away and just leave it like that. How can I sleep at night, knowing how bad this is? Come on, you don't want me to lay awake and worry about you guys, do you?"

"No-o-o…" Rory looked conflicted. "But Mom's not going to like this, Luke."

"Leave your mom to me," Luke said confidently. "We'll have this done before she gets home. I bet she'll be so thrilled when she sees it she won't even care that she didn't know about it beforehand."

Rory gave him one of those looks that she did sometimes, the ones that made him think she was ever so much smarter than he was.

"It's your funeral," she told him succinctly, holding out her hands in surrender. "But I still think she's going to be mad," she predicted, walking over to the orange cone. "And I'm going to miss Coney," she added in a grumble, patting the cone's pointed top. "He's become like a member of the family."

Luke sighed and shook his head. "Will you help me get the supplies out of the truck?"

"Only if you tell Mom that none of this was my idea."

"Fine, you can put all the blame on me," Luke muttered, rolling his eyes.

"Then I'll help," Rory agreed, jumping down the steps ahead of him.

With Rory's extra two hands, he soon had the sawhorses set up on the ground by the steps, his toolbox open on the porch, and an armload of lumber leaning against the house.

"Why did that one do that?" Rory asked, pointing at the curled up board.

Luke got the claw-end of the hammer underneath the board and pried it up. "I think whoever made this porch used the wrong sort of boards." He examined the damaged plank. "There's special wood, pressure-treated wood, that you're supposed to use for outdoors. It's treated with a chemical, so it will hold up under rain and snow for a lot of years. I'm pretty sure this isn't pressure treated, so it was just a matter of time before it went bad."

"Is the whole porch bad?" Rory sounded panicked.

"Hey, it's OK." Luke had already learned how easily Rory got worried. "Eventually this whole porch might need to be replaced, but not right now. Today we're going to get rid of the weakest boards, but the rest are still doing their jobs. Once I get all of these new ones in, maybe we'll talk to your mom about putting some sort of a protective sealer coat on, or painting the whole thing. That would help it to stand up to the weather longer. Don't worry, we'll take care of it, OK?"

"OK," Rory said with complete trust, watching his eyes with her serious ones, and making Luke feel responsible for a whole lot more than merely fixing a back porch.

For the next 30 minutes they worked, Rory mostly watching while Luke pried and measured, cut and nailed. She helped when she could, handing him nails or the tape measure, but this project wasn't as hands-on for her as the birdhouse had been.

"Hey, Luke, would it be all right if I went back to Babette's?" she asked, after fidgeting for a spell.

"Sure, that's fine," Luke told her. "It's pretty hot out here, huh?"

"Yeah, and I've got this story I'm reading. The Hobbit? Did you ever read it?"

"Bilbo Baggins? Sure, I've read it."

"Don't tell me how it ends!"

"I wouldn't do that," Luke grinned at her.

"It's really good. They've just got to the elves' kingdom, and it sounds so pretty. I want to see how much I can read before tonight."

"What's tonight?" Luke was busy measuring again.

"Lu-u-uke! Fireworks!"

"Oh, right," he nodded.

"Hey, are you going?"

"Me? Nah."

Rory sucked in a sharp little breath. "Oh gosh, I'm sorry. Is it a family thing again?"

"Family thing?" Luke looked up from his calculations. "What do you mean?"

"You know. Like Father's Day. Is it something that makes you sad because you used to go with your dad?"

"No, nothing like that." Luke smiled kindly at her. "I just don't like crowds much."

"Don't you want to see the fireworks?"

"If I do, I'll step outside and look up when I hear the booms."

"That's not the same," Rory insisted.

"It is to me," he said firmly.

She sighed, shaking her head at the folly of grown-ups, and he smiled at her again.

"Go on in. Go read more about Bilbo," he encouraged her.

"I'll check back later," she promised, clattering down the steps.

After Rory left, Luke noticed the heat more. Without the distraction of her questions, the sun burned against his neck. Sweat dripped down his face, and gnats buzzed around his ears. He took off his hat, and then yanked off his t-shirt. He hung the shirt over the porch railing to dry out, and when he put his hat back on, he put it on the way it was supposed to go, with the bill over his forehead, shading his eyes. Then, giving himself a mental shake, he got back to work, trying to ignore the scorching heat.

Soon he got into a sort of a groove, falling into the rhythm of prying, measuring, cutting, fitting, nailing. He hated leaving so many weak boards in place, but he had to concentrate on only the worst of the worst for right now. He'd go back to the lumberyard and get more boards to complete the project at a later date. Today he'd do just enough to get by.

Finally he was down to only one replacement board left, and many potential candidates for where to place it. He thought about where the girls probably stepped the most, and that made his decision. He pried up a board right in front of the back door. It was split and half-rotted, and they surely stepped right on it every time they came outside.

He was down at the sawhorses, cutting the replacement board to fit the spot, when he heard Rory calling from inside the house. His head jerked up, confused about how she could have gotten inside without him knowing it. Then he took off running, jumping up the steps, trying to stop her before she could open the door and step into the hole where the missing plank should be.

"Rory, don't come out!" he yelled, putting his hands out at where he estimated her shoulders would be. The door began to open, and he lunged.

But instead of Rory's shoulders, his hands were resting on a spot just above Lorelai's waist. He was pretty sure that the shocked look on her face was mirroring his own.

"You're not Rory," he said stupidly.

"Neither are you," she pointed out with a slight gasp.

They stared at each other for a moment before he thought to drop his hands. He took a step back.

"Watch out," he warned her, pointing to the gap in the porch floor.

She looked down at the hole, looked at him, and then looked completely around the whole backyard, her hands on her hips. She finally spoke. "You know, you should probably pinch me."

"I'm sorry, what?" Luke shook his head, trying to understand what she meant.

"Pinch me," she repeated. "I mean, I'm pretty sure I'm dreaming. I come home to my own house, open my door, and I find a half-naked stud doing unrequested home repairs on my back porch." She smiled thinly at him. "Gotta be a dream, right?"

Suddenly aware of his bare chest, Luke dove for his shirt, but Lorelai was closer.

"Uh-uh, I think I'll hold on to this for right now," she declared, crossing her arms over the t-shirt, hugging it to her securely.

Luke crossed his arms, too, scowling down at the wooden floor.

She looked around again, taking in his work station, the sawdust, the open toolbox sitting at his feet. "Luke, what's going on?"

"Rory mentioned that you had some issues with your back porch. I thought I'd see what I could do," he muttered.

She paused again. "And you didn't think that maybe you should talk to me about it first?"

He began to get an inkling that he should have listened to Rory's misgivings. "I thought it would be nice to surprise you."

"Oh, you surprised me, all right." She saluted him with his own shirt.

"It's not that big a deal," he said sullenly.

"There you're wrong. It is a big deal." She carefully stepped over the open spot in her high heels, crossed the porch, and leaned against the far railing. "You confuse me, Diner Guy."

Luke sighed, realizing that they were going to have this conversation. He crossed over to the opposite railing, leaning against it, waiting for her to continue.

"I can't figure out what your game is here," she told him thoughtfully.

He shook his head. "There's no game."

"You seem like a genuinely nice guy. Mia says you're great. Sookie says you're great. Rory absolutely adores you, and it seems like you honestly enjoy spending time with her. And then I come home and find you fixing my porch."

"What's wrong with that?" he asked with a touch of belligerence.

"What's wrong is that it's not your house. It's mine. I'm the homeowner and the mom, and I get to decide if, when, and how my home is repaired. Not you. It's my name on the mortgage. It doesn't say Lorelai V. Gilmore and 'Diner Guy to be Named Later.'"

Luke pushed away from the railing, his hands going back to his hips, and he glared down at the floor. "Because it's charity, right?"

Lorelai looked at him in surprise. "Yeah, I guess. Maybe that wasn't exactly what I was going to say, but yes, that's the gist of it. It's my responsibility to care for our house. This is important to me, to keep a roof over Rory's head. I want to know that I can do it. I need to know I can do it."

He shook his head, looking away over the yard. "When did charity become a bad word?"

Now she looked confused. "I didn't say that."

"But that's what you meant. Everyone seems to feel that way. 'I won't accept charity.' How often do you hear that? All the time, right? And I want to know when helping out a neighbor, helping out a friend, became something you couldn't do? When did it become a flaw to be kind? If I have skills you don't, why is it bad manners for me to offer them? Why am I in the wrong for being kind?" He looked at her, daring her to disagree with him.

Her mouth dropped open, staring at him. A long moment later, she began to laugh. "Seriously? Are you seriously mad at me because I won't let you work for free on my house?"

He felt a smile tugging at his own lips. "How would you feel, to have someone questioning your motives?" He shook his head at her. "You sort of hurt my feelings," he said lightly.

She gave another chuckle. "Luke, you can't do this. You can't take it upon yourself to come over here and fix up the Crapshack whenever you feel like it."

"The…Crapshack?"

"It's what Rory and I fondly call our house." She shrugged. "In case you haven't noticed, it needs some work."

"I noticed."

"Yeah, well…" She looked down at the new boards proudly gleaming amongst the weathered ones. "Can we reach some sort of compromise here? Because I'm getting the distinct impression that I'm not going to convince you otherwise."

"Maybe," he said, beginning to feel encouraged.

"How about if I…talk to you when I see something that needs to be fixed? And if you can fix it, you fix it when you have time, but I pay for the materials. That's absolutely non-negotiable. The cost is on me," she said with absolute firmness. "I still don't feel really comfortable with you working to keep my house livable, but maybe over time I'll get used to it. And if you don't want to do it, you need to say so. You won't hurt my feelings if you refuse."

"I can live with that," Luke said quickly, before she could change her mind.

"I can live with that," Lorelai mocked. "Fixing my house, for free, and you can live with that." She laughed sarcastically. "Glad I can make you happy."

"What can I say?" Luke shrugged, smiling. "I have this compulsion to do home repairs."

"How can I argue with that? Maybe we can eventually find you some sort of 12-step program." She pushed away from the railing and carefully made her way back to the door. "It's hot. I think I'll go up and get changed," she commented, motioning at her heels, dress pants, and silky lilac blouse. "I take it that Rory is still at Babette's?"

Luke nodded, and held out his hand to take back his t-shirt.

Lorelai grinned evilly and kept the shirt pressed to her. "Nope, I think I'll keep this longer. Not quite done ogling the sexy carpenter guy who works for free yet."

"You know, if I'd say something like that to you, I'd be some sort of a macho pig," he fumed, irritated at her. "Why is it supposed to be amusing if a woman says that to a guy, but I'd be vilified if I said that to a woman?"

"Ooh, testy," she grinned. "What? You think I can dish it out but can't take it?" With one hand still clutching his shirt, she reached for the fluttering hem of her own blouse.

"You wouldn't –"

Before his shocked eyes, she grasped the bottom of her blouse and pulled it off over her head, which revealed the demure camisole she had on under it.

"Oh, my God! Duke!" She laughed so hard she had to bend her knees, trying to get back in control. "If you could see your face right now!" She lost herself in another laughing fit.

"Not funny," he grumbled.

"Why not? Oh, you want me to go on?" she teased, suggestively fingering the bottom of the camisole.

"Go change," he growled at her, going down to hide his red face at the sawhorses. He could hear her laughing even after she went back into the house.

He was putting things back into his old toolbox when the door opened again. A glass with enticing beads of moisture was being held out from it.

"Truce?" he heard Lorelai ask.

"Truce," he agreed, coming across the floor to take the glass.

Lorelai came out too, dressed now in navy blue short-shorts. Two spaghetti straps over her shoulders, a white one and a red, showed that she had layered on two tank tops. Her hair was held up off her shoulders by a big plastic clip on the back of her head.

Luke took his attention away from her insanely long legs by looking at his drink. "What's the purple stuff?" he asked suspiciously, pointing to something round floating in his glass.

"Oh, those are grapes," she said, as if that was the most normal thing in the world.

"Grapes?"

"Yeah." She relaxed against the railing again, then lifted her own glass at him. "Rory and I don't eat much fruit –"

"Tell me about it," Luke muttered under his breath.

"– but we saw this idea on one of the morning talk shows, about freezing grapes. They said they were a great, cool treat in the summertime, that they made a healthy alternative to popsicles. So we thought we'd try it."

Luke still looked distrustfully at his drink. "And how are they?"

"Eh, OK, I guess. Truthfully, we mostly forgot all about 'em. But since all I had to offer you was water, I wanted to put something in it to fancy it up, and I thought about the grapes."

"Well, sure. That makes so much sense now." Luke chuckled, then took a massive gulp of the water. He was thirsty after his afternoon of hard labor. He got one of the grapes in his mouth and crunched it between his teeth.

"What do you think?" Lorelai asked, watching him closely.

"Not bad," Luke decided, maneuvering the glass to get another one. "Not exactly like a popsicle, though."

"I sort of figured that." She drank out of her own glass of water. "Are you done with this?" she asked, looking around the porch.

"Yeah, just cleaning up."

"It looks great. Seriously, Luke, thanks."

"No big deal," he insisted.

She sighed and shook her head. "We're not getting into that conversation again. Once around that particular tree is enough." She motioned at his t-shirt still held over her arm. "So, here's the deal. You want this back? Tell me about the tattoo."

Luke groaned. He raised the cool glass up to his forehead, first tilting the hat brim out of the way.

"'Cause I have to tell you, Duke, you do not seem like the kind of guy to have a tattoo."

"Well, I do," he grumbled.

"Yeah, but I want to know why. Come on, there has to be a story there."

"So I have a tattoo. Lots of people have tattoos," Luke offered, already knowing that she was going to get the whole story out of him, no matter how much he didn't want to tell it.

She hoisted herself up on top of the railing, getting comfortable. Temporarily setting her drink on the rail beside her, she put his shirt over her back so it hung down like a cape, dangling the short sleeves over her shoulders.

"Be careful up there," he warned her, wishing he would have checked on the sturdiness of the railings, too. Then he noticed how perfectly her perch on the railing displayed her gorgeous legs, and he once again quickly looked away.

"Let's hear it. What prompted you to get a tattoo?"

He stared out at nothing, resigned to the telling. "Peer pressure, immaturity, and one beer too many."

Lorelai gasped dramatically. "I had a night like that too, only I ended up with Rory!"

Alarmed, Luke's gaze swerved over to her.

"Kidding," she said, putting up her hands. "Sort of. Go on," she ordered.

"I was 18. Newly graduated from high school, but was still playing in a baseball league over the summer. Well, we won the regional, and went on to the state championship, which was held in Bridgeport that year. One of the guys had an older cousin with his own apartment there, and he threw us a party. It was a big celebration for us with drinks, older girls, a lot of his friends coming by. None of us were used to booze just sitting there, waiting for us to drink it. He lived on this funky little street, with lots of coffee shops and bookstores, you know?"

Lorelai nodded. "And I'm guessing at least one tattoo parlor."

"Unfortunately, yes. All of us were feeling pretty mellow as the night wore on, and pretty sentimental, too. We knew in the fall everything changed, people were going off to college…This was our last hurrah. Somebody got the idea that we should all get tattoos, to remember the night, and off we went."

"Ooh, boy."

"I think after the first guy, we all wanted to chicken out, but too late then, you know?"

"Peer pressure."

"Exactly." Luke gestured with his chin towards his shoulder. "So, tattoo."

"What happened when you got home?"

"Not what I thought. I thought my old man would lay into me about it, but he didn't. He let me know he wasn't happy about it, but he said I was 18 and legally it was my decision. He told me I'd made an impulsive choice that I was going to have to live with the rest of my life, and he thought that was punishment enough. But he told me that he hoped from then on, I'd think twice before I acted. That maybe I'd remember the tattoo, and not be so fast to agree to something foolhardy the next time. And you know what?" Luke looked at her shyly, shaking his head over what he was about to say. "As corny as it sounds, it's worked. I swear I've felt the damn thing itching me when I've been about to make some stupid, impulsive decision through the years."

"Wow." Lorelai looked at him in admiration. "Could you maybe come over here and tell Rory that same story when she hits 18?"

"I'd be glad to," he told her, meaning it sincerely.

"I hate to admit this after the great story, but I can't actually make out what it's a tattoo of. Care to enlighten me?"

Luke groaned again.

Lorelai giggled. "Oh, come on. It can't be that bad."

"Yes, it can," he refuted grimly.

She jumped down from the railing and walked over to where he was leaning. She stood on his right, studying the tattoo, finally reaching out to trace over it with her finger, making goosebumps break out on him, even in the heat.

"Nope, I can't figure it out. You've got to tell me."

"I don't know," he said, grinding the words out between his teeth.

"How can that be? Was your arm not with you while it was getting tattooed?"

"No, I was there with my arm the whole time."

She just looked at him, raising her eyebrows.

He sighed yet again. "We were all pretty wasted. No one was sober enough to make a very good decision at that point, but the one we all agreed to make was probably the stupidest thing we could have done. We decided we'd just open up the guy's book and haphazardly point at a tattoo, and that would be what we'd get."

A laugh burst out of Lorelai. "No! You're kidding! You did not do that!"

"Oh yes we did. That's why I have no idea what this is. It's just some random design, I guess. That's what makes it even more senseless. But at least I fared better than poor Randy ahead of me. He ended up with a butterfly."

Lorelai laughed again, and Luke couldn't ignore that he was pleased that he could make her laugh, even if it was at his own expense.

"Here," she said, turning her back towards him so he could lift his shirt off of her. "You deserve this."

"Finally." He sat down his empty glass and took off his hat, whipping his shirt back on. When his head emerged from the fabric, he saw that Lorelai was watching him intently. Embarrassed, they both backed off, deliberately looking away from each other.

"You got it done!" Rory came clambering up the porch steps, leaping from one new board to another as if it was a hopscotch grid. She ended up next to Lorelai, leaning against her, her arms circling her mother's waist. "Were you surprised, Mom?"

"I certainly was!" Lorelai squeezed her daughter, but gave Luke a significant look, which wasn't lost on Rory.

"I was right, wasn't I?" Rory said smugly to Luke.

"You were right," Luke admitted grudgingly.

"You're not really mad at Luke, though, are you, Mom?" Rory looked pleadingly at Lorelai. "He just didn't want to worry about us living here with a broken porch."

"No, I'm not mad at Luke. At least not now. We've made peace."

"Good." Rory pulled away from her mom and nodded her head confidently. "Because you guys can't be mad at each other if we're all going to the fireworks together."

"We're what?" Lorelai questioned.

"I'm not –" Luke began to say.

"You said you didn't want to go because you don't like crowds," Rory explained to him earnestly. "But you won't be in a crowd. You'll be with us."

"Rory –" Luke tried to sort out his reasoning.

"No, Luke, think about it. You'll be with me, and Mom, and Lane, and we'll be this complete unit, blocking out the rest of the people. You'll have fun with us, I promise. You won't have to deal with the whole crowd of people at all. It'll just be us."

Lorelai was starting to smirk. "Yeah, Luke. You should totally come with us. It'll just be me, and Rory, and Lane. And Sookie. And Albert."

"Who's Albert?" Rory asked, turning a puzzled look Lorelai's way.

"Sookie's new boyfriend. She was nervous about being alone with him all night, so she wanted to hang around with us." Lorelai suddenly squinted up at the sky, then grabbed Luke's wrist, trying to look at his watch. "What time is it?"

Luke shook his wrist out of her grasp, so he could read the dial. "Almost 5."

"Then we need to come to a decision and boogie, because I told Sookie we'd meet her there at about a quarter past."

Rory had been quickly counting. "See, Luke, that's only six people, including you. That's a good number to defend against a crowd. Come with us!"

"Thanks for the offer, but I'd really rather go home," Luke began, feeling a little flustered.

"Please?" Rory took a step closer to him, her eyes suddenly looking as if they were underwater. "You worked so hard today. Don't you want to come with us and have some fun?" Her lips turned downward and her shoulders sagged pitifully.

Luke felt as though the dwarves had come to him and offered him an adventure but he'd had the gall to turn them down. How could he disappoint the poor girl like that?

He licked his lips, trying to explain his desire to skip the town's festivities another way. "Rory, I just don't think…"

"It's my treat." Lorelai broke in, adding her persuasion to Rory's. "This way I can buy you a barbeque dinner and a couple of beers, sort of make a stab at paying you back for your…What was it? Oh yeah, your kindness today." Her grin was teasing. "What's wrong? You have a problem with accepting charity?"

"I…"

"Please?" Rory begged, her blue eyes shimmering.

"Please?" Lorelai echoed, mostly teasing, he knew, but somehow managing to add in a touch of sincerity. "Come on," she sing-songed. "You know you want to. All the cool kids are going."

That was the point where Luke knew he'd given up. "But I'm a hot, sweaty mess. I can't go like this. Let me run home, and –"

"Nope, no time for that! Go upstairs to the good bathroom and get cleaned up," Lorelai ordered. "We'll put your tools away –" she paused for a moment to snicker "– and then we'll all be ready to go."

Luke didn't want to admit it, but barbeque did sound good. The American Legion did a fine job on their grilled chicken and brats, and it had been years since he'd tasted them. "Well…"

Lorelai recognized capitulation when she heard it. "Rory, you run upstairs and get some clean towels laid out for Luke. Find the least girly-smelling soap, too. Maybe he'd like your cotton candy scented body wash."

"The Hello Kitty one?"

"Exactly!"

"Yay! You'll have a good time, Luke, I promise!" Thrilled, Rory ran inside the house, bent on her mission.

Another small period of quiet enveloped the space between Luke and Lorelai, a by-product of Rory's sudden absence.

Luke swallowed kind of hard, glancing at the door where Rory had disappeared. "Boy, she is really good at that," he said sheepishly, trying to explain his change of heart.

"She is, isn't she?" Lorelai sounded proud.

"Yeah, I guess I'm going to have to watch out, or she'll have me twisted around her finger for sure."

Lorelai opened up the door, motioning for Luke to go in. Just as he passed beside her, she leaned towards him confidentially. "Hey, Luke?"

"Yeah?" He looked at her standing right next to him, beautiful and glowing and looking completely mischievous. "What?" he asked warily.

"Just thought I should warn you. You know she learned how to do all of that from me, right?" She almost whispered that disturbing fact directly into his ear. Then she laughed, tried to wink, and pushed him in through the door. "Go get pretty now, Diner Guy."

Luke found the stairs and climbed upwards, apprehensive about the night stretching before him, worried about how easily he'd given in to the manipulation of the Gilmore girls. But he could also admit he was looking forward to seeing what the night might hold before the fireworks shot off.

Once in the bathroom he glanced over at his tattoo, but the ink drawn on his bicep seemed content, not giving any warning at all about tonight's impulsive decision.