CHAPTER ELEVEN– Wild Monkeys

Author's Note: I'm really sorry about the delayed nature and shortness of this chapter. Real life sometimes attacks with a vengeance. For anyone still reading... voila. More soon, God willing.

"Hello? Hello?!" Even with her cell phone plastered to her ear, Lorelai couldn't hear a damned thing on the other end, principally because people were still banging on Luke's front door and calling after her.

There were people in housecoats and pajamas, flannel pants and sweatshirts, all states of attire, waving money and people pouting, presumably because they'd either bet wrongly or not bet at all. Lorelai stopped in her tracks, her mouth gaping open and the cell phone wavering a bit in her hand, when she saw Jackson counting money.

"Jackson, how dare you!" she said, reaching out with her free hand to snag him by the jacket.

"Mom!" Finally, Rory's voice, tinny but definitely there, burst through the cell phone and into Lorelai's ear. "Come on, I'm wastin' minutes here."

She honest to goodness felt as though she were slinking away as she started in the direction of the house, but she didn't feel guilty. It was Luke's damned fault anyway. "Rory, are you there?"

"Where else would I be?" her daughter noted dryly on the other end of the phone. "Oh, that's right. I would be in bed, if it weren't for my cell phone ringing."

"Your cell phone?" Belatedly, Lorelai realized she'd left a perfectly good, fresh cup of coffee—Luke's coffee, no less—sitting back in the diner. It would have been a perfect lubricant, a miracle fuel, for her powers of logic this morning. As it was, the sheer illogical progression of being kissed by Luke, kissing Luke back, and being assailed by townspeople with wagering problems had her head reeling.

"Babette just called my cell phone, Mother. Babette." Though she was trying very hard to hide it, Rory had found amusement all the way on the other side of the country—she'd just found it in the form of her mother back home.

It was the first thing she'd well and truly smiled about since her time with Dean.

"Babette called your cell phone. Got it. I'll tell her not to do that."

"It seems," Rory said, pacing across the guest room in her father's house, falling into her habit of parental lecturing, "You and Luke were caught kissing in the middle of town this morning."

"You have got to be kidding me." Lorelai let herself into her house and shot nasty looks at the walls. She'd spent a lot of time looking at those walls the night before. She didn't really want to see them now. They were mocking her.

Even the cats ordinarily hanging about the porch were gone.

With squinted eyes, Lorelai wedged the phone between her shoulder and her ear and struggled to separate a coffee filter, momentarily contemplating dumping the grounds straight into the top of the coffeemaker, and then wondering if she should just dump the grounds straight into her mouth. "I haven't had any sleep," she whined, hoping that would serve as an excuse.

"You know, I distinctly remember getting in trouble for not telling you when I kissed a boy in public." It stung, that memory, but it felt good to talk to her mother, to fall back into this rhythm.

She'd wanted to get away, but Rory very desperately missed her mother. She especially missed her at this particular moment, when the opportunity to mock Lorelai grew larger and larger with each passing moment.

"I'm sure somewhere in all your years, I told you to respect your elders," Lorelai moaned, pressing her forehead to the counter and listening to the sweet, ambrosial music of the coffee dripping into the pot.

She was starting to think it would be worth a few second-degree burns just to put her mouth right under the drip.

"I'm sure you did," Rory said indulgently. "Babette was really mad, Mom. I mean, if you'd held out just another week, you'd have made her a lot of money."

"I adopted you from a band of wild monkeys," Lorelai said, smacking her forehead once, twice, three times onto the cold counter.

"No you didn't. Okay, listen, I want to go back to bed, but first I want you to tell me what happened so I can have nightmares about my mom kissing the town grouch." The idea of Luke and her mother had grown on her over the years and even more so over the past few days, but she wasn't about to tell her mother that. After all, Lorelai freaked out enough when she thought she might be getting serious—if she knew someone else thought she was getting serious, she'd definitely back off.

"Luke's having a mental breakdown and he attacked me with his lips in front of the diner. We're checking him into Bedlam now." Lorelai fumbled a mug, hoped it was clean, and filled it with coffee, sipping it from the cup even as she poured, hissing and wagging her tongue when she burned herself.

Heaven. Heaven would be filled with coffee.

Hell would be filled with herbal tea.

"Mmm-hmm," Rory said, wincing as Lorelai slurped on the other end. She wavered between making a very big deal and playing it down, then made a noncommittal noise. "Well, it'll all blow over. Small town, everyone's looking for a scandal. This at least takes the spotlight off of... other things." She hadn't yet gotten up the nerve to ask her mother if anyone had found out about Dean, if Dean had told Lindsey, if her guilt had somehow been branded on her house in a big red A for everyone to see.

"That it does," Lorelai said, holding the mug between her hands, suddenly sober and very much awake. How could she have forgotten Dean's outburst in the diner? "Well," she said, trying out a chuckle, "If it'll help my little girl, I'll strip naked in the town square. But Kirk already did that, so I think that's old hat."

Rory put her fingers to the phone with a faint smile, knowing a reassuring hug and cuddle were on the other end of that phone, and knowing just as well she needed to make her own way for this one. "I'm going back to bed, Mom." She had made some decisions in the past twenty-four hours, but it wasn't time to tell Lorelai.

There was always time.

"Tell Luke I said hi, okay? Ask him if this means I get free coffee."

She was still chuckling when Lorelai hung up on her.

Lorelai stared at her coffee, no longer wanting it. For the first few moments of silence in the house, she couldn't figure out what had her so disconsolate. No matter how bizarre the actions of the residents of Stars Hollow, it was not their behavior that had her so concerned.

Only when she laid down on the couch, pulling an afghan over her, did it strike Lorelai what she'd done.

She'd been flippant with her daughter, her closest friend, about Luke. She'd avoided the truth, and even though she knew Rory had heard the facts—or some version of them—from Babette, it made her distinctly uncomfortable.

She didn't want to lie about Luke. Not to her daughter, not to her friends, not to her parents.

Not to herself.

- - - - -

He'd followed what she was saying that morning—Luke thought he was probably one of the select few people in the entire world who understood Lorelai when she was in mid-rant—but it still surprised him to draw the photograph out of the bag, to see that she'd taken the time to copy and frame the picture.

Luke wasn't going to be the one to tell her he'd already made his own copy.

He sat behind the counter, sipping a cup of tea with a small smile on his face, anticipating a big day of business ahead.

After all, there were dozens of people standing in front of his store, and there seemed to be plenty of money changing hands.

It was only an added bonus that people were standing on the sidewalk in front of Taylor's, undoubtedly getting in the way and making things a mess for Taylor.

Served the meddling old coot right, Luke judged, setting the cup aside and moving to turn his sign to "Open."

On any other day, Luke Danes did not want to answer questions. In fact, on any other day, Luke Danes didn't want to talk at all.

But as the morning crowd—greatly expanded, he noted—poured into his doors, clamoring for information, some waving newly-made money around, he was ready to answer whatever questions they had.

He just wondered who would answer his.