Author's Note: So I wanted to write a fic with certain scenes in it and this is what I started. It's not going to be long, but hopefully it will be a good read if you're looking for one. I don't own Gilmore Girls.
Spoilers: This story details the reason for Christopher's reappearance in Stars Hollow. If you don't want to know the reason Chris is back in town then please don't read any further.
He lazily awoke and reached to the left side of the bed without opening his eyes. His hand was greeted by a cold sheet where she used to be. He forced his eyes open to get the visual proof he needed that she wasn't there. That she wasn't coming back. How long had it been since she was there? He couldn't seem to remember anymore.
It seemed a lifetime ago that he told her to make a choice. It was all or nothing. She laughed at first and started singing a song that was vaguely familiar. He thought it was from an old musical she forced him to watch once upon a time. But then she realized that he was serious. He needed to know where he stood. Unfortunately she couldn't tell him. She couldn't let him get to that little piece inside of her that she protected so fiercely.
The worst part was that he thought he was the man that could breach the wall she had built around her heart such a long time ago. He honestly thought he was different. Her silence at his question only proved to him that he was no different than any other man that had come before. Lorelai Gilmore was too independent, too stubborn, too isolated to admit to anyone that she needed anyone, save for herself and Rory. He needed her assurance that she was in it for the long haul. Luke looked at Lorelai and saw forever. He soon realized that she looked at him and saw only tomorrow.
He sat up in his bed. The bed that was once the site of one of Luke's happiest memories. Now it was simply a place to sleep. A place to shut his eyes and forget about Lorelai, forget about the pitiful looks the town gave him, forget about his life if only for a few hours each night. God knows the sleep wasn't easy. He kept seeing her face. He kept seeing her reach out to him. Her voice in his ears saying that she didn't want it to end. She didn't want it to end, but she never said the words that would make him stay. And so Luke threw back the covers and forced himself into the cold morning air.
It was early. Four a.m. by the face on the clock. Luke knew he should be downstairs unpacking his bread shipment instead he was upstairs packing a bag. Once upon a time Luke had given his word to Taylor and the entire town that if his relationship with Lorelai ended he would close up the diner and leave town. He never actually planned on following through with that plan, but circumstances changed. He couldn't face the looks anymore. The town hadn't divided into pink and blue as Taylor had predicted, but the looks of pity came daily. He couldn't bear to hear snippets of conversation about Lorelai. He just couldn't do it anymore.
Luke hadn't told anyone of his plan to leave. He hadn't even really thought about it seriously until the previous evening. Lane asked for a few weeks off to work with the band. Caesar was going on vacation and Luke decided it was time. He was going to do something he'd never considered in his life. He was leaving Stars Hollow.
Luke didn't have a plan. He was going to go to the cabin for a while. He couldn't impose on Liz and he didn't really want to. He'd go to the cabin and stay there until he figured out what to do, where to go, who to be without Lorelai there to define him.
Luke filled his large duffel bag and threw it into the back of his truck. He took one last look around the town square. It was quiet and dark. The sun hadn't risen yet and the town looked so peaceful, so unassuming. He took a deep breath and reached for the sign that he wrote with great pain. He walked over to the diner door and opened it. He slipped the sign in between the blinds and locked the door behind him. Taking one last look at the diner, the place he called home for years, Luke walked to his truck and started the engine. He put the truck in drive and the tired rolled out of town, the way Luke saw it, forever.
Four weeks. That was how long Lorelai had gone without coffee from Luke's. She trudged down the stairs in a state of perpetual grumpiness. The grumpiness started four weeks ago. It started about the time she stopped having Luke's coffee. It started about the time Luke left her.
Lorelai contemplated that thought. Luke left her. She didn't walk away. He did. Sure, he wanted her to say she loved him. He wanted her to say that there was room in her life him, but the thought terrified her. She wasn't ready to tell him, though they'd been together for eight months, though he'd been a huge part of her life for eight years, she couldn't tell him what he wanted to hear. And she'd be damned if she was going to tell him under threat of an ultimatum. He should've known her better than that.
Lorelai passed the couch and saw Christopher slumbering peacefully. Christopher. That was the other half of her problem. Luke wasn't happy with his reappearance in her life. Lorelai couldn't honestly say she was either, but she felt some sort of feeling, it might have been pity, and she had to help him.
Sherry left Christopher and now he was on his own to raise Georgia. He didn't have a clue and part of Lorelai felt she had to help him and so she did. That was when her relationship with Luke started to strain. He couldn't understand how Lorelai could take him in and help him raise another woman's child considering he wasn't there to help with Rory. Lorelai agreed with Luke. She wasn't sure how she was able to do it either.
Eventually Luke relented and tried to be supportive about the arrangement. But one day, their anniversary actually, he wanted more. He wanted Lorelai to reassure him that she was just as committed to their relationship as he was. It seemed simple enough and yet, she couldn't do it. So four weeks had passed with no coffee, no communication, no Luke.
It was Saturday and Lorelai had to be at the inn early. She left the house and, as she'd been doing for the last weeks, she took the long way to the inn. She drove through town square and when she stopped at the four-stop she glanced at Luke's Diner. In some ways it made her feel good to know that even if she didn't see him, didn't touch him, didn't speak to him that he was still there. But today was different. She stopped and glanced at the diner and she saw a large crowd outside the diner. The lights were off inside and people were peering in the windows.
Lorelai found a parking space and dashed across the street to the diner. The scene had a familiar quality to it. Lorelai saw Babette and tapped her shoulder.
"Babette," Lorelai said. "What's going on?"
"Oh, hey sugar," Babette said surprised and melancholy all at once.
"Is everything okay?" Lorelai asked trying to peer through the crowd in front of the door. "Is it Luke?"
"Sugar," Babette said tugging on Lorelai's arm and pulling her away from the crowd. "Come here a minute."
"Babette," Lorelai said, her voice starting to shrill from nervousness. "What's wrong?"
"Luke left honey," Babette said patting her hand. "He closed the diner and left town."
"What do mean?" Lorelai asked starting to panic. "He just went fishing right?" Lorelai asked remembering the last time the diner closed that Luke had gone to his cabin to fish.
"I don't think so sweetie," Babette replied. "The sign said closed permanently. I don't think Luke is planning on coming back anytime soon."
Lorelai shrugged off Babette's hand and plowed through the crowd to see the sign for herself. Sure enough she got to the front of the crowd and saw Luke's familiar handwriting, "Closed permanently. Thanks for your patronage."
Lorelai felt dizzy. She slowly backed through the crowd. She could feel everyone looking at her. It was as if all their eyes glared and shouted, 'This is your fault.' Lorelai struggled to make it back to her Jeep and she sat in the driver's seat just staring out the window at the dark diner. Lorelai never thought Luke would leave town. She remembered all too well Luke's promise to Taylor, but she never thought he'd actually follow through with it.
Clumsily Lorelai reached for her purse and dug to find her cell phone. She had to know what was going on. She had to break the four-week silence and talk to Luke. He was the only one who could explain, could make her feel better. She pulled out her cell phone and dialed a familiar number.
Luke looked down at the passenger's seat and saw his ringing cell phone. 'Lorelai must know I'm gone,' he thought. With the exception of Liz and Jess she was the only other person with his cell phone number. Sure enough he looked at the caller ID and saw her number. He almost picked it up, but he finally decided he'd let it ring.
"Hi, this is Luke. I'm can't get to the phone, so leave a message and if I can figure out how to retrieve it with this damn technology I'll call you back. And by the way, you shouldn't use cell phones anyway, they may cause brain cancer." Beep.
Lorelai usually laughed when she heard Luke's little tirade on cell phones and brain cancer. He had added that to his voicemail message just for her. He'd gotten her a hands-free device so she wouldn't have her cell phone so close to her head. But today she didn't laugh. Today she sighed when she heard his voice mail click on.
"Luke," she began. "It's me...it's Lorelai. I was just at the diner and I need to know what's going on. You're closing the diner? Forever? For this month? I mean I know what permanent means, I don't need a thesaurus, but I, I just want...I need to know...Look you can't leave town okay? Please, please don't do this. Call me please," Lorelai hung up the phone.
She thought her voice sounded more desperate than she intended. But suddenly she was faced with the cold reality that Luke was gone. Not only was he not going to be a part of her life, but he wasn't going to be a part of the town. Even though she had been too stubborn to tell him how she felt, now she wouldn't even get to hear about him. She wouldn't hear Babette tell her that she could tell Luke was still in love with her. She wouldn't get visits from Kirk telling her that his grilled cheese hadn't tasted the same since they broke up. She wouldn't ever pass Luke in Doose's. This was truly the end.
"Hey Lore," Christopher called happily from the kitchen when she returned home that night.
"Hey," Lorelai grumbled.
"What's up?" he asked walking into the foyer with Georgia on his hip.
"Nothing," Lorelai responding tossing her purse on the table and walking into the living room.
"Okay, not a very convincing nothing," Christopher replied following her.
"What are we doing here Chris?" Lorelai asked him.
"What?" he responded baffled.
"What is this?" Lorelai gestured to the room around her. "Why are we playing house? Why are you staying here?"
"Okay, hold on a second," Christopher said placing Georgia in her playpen. "What are you talking about? I didn't know we were playing house."
"Aren't we?" Lorelai asked. "You're here with Georgia, Rory comes home on the weekends and we look like this little happy family."
"You're helping me with Georgia," Christopher replied. "Who said we were trying to put a family together?"
"Don't act like you've never thought about it," Lorelai shot at him.
"I won't," Christopher admitted quietly. "But I haven't pressured you or said anything about it, so where the hell is this coming from? Is this about Luke?"
"No," Lorelai said fluffing the pillows on the couch a little too forcefully.
Christopher walked over to Lorelai and gave her a look.
"It's not about Luke?" Christopher asked. "This has nothing to do with him leaving town?"
"How do you know he left town?" Lorelai asked.
"Please, this is Stars Hollow," Christopher replied. "I know that Mrs. Nelson got a delivery from UPS that she had to send back, Morey is fighting a cold and Taylor got a shipment of bananas infested with fruit flies and I didn't even leave the house today."
"Yeah, well Luke did leave town," Lorelai replied crumbling on the couch. "He closed the diner and he's not coming back."
"And this is somehow my fault?" Christopher asked.
"Yes," Lorelai replied. "Luke and I were doing fine and then you showed up all pitiful and unsure of how to be a father. So I helped you even though I didn't want to because I felt bad for Georgia. I didn't want her to grow up without a father. It's bad enough to grow up without a mother. And then Luke and I started fighting," Lorelai quickly spoke.
"Whoa, whoa,"Christopher said putting his hands on her shoulders. "You and Luke didn't break up because of me."
"How do you know?" Lorelai asked.
Christopher just gave her a look.
"Of course, because we live in Stars Hollow and everyone knows what I had for breakfast this morning," Lorelai sighed.
After a moment she added, "No we didn't break up because of you. But you came here and that's when we started fighting. That's when he..."
"That's when what Lore?" Christopher asked placing a hand on her shoulder.
"Nothing," she said pushing his hand away. "Nothing, it's fine. We had problems and then he was gone. He was the one who left me," she said standing up and getting agitated.
"Why did he leave you?" Christopher asked standing. "I mean this town knows everybody's business and yet no one seems to know what happened."
"It's none of their damn business," Lorelai said.
"It might help to talk about it," Christopher prodded her.
"I don't want to talk about it," Lorelai replied. "I don't, I'm fine. Luke has left town. Good, it just makes it easier for me. Now I don't have to worry about seeing him, or hear people talking about him. It's fine."
Lorelai abruptly stomped up the stairs before Christopher could go after her.
"Lore," he called up the stairs.
"I'm fine," she said and slammed the door to her room.
She could fool the town, she could fool Christopher, but she couldn't fool her heart. Lorelai laid face down on her bed and clutched a pillow to her face has hot tears streamed down her cheek. The realization finally hitting her that Luke was gone and he wasn't coming back. Furthermore, it was all her fault.
TBC