Title: The King of Practical Wisdom
Author: Anna S.
Summary: "Castles are so drafty, and he has no idea where he'd keep a horse."
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: If you look hard, you can find spoilers through Eight O'Clock at the Oasis, but there's nothing major.
Distribution: Anywhere goes, but please give me a heads up.
Disclaimer: Hail ASP and WB. The characters in here belong to them and not me, although sometimes I like to play dress-up.
Notes: With endless thanks to Shaye, who's crazy, brilliant and knows exactly what I want to say, usually before I do. And also to Christine, the reigning queen of challenges.
"So you're an old, old dog
You've been around the block so many times
And it's the same old turns,
same old feel, straight down the line."
-Buried Bones, Tindersticks
*
The first time Rachel left, the diner was barely a month old. He was still finding nails and receipts for chain saws tucked away into corners. His father's funeral wasn't paid for yet, but he could feel his life falling into a distinct pattern.
Wake up. Work. Close up. Sleep. Wake up. Work.
It was how he liked things. Variety had never really been his style.
"You're actually staying," Rachel said more than once, eyebrows raised towards the ceiling. "By choice. Here."
"When I said I was opening a diner did you think I meant for a few days, just for the hell of it?" he asked.
"You know I'm not staying, right?" she said, swaying her hips, his least favorite smile playing on her lips.
"And where would you go?" he asked with a small frown.
"Somewhere else," Rachel said, emphasizing each word. "Somewhere that's anywhere but Stars Hollow."
She'd been talking about going for so long that he figured it was just one of those things you joked about. Like his father leaving the hardware store to him or Taylor running some poor bastard out of town. But a few weeks later, her bags were packed and he found a one-way ticket to New York tucked into the bottom of their sock drawer.
That year, he un-learned a lot of things.
*
She comes and leaves again and again and again, until the only permanence in their relationship is that there is none.
"When are you going to stop doing this, Rachel?" he asked as she slung her backpack across her shoulder for the fourth time.
"When you stop waiting for me," she said, wrapping her arms around his waist. He leaned against her and breathed in.
*
His earliest memories are of the hospital; the smell of ancient pennies etched into his father's hands. Blood, gore, guts, and a nurse's cold embrace.
He cried because everyone else was crying and he was tired and he hated everything about the hospital, from the walls to the expression on his sister's face.
Even now when he pictures his sister, a grown woman systematically destroying herself in Brooklyn, he remembers the way her face twisted on itself at their mother's funeral, lips pressed together, mascara dripping down her cheeks.
They came back from the funeral and found their car packed with camping gear. Liz refused to go with a look that seemed to say, "Mom's dead and now you want me to go hiking in the middle of fucking nowhere?"
Luke doubted that his father even heard her arguments; he was so busy tightening cords and staring into space. The entire three hour ride he didn't say more than two words.
The campsite was almost completely deserted, but Liz flounced off anyway, muttering about finding people her own age. Luke and his dad gazed after her, not sure what their new roles would be. Mom had always been the one to handle Liz's sulking fits.
With a shrug, his dad started pounding the tent's stakes into the hard soil. He made it look easy. One swing, two swing, done. Luke stood over his for five minutes, hammering until his arm ached, but the ground was stronger than he was.
Once the tent was up, his dad looked around in confusion, as if he was trying to remember what step they'd left out. "I should, uh, go after your sister," he said, spinning on his heels, and disappearing into the woods.
Luke knelt in the tent, staring straight at the same spot for five minutes. Mixed in with the fishing tackle, he noticed a bag of groceries and started sorting things out. Meat, matches, carrots, and sardines tumbled into his lap.
It was completely dark when he heard footsteps again. "Luke," said his dad in a strained voice, as he emerged from behind an oak tree, eyes glazed. "I'm. I--"
"I burned the hamburgers, dad. I'm sorry." Luke showed him the charred meat. Tears pricked at his eyes and he tried to blink them back, but ended up kicking the ground. Ashes and crumpled leaves flew in every direction.
His dad looked at him blankly, then seemed to come back to himself. He sat down next to Luke. "Tomorrow, I'll teach you how to cook a great burger," he promised, awkwardly looping his arm around Luke's shoulders.
*
For years after his mother's death, Luke found the strangest things tucked away into corners and closets: dresses waiting to be returned, cracked hairbrushes, and the summer before first grade, a wrapped birthday present under his parent's bed. His name was written on the front in handwriting that was nothing at all like his dad's sprawling, uneven style.
When he tore it open, Luke found a baseball glove, a card celebrating the birthday he'd had the year before, and a skinny book.
By tracing each letter with his finger, he managed to make out most of the first page. To distract him from the needles and the hours of waiting, his mom had been teaching him to read and Luke was surprised by how much he remembered.
His dad came back from a re-enactment meeting twenty minutes later, his face shiny with sweat and annoyance.
"That Taylor is something else," he growled. "Showing up for the first time with the wrong clothes and the wrong dates, and trying to take over the whole damn thing." He pulled his flannel shirt over his head and flung it to to the side. "Was the pie that Miss. Hersh sent over any good?" he asked.
"It was okay," Luke said with a small shrug. After a small pause, he added, "Mom's were better. She used more apple and not as much sugar."
His dad grunted, then seemed to notice what Luke was reading. Frowning, he lifted the book out of Luke's hands.
"I don't want you growing up thinking about moons and cows. Here, this might actually teach you something," he said, throwing the front section of the newspaper into Luke's lap.
Luke read it slowly, word by excruciating word, waiting for his dad to get sick of explaining where Yugoslavia was or what "extinguished" meant, and give him a book that didn't spill out all over the sofa, but he didn't.
So he was seven and he already understood that when people were buried and everybody wore black, they didn't come back and that other people died in plane crashes and were never found, and that some people who should have died escaped into the night.
"The world isn't a very nice place," he said to his dad three Saturdays later, after reading about two shootings and a forest fire.
His dad kept on cleaning the long, shiny barrel of his musket, and chuckled. "Learn it early, and learn it well, kid."
Luke doesn't read newspapers anymore. He isn't sure if it's because he's reached a saturation point or if he's simply sick of it, of everything staying exactly the same. Senators lying and gas spilling and the sky cracking and nobody caring enough.
Taylor can do whatever he wants because it's easier to keep quiet, to adjust to the mandatory decorations and the five minute stop at the empty crosswalk. It's a whole town of what a shame, but I'm busy; a whole country of too bad, but I'm running late.
*
"I was thinking that maybe, I wouldn't go to HCC after all. College isn't really for me."
His dad gave him a searching look. "I don't need your help here, Luke, if that's what you're asking. This place practically runs itself."
"That's not it," he said and that was almost the truth. Something like panic tingled in his blood when he thought of living somewhere else. Rachel dreamed of mountains and skyscrapers and African villages without indoor plumbing. He dreamed of quiet Saturday afternoons.
"I'm not going to some crappy college with a bunch of pretentious idiots whose idea of a challenge is long division," Luke added.
His dad shrugged then. "It's your life. Who am I to stop you from screwing it up?"
*
There are mornings when he almost blurts it out: I'd be good for you.
She lives like a teenager whose parents are away for the week-end, gorging on movies and junk food, making eyes at all the wrong men.
"Someday, you're gonna regret this," he says instead, shaking the coffee pot. Lorelai's never wanted what was good for her.
*
He leans his elbows onto the counter. "So, Kirk, how'd it go?"
"I thought you said she'd appreciate the tuna question."
"She didn't like the tuna question?"
"She said it wasn't the right time," Kirk says with a sigh, finally looking up. "At least I asked," he adds and it feels like a rebuke.
"Anyway, I should go and break the news to my mother. Thanks for the help, Luke."
He waves Kirk on and goes back to wiping the counter. Jess appears a second later, slamming the door behind him without a word. Luke is tempted to make a crack about Shane and siamese twins, but resists, remembering whose name was brought up last time he mentioned Shane.
The door swings open and Lorelai walks in, coffee pout already firmly in place. "Now, Luke," she begins, "I know what you're going to say and I have- -"
"Here," he says, handing her coffee and cutting off whatever long chain of bizarre excuses she had planned.
She eyes the mug suspiciously, then him, then the coffee again. "You're going to give it to me, just like that?"
"Do you want me to take it back?"
"No, no, no, no," she says, clutching it to her chest.
"I think you should know that Kirk was in here a few minutes ago. Bawling his eyes out. I don't know how you could throw away that kind of devotion, Lorelai."
She turned her head to the side, squinting at him. "I couldn't picture it, but I think it works on you. Yenta Luke. By next week I bet you and Patty will be sharing gossip tips."
"For that--" Luke begins, but Jess storms back in, cutting off his threat and Lorelai suddenly looks uncomfortable. "Well, I should, I should go. With Rory and everything."
"Yeah. Rory. Bye."
*
Rachel sends letters this time. But instead of postcards, she scribbles notes on photographs of starving children and debris. "I'm doing great, the weather's sunny, the mood's violent. Miss you."
On the last one, she wrote, "please tell me you've told her." He didn't write back.
*
"How is it possible that I only made fifty-six dollars in August?" asks Luke, glaring at the stack of papers in front of him.
He flinches when Jess replies; still not used to having somebody talk back when he thinks out loud. "I can see why the school called you in to talk about your successful career."
Frowning, Luke scribbles out a column of numbers and comes up with eighty- five, which is still about one thousand percent too low. He hears the click of Jess's light and whirls around, fighting the urge to grab it and set the entire apartment on fire.
"No smoking in the apartment, Jess. And I thought you were going to quit."
Jess shrugs. "Nicotine patches aren't what they used to be." He exhales, a stream of smoke swirling around his face.
Luke tries to remember to count to ten, but only reaches three before he says in a barely controlled voice, "maybe it doesn't bother you that you're killing yourself, but you don't get to bring me alone for the ride. Either go outside or put it away."
"You know what's funny, Uncle Luke? That you seem determined to suck every last year out of life, but most of the time you're miserable."
Luke's chair crashes to the ground as he stands up, itching to pull Jess's neck until his over-sized, wise-cracking head falls off. "You know what else is funny? How fast I can get you on a bus home."
"Yeah, whatever," says, Jess, looking down at his book again.
"Not whatever," corrects Luke, fists clenched at his side. "You said when you came back that you'd respect me. I'm not gonna have this fight with you every other day."
"I'm just being honest with you. You're the one who's always telling me we should do the whole bonding thing. I think you let Lorelai walk all over you and I told you so."
"I told you I wasn't going to discuss Lorelai with you. End of story." He pauses for a second and then adds, in a slightly less gruff tone, "and I'm not the one who walked in soaking wet today."
Luke waits for the inevitable, "okay, whatever", but Jess just clenches his jaw. He must have been right then, when he guessed why Jess showed up after his break dripping with water and muttering about sprinklers.
He sits down next to Jess, who sneers, "if you think I'm going to talk to you about how cute it is and how those Gilmore girls, boy they just get under your skin, you're crazy."
"I don't," says Luke, truthfully. There's another pause. "But they do, don't they? Get under your skin."
Jess closes his book and sighs. "Yeah. They do."
"And it sucks, doesn't it?"
"Yeah, it does."
*
"Nineteen days," Lorelai announces to the entire diner as she sits down.
"Mom, I thought you were going to stop doing that eventually," says Rory. "You make it sound like I'm on death row."
Luke knows his cue, and he walks over for their orders before they can start arguing. "What do you want?"
"Pancakes, please," says Rory.
"If this is your last meal, I think you should do better than that, don't you? It's not like you have to worry about keeping your figure, so just go all out. Blueberries, whipped cream, a side order of sugar coated death."
"And that would be different from your usual order, how?" asks Luke.
"The impending doom would make it sweeter," Lorelai replies.
"Great. Maybe I'll start offering to stab people after their meals, so they enjoy it more." Out of the corner of his eye, Luke notices that at least five tables are flagging him down. In the interest of saving time, he pours two cups of coffee and places them down on the table.
"Ahh, the elixir of life," Lorelai says as she takes a long drink.
"Does that make Luke a God?" asks Rory as he moves away towards saner customers. For the next half an hour, Luke rotates behind the counter and in the back, but their conversation weaves in and out of his hearing.
"Mom, I don't think I can be both Yoko Ono and John Lennon."
"Cher and Sonny then."
"Mom, can we please stop talking about this?" Rory asks, her voice laced with annoyance.
"But I need to get my talking out. In a month it's just going to be me talking to myself."
"That's never bothered you before," she points out.
"Yes, but that's because with you I'm the quirky, but charming woman who likes talking to Harry the toaster. When you leave, I'm going to turn into that crazy lady who wears garbage bags and talks to the kitchen appliances."
"You'll have Sookie and Luke and I'll spend every single moment of my day with the phone attached to my ear," Rory replies, glancing at the stairwell for the fourth time that morning.
Luke walks by their table, leaning down to say, "I told Jess he could sleep in, but if he's not down in ten minutes, I'm gonna empty this coffee pot on his head."
"I could wake him up," offers Rory. Luke stammers for a second, glancing at Lorelai, who has the hard, caged look in her eyes that she saves only for Jess and Yale.
"I should go to work," she says, standing up abruptly, knocking her chair into the wall. "Have fun with Jess and the morning smooches. Bye Luke."
Rory waves goodbye and heads upstairs. She's already back in five minutes, but she as she sits down, she has the first genuine smile he's seen all morning.
"He's coming down in a second," she says, fidgeting with the sugar. Reflexively, Luke pours a cup of coffee and slides it in front of her. He knows how these things go. Feed a Gilmore girl and they'll tell you anything.
Rory takes a sip, sighs, and then says," I don't know why mom and I keep fighting so much. It's never been like this before."
"It doesn't seem too bad," he says, which is only partly true. Their banter hasn't changed, but there are undercurrents of bitterness that he's never heard there before.
"She's not happy with anything I do. And she's obsessed with my leaving. I want to fix it, but at the same time, she's being so frustrating."
"Maybe, you're trying to make the separation easier on yourselves," he suggests.
She looks up at him, her forehead creased in thought. "That kind of makes sense." Rory tilts her head to the side. "You're very wise."
"It comes with the job."
"It's just--," she breaks off, frustrated with herself and her inability to articulate what she wants to say. It's a feeling he knows all too well.
"It's just that, I gave up Harvard so I could be closer to home and now, I don't know if I'm going to miss Stars Hollow the way I expected to," she continues, glancing up at him. "Did you miss it?"
He shrugs. "I never stayed away long enough to miss it much."
"You know how I think it's going to be? Remember when Teriyaki Joe's closed down? Mom and I only went once or twice a month, and that was mostly to make fun of the menus, but mom complained for weeks after Joe left town. It wasn't so much that it wasn't there, as it wasn't ever going to be there again. It was so permanent. I don't like the finality of leaving."
He's about to answer, when the familiar sound of Jess' footsteps interrupts him. "Ready to go?" Jess asks, as he walks through the doorway.
"I'm not the one who was sleeping three minutes ago," she points out, kissing his cheek. Rory stands up and looks back at Luke, who's already returned to wiping down the counter.
"Thanks Luke," she says.
"Any time," he says. "And Rory, you should tell your mom that. I think she's probably thinking the same thing."
Jess stands there impatiently, tapping his foot. "I'll meet you by your car," Rory tells him, taking a step in Luke's direction.
"I wanted to ask you if you'd keep an eye on mom next year. Intercede on the behalf of her arteries and the toaster once in awhile."
"You know I will," Luke promises. "But your mom will be fine. She always is."
Rory gives him an unsure smile, and he watches as she leaves for the nineteenth to last time.
*
"Lorelai?"
"Yes?"
"Do you want me to set up a bed down here, maybe build a bathroom, so you never have to go home?" Luke asks. He eyes her coffee cup and wonders if he can sneak it away without her noticing.
"Would you really? And then maybe we could get a bell, so if I got a craving in the middle of the night--"
"Go home," he says, cutting her off. "It's past twelve which means it's more than an hour past my closing time and I should be upstairs."
He takes the cup away and she doesn't react. "But I'm such charming company," she says.
"Lorelai."
"Your imitation of my mother just keeps getting better and better."
He knows that if he lets her go on for too long she'll talk him into circles until he accidentally gives in. "If I have to pick you up and drop you outside, I will."
"And caveman Luke returns." He glares at her and Lorelai's smile melts away. "I don't want-- I don't remember what it's like to go back to an empty house."
"You did it for all of last summer," he points out.
"Yeah, but that was only for a month and now we're hitting the more than a month stage and it's starting to become permanent. And soon it'll be in the six month stage and I'll be used to it, and Luke, I don't want to be used to it. I should never get used to not having Rory here, with me."
"I've been spending too much time with you because that almost made a weird kind of sense."
"I need-" she pauses and meets his eyes. He grips the counter to keep his hands still, but can't bring himself to avoid her gaze.
"It occurred to me," she begins. "That well you're alone and I'm alone, and I thought maybe we could be alone together." She reaches for his hand and squeezes it, her fingernails digging into his palm.
"Okay," he says. "Just let me close up."
*
He used to wonder if one day everything he'd been not saying for four years would escape and he'd be like her, sentences flying out of his mouth before his brain got a chance to catch up.
As it turned out, he didn't need to say a word. He didn't have to ask how to undo her shirt; she did it herself. His mouth was too busy to say, "are you sure you want this?"
And the only thing she said, as he pinned her against the wall was, "I told you the bed was too small."
*
He wakes up first and has to spend five minutes convincing himself that he's not still sleeping.
The only reason he eventually decides that it's not a particularly realistic hallucination is that in his dreams she always wakes up early, eager for extra cuddling. Which is stupid; he doubts Lorelai's ever gotten up before him in her entire life, but then that's why he's never put much stock in dreams. They tend to be stupid.
Luke sets the alarm clock for another forty-five minutes and throws on the shirt lying on the ground. There's a shipment waiting for him in Hartford and he figures there's no point in putting it off.
"I'm not giving her an out," he says to his truck as he leaves, but he feels like even the headlights are treating him with skepticism.
When he's back, she's gone and she doesn't show up all day and it's nothing at all like he imagined and everything like he would have predicted. So he's surprised when he's the one to initiate the conversation; he never would have predicted that.
He finds her at the gazebo, sitting on one of the tippy benches, and sits down next to her.
"Hey," he says.
"Hi," she says. She gazes at her hands like the secret of the universe is written on them. Or knowing Lorelai, like the secret to the best cup of coffee.
"I thought maybe, you know, we-- we could talk, because--" he trails off.
"Yeah," she says and then she looks up at him and he knows, he's not going to like what she has to say. And he almost wishes that the pain crackling in her voice had anything to do with him.
"Never mind," he says, cutting her off. "I know. It was a one time thing, you were lonely, you missed Rory, blah, blah. Fine, I get it. I don't need to hear it."
And he does get it. She wants a prince on a white stallion to sweep her off her feet and carry her away. And there are days when he thinks he should just buy the damn horse, retire the flannel, find some cheap property in Europe. But castles are so drafty, and he has no idea where he'd keep a horse.
The truth is that romance isn't practical. It's better to have somebody who can clean your gutters and feed you and make sure you're not going to have a heart attack at the age of forty, than cold feet and a pretty face to look at.
"You shouldn't have let me do it," she says.
"You're a grown woman, Lorelai, I don't think it's my job to stop you from doing what you want to do. And it's not like you would have listened anyway."
"It was stupid though. I mean Mighty Ducks Three kind of stupid. I just thought it might help," she finishes in a wistful tone.
He should have known. When something goes wrong, he's always the first one called. He fixed her roof when it cracked and her porch when it fell down, and Lorelai assumed that when she broke he was going to put her back together again too.
"How'd that go for you? Did it help?" he asks.
"Not even the tiniest little bit." She glances up at him and he's surprised to see that her eyes are bright with tears.
"I think maybe only Rory can make you stop missing Rory. Although I hear time does wonders too. Next college break, I bet you'll be counting the minutes 'til she's gone."
She laughs, shortly, and then sniffs. "In the same universe where Santa Claus really exists, Britney Spears has talent, and Taylor's a charming neighbor, maybe."
After a moment's pause, she adds, "I thought you were mad at me. When I woke up and you were gone I figured I'd brought pod Luke from last summer back to life."
"I had work to do," he says. He glances at her side-ways, relieved to see that her chin has stopped trembling before adding, "I wasn't mad at you."
He's been down the anger road already. Sometimes he's tempted to try again, to say no, to wait out the inevitable pleas and silly voices and tirades, but he doesn't think he'd last.
Jess- if he'd ever talk to Jess about these things, which he wouldn't- would probably call him pathetic. But maybe she'd give up. Find a new addiction, somebody else to keep her life running smoothly.
After all, he's just the guy with the coffee.
He doesn't say anything for a few seconds, and she asks, "Luke? You still here?"
"I know...I know I'm not what you think you want," he finally says.
"That's not fair," she begins, but he cuts her off.
"You want some guy to sweep you off your feet. You want romance and a golden retriever and all that other Disney crap."
"Huh," she says.
"Once in a while, I listen when you babble," he says. "And here's the thing, Lorelai. I don't think you'd be happy with any of that. You make fun of "Small World" more than I do and any dog of yours would die of sugar poisoning after a week."
"Huh," she repeats. He waits, but she just sits there.
"Of all the times you could'a shut up, now's the time you pick?" he asks.
"You think you could make me happy?" she asks, the hint of a smile on her face. The way she says it, tipping her face to the side makes it sound like a challenge.
"Yeah. I think, maybe I could. I mean, I have the coffee."
"There's always that. Never under-estimate the importance of food in a relationship."
"I also have the pie," Luke adds, concentrating on keeping his breathing steady as her thigh presses against his.
"And the doughnuts," she says. "We can't forget about the doughnuts."
He leans toward her, not exactly sure what the hell he's about to do, when Lorelai raises her head the extra inch to bring their lips together.
Kissing her is not un-like chewing raw coffee beans, but he's starting to understand the appeal. Although it might just be that her tongue is sliding across his teeth and her fingers are tangled in the extra flannel of his shirt.
Lorelai pulls away after a few seconds, a tiny smile on her face. "All that food talk made me hungry," she says. Luke snorts, but he stands up and offers her his hands.
"Dinner's on me," he says and her smile widens.
*
There are times when Luke wishes he didn't know her as well as he does. He doesn't have the luxury of pretending that she's madly in love with him or that she sits at home, picking out dress styles for their wedding.
He's just the guy who happened to be there at the end of the day. He's not Christopher or Prince Charming and he doubts that he's ever played into her day-dreams.
But Luke has the coffee and she sleeps in his arms, in the bed he's owned for his entire life, and just this once, he's glad that he's never needed more than he could have.
*
Fin.
Feedback is better than all the doughnuts in the land. [email protected].
Author: Anna S.
Summary: "Castles are so drafty, and he has no idea where he'd keep a horse."
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: If you look hard, you can find spoilers through Eight O'Clock at the Oasis, but there's nothing major.
Distribution: Anywhere goes, but please give me a heads up.
Disclaimer: Hail ASP and WB. The characters in here belong to them and not me, although sometimes I like to play dress-up.
Notes: With endless thanks to Shaye, who's crazy, brilliant and knows exactly what I want to say, usually before I do. And also to Christine, the reigning queen of challenges.
"So you're an old, old dog
You've been around the block so many times
And it's the same old turns,
same old feel, straight down the line."
-Buried Bones, Tindersticks
*
The first time Rachel left, the diner was barely a month old. He was still finding nails and receipts for chain saws tucked away into corners. His father's funeral wasn't paid for yet, but he could feel his life falling into a distinct pattern.
Wake up. Work. Close up. Sleep. Wake up. Work.
It was how he liked things. Variety had never really been his style.
"You're actually staying," Rachel said more than once, eyebrows raised towards the ceiling. "By choice. Here."
"When I said I was opening a diner did you think I meant for a few days, just for the hell of it?" he asked.
"You know I'm not staying, right?" she said, swaying her hips, his least favorite smile playing on her lips.
"And where would you go?" he asked with a small frown.
"Somewhere else," Rachel said, emphasizing each word. "Somewhere that's anywhere but Stars Hollow."
She'd been talking about going for so long that he figured it was just one of those things you joked about. Like his father leaving the hardware store to him or Taylor running some poor bastard out of town. But a few weeks later, her bags were packed and he found a one-way ticket to New York tucked into the bottom of their sock drawer.
That year, he un-learned a lot of things.
*
She comes and leaves again and again and again, until the only permanence in their relationship is that there is none.
"When are you going to stop doing this, Rachel?" he asked as she slung her backpack across her shoulder for the fourth time.
"When you stop waiting for me," she said, wrapping her arms around his waist. He leaned against her and breathed in.
*
His earliest memories are of the hospital; the smell of ancient pennies etched into his father's hands. Blood, gore, guts, and a nurse's cold embrace.
He cried because everyone else was crying and he was tired and he hated everything about the hospital, from the walls to the expression on his sister's face.
Even now when he pictures his sister, a grown woman systematically destroying herself in Brooklyn, he remembers the way her face twisted on itself at their mother's funeral, lips pressed together, mascara dripping down her cheeks.
They came back from the funeral and found their car packed with camping gear. Liz refused to go with a look that seemed to say, "Mom's dead and now you want me to go hiking in the middle of fucking nowhere?"
Luke doubted that his father even heard her arguments; he was so busy tightening cords and staring into space. The entire three hour ride he didn't say more than two words.
The campsite was almost completely deserted, but Liz flounced off anyway, muttering about finding people her own age. Luke and his dad gazed after her, not sure what their new roles would be. Mom had always been the one to handle Liz's sulking fits.
With a shrug, his dad started pounding the tent's stakes into the hard soil. He made it look easy. One swing, two swing, done. Luke stood over his for five minutes, hammering until his arm ached, but the ground was stronger than he was.
Once the tent was up, his dad looked around in confusion, as if he was trying to remember what step they'd left out. "I should, uh, go after your sister," he said, spinning on his heels, and disappearing into the woods.
Luke knelt in the tent, staring straight at the same spot for five minutes. Mixed in with the fishing tackle, he noticed a bag of groceries and started sorting things out. Meat, matches, carrots, and sardines tumbled into his lap.
It was completely dark when he heard footsteps again. "Luke," said his dad in a strained voice, as he emerged from behind an oak tree, eyes glazed. "I'm. I--"
"I burned the hamburgers, dad. I'm sorry." Luke showed him the charred meat. Tears pricked at his eyes and he tried to blink them back, but ended up kicking the ground. Ashes and crumpled leaves flew in every direction.
His dad looked at him blankly, then seemed to come back to himself. He sat down next to Luke. "Tomorrow, I'll teach you how to cook a great burger," he promised, awkwardly looping his arm around Luke's shoulders.
*
For years after his mother's death, Luke found the strangest things tucked away into corners and closets: dresses waiting to be returned, cracked hairbrushes, and the summer before first grade, a wrapped birthday present under his parent's bed. His name was written on the front in handwriting that was nothing at all like his dad's sprawling, uneven style.
When he tore it open, Luke found a baseball glove, a card celebrating the birthday he'd had the year before, and a skinny book.
By tracing each letter with his finger, he managed to make out most of the first page. To distract him from the needles and the hours of waiting, his mom had been teaching him to read and Luke was surprised by how much he remembered.
His dad came back from a re-enactment meeting twenty minutes later, his face shiny with sweat and annoyance.
"That Taylor is something else," he growled. "Showing up for the first time with the wrong clothes and the wrong dates, and trying to take over the whole damn thing." He pulled his flannel shirt over his head and flung it to to the side. "Was the pie that Miss. Hersh sent over any good?" he asked.
"It was okay," Luke said with a small shrug. After a small pause, he added, "Mom's were better. She used more apple and not as much sugar."
His dad grunted, then seemed to notice what Luke was reading. Frowning, he lifted the book out of Luke's hands.
"I don't want you growing up thinking about moons and cows. Here, this might actually teach you something," he said, throwing the front section of the newspaper into Luke's lap.
Luke read it slowly, word by excruciating word, waiting for his dad to get sick of explaining where Yugoslavia was or what "extinguished" meant, and give him a book that didn't spill out all over the sofa, but he didn't.
So he was seven and he already understood that when people were buried and everybody wore black, they didn't come back and that other people died in plane crashes and were never found, and that some people who should have died escaped into the night.
"The world isn't a very nice place," he said to his dad three Saturdays later, after reading about two shootings and a forest fire.
His dad kept on cleaning the long, shiny barrel of his musket, and chuckled. "Learn it early, and learn it well, kid."
Luke doesn't read newspapers anymore. He isn't sure if it's because he's reached a saturation point or if he's simply sick of it, of everything staying exactly the same. Senators lying and gas spilling and the sky cracking and nobody caring enough.
Taylor can do whatever he wants because it's easier to keep quiet, to adjust to the mandatory decorations and the five minute stop at the empty crosswalk. It's a whole town of what a shame, but I'm busy; a whole country of too bad, but I'm running late.
*
"I was thinking that maybe, I wouldn't go to HCC after all. College isn't really for me."
His dad gave him a searching look. "I don't need your help here, Luke, if that's what you're asking. This place practically runs itself."
"That's not it," he said and that was almost the truth. Something like panic tingled in his blood when he thought of living somewhere else. Rachel dreamed of mountains and skyscrapers and African villages without indoor plumbing. He dreamed of quiet Saturday afternoons.
"I'm not going to some crappy college with a bunch of pretentious idiots whose idea of a challenge is long division," Luke added.
His dad shrugged then. "It's your life. Who am I to stop you from screwing it up?"
*
There are mornings when he almost blurts it out: I'd be good for you.
She lives like a teenager whose parents are away for the week-end, gorging on movies and junk food, making eyes at all the wrong men.
"Someday, you're gonna regret this," he says instead, shaking the coffee pot. Lorelai's never wanted what was good for her.
*
He leans his elbows onto the counter. "So, Kirk, how'd it go?"
"I thought you said she'd appreciate the tuna question."
"She didn't like the tuna question?"
"She said it wasn't the right time," Kirk says with a sigh, finally looking up. "At least I asked," he adds and it feels like a rebuke.
"Anyway, I should go and break the news to my mother. Thanks for the help, Luke."
He waves Kirk on and goes back to wiping the counter. Jess appears a second later, slamming the door behind him without a word. Luke is tempted to make a crack about Shane and siamese twins, but resists, remembering whose name was brought up last time he mentioned Shane.
The door swings open and Lorelai walks in, coffee pout already firmly in place. "Now, Luke," she begins, "I know what you're going to say and I have- -"
"Here," he says, handing her coffee and cutting off whatever long chain of bizarre excuses she had planned.
She eyes the mug suspiciously, then him, then the coffee again. "You're going to give it to me, just like that?"
"Do you want me to take it back?"
"No, no, no, no," she says, clutching it to her chest.
"I think you should know that Kirk was in here a few minutes ago. Bawling his eyes out. I don't know how you could throw away that kind of devotion, Lorelai."
She turned her head to the side, squinting at him. "I couldn't picture it, but I think it works on you. Yenta Luke. By next week I bet you and Patty will be sharing gossip tips."
"For that--" Luke begins, but Jess storms back in, cutting off his threat and Lorelai suddenly looks uncomfortable. "Well, I should, I should go. With Rory and everything."
"Yeah. Rory. Bye."
*
Rachel sends letters this time. But instead of postcards, she scribbles notes on photographs of starving children and debris. "I'm doing great, the weather's sunny, the mood's violent. Miss you."
On the last one, she wrote, "please tell me you've told her." He didn't write back.
*
"How is it possible that I only made fifty-six dollars in August?" asks Luke, glaring at the stack of papers in front of him.
He flinches when Jess replies; still not used to having somebody talk back when he thinks out loud. "I can see why the school called you in to talk about your successful career."
Frowning, Luke scribbles out a column of numbers and comes up with eighty- five, which is still about one thousand percent too low. He hears the click of Jess's light and whirls around, fighting the urge to grab it and set the entire apartment on fire.
"No smoking in the apartment, Jess. And I thought you were going to quit."
Jess shrugs. "Nicotine patches aren't what they used to be." He exhales, a stream of smoke swirling around his face.
Luke tries to remember to count to ten, but only reaches three before he says in a barely controlled voice, "maybe it doesn't bother you that you're killing yourself, but you don't get to bring me alone for the ride. Either go outside or put it away."
"You know what's funny, Uncle Luke? That you seem determined to suck every last year out of life, but most of the time you're miserable."
Luke's chair crashes to the ground as he stands up, itching to pull Jess's neck until his over-sized, wise-cracking head falls off. "You know what else is funny? How fast I can get you on a bus home."
"Yeah, whatever," says, Jess, looking down at his book again.
"Not whatever," corrects Luke, fists clenched at his side. "You said when you came back that you'd respect me. I'm not gonna have this fight with you every other day."
"I'm just being honest with you. You're the one who's always telling me we should do the whole bonding thing. I think you let Lorelai walk all over you and I told you so."
"I told you I wasn't going to discuss Lorelai with you. End of story." He pauses for a second and then adds, in a slightly less gruff tone, "and I'm not the one who walked in soaking wet today."
Luke waits for the inevitable, "okay, whatever", but Jess just clenches his jaw. He must have been right then, when he guessed why Jess showed up after his break dripping with water and muttering about sprinklers.
He sits down next to Jess, who sneers, "if you think I'm going to talk to you about how cute it is and how those Gilmore girls, boy they just get under your skin, you're crazy."
"I don't," says Luke, truthfully. There's another pause. "But they do, don't they? Get under your skin."
Jess closes his book and sighs. "Yeah. They do."
"And it sucks, doesn't it?"
"Yeah, it does."
*
"Nineteen days," Lorelai announces to the entire diner as she sits down.
"Mom, I thought you were going to stop doing that eventually," says Rory. "You make it sound like I'm on death row."
Luke knows his cue, and he walks over for their orders before they can start arguing. "What do you want?"
"Pancakes, please," says Rory.
"If this is your last meal, I think you should do better than that, don't you? It's not like you have to worry about keeping your figure, so just go all out. Blueberries, whipped cream, a side order of sugar coated death."
"And that would be different from your usual order, how?" asks Luke.
"The impending doom would make it sweeter," Lorelai replies.
"Great. Maybe I'll start offering to stab people after their meals, so they enjoy it more." Out of the corner of his eye, Luke notices that at least five tables are flagging him down. In the interest of saving time, he pours two cups of coffee and places them down on the table.
"Ahh, the elixir of life," Lorelai says as she takes a long drink.
"Does that make Luke a God?" asks Rory as he moves away towards saner customers. For the next half an hour, Luke rotates behind the counter and in the back, but their conversation weaves in and out of his hearing.
"Mom, I don't think I can be both Yoko Ono and John Lennon."
"Cher and Sonny then."
"Mom, can we please stop talking about this?" Rory asks, her voice laced with annoyance.
"But I need to get my talking out. In a month it's just going to be me talking to myself."
"That's never bothered you before," she points out.
"Yes, but that's because with you I'm the quirky, but charming woman who likes talking to Harry the toaster. When you leave, I'm going to turn into that crazy lady who wears garbage bags and talks to the kitchen appliances."
"You'll have Sookie and Luke and I'll spend every single moment of my day with the phone attached to my ear," Rory replies, glancing at the stairwell for the fourth time that morning.
Luke walks by their table, leaning down to say, "I told Jess he could sleep in, but if he's not down in ten minutes, I'm gonna empty this coffee pot on his head."
"I could wake him up," offers Rory. Luke stammers for a second, glancing at Lorelai, who has the hard, caged look in her eyes that she saves only for Jess and Yale.
"I should go to work," she says, standing up abruptly, knocking her chair into the wall. "Have fun with Jess and the morning smooches. Bye Luke."
Rory waves goodbye and heads upstairs. She's already back in five minutes, but she as she sits down, she has the first genuine smile he's seen all morning.
"He's coming down in a second," she says, fidgeting with the sugar. Reflexively, Luke pours a cup of coffee and slides it in front of her. He knows how these things go. Feed a Gilmore girl and they'll tell you anything.
Rory takes a sip, sighs, and then says," I don't know why mom and I keep fighting so much. It's never been like this before."
"It doesn't seem too bad," he says, which is only partly true. Their banter hasn't changed, but there are undercurrents of bitterness that he's never heard there before.
"She's not happy with anything I do. And she's obsessed with my leaving. I want to fix it, but at the same time, she's being so frustrating."
"Maybe, you're trying to make the separation easier on yourselves," he suggests.
She looks up at him, her forehead creased in thought. "That kind of makes sense." Rory tilts her head to the side. "You're very wise."
"It comes with the job."
"It's just--," she breaks off, frustrated with herself and her inability to articulate what she wants to say. It's a feeling he knows all too well.
"It's just that, I gave up Harvard so I could be closer to home and now, I don't know if I'm going to miss Stars Hollow the way I expected to," she continues, glancing up at him. "Did you miss it?"
He shrugs. "I never stayed away long enough to miss it much."
"You know how I think it's going to be? Remember when Teriyaki Joe's closed down? Mom and I only went once or twice a month, and that was mostly to make fun of the menus, but mom complained for weeks after Joe left town. It wasn't so much that it wasn't there, as it wasn't ever going to be there again. It was so permanent. I don't like the finality of leaving."
He's about to answer, when the familiar sound of Jess' footsteps interrupts him. "Ready to go?" Jess asks, as he walks through the doorway.
"I'm not the one who was sleeping three minutes ago," she points out, kissing his cheek. Rory stands up and looks back at Luke, who's already returned to wiping down the counter.
"Thanks Luke," she says.
"Any time," he says. "And Rory, you should tell your mom that. I think she's probably thinking the same thing."
Jess stands there impatiently, tapping his foot. "I'll meet you by your car," Rory tells him, taking a step in Luke's direction.
"I wanted to ask you if you'd keep an eye on mom next year. Intercede on the behalf of her arteries and the toaster once in awhile."
"You know I will," Luke promises. "But your mom will be fine. She always is."
Rory gives him an unsure smile, and he watches as she leaves for the nineteenth to last time.
*
"Lorelai?"
"Yes?"
"Do you want me to set up a bed down here, maybe build a bathroom, so you never have to go home?" Luke asks. He eyes her coffee cup and wonders if he can sneak it away without her noticing.
"Would you really? And then maybe we could get a bell, so if I got a craving in the middle of the night--"
"Go home," he says, cutting her off. "It's past twelve which means it's more than an hour past my closing time and I should be upstairs."
He takes the cup away and she doesn't react. "But I'm such charming company," she says.
"Lorelai."
"Your imitation of my mother just keeps getting better and better."
He knows that if he lets her go on for too long she'll talk him into circles until he accidentally gives in. "If I have to pick you up and drop you outside, I will."
"And caveman Luke returns." He glares at her and Lorelai's smile melts away. "I don't want-- I don't remember what it's like to go back to an empty house."
"You did it for all of last summer," he points out.
"Yeah, but that was only for a month and now we're hitting the more than a month stage and it's starting to become permanent. And soon it'll be in the six month stage and I'll be used to it, and Luke, I don't want to be used to it. I should never get used to not having Rory here, with me."
"I've been spending too much time with you because that almost made a weird kind of sense."
"I need-" she pauses and meets his eyes. He grips the counter to keep his hands still, but can't bring himself to avoid her gaze.
"It occurred to me," she begins. "That well you're alone and I'm alone, and I thought maybe we could be alone together." She reaches for his hand and squeezes it, her fingernails digging into his palm.
"Okay," he says. "Just let me close up."
*
He used to wonder if one day everything he'd been not saying for four years would escape and he'd be like her, sentences flying out of his mouth before his brain got a chance to catch up.
As it turned out, he didn't need to say a word. He didn't have to ask how to undo her shirt; she did it herself. His mouth was too busy to say, "are you sure you want this?"
And the only thing she said, as he pinned her against the wall was, "I told you the bed was too small."
*
He wakes up first and has to spend five minutes convincing himself that he's not still sleeping.
The only reason he eventually decides that it's not a particularly realistic hallucination is that in his dreams she always wakes up early, eager for extra cuddling. Which is stupid; he doubts Lorelai's ever gotten up before him in her entire life, but then that's why he's never put much stock in dreams. They tend to be stupid.
Luke sets the alarm clock for another forty-five minutes and throws on the shirt lying on the ground. There's a shipment waiting for him in Hartford and he figures there's no point in putting it off.
"I'm not giving her an out," he says to his truck as he leaves, but he feels like even the headlights are treating him with skepticism.
When he's back, she's gone and she doesn't show up all day and it's nothing at all like he imagined and everything like he would have predicted. So he's surprised when he's the one to initiate the conversation; he never would have predicted that.
He finds her at the gazebo, sitting on one of the tippy benches, and sits down next to her.
"Hey," he says.
"Hi," she says. She gazes at her hands like the secret of the universe is written on them. Or knowing Lorelai, like the secret to the best cup of coffee.
"I thought maybe, you know, we-- we could talk, because--" he trails off.
"Yeah," she says and then she looks up at him and he knows, he's not going to like what she has to say. And he almost wishes that the pain crackling in her voice had anything to do with him.
"Never mind," he says, cutting her off. "I know. It was a one time thing, you were lonely, you missed Rory, blah, blah. Fine, I get it. I don't need to hear it."
And he does get it. She wants a prince on a white stallion to sweep her off her feet and carry her away. And there are days when he thinks he should just buy the damn horse, retire the flannel, find some cheap property in Europe. But castles are so drafty, and he has no idea where he'd keep a horse.
The truth is that romance isn't practical. It's better to have somebody who can clean your gutters and feed you and make sure you're not going to have a heart attack at the age of forty, than cold feet and a pretty face to look at.
"You shouldn't have let me do it," she says.
"You're a grown woman, Lorelai, I don't think it's my job to stop you from doing what you want to do. And it's not like you would have listened anyway."
"It was stupid though. I mean Mighty Ducks Three kind of stupid. I just thought it might help," she finishes in a wistful tone.
He should have known. When something goes wrong, he's always the first one called. He fixed her roof when it cracked and her porch when it fell down, and Lorelai assumed that when she broke he was going to put her back together again too.
"How'd that go for you? Did it help?" he asks.
"Not even the tiniest little bit." She glances up at him and he's surprised to see that her eyes are bright with tears.
"I think maybe only Rory can make you stop missing Rory. Although I hear time does wonders too. Next college break, I bet you'll be counting the minutes 'til she's gone."
She laughs, shortly, and then sniffs. "In the same universe where Santa Claus really exists, Britney Spears has talent, and Taylor's a charming neighbor, maybe."
After a moment's pause, she adds, "I thought you were mad at me. When I woke up and you were gone I figured I'd brought pod Luke from last summer back to life."
"I had work to do," he says. He glances at her side-ways, relieved to see that her chin has stopped trembling before adding, "I wasn't mad at you."
He's been down the anger road already. Sometimes he's tempted to try again, to say no, to wait out the inevitable pleas and silly voices and tirades, but he doesn't think he'd last.
Jess- if he'd ever talk to Jess about these things, which he wouldn't- would probably call him pathetic. But maybe she'd give up. Find a new addiction, somebody else to keep her life running smoothly.
After all, he's just the guy with the coffee.
He doesn't say anything for a few seconds, and she asks, "Luke? You still here?"
"I know...I know I'm not what you think you want," he finally says.
"That's not fair," she begins, but he cuts her off.
"You want some guy to sweep you off your feet. You want romance and a golden retriever and all that other Disney crap."
"Huh," she says.
"Once in a while, I listen when you babble," he says. "And here's the thing, Lorelai. I don't think you'd be happy with any of that. You make fun of "Small World" more than I do and any dog of yours would die of sugar poisoning after a week."
"Huh," she repeats. He waits, but she just sits there.
"Of all the times you could'a shut up, now's the time you pick?" he asks.
"You think you could make me happy?" she asks, the hint of a smile on her face. The way she says it, tipping her face to the side makes it sound like a challenge.
"Yeah. I think, maybe I could. I mean, I have the coffee."
"There's always that. Never under-estimate the importance of food in a relationship."
"I also have the pie," Luke adds, concentrating on keeping his breathing steady as her thigh presses against his.
"And the doughnuts," she says. "We can't forget about the doughnuts."
He leans toward her, not exactly sure what the hell he's about to do, when Lorelai raises her head the extra inch to bring their lips together.
Kissing her is not un-like chewing raw coffee beans, but he's starting to understand the appeal. Although it might just be that her tongue is sliding across his teeth and her fingers are tangled in the extra flannel of his shirt.
Lorelai pulls away after a few seconds, a tiny smile on her face. "All that food talk made me hungry," she says. Luke snorts, but he stands up and offers her his hands.
"Dinner's on me," he says and her smile widens.
*
There are times when Luke wishes he didn't know her as well as he does. He doesn't have the luxury of pretending that she's madly in love with him or that she sits at home, picking out dress styles for their wedding.
He's just the guy who happened to be there at the end of the day. He's not Christopher or Prince Charming and he doubts that he's ever played into her day-dreams.
But Luke has the coffee and she sleeps in his arms, in the bed he's owned for his entire life, and just this once, he's glad that he's never needed more than he could have.
*
Fin.
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