Editor's note: Um ... sorry/not sorry? This is set just before "Winter" in A Year in the Life. The story title comes from "Hamilton."

Teach me how to say goodbye

Of course it had to happen in the most cliché of fashions. Lorelai would later say there was an entire page of TV Tropes dedicated to this sort of thing, which was subsequently followed by her having to explain to Luke what it was. Then an entire evening was lost as they both got sucked into the demon pit that was the website, reading and bickering over it until they fell asleep on the couch in a tangle of limbs and sleepy vows to never do that again (that lasted until the next movie night.)

But cliché is as cliché does, and when Luke yanked the incessantly ringing phone off the receiver in the middle of morning rush, he had no clue his world was two seconds away from cracking.

"Luke? This is Emily Gilmore."

He flinched. When they had gotten back together more than eight years earlier, Lorelai vowed to keep him as separate from her family as possible, which was pretty OK in his book. Mostly. Ish. Granted, keeping out of Lorelai's family was like only being sucked partially into a black hole. He was spared the phone calls and most of the snide, snarky remarks, and at least half of the Friday night dinners. The rest, he gritted his teeth and tried not to do anything that would result in discord in his own household. Thankfully, he and Lorelai stood on the same side when it came to her parents.

"I'm sorry, Emily," he started to say. "It's really busy at the moment, and-"

"Richard's dead," Emily blurted.

Luke very nearly dropped the loaded plate he had just picked up. Moving on decades of instinct, he pushed it in front of the closest person to him, not even bothering to see if it was the right customer. "What?"

"Richard's dead," Emily repeated, and for the first time, he heard the cracks in her voice. "You have to–"

He pushed into the kitchen, squeezing himself into the space between the door and the counter. "What happened?"

"Heart attack," she said simply. "It all happened so fast. I can't … I need Lorelai. Now. As soon as possible."

"Have you called her?" But he already knew the answer in his gut, already knew what Emily was going to ask of him.

"No. I … Can you tell her? I tried. I dialed her cell phone three times, and I just … can you tell her? Please?"

It was the please that got him, even though he already knew he would do it. He had never heard Emily Gilmore use the term before in his presence. The number of times she used it at all were so few and far-between that Lorelai kept a count in her Filofax on the same page with the list of 20 different ways to off Taylor and hide the body that they had come up with one drunken, silly night.

It took another five minutes to get the basic details out of Emily, enough to pacify the questions he knew Lorelai would ask. She was still at the hospital, insisting on personally overseeing the removal of the body to the funeral home. She could meet them there, she said, figuring it would take them at least an hour for him to tell Lorelai and for them to make it to Hartford. She gave him the very basic details of how he died: Richard had been on his way to the club and collapsed in the entrance to the Gilmore home. Upon arrival at the hospital, he'd been yelling at the nurses to get away from him when a second round of cardiac arrest had proven fatal.

That was followed by an even more frustrating 15 minutes of getting the diner situated, as Luke told his workers to finish serving everyone then close it down for the day. Then he had to move fast, before someone in town caught whiff of the unusual move and informed Lorelai. He broke every traffic law he could think of barreling to the inn, knowing he was in from a round of Taylor harassment as a result.

But when he reached the Dragonfly, he found himself at a loss. He didn't want to do this in the front lobby, where there were guests around. Sookie was on sabbatical, and God he could have used her. Or Rory. Memories of the night his father died flooded back, and he leaned heavily against the truck door and just stared into the distance. Then he pushed off the door and wound his way through several departing guests, relieved to see Michel alone at the front desk.

"Oh look who's here," Michel said dismissively, barely flicking a glance at Luke. "Might I advise you to keep your booty calls to a low roar, we have guests."

He ignored Michel's rudeness. "Can you ask Lorelai to go to her office and don't tell her it's me."

Michel now looked up, a scathing quip on the tip of his tongue. But Luke figured something in his face caused Michel to quickly drop the scornful look that was his trademark. "Is Rory OK?" he asked quietly.

"Yeah. Yeah, Rory's fine."

"It's not good news, is it?"

"No, it's not."

"Very well." With something that seemed almost like sympathy, Michel picked up the phone. "You have someone to see you in your office. … No, you need to take care of it personally, I am not picking up the slack for you. No, he did not give me a name, just said he had to speak with you right away." Michel jerked his head toward Lorelai's office. Luke mouthed a quick thanks and slipped into the office.

He paced, practicing just how he was going to say it, trying to remember how he had told Liz. It was locked away in the part of his brain that he only allowed himself to access once a year, buried so deeply that he worried for a moment what bringing it back would do to him, and he couldn't afford to fall to pieces himself. Not right now, not when he knew what was going to happen.

Luke turned toward the door as it opened and seared the image of a happy, surprised Lorelai into his memory. He took in everything, from her curled hair hanging loose around her shoulders in that way he loved, to her blue eyes filled with happiness, to the cheerful patterned skirt and matching top she'd donned for work after he had left for the diner, and the bright smile that was his alone. He thought of how they had woken up that morning, when she stirred when his alarm had gone off, and she had given him such a sleepy, sultry smile that he had been 15 minutes late getting to the diner because despite the years, she could never fail to make him feel like a teenager. Luke took everything about their life as it was at that second and filed it away among his most treasured memories, because he knew it would be a very long time before Lorelai would smile like that again.

"Hey!" Lorelai seemed to almost skip over to him, drawing him into a kiss that made him feel selfish. He'd rather be kissing her than doing this. Part of him wanted to grab her hand, convince her to go run somewhere, anywhere other than the cold reality he was about to hit her with the force of a sucker punch.

"What's with you? Are you playing hooky?" Lorelai nodded toward the clock. "All the cool kids do it. God, you have no idea how much of my high school life I spent trying to escape it. I bet you Butch Danes was in class every day, wasn't he?"

"I cut my fair share," Luke said, slightly insulted.

"Ah, but no one could outdo me," Lorelai replied lightly. She ran a thumb over his cheek and he knew she'd seen something in his eyes. She licked her lips and her breath stuttered. "Something's wrong," she said. "Oh God, Rory …"

"Is fine," he hastily said. "Rory's fine in that death trap she calls an apartment."

"Good. That's good." Lorelai pulled away from him and began pacing. "Hey, since you're playing hooky, let's go to the city for the day. Drop in on Rory. You can gripe about her apartment and fix all the stuff the super won't bother to do. We'll get some ridiculously fancy meal and drag you all over Manhattan while you roll your eyes at the shopping. We can check out the TKTS booth or bribe our way into the Hamilton line. It's a Wednesday, we leave now, we can probably see the Ham4Ham performance. We can get a stupid fancy hotel we can barely afford and have sex until dawn." Her voice skated up a few octaves as she babbled.

"Lorelai," Luke said gently, moving to intercept her on her next round of pacing. But she averted him.

"No, no, give me a moment." Lorelai said shakily. "Give me just a moment, because I know. I know. I saw the look Michel gave me when I went by the front desk. God, it's written all over your face, Luke." She stood, back to him, shoulders rigid. "Tell me. Tell me really fast, because if you don't-"

He stepped in front of her. She was hugging herself now, eyes fixed to the carpet. He waited until she forced herself to meet his eyes. "It's your dad. It was a heart attack. It was about an hour ago. Your mom tried to tell you herself, but she couldn't … she asked me to do it." I'm sorry was on the tip of his tongue, but he knew all too well it was the last thing she would want to hear.

"What happened?" she rasped.

He told her the scant details Emily had relayed and she just nodded. Lorelai took several trembling breaths and fumbled behind her at the desk, for the cell phone tossed near the computer. "Rory," she murmured. "Have to tell Rory. Oh God. I have to tell Rory." She pressed her palms to her eyes, rocked back and forth. "How do I tell Rory, oh my God."

Luke moved in now, wrapping his arms around her, relieved when she sagged into him. "We'll do it together," he murmured into her hair. "Use that Facetime thing on your phone."

Lorelai managed a weak chuckle. "You hate video chatting."

"It's not so bad," Luke conceded. It was his primary means of talking with April during her time in college, and really once he'd gotten over the weirdness of having a computer following his every move while the camera was on, it had been nice to at least see April.

He felt her tears through his shirt, quiet tears instead of the great, racking sobs he'd been prepared for. The nearly silent weeping undid him more than anything. He just pulled her closer, rocked her absently as he ran his hands through her hair and felt helpless and useless because she hurt so badly. He blinked back his own tears, less for Richard Gilmore and more for his daughter, who he loved more than life itself. If she hurt, he hurt, and it who knew how long it would be before the hurt stopped.

"Can we stay like this?" she whispered. "Just for a few minutes? Just the two of us?"

"Yeah," he whispered back, determined to shield her from the world for just a little while longer.