Hi, Remember Me?

"If you ever want to hear more about that other reality, come look me up."

Those were the words that came to torture him every night. Her beautiful sapphire eyes, tinged with sadness, filled his sleep-deprived brain. He couldn't stop thinking about how she'd managed to smile so tenderly, even through her tears. And then, those mile-long legs…

Luke squirmed uncomfortably, well-aware that his wife was asleep right beside him. Automatically he launched the same pep talk he'd given himself every night since encountering the crazy, beautiful lady back behind Gypsy's garage. All he was doing was remembering, he insisted to himself, and remembering didn't mean he was going to do anything about it. After all, he'd given the business card right back to her. He certainly wasn't going to cheat on Rachel. What he'd told the strange woman that day was true. That wasn't who he was.

But…

Surely there was no harm in recalling the details, was there? How often did you meet someone claiming to live in an alternate reality? It was weird and disturbing and deserved to be reflected upon. Anybody would find it hard to forget the crazy lady. And obviously, she was crazy. In fact, maybe she was so crazy that it was actually his duty to follow up? What if she jumped off a balcony someday? Or took people hostage in a grocery store? What if she hurt not only herself, but other people, too? How would he feel then, knowing he could have prevented a tragedy?

That's where it all got murky. He could never quite convince himself that his interest in her was merely for the good of mankind, to protect innocent bystanders.

So he shifted then to the Jess angle of the encounter. She'd known Jess – or at least, acted as if she had. She was willing to talk about him. That was different from everyone else in town, all those who seemed glad to pretend he never existed. If there was no Jess, nobody had to say anything about his dead nephew. Erasing Jess made it easier for all of the residents of Stars Hollow.

Luke stifled a sigh. No matter how much he deflected, he knew the truth. He'd like to talk to her again. He'd like to hear about that other Stars Hollow. He'd like to have one person who was willing to talk to him about Jess. Someone who'd secretly admired his nephew's smart-assedness, he thought, smiling in the dark as he recalled her description.

But he'd given her back her business card. So that was that.

Luke closed his eyes. He remembered turning that card over and over in his hands, and seeing her name over and over, too. Hartford. The McCain Advertising Agency.

He wasn't much for computers. He'd staged more than one rant about the evil overlords of technology just itching to take over the world. However, even he knew you could go to the library. He knew how to log on. He knew how to use Google.

It was far too simple to look up a name. Child's play to find the address of a business.

Good thing he wasn't the type of guy to make use of that knowledge.

He turned over on his side, as far away from Rachel as possible.

"Wow, you look nice." Rachel halted in the dining room, frowning at his blue dress shirt. "What's going on?" she wanted to know, as she ripped the order she'd just jotted down off of the pad.

"I thought I told you. Bank meeting," Luke lied, barely able to get the words out of his dry throat. He bent down, pretending to tie one of his shoes. No way could he do this if he had to look at her, too.

Rachel shrugged. "Maybe you did." She reached for him, and for one soul-chilling second, Luke thought she meant to kiss him goodbye. Instead, she brushed a piece of lint from his arm. Oblivious to his panic, she started towards the kitchen. "When will you be back?"

He repeated the words he'd been practicing in his head. "Before dinner rush. I thought I'd swing by the restaurant supply place and pick up some things while I was in town."

"Yeah, good idea." Rachel nodded, and added another notation to the ticket before handing it off to Caesar. "Well, see you later."

"Yeah, see you later," Luke mumbled, and almost ran out of the diner's door.

Maybe he had it in him to be that guy after all.

Luke knew enough about downtown Hartford to locate the correct street. He found a place to park his lovingly restored pickup truck. Once in the building, he knew he needed to take the elevator up to the eighth floor. After that, he wasn't sure what would happen.

When he reached the eighth floor, he took a moment, realizing that he stood at a crossroads. Right now, he could still get back into the elevator and return to Stars Hollow, with no stain on his conscience. This attempted trip into alternate reality would be nothing but the barest blip on his timeline. Nothing would change.

Everything could stay exactly the same…if that's what he wanted.

He ran his palm over his head, smoothing back his hair. Since he normally wore a hat in the diner, it was disconcerting to be without it. He squared his shoulders, took a deep breath, and walked over to the receptionist.

"Hi," he said, catching the busy woman's eye. He ducked his head to one side and smiled. An old girlfriend had once told him he could get anything he wanted by doing that.

The receptionist blinked at him twice. "Hi," she parroted back at him, before giving her head a small shake. "Uh, welcome to the McCain Agency. May I help you?"

"I'd like to see Lorelai Gilmore, please," Luke said with as much confidence as he could.

"Do you have an appointment?"

"No. I was hoping that she could squeeze me in for just five or ten minutes." He was having trouble maintaining the smile.

The receptionist studied him again, then picked up the phone, punched in a few numbers, and murmured several words into the receiver. "Go down that first hall to your right," she told him, after replacing the phone. "It will be the second office."

"Thanks," Luke said. He tried not to sprint to the hallway.

Lorelai Gilmore, the placard beside the second office announced. But it wasn't that easy. A secretary still stood between him and Lorelai's actual office.

"May I help you?" the woman asked, getting up from her desk. "I'm Nancy Asher, Ms. Gilmore's assistant. Unfortunately, she does have several meetings on her schedule today. Could we set another time? Or could you give me an idea what you need to see her about?"

Lying was so not Luke's thing, but desperation made him glib. "We have a mutual friend, and I've been worried about him lately. I was hoping maybe I could talk to her for just a minute or two, see if she's noticed anything off about him too." He tried a thoughtful, concerned smile this time.

Nancy seemed to be sizing him up. "May I tell her your name?"

"Luke Danes."

Nancy nodded. "If you'll just wait a minute here, please." She knocked on the inner door, opened it, and stepped inside, but the door didn't close completely behind her.

"Lorelai, there is the cutest guy out here to see you!" Nancy spoke in a low voice, but Luke could still hear her.

"Cute? Oh, God – it's not Christopher again, is it?"

Hearing her voice gave him a thrill, but then he frowned. Who the hell was Christopher?

"No. Forget cute. Handsome. He's handsome. Tall, broad shoulders, chiseled chin. Great eyes, even better smile. Listen, I told him you were busy. Why don't I just handle it for you?"

Lorelai chuckled. "I don't think so, girlie."

Nancy sighed. "Well, I gave it my best shot. His name's Luke Danes."

"Okeydokey, send him in."

Luke jumped back as the door pushed open. "Mr. Danes? Come on in."

He entered the office. Lorelai was in the process of walking out from behind her desk. "Mr. Danes? Hi," she said, holding out her hand to him. She smiled directly into his eyes, and he caught his breath.

Seeing her again almost made him dizzy. It was an incredible relief to see that she was real. He'd been half afraid he'd fantasized the whole encounter. Also, she was just as gorgeous standing before him as she was in his memory. He'd wondered if he'd embellished her beauty each time he'd replayed their meeting in his head. It turned out he had not. She was a certified knockout.

"H-hi," he stammered back, hesitantly grasping her hand for a moment.

She tilted her head, still smiling, studying him. "Last month at the mayor's breakfast, right?"

"I'm sorry – what?"

"We met at city hall, at the mayor's breakfast, right?"

"No." He felt the nervous tension returning. "I'm…I'm Luke Danes."

"Oh, my mistake! It was at one of my mother's things, wasn't it?" She bobbed her head, her smile turning apologetic. "The fundraiser for the pediatric unit?"

He licked his lips uneasily. "No, I'm Luke. From Stars Hollow."

"That's like the local chapter of the Make-A-Wish Foundation, right?"

"No." Panic was beginning to bubble through him. "I'm – Look, it doesn't matter. Obviously, this was a mistake. Sorry I bothered you."

He turned to run away from his humiliation, but she caught his arm. She was a lot stronger than she looked.

"Wait. Please." She stepped in front of him and gazed at him seriously, the smile gone. "You think I should know you, don't you?"

"You do. You – you did. You came to Stars Hollow, to find me."

Her eyes darted over his face. "When was this?" she asked soberly.

"Two weeks ago Wednesday."

Lorelai breathed in sharply. She moved over to her desk and leaned her hands on the surface, staring at a calendar. "I lost a day, a couple of weeks ago. Two weeks ago Wednesday, actually." She looked back over her shoulder at him. "It freaked out everybody who knows me, and I have absolutely no memory of the entire day."

"And that's not, I don't know – a normal occurrence for you?"

"No," she said, chuckling. "I'm not in the habit of channeling Ray Milland from Lost Weekend." She turned around and rested a hip against her desk. "And before you ask, I wasn't sick, I wasn't delirious from fever, I wasn't drunk, I wasn't taking anything for either medicinal or recreational purposes. I just had 24 hours disappear from my consciousness without warning and for no apparent reason."

Luke forced himself to consider what she'd said, instead of immediately jumping to conclusions. "That sounds terrifying."

She sent him a look of gratitude. "It was. It is. I keep worrying that it might happen again. I wonder if I need to go get an MRI or something. Have somebody poke at the inside of my head. The thing is, though, I feel fine. But maybe that's what all crazy people say, that they're fine. I mean, isn't that the whole thing about being crazy? The crazy never know they're crazy?"

"That day, you said you knew how crazy it all sounded."

She regarded him seriously again. "I came looking for you? You, specifically?"

Luke nodded. "As far as I know."

"Where was this?"

"Stars Hollow."

Lorelai shook her head. "I don't even know where that is."

"It's about thirty minutes northeast from here."

"Why would I do that?" Lorelai muttered, mostly to herself. Luke shifted uncomfortably, and she observed it, frowning. "Do you know why I did it?"

"I only know what you told me. Frankly, the reason I came here today was because I was hoping to get some answers from you." He sighed. "It was sort of a disturbing experience for me, too."

She laughed again. "I can only imagine. Poor you, being accosted by some random crazy lady."

He smiled softly. "It wasn't all bad."

"No?" She smiled back. "Listen, do you have time to let me pick your brain about whatever happened that day? Could we maybe go get lunch?"

Luke hesitated. Lunch seemed slightly frivolous and infinitely more dangerous than a sensible fact-finding mission to her office.

"It's fine if you don't want to," she said hurriedly. "I'm just anxious to fill in the gaps, and for obvious reasons, I really don't want to talk about this here at my job. I'm thinking that the less my boss knows about my unfortunate memory lapse, the better."

"Um, sure. Lunch is fine," Luke confirmed, shaking off his concerns.

She jumped away from her desk and retrieved her purse from a cabinet along a wall. "Now I just need to come up with a good story about why we're leaving."

"Well, I told your assistant that I needed to see you about a mutual friend, someone I was worried about."

"Ooh, excellent!" She grinned at him. "I like the way you can lie on your feet. Maybe we've got some things in common after all."

"I don't lie, as a rule," Luke told her coldly. "In fact, everything I'm doing today is way outside of my comfort zone."

"Sorry." Lorelai held up her hands. "I'm not trying to imply anything about your character. I'm just glad you've already provided a reason for us to take off together."

Luke was ready to protest again, not liking the way take off together sounded to his ears, but then he had to admit that was exactly what they were doing, and that he should be grateful it was. This was what he wanted. He came here to get some answers from her.

Lorelai said a few words to her assistant. He overheard her say something about 'our friend Clyde,' and assumed she was embellishing the lie he'd started. Then he saw her give a sly wink.

"Thanks, Nance. Call me if something comes up you can't handle. Otherwise I'll be back by 3."

While they waited for the elevator, he gave her a cool look of judgement. "So is 'Clyde' a code word for when you want to blow off work for the afternoon?"

Every bit of sunniness left her demeanor. "Look, Mr. Danes, no matter what happened a couple of weeks ago between us, you don't know me. I work damn hard, and I'm good at it. There's a reason I've got a corner office. If I miss a couple of hours today, I assure you that I'll more than make them up the next time I'm facing a deadline. You're not my boss, and my work habits don't concern you. If my ethics aren't good enough for you, feel free to cut and run. I'll go get lunch on my own."

Her sudden irritation broke through his attitude. "Sorry. I didn't…" He shook his head, not looking at her. "I'm aware that I'm not helping myself here. I'm nervous about all of this, being here, talking to you. This is undoubtedly the most bizarre situation I've ever landed in. I have a habit of snapping at people when I'm on edge. Sorry," he repeated. "I don't mean to be taking it out on you."

He sensed her acceptance of his explanation. "It is bizarre," she agreed, cheerful again. "Can't argue with that."

Once they reached the street, Lorelai pulled sunglasses out of her purse and put them on. "Is it OK if I drive?"

"Sure, if you want to."

She headed for a parking lot next to the building, and he followed her. She gave him a swift glance. "You seem like a normal, decent guy as far as I can tell, but it's probably safer if I'm driving. Just in case you turn out to be a deranged murderer, or something."

Luke stopped in his tracks, stunned that someone could look at him and think deranged murderer. "I can drive myself, if that makes you feel better. Just tell me where to meet," he suggested, his voice frosty.

"Nah." She grinned at him, but the sunglasses hid her eyes. "I'm kidding around – mostly. Besides, I've gotten pretty good at weeding out the serial killers over the years."

She walked to the rear of a black car and opened the trunk, sifting through the items stored there. "Oh, good, it's still here!"

"What?"

"The blanket from last summer's company picnic."

He crossed his arms over his chest and stared at her. "Gonna use that to hide my lifeless body? How do I know you're not the serial killer?"

She took no offense from his words, and instead measured him from head to toe with her eyes. "I think you're safe. I'm pretty sure this blanket isn't big enough to do a good job of hiding your corpse." She scanned the trunk. "Also pretty sure you wouldn't fit in the trunk, either."

"Sounds like you've given body disposal a lot of thought."

"Not really. Just a lot of CSI and Law and Order reruns." She grinned. "What I really thought was that maybe we'd hit a drive-thru and have an impromptu picnic at a park." She closed the trunk and moved to the driver's side door as she talked. "I'm thinking that's better than taking the chance of anyone overhearing what's bound to be our bizarre conversation in a restaurant."

"Yeah, that's probably best," he agreed, moving to the passenger side of the car. When he heard the lock release, he opened the door and climbed inside.

Lorelai expertly backed out of the tight parking spot, exited the lot, and drove a couple of blocks down the street to a fast food restaurant. There was something about the way she navigated the 90 degree turn into the drive-thru lane that made Luke think she'd done it many, many times.

"I'll have the number five with extra cheese, an order of jalapeno poppers, two cherry pies, and an extra-large coffee with cream." She turned to Luke. "What would you like?"

He felt his eyes bugging out as he stared at her. "That's all for you?"

"No, I'm also feeding the family of gnomes who live in the back seat." He sensed her rolling her eyes. "Now, what do you want?"

He leaned down, trying to see past her at the menu board. "Do they have a salad?"

"You're killing me here," she grumbled. "Yes, they have salads." She pointed at the bottom of the board.

"Just a plain salad," he said, unable to read the small section of the menu from his vantage point.

She sighed. "Let's have one of the salads with chicken strips," she ordered, before turning to him again. "What kind of dressing?"

"I don't need any dressing."

She pursed her lips before swiveling back to the microphone in the menu board. "With both ranch and bleu cheese, please."

"I don't –"

"Do you want coffee?" she asked, cutting off his protest.

"No, I don't drink coffee. Water's fine."

"You don't drink coffee!" Her mouth dropped open. "What kind of a monster are you?"

"There's nothing wrong with not wanting to put caffeine in your body," he muttered.

"Caffeine is our friend," Lorelai said primly. She drove the few feet to the first window, and waved off his attempt to pay. "Caffeine keeps us perky and lovable, even in the meetings that go on and on and on."

At the second window, their drinks were handed to them first. Lorelai put her coffee in the cupholder where she could easily grab it. "I'm a coffee fiend," she admitted. "I have to have a cup always readily available or I feel anxious."

"The anxiety is probably from too much caffeine. You should try to cut back," Luke felt compelled to tell her.

"Yeah, probably." She smiled easily at him. "Not gonna happen, though."

He couldn't help but smile back. "I make coffee all day long."

"But you don't drink it? I'm confused."

"I own a diner, in Stars Hollow, so that's a big part of my day. Making pot after pot of coffee. I've been told it's pretty good," he told her, with a bit of pride.

"Oh my God, a real diner? Like with burgers and chili fries and pies underneath the plastic domes?"

Luke chuckled. "Yes, that's exactly it."

"No wonder I came to find you that day. You're the guy of my dreams."

Luke said nothing to that, and Lorelai went quiet for a few moments.

"Actually…" she said tentatively, then stopped. "I wonder if…" she tried again, but also let that thought die.

"What?" he encouraged her.

She sighed. "That day. The day I lost. People told me things that happened. And apparently, I was just about to take a swallow of coffee during a meeting, when I freaked out." She shrugged, her eyes on the road. "I dropped the coffee and it spilled everywhere. I ran out after that and I have no idea what I did for the rest of the day." She glanced over at him for a second. "But now I wonder…"

Luke nodded. "If the coffee triggered some kind of memory?"

"Yeah." She shifted uneasily in her seat. "When did I show up in your town?"

"In the afternoon. It was maybe 3 o'clock or so when you talked to me?"

"Did I go to your diner?"

"No, we met over by Gypsy's garage."

"Ooh, that sounds fancy," Lorelai mocked.

She pulled into a lot for a city park. Since it was lunchtime, there were a lot of cars. They collected their food and the blanket from the trunk, and walked away from the majority of people sitting at benches or picnic tables.

"Is this OK?" Lorelai pointed at a spot close to a small grove of pine trees. "We can spread the blanket here, and sit in the sun until we get too hot, then we can shift into the shade."

"Good idea," Luke agreed, and helped her position the blanket on the ground.

Once settled, Lorelai wasted no time digging into her family-sized meal. Luke smiled to himself as he tried out the salad. She was eating with gusto, his mother would have said.

"You're really not going to use the salad dressing?" she asked him, her mouth full.

"No, it's pretty good the way it is."

"Psychopath," she muttered.

He grinned and stabbed another forkful of greens.

They were seated opposite each other on the blanket, with their legs running parallel between them. Lorelai had kicked off her heels when she sat down, and her bare feet and legs were right beside him. He deliberately focused his concentration on eating his salad and chicken, and not on the smooth, endless skin next to him.

"How's this for an idea?" Lorelai wiped off her mouth and fingers with some of the paper napkins she pulled out of the bag. "Why don't we take turns telling each other about that day? Maybe we can draw some conclusions about what happened if we share information."

"I didn't think you remembered any of it."

"I don't, but it's just like with the coffee thing. People told me stuff afterwards."

"Then, sure. Go for it."

She popped the last crumbled piece of cherry pie into her mouth, drank some coffee, and then leaned back on her elbows. "According to my mother, I came downstairs, committing the horrible sin of still being in my pajamas –"

"Wait – you live with your mother?"

Lorelai had taken off the shades, so it was easy to see her glare. "Yeah, I do. You wanna make something of it?"

Luke shrugged, smirking a bit. "You just don't seem like someone who'd still be living at home."

For a moment she seemed ready to fight, but then her shoulders relaxed, and she sighed. "It's a temporary thing. I went through a divorce, not that long ago."

"Sorry," Luke said, wincing at his unintended jab.

"No, it's fine." She waved a hand in the air, letting bygones be bygones. "I'd had my own place forever, but when I got married, I foolishly sold my condo. Thought I needed to show how committed I was to the relationship." She blew out a breath of air. "Boy, I sure got that wrong."

"Sorry," he said again.

"How long have you been married?" Lorelai asked him, nodding at his hands. That was when he realized that he'd been nervously twisting the silver band on his finger.

"Going on four years." He deliberately placed his hands on his knees, so he wouldn't be tempted to spin the ring yet again.

"Pretty long time," she commented.

"Yeah." His thoughts were going down a different path. "How long were you married before you knew it was a mistake?"

"Hmm, that's hard to pinpoint. Maybe by the time we cut the cake at the reception?"

His head jerked up to stare at her. "Are you joking?"

"Yeah, I am. It was probably right after I said 'I do.'"

"Come on."

"No, Luke, that's probably spot-on. Christopher and I –"

"Oh, Christopher is your ex!" he blurted out.

She frowned. "You know him?"

"No, of course not." He grimaced, hating the predicament he'd gotten himself into. "I heard – I overheard some things your assistant said in your office. I heard you say something about Christopher," he admitted.

"Oh!" She smiled shamelessly. "Nance was totally crushing on you. She must have missed the wedding band."

He felt his cheeks heating up so he reached for the bottle of water.

"Anyway, Chris and I had been a thing forever. We were pals even as kids because our families were together all the time. We went to the same schools. It was an easy transition to being boyfriend/girlfriend when the time came. Eventually everyone just expected us to get married – especially my mother," Lorelai grouched.

"You got married young?" Luke theorized.

"No, we got married late." Lorelai shook her head. "Just last fall. Chris wanted to, as soon as we finished college, but I kept putting him off. I wanted to get my MBA. I wanted us to have good jobs. I wanted to make sure we had a nest egg."

"Nothing wrong with that."

"Except that I don't think it had anything to do with being prudent and cautious. Now I think I just didn't want to marry him."

"Why did you, then?"

"Because one day I realized how old I was." She shrugged. "I realized that if we were going to do it, we needed to do it now."

"You weren't already living together?"

"No, I liked my space. I liked being able to do everything my way. I liked having sole control of the remote."

Luke chuckled at her wry comment. He was discovering that he appreciated her humor.

She sighed again. "My mother was over the moon. Finally, you know? And I found out that I'm really, really good at planning weddings. I loved every bit of that part. It was exhilarating, finding the best deal on flowers, negotiating with the caterer. I tell you, I was in the zone!" She stared at him. "But then, the actual wedding day came, and I was…empty. This was supposed to be the happiest day of my life, but instead I realized I'd made the worst mistake of my life. I felt like such a failure."

"That sounds brutal."

"Yeah. Nobody understood. Well…my dad didn't fight me on it. He seemed…accepting, I guess. But everyone else – wow. They all thought I'd lost my mind." She chuckled ruefully. "Maybe it was the precursor of my crazy lost day, I don't know." She pointed again at his hands, and he startled, finding that he was still mindlessly fiddling with his wedding ring. "Your marriage is happy, right?"

"I think so," he said, without thought. "Maybe?"

"You don't know?" she asked, curious.

He stared at her, and felt the odd compulsion to spill his guts. "I guess our story has some similarities to yours, in that Rachel and I dated when we were young. We were a thing through high school, through college. I thought we were on the same page about marriage, but Rachel didn't want to stay in Stars Hollow. She said I was unreasonable, to expect her to stay in Stars Hollow instead of going where she could get a job."

"What's she do?"

"Photographer. And she's good at it, too. Maybe too good." Luke picked up his bottle of water and stared at it. "First she got a job in Hartford, so that barely made a difference for us. Then Boston. That was harder, but still doable. Then Chicago. Then San Francisco. Then Europe. After that, it was wherever the urge took her."

Lorelai blinked, taking in what he'd said. "Wow, sounds like she had some success."

"Yeah, definitely," he said grudgingly.

"She didn't want you to be there with her?"

He looked up, surprised at her question. "Well, yeah…I mean, I think she did. That's not…" He paused, trying to get his thoughts together. "That wasn't what we fought about. The issue was that I didn't want to go." He paused again. "OK, so that sounds terrible," he commented, suddenly hearing what he'd said from Lorelai's point of view.

"It does," she agreed, smiling kindly at him.

"It's not that I didn't want to be with her," he clarified. "It was just that I needed to stay in Stars Hollow. I had family responsibilities. I had a business. I couldn't just go gallivanting around the globe without a care."

"Hmm." Lorelai studied him. "The long-distance thing didn't work out?"

"No. We did try, for a while. But the longer the distances got, the more impossible it was to maintain." Luke met Lorelai's thoughtful gaze. "It got to where it seemed like I was supposed to make all of the compromises while she just kept on doing whatever she wanted, and finally I just said the hell with it, you know?" He shook his head. "I put up a wall and ignored her, went on with my life. I dug in. I can be pretty stubborn," he admitted. "It's probably not one of my better characteristics."

"Yes, shame on you. I myself am very flexible. As long as everything goes my way, I'm completely flexible."

He grinned at her. Yeah, he definitely liked her sense of humor.

"So what changed?" Lorelai questioned. "What brought her back?"

"I don't…I don't really know." Luke thought back to that day in the diner, where he looked up and Rachel was standing there. "She said she was changing planes at Logan and suddenly had the urge to come see me."

"Aww, that's pretty sweet, Luke."

"Guess so," he agreed, hunching his shoulders and twisting the cap on the water bottle.

"Had you moved on? Did you not want her back by then?"

Again, he was disconcerted by her intuition. "Not moved on, no. But maybe I was past what we had? Maybe I'd gotten used to everything the way it was? I'm not sure. I was happy to see her. It was good to see her again, I won't lie about that."

"She wanted to get your relationship on track again?"

"She said she was back for good, that she wanted to stay with me this time," he said, his words sounding slightly bitter.

Lorelai's eyebrows rose at his tone. "Did that not prove true?"

"No, it did. She's stayed. I just –" He cut himself off, shaking his head as he contemplated what he wanted to say next. "I didn't believe her. I still don't believe her."

"But she did stay. You married her!"

"I know," Luke muttered.

"Has she indicated that she wants to leave?"

"No," he had to admit, still sounding cranky. "Sometimes, I guess I wish there would have been a reason for me to back out when she returned. You know, if I'd already fallen in love with someone else, maybe, or had more of a backbone, or something. But she was there, saying the right things, and there wasn't any reason for me to oppose it. So she moved in with me, and after a couple of months we got married." He shrugged. "It sort of seemed like once we started down that path, there was no getting out of it."

"Does she still do her photography?"

"No. At first, she picked up some freelance stuff now and then, but now…" Luke worried his bottom lip with his teeth. "Honestly, I can't remember the last time I saw her with a camera."

"She's OK with that?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know?" Lorelai looked disbelieving. "What's she doing now?"

"She works in the diner."

"You're kidding." Lorelai laughed, and not in a good way. "She went from globe-trotting photojournalist to slinging hash?"

Luke let a glare be his reply.

"She's happy?"

"I don't know," he repeated, digging in.

"You do too," Lorelai insisted. "Of course you know."

He refused to answer.

"Let's go at this from the opposite way. Are you happy?"

Again, she surprised him with the question, enough so that he looked for an honest answer. "I'm not…unhappy. I guess that for the most part, I just feel sort of stuck. It feels like I'm existing, but not really living." He grimaced at what he'd just said. "Somebody better call Dr. Phil. Getting pretty new-agey here."

"Hey, do not diss Dr. Phil."

"The guy's a quack," he said dismissively. "What, you're in his corner? You've got all of his books on your shelf, with the important parts all highlighted?"

"Maybe if I did, I'd still be married."

"No, you wouldn't be," Luke said immediately.

"How do you know that?"

"Just from what you said. The way you are. You seem pretty steady, pretty sure of yourself. You don't seem to have any doubts that you did the right thing in ending your marriage."

"I do?" Lorelai asked, almost wistfully.

"Do you have doubts?" Luke asked, genuinely curious.

Lorelai picked up the empty hamburger wrapper and began to pleat it with her fingers. "Doubts? No, I guess I don't actually have any doubts. I just wish I'd never suggested we go ahead and get married in the first place."

Luke felt a shiver of recognition waft down his back. "Bingo," he said slowly. "See, that's what I was saying about me and Rachel. I just wish it hadn't ended up the way it did."

Lorelai's china blue eyes found his, and some sort of unspoken acknowledgement passed between them.

She cleared her throat and looked away. "Well, this has been a depressing conversation so far."

"Yeah," he agreed, his voice gruff.

"And we haven't even talked about what we're supposed to be talking about yet."

"I guess we got off track, didn't we?"

"Yeah." She grinned at him. "Not that it wasn't a good talk."

"Just not on the agenda." He pulled his legs up and wrapped his arms around them, trying to get comfortable. "So you came downstairs and met your mother," he reminded her, jump-starting their real talk again.

"Still in my pajamas," she said, the smile remaining on her lips. "Don't forget that important detail. In the Gilmore household, that is an unforgivable sin."

"Whoa, tough house."

"Now you know why I moved out and had my own place as soon as I could. I like being in my pajamas."

"Well, sure, who doesn't?" Luke asked dryly.

"You don't strike me as the lounging-around-the-house type."

He smiled, agreeing with her assessment.

"You do have a great smile," she mumbled, staring at him. "Nance was right about that."

He ducked his head, hoping to deflect the praise.

"Moving on," she said. "A little bit ago, you said I was steady and sure of myself. What are the odds you'll still think that after we get through with our reminiscing?"

He took in her bright eyes and pretty smile. His self-esteem was at an all-time high, just from the way she was so focused on him. "I'd say the odds are pretty good," he predicted.

TBC…

Author's Chat: Happy New Year! I hope everyone is ready to suspend their disbelief, because this is a weird one! Alternate timelines, different Lukes and Lorelais, and a slightly changed Stars Hollow to boot. My favorite part of the original story was the bittersweet meeting between out-of-sync Lorelai and skeptical Luke, who nonetheless felt a connection to her and yearned to help her. Afterwards I felt terrible for that Luke, who was missing a life with his true love and didn't even know it. Obviously, I can't stand for any Luke and Lorelai to be apart, and this story aims to rectify that. Let me know if you like it, and feel free to shoot me any questions if you're confused about the altered timeline. I'm predicting at least four chapters, maybe more if the muse stays with me.

Also, thanks to Eledgy, who's signed on to beta this one for me. She's going to make sure I keep all of the timeline stuff straight. "Reunited and it feels so good!"