*
 

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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