It is 11:25pm on a Saturday night, and Luke's phone rings. Not the diner phone, but the phone upstairs, his personal phone. This phone usually only rings for a few reasons: for Jess, a wrong number, or bad news. Nicole doesn't call this late.
Rory and Jess are together, out, somewhere, being young, so it can't be Rory. The wrong numbers only happen when Luke is busy downstairs, or in the shower, or otherwise occupied. Which leaves bad news. Luke groans; he's just gotten comfortable, having closed up the diner, taken a shower, and had a beer, and now he was looking forward to a pleasant evening of falling asleep in front of the television. A Saturday night alone is actually a luxury these days, between his nephew and his - girlfriend? He has a girlfriend? Luke is conscious of the fact that this is the first time he's thought of Nicole as a girlfriend. Well, they've been dating for a month and a half now, what else are they to each other? He is not sure. But the phone is still ringing. He sighs and gets up.
"Yeah?" is the way he answers the phone.
"He dumped me," says a woman's voice, unrecognizable with crying.
"I'm sorry to hear that, ma'am, but I think you've got the wrong number."
"Luke," sobs the voice, "It's me. Lorelai."
Oh. Lorelai generally does not call him on the phone. When she wants something from him, she just shows up in person. He has always gotten the feeling that the phone is just too restrictive a medium for her personality.
"Who dumped you?" he asks, stupidly, because it can really only be Alex, but he doesn't want to presume to know.
"Matthew McConaughey," she says, exasperated. "Helena Bonham Carter strikes again."
"Huh? Did you accidentally drink too much cough syrup again?"
"Alex. Alex dumped me." She says this slowly and carefully, as though he's not so bright. Well, maybe he isn't.
"Oh. Uh, sorry. What happened?"
"Can you come over?"
"Of course."
Of course he can.
***
When the car accident with Rory and Jess happens, Lorelai does not call him from the hospital, no, she just shows up in person. She is yelling and screaming and getting in his face, and it takes a while for the words to make sense. Eventually he is able to piece things together, but he's still not sure exactly how it happened. Lorelai seems to think Jess has done this on purpose. And, by extension, she blames Luke. He wonders where she learned her definition of "accident". And at a time when he still has no clue if Jess is hurt or not, she continues to yell, and this is the thing that really sticks with Luke for a while.
He expected Lorelai, of all people, to understand the importance of family, to understand his obligation to take care of Jess. Instead, she seems to think that Jess should come in a distant third on Luke's list of priorities; after Lorelai and Rory, of course. He wonders where he himself fits in on her list, if he's ever even made an appearance there. And the certain one-sidedness of their relationship, the thing he's always been able to ignore, is dragged out into the open and lit by harsh floodlights.
And he withdraws from Lorelai. She's had him wrapped around her finger for a long time, but this strange selfishness of hers, her inability to see this situation from his perspective, has made her much less attractive to him. And he is angry, and hurt.
He sends Jess away. Not to appease Lorelai, no, although he secretly hopes she feels a little guilty when she hears about it. No, he sends Jess away because he suddenly has his first real flash of parental instinct; he knows damned well that Jess is going to ask him if he can come back. And he knows it's the only way he's ever going to get a little bit of control over Jess, something resembling the upper hand. By proving to Jess that he, Luke, has something that Jess wants, that only Luke can provide. And that something is Stars Hollow and a semblance of stability. So he sends him away, and never quite gets around to sending his belongings back.
And when Jess returns, Luke has a profound sense of satisfaction; he's finally starting to get the hang of understanding how human nature works and using it to his advantage. Better late than never.
Meanwhile Lorelai has apologized. She has apologized in person, and she has apologized in a letter. She has begged him to return to their former friendship. And while he is inwardly pleased to hear her apologies, to see this evidence that she actually needs him, he is still reluctant to open back up because he was just getting used to the idea that maybe he didn't need her. Well, and because he's enjoying having the upper hand with her, too. Overall, this whole upper-hand thing is way more fun than he realized.
But eventually, of course, he caves. He caves because he has to see her every day, and she is beautiful and funny and warm and she needs him.
If only as a friend.
You take what you can get.
***
Luke pulls on a sweater over his t-shirt (out of flannels; tomorrow is laundry day), decides that his hair is still too wet for a cap, and heads for his truck.
When he arrives at Lorelai's house, she answers the door wearing a slinky black dress and high heels, which confuses Luke for a moment until he realizes it is Saturday night and she must have been out on a date with Alex. Dumped during a date. Ouch.
She is also holding a box of Kleenex. He trails her into the living room, where she has set up a nest on the couch: a paper bag already partially full of used tissue; a bag of Chips Ahoy, and a carton of Nestle Quik. She's got this down.
He should have known this would be an occasion for junk food. He shakes his head, but he has to respect how well-prepared she was.
He sits down in a chair. "Do you want to tell me what happened?" he asks.
"Alex dumped me," she says, kicking off her heels and collapsing on the couch. Luke has to stop himself from making a wisecrack about broken records.
"Why?" he asks instead. He's not sure it's any of his business; he's pretty sure it's not, but he doesn't know what else to say.
He sees that it was in fact a bad question, and that Lorelai is not going to answer him honestly. Instead she says, "Because he's a jerk."
"Well, clearly," Luke replies with a smile. And he means it; Alex is a jerk because he made Lorelai cry. Luke would like to punch him right about now, but he doesn't even know what Alex looks like so he'll have to let it go.
Still, it's the thought that counts, so he asks, "Do you want me to beat him up?"
But Lorelai doesn't even laugh, she just stares at him, oddly, and then starts a fresh round of crying. Luke has never really seen her like this, speechless with grief. He is not sure how to handle a non-verbal Lorelai. Well, he's not really sure how to handle a verbal Lorelai either, but that at least doesn't strictly require his interaction.
So after a few uncomfortable moments of watching her cry and not knowing what to say, he finally understands what is expected of him. He takes a deep breath and stands up, and walks over to sit next to her on the couch.
She is sitting with her long legs folded up underneath her, face buried in one hand, tissue in another. At first he is just going to pat her on the back. Her date-dress has a halter-style top, her back and shoulders are bare, so patting her on the back is going to involve touching her bare skin, but he cannot see any way around it. He pats her back gently. Her skin is cool and soft.
As soon as she feels his hand on her back she leans over into him, and so he puts an arm around her shoulder. But she keeps, well, leaning, burying her face in his chest, so the easiest thing to do is put his other arm around her, too, and there is really nowhere for his hands to go that isn't bare skin.
So here he is. He is sitting here with Lorelai in his arms, her cheek pressed against his chest, her hand clutching absently at his sweater. He rocks her a little. He can smell her perfume, and he thinks about the fact that the perfume was intended for Alex, not him. And then he's not thinking of anything at all, because he is sitting here with Lorelai in his arms. Carefully continuing not to think, he strokes her hair gently with one hand. His other hand rests somewhere on her upper back. He's engrossed with the way she smells and the texture of her hair and wishing he could crawl into a bed with her and warm up all the cold skin of her back and shoulders.
And between being engrossed and not thinking, he doesn't realize at first that she's started to talk; it takes him a moment to notice that the words "It was because of you," have just come out of her mouth.
***
When Jess and Rory start dating, Luke is confused, and elated, and concerned, and jealous. Yes, let's be honest, he is jealous of Jess, because Jess has, through tenacity and god-knows-what-else, gotten the girl he wanted. A Gilmore girl. He is even a little jealous of Rory, too, after Lorelai describes the specifics to him; he is wise enough to know that if Dean had not dumped Rory, if she had finally had to admit her feelings and dump him, it would have been much harder on her. She does not handle guilt well; she has not yet learned her mother's trick of sidestepping it. All things considered, she got off easy. Without Dean recognizing what was going on and breaking things off, she would most likely have spent many more months secretly pining after Jess.
And Luke is well aware how much fun that isn't.
***
"What?" Luke asks.
"Because of you," Lorelai repeats. "Alex... ended things with me. Because of you."
"I wasn't even there," he says, trying to be funny, because this is making no sense and Lorelai told him once that humor is the last refuge of the nonsensical.
"But you were," she says. "As he pointed out to me, I never stop talking about you around him."
"Did you explain that it's probably just the coffee withdrawal talking? Because, I could hook him up with my secret Lorelai formula if that'll help."
"Luke, I know how strange these next two words are going to sound coming from me, but I'm serious."
"Well, did you tell him he was crazy?"
Pause.
And then Luke understands. And in case there was any doubt left, Lorelai, who is no longer crying, has taken this moment to sit up a little, and turn her face towards his and whisper "He's not crazy." And then she uses her totally unfair mind powers to hypnotize him so he can focus on nothing but her lips. So he kisses her, very softly, and she tastes like chocolate as she kisses him back.
Just the one tentative kiss, and then she pulls away and looks down shyly. "I know you still have the thing, with Nicole," she says softly. "So I understand if you want to take care of that first."
When Luke was a teenager, he had a Rubik's Cube. He liked it a lot. He especially loved the final click when the last twist solved the puzzle and set all the colors right. Sometimes, when he suddenly adds everything up, when a bunch of bits of information coalesce into a big picture in his head, he remembers the Rubik's Cube.
"Take care of it," he says. "The thing with Nicole."
Click.
Lorelai pulls back from him, out of his arms. "Yeah," she says. "Ending things with her. I mean, I assumed..." and her voice trails off, because, Luke guesses, she has realized that he is no longer following the script. Luke stands up.
"You assumed that now that you've crashed and burned for the third or fourth time running, it's time to give ol' Luke a chance," he says, and he hardly recognizes his own voice, and she recoils like she's been hit. "You assumed that I'd just drop whatever I was doing, whoever I was doing and come fix things, because that's what you've pretty much trained me to do over the last few years."
It takes some effort not to yell.
"Luke!" she gasps. "Didn't you hear anything I said?"
"I heard. You Gilmore girls sure are lucky, aren't you? Even your significant others are considerate enough to dump you when they realize you're getting restless. You don't even have to do the dirty work. Just get dumped on cue, fall into the waiting arms of the next guy. And nevermind if he already has someone else. Nevermind the Shanes, and the Sherris, and the Nicoles of the world."
Lorelai looks shocked, really shocked. "You mean... I thought... I thought you wanted me," she breathes.
He looks at her, curled up on the opposite end of the couch now, and he says, very carefully, "Of course I wanted you, Lorelai. Just not like this."
And she is crying again now, and he feels bad, he does, he kind of wants to rewind things five minutes and just hold her, but he also feels angry. Angry and disappointed, because he doesn't want it to have been part of a script, and he doesn't want to be Rebound Guy, and he doesn't want to be taken for granted anymore. And he wonders how in the world she would ever have respected him if he'd just dropped everything and come running when she finally got to his number on the to-do list. Has she even thought about it? Is it better for her if she doesn't have to be bothered with respecting him, and when exactly did this feeling turn into rage?
He is so angry, in fact, that he leaves then, and goes to a payphone and calls Nicole. And then he goes to Nicole's house. Before tonight, they've only ever kissed, but Nicole seems to have understood something about the tone of his voice on the phone. She asks no questions; just answers the door in a pale robe.
And afterwards, he is angry again, because as he is falling asleep in Nicole's huge bed, he realizes he is still thinking of Lorelai.
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Chapter Three