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When the bell rang, he knew that it was Lorelai before he turned around. He could always just tell when it was her. Everything sounded different, the air smelt different, and the room seemed to shine brighter. Placing the rag he was cleaning with over his shoulder, he turned to see Lorelai walking towards her normal seat, the stool right in front of him at the counter, garment bag in hand.
She smiled at him in greeting when her searching eyes met him.
“She’s not here yet,” Luke grumbled as he grabbed her usual coffee cup and started to fill it.
“All right,” she sighed, “you'll have to entertain me until she arrives.”
She smirked at him and he couldn’t help but notice how her eyes popped against her blue eyeshadow. He forced himself to react, before his staring became too noticeable. He rolled his eyes.
“OK, Burger Boy, dance.” She clapped her hands and looked at him with anticipation.
Annoyed by her antics he tried to think of the most random question he could. Finally after a moment he grinned and did his best to look intently into her eyes. “Will you marry me?”
Her whole body froze. Her eyes wide, garment bag half folded by her arm, and jaw dropped as low as the floor.
“What?” She asked.
Slowly, he repeated himself, “will you marry me?”
That was not how he meant to say it. He had meant to say it even slower than that, he wanted it to sound like he thought she was dumb. But, instead, the way he said it was almost sensual. Like he meant it. He had expected Lorelai to laugh. It was a joke, he had tried to be funny. Usually she laughed at his jokes. Usually she found him funny. Yet right now, she did not look amused.
She just stared at him. The world seemed to fade out from around them. Lorelai couldn’t take her eyes off of his. Marry him? Marry Luke? Diner Luke? Town Luke? Her Luke?
They weren’t even dating? It had only been very recently that she had even started considering herself attracted to Luke. Had the attraction been there for longer? Probably. Had she ever acknowledged it? No. Not until that Chilton dad had asked her out and he seemed slightly jealous.
Maybe that meant something. He was jealous, and now that she thought about it. He had made similar comments when she didn’t go out with that waiter guy from one of the catering companies the Independence outsourced to sometimes. Maybe all this time he was interested in her. Maybe he even liked her. Maybe even loved her.
He did ask her to marry him. He was her best friend. The one person she knew without a doubt would come running to her side if she needed anything. Anything. And she knew that she could do the same for him. She would drop anything, other than Rory, to help him.
He also understood just how much Rory really meant to her. She felt that sometimes other people were starting to push her to put herself first, before Rory, now that Rory was older. But she couldn’t, not in a million years. He would never expect that of her.
In the four years she had known him, he has never once made her feel like that. Like she was a bad person for putting herself second or for taking less care for herself than she should for Rory. He understood her. He could tell what she was feeling just as soon as she walked in the door. And she liked to think that she was almost just as good at reading him as he was at reading her.
She could always tell when his grumpiness was genuine or just a front. She could always tell when he was just playing into the joke that he was mean, because he wasn’t mean. She knew that first hand.
He wasn’t mean, he was Luke.
He was kind and he was generous. She had never seen someone do kind things for the people around them more than she had seen Luke do kind things. He was gentle and caring. She had watched him with her daughter, on her birthdays and holidays when he bought her those ridiculous gifts that Rory treasured beyond compare.
He loved her daughter. She knew it to be true. Once when she had come in crying about how a boy had pulled her pigtails, Lorelai almost had to hold Luke down, keeping him from beating the poor 12 year old boy to a pulp.
So here was this young, attractive, kind, generous, caring, gentle, daughter loving man, one who she couldn’t believe she had never seen this clearly before, asking her to marry him.
It felt like they had stared at each other for years, but it must have only been seconds. She forced her jaw up and smiled.
When she opened her mouth she had intended to turn it all into a joke. One along the lines of getting dinner first or not making impulsive decisions. One that would break the tension and allow her to push for a date instead.
Because, even if she knew it was way too quick to be married, she had realized over the course of the few seconds of staring that she was most certainly in love with him.
But the joke did not come out. Instead she forced her jaw up, smiled, and said with more sincerity in her voice than she had ever heard, “yes.”
That was when his jaw dropped. “Yes?”
There was no way he had heard her correctly. There was no way she had just said yes. And certainly she hadn’t said it like that . Like she was genuinely considering it.
Lorelai’s eyes widened as if she didn’t realize what had come out of her mouth until he repeated it. She opened her mouth to try and explain but she couldn’t seem to make a sound. She gulped and smiled again, not knowing what else to do.
Luke cleared his throat and looked down at the coffee she had yet to touch, finally breaking their stare down. He looked back up to her face and frowned as she brought the cup up to her face and drank it. He watched her take a large gulp and close her eyes as she swallowed. She took a deep breath and placed the cup back down, using the coffee to ground her. She took another breath and sat up straight, looking Luke right into his eyes. Together they tried to say something,
“I was just looking for something to shut you up.”
“I think we could make it work.”
They both froze again, digesting what the other person had said. Then again they spoke at the same time.
“You think we could make it work?”
“You weren’t serious?”
Luke was suddenly feeling a little dizzy. She had said yes. Lorelai Gilmore had said yes to his proposal. He had known he was in love with her, he had known that if he was ever going to get over his hesitation when it came to marriage and get married it would be to Lorelai. Not that he would ever admit it to anyone but himself but he had dreamed of all of it. How he would ask her out, kiss her goodnight on her front porch for the first time, how he would propose by making her favorite dessert and placing his mothers ring on top, how they would live in the Twickham house and fill it up with Rory and other Gilmore-Danes babies.
“You were serious?” Luke asked when he was able to breathe again.
Lorelai suddenly looked mortified. “Me? Serious? No. I’m not one for serious.”
She stood up, coffee and garment bag forgotten, and started towards the door. Luke rushed around the counter and followed her into the street. He grabbed her wrist and turned him towards her. She wouldn’t meet his eyes at first. Luke bent down and moved into her eye line. Then, with even more sincerity than when he had asked her to marry him, he asked her, “Were you serious?”
Lorelai looked to the sky, mostly to keep tears from falling. She felt ridiculous. Of course he was joking, how could she have been so dumb. Where had her brain gone? She was never this naive. Never. But now here she was admitting to the man she just discovered she loves that she would marry him if he asked without dating him first. Her eyes found Luke’s again and he patiently waited for her answer.
She wanted to laugh at herself. Before she had thought she could read him as well as he could read her, but right now she couldn’t read shit. She had no idea what he was thinking. Was he pitying her? Was he messing with her even more? No, she almost physically shook that idea away. He wouldn’t mess with her more. That much she knew, she knew him well enough to know that he knew she was upset and embarrassed. And that he would not make her feel worse, at least not like that, not intentionally.
He was always good at hiding his emotions behind his face. His face was always set, in one of those grumpy, straight mouthed faces. But the secret, she had learned, was to look at his eyes. His eyes always told another story. She just wished she could read the story they told. Sometimes it was easy. Sometimes, like right then, it seemed impossible.
He moved his hand from her wrist and held her hand, his thumb caressing her knuckles. “Lorelai. Were you serious?”
She looked to their hands and back to his face. His head cocked to the side and he gave her a small smile. One that told her just what he was thinking. One that told her that whatever she said, no matter what, he would accept it and that they would move on; and if she wanted, never speak of this again. Pretend it never happened.
When she could finally compel herself to breathe again she sighed. Then, with her eyes closed, as if trying to protect herself, she whispered in the same love sick tone, “yes.”
Luke nodded, even though her eyes were still closed. “Right.”
His thumb was still caressing her hand. He waited a moment more, waiting for her to say something again. Normally she did all of the talking for them, he never had to force a conversation along.
This was no normal conversation, however. They stood in silence for a while longer. He broke the silence, asking, “you think we could make it work?”
Lorelai finally opened her eyes, she nodded. “Yes.”
“Because there’s a lot of things to think about and talk about.” Luke could feel one for his rants coming. “Like I’ll have to move in. I’d live there, in that house. I’d come home every day and cook you dinner every day and we’d go to bed together everyday. And we’d have to go to the bank and combine our accounts. I know technically we have different banks but I know you like yours. Because of the teller who can’t count or whatever, so I’d have to do that. And while I’m not entirely sure what the deal is with that Chris guy is, I would like to be involved in Rory’s life, as a father figure. I mean, I already love that kid as if she were my own and would do anything for her and I don’t think I could just be there, on the sideline, and not be involved in her li-”
He froze and gripped her hand tighter. “Rory! She’s not here, she doesn’t know. I was supposed to ask her. I would have asked for her blessing. Because I know how much she means to you. And I was definitely supposed to do this differently. I was gonna buy you those yellow daisies I know you love and bake you a cheesecake or some other type of dessert and have the ring be there and Rory was going to be there, well maybe nearby so you could tell her, but she's not here. She is not nearby because she doesn’t know. Because I stupidly asked as a joke. One that you took seriously and now I’m revealing all of my cards by telling you that I’ve been thinking about proposing for what feels like forev-”
Lorelai was kissing him. Lorelai Gilmore was kissing him. And she tasted like coffee. For the first time in Luke’s life he loved the taste of coffee. Her hands were on his shoulders and one of his was on her waist as the other moved to her hair, both pulled the other closer. Luke slightly pulled away, placing their foreheads together.
They were so close that Luke could feel Lorelai smile. “I was serious.”
Luke opened his eyes and grabbed her hands again. “And if I asked you again, would you be serious then too?”
Lorelai smiled bigger and nodded.
“Wait right here.” Luke took a step back. “Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”
Lorelai gave him a questioning look but Luke just smiled and turned back towards the diner and ran. He ran up into his apartment and grabbed his mother’s old ring from the family safe, the one he knew he would propose to her with. Placing it in his pocket he bounded down the stairs once more.
He rushed back into the diner and saw Rory looking at him confused. She held up her mom’s purse, which was sitting on the counter next to her cold coffee. “Is she in the bathroom?”
Luke shook his head and looked out the window to see Lorelai watching the diner confused, but she was just far away enough where she couldn’t really see what was going on.
“Rory, come here.” Luke nodded his head towards himself. Rory walked over to him and sat down in front of him at the counter. “This doesn’t make a lot of sense, and I know that it is crazy. Like really crazy. But there is no way I can do this without your permission so here it goes.”
He pulled the ring box from his pocket and placed it on the counter opening it so Rory could see the ring. Rory looked up at him confused. “I am going to propose to your mother. Right now.”
Rory’s eyes became huge as she looked between the ring and Luke. “What?”
“And your mom is waiting for me to ask her, right out there,” he pointed over her shoulder to where they could both see Lorelai patiently waiting for Luke to come back, “but, if for any reason other than it being a crazy idea, like you don’t like me or something like that, you don’t want me to. I won’t. She was your mom first.”
Rory looked back at her mother and down at the ring and finally landed her eyes on Luke. “This is crazy.”
“I know.”
“Like insane.”
“I agree.”
“What if she breaks your heart?”
Luke raised an eyebrow. “She breaks my heart?”
Rory looked down at the ring box and picked it up. She started fidgeting, by opening and closing it. “I can’t lose you too Luke.”
Luke’s heart beat, that hadn’t calmed down since he had made the stupid joke in the first place, slowed. “Oh angel, you’ll never lose me. Even if she breaks my heart. You’ll never lose me. I know I’ve never told you but,”
Luke stopped and took a moment to think of his words. Rory looked up at him and gave him a confused smile. “You haven’t called me angel since I was 12.”
“You’ll always be that 10 year old little girl in angel wings, asking for me to go to your pet caterpillar’s funeral.” Luke smiled softly at her.
Rory smiled back and looked down at the box again. “I’ll never lose you?”
“Nope.” Luke popped the p, “I love you too much.”
Rory’s head snapped up. Luke gave her an unsure smile. “You gotta know kid, it’s always been the two of you.”
Rory smiled and handed him the box. “I still think it’s crazy.”
“I know.” Luke walked around the corner and hugged her. With a kiss on the top of the head he stepped back. “So, that’s a yes, right?”
“Don’t keep her waiting any longer.”
Luke smiled and ran out the door. Back to the center of town where he had left Lorelai. Well, she had moved to sitting in the gazebo, but he didn’t care. She smiled as he walked up.
“I don’t have any sort of dessert. But, I do have an approving Rory on standby and a ring.” He showed Lorelai the box.
Lorelai’s smile softened when he opened the box. “I know this should be more romantic. I know that this is not the order we should be doing this. But, I love you Lorelai. I have for years, I love everything about you. The good, the bad, the beautiful, the ugly. I love you.”
Luke got down on his knee and smiled up at her with the most dazzling smile she had ever seen on his face. “Lorelai Victoria Gilmore, will you marry me?”
“Yes.”