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Lorelai Gilmore has never felt so alone.
She hears it running through her head in some deep, dramatic, masculine voice, like the beginning of a movie trailer. She can see it, actually, the shots of her life cut together in a way that will draw the viewer in, make you shell out five bucks for a ticket to see the show.
The first shot is her right now, standing at this bus stop, face ashen and mouth curved down. The camera pans slowly in, and the wind rustles her hair and tries to steal her scarf.
Then the music kicks in and the guy says, She used to have it all.
A shot of Lorelai dancing around in her fancy room in her parents’ fancy house, laughing like a fool. Her and Christopher, smiling and kissing, snuggling and watching a movie, throwing peanuts at each other’s heads.
Until…she threw it all away.
A tiny plus on a plastic stick. The struck look on Christopher’s face. Her mother’s back as she turned and walked away.
Lorelai felt the tears welling up in her eyes, tried to hold them back by sheer force of will.
“Miss?” An irritated voice cuts through her daydreaming, clearly not the first call. The attendant in the booth is staring at her expectantly.
Lorelai steps forward nervously. “Um, yes, I need one ticket to, uh, Stars Hollow?” She hates how soft and uncertain her own voice is.
“Round trip?” The attendant’s voice is somehow impatient and bored at the same time.
Lorelai’s gloved hand swipes across her cheek before the tear even has a chance to fall. Ahead of the game. “No,” she says, clearing her throat. “No, just one way.”
Her stomach twists as she takes her change and her ticket, making her way over to the bench. For a wild second she starts thinking over what she’s eaten lately, what might have upset her digestion. When she remembers, she rolls her eyes.
“You’re pregnant, idiot,” she mutters to herself.
She realizes it’s the first time she’s really, actually said it out loud. She showed Christopher the test, unable to make her lips form words. When she tried to tell her mother she just burst into tears. Chris, desperate to be helpful, pulled Emily aside and told her in a low voice, as if Lorelai wasn’t allowed to know the secret of her own pregnancy. Honestly, Lorelai was pretty sure his well-intentioned explanation was overkill. She’s pretty sure Emily knew the moment her daughter whispered, “Mom, I need to tell you something.”
If she and her mother hadn’t been estranged before, Lorelai guesses they are now. Here they are a week later, Emily comfortable in her big cold house, Lorelai out on this hard cold bench, leaving home for the first time and not sure if she’ll ever be able to go back.
After all the times she’d snuck out, all the nights she’d planned her post-graduation escape, somehow it had never occurred to her that maybe Emily would kick her out before she had the chance to storm out proudly on her own two feet.
But Emily Gilmore always has to have the last laugh, doesn’t she.
Eventually the bus to Stars Hollow appears. Lorelai gets on, sits down in an empty row. She glances out the window, holds back tears. She rests a hand on her still-flat stomach, and her heart races.
Lorelai Gilmore has never felt so alone. Then again, there’s a tiny person kicking around somewhere in her organs. So maybe she’s got all the company she needs.
Miss Patty is absolutely, positively, one-hundred percent not at all what Lorelai expected.
For one thing, she is LOUD.
“OH! You must be Lorelai!” she cries from the doorway of her dance studio, rushing out onto the street to greet her.
Second, she is a hugger.
Her arms are around Lorelai before the latter has a chance to take a breath, and she’s surprised to find that it’s…nice. That she appreciates it. It’s been a while since anyone except Christopher showed her any kind of physical affection. She tries to think of the last time her dad hugged her, even, and shoves the thought away when she can’t remember any instances any time recently.
“Come in, come in, let’s get you a cup of tea, it is just freezing out here! I’m sure you’re exhausted from the trip,” Miss Patty leaves her arm around Lorelai as she pulls her past a bunch of little girls practicing what looks to Lorelai like a pretty poor rendition of the Nutcracker.
“Keep your arms up high, Grace; remember, we are graceful!” Patty calls airily to one of them, and then she and Lorelai are in a little kitchen area off the main dance floor.
She sits Lorelai down on a wooden chair and bustles about the tiny room fixing tea. When it’s steeping, she settles herself across from her guest and says, “So! Tell me about yourself! Your mother didn’t say much besides, ya know—” she gestured to Lorelai’s belly unceremoniously, “—not that I’m surprised she hasn’t kept me up to date with all her beautiful daughter’s achievements—we didn’t always get along back in the day, you know.”
Lorelai has never been told this, had never even heard of Patty until two days ago, but she does know. Patty does not seem anything like the sort of women Emily is friends with, or would even deign to speak to without heaps of condescension and judgement. It’s far more surprising that Emily Gilmore would send her pregnant teenage daughter to stay with the glitzy, gaudy Miss Patty of Podunk Stars Hollow than that she would have bickered with the very same girl in high school.
“Is that so,” is all Lorelai says.
Miss Patty laughs more than Lorelai thinks the statement merits.
“You are just too much, Lorelai,” she says. “I bet you just make your mother’s head spin.” Her delight at the prospect is clear.
“Well, that’s one way to put it,” Lorelai mumbles.
“Now, I wasn’t kidding, sweetheart,” Miss Patty says. “I want to hear all about you. Start from the beginning, tell me everything!”
She sort of sounds like she’s digging for gossip, but she also sort of sounds like she cares. And it’s not like Lorelai has anything to hide. Miss Patty already knows the most private thing about her.
So Lorelai smiles, takes the tea Miss Patty presses into her hands, and tries to keep a lid on the sarcasm as she says, “Well, I’ll warn you, it’s not too thrilling a story…”
She’s been staying with Patty for about two weeks the day the door breaks.
“It was only a matter of time,” Miss Patty shakes her head. “This place is falling apart at the seams. It needs all sorts of work I can’t do myself.”
Lorelai’s surprised by how much she wishes she could help. She’s the farthest thing in the world from handy, but something about this woman and her hospitality—and, well, Lorelai almost wants to call it her love—makes her feel like grabbing a hammer and some paint and getting to work, doing whatever she can to make Miss Patty’s life better.
This whole town is like that, actually.
Miss Patty has been parading her around like crazy, introducing her to what Lorelai thinks must be every soul in Stars Hollow, from the elders of the community down to the newest newborn baby.
And they’re all so…sweet.
Growing up in a big house in Hartford, in the Gilmore house no less…well, Lorelai won’t go so far as to say she was lacking in love, per se, but…she can’t believe how loving these complete strangers are, if a little (or a lot) nosy.
Not everybody mentions it, but she knows they’re all very aware of her pregnancy. There’s the occasional question like when are you due? and are you hoping for a boy or a girl? that would seem innocent if she was, you know, showing, but at the current stage of gestation just identifies someone tuned into the town’s rumor mill and not terribly subtle about it. But everybody knows. Everybody’s eyes drop to her stomach as they’re introduced, like they’re checking to see if there’s visible evidence yet. Everybody shakes her hand just a little too lightly, speaks to her just a little too gently.
But they mean well. It surprises her to realize that they genuinely care about her well-being and are happy to have her in their town.
Babette gives her a huge, warm, exuberant hug within four seconds of their introduction. Taylor jabbers on for a good seven and a half minutes (but who’s counting?) with a mix of braggy factoids about Stars Hollow and fairly invasive and offensive but probably well-intentioned pregnancy advice. Craziest of all, Mia, the owner of the Independence Inn, tells her that if she’s looking, she’s sure she can find Lorelai a job at the inn, before or after she has her baby.
It’s more than Lorelai ever expected when her mother told her she’d been going to a little town called Stars Hollow for the next nine months.
She had no idea she’d almost feel…at home here. After two weeks.
She’s taken to spending her days at the dance studio with Miss Patty, making the older woman tea a couple times a day, listening to the sweet dance students chatter on about everything under the sun, daydreaming, breathless, about the baby currently growing inside of her turning out to be a girl, ending up in this studio alongside a dozen other little girls like these, sporting a purple tutu and tripping over her own feet as Miss Patty calls out instructions.
Lorelai has never felt maternal in the slightest before those thoughts start creeping up on her. She starts to suspect that maybe, possibly, she can do this.
Except. Well, Emily never said as much, but Lorelai has a sinking suspicion that her mother has no intention of letting her keep this baby once it’s born. That that’s the reason she’s here, away from home, to spend her pregnancy. If no one at home knows she’s in the family way, no one at home wonders where the baby is when she comes back.
Whenever she thinks about it, she’s overwhelmed by the ferocity with which she knows she’ll reject this plan if her mother tries to push her into it.
She wants this baby. Her baby. She’ll fight for it.
“Oh sweetheart, I forgot there’s a meeting for the Firelight Festival this afternoon,” Miss Patty says now. “Taylor’ll have my head if I don’t show up. Can you wait for Luke and tell him what’s wrong with the door?”
“Sure thing,” Lorelai says easily. “Who’s Luke?”
Stars Hollow isn’t that big of a place—Lorelai can’t imagine there’s anyone left she hasn’t met.
“His dad runs the hardware store downtown, the one right next to Doose’s? Luke’s been doing jobs for him since he was…oh, fourteen, probably. His dad is grooming him to take over the store someday. But look at me chattering on,” Miss Patty laughs as she pulls on her coat and heads for the door. “Thank you, Lorelai!”
And she’s gone.
Lorelai heads back into the tiny kitchen and gets busy washing out the tea mugs she and Miss Patty had been drinking from. She sets them on a towel to try and looks longingly at the coffee pot sitting sadly, abandoned, on the corner of the counter.
“I miss you,” she tells it. “I’ve always loved you.”
“Miss Patty?” a gruff but youthful voice floats through the studio to the back room, and Lorelai jumps.
She dries off her hands and heads out into the studio, stopping short at the sight of the person standing in the middle of the dance floor.
He’s older than she expected, somehow, probably seventeen or eighteen. And though he’s not traditionally attractive—not the pretty boy type Lorelai usually goes for, a bit too much scruffy facial hair, a bit too much flannel and backward baseball cap—she can’t deny that he’s pretty cute in his own way.
“Well howdy-doo, handsome handyman,” she chirps, and the boy shuffles his feet awkwardly. It’s a little hard to tell because he’s ducking his head, but Lorelai thinks he might be blushing.
“The name is Luke Danes,” he says, a little sternly, bringing his gaze back to her face. “Or, I mean, just Luke. You don’t have to call me Luke Danes every time you want to get my attention,” he gives a kind of nervous half-laugh.
He’s just on the cusp of being adorable, and Lorelai can feel her flirting instincts kicking into high gear. Then she feels that familiar twinge of guilt that comes with teasing and making playful eyes at guys who aren’t Chris, even if she knows her boyfriend is well aware that she doesn’t mean anything by it.
But Christopher isn’t her boyfriend. Not anymore.
Somehow the reminder that she can flirt guilt-free puts a damper on her desire to flirt in the first place.
Chit-chat. Polite, neighborly chit-chat is what’s for dinner today, folks.
“I’m Lorelai. Lorelai Gilmore,” she says. “It’s nice to meet you, Luke.”
“Yeah, you too,” he says simply, smiling at her.
He has a really nice smile, Lorelai thinks. Slight, no teeth showing. It’s easygoing, kind. It reaches his eyes.
“So you’re, uh, the girl that’s staying with Miss Patty, huh?” he says.
“Give the man a prize!” she says, pointing at him. “Am I the talk of the town, or do you make a habit of keeping up with all the ladies in this place?”
Luke blushes again, though he’s rolling his eyes.
Oops. So much for not flirting.
“So, the door,” she says, too fast, and Luke looks a little taken aback by the heightened pitch of her voice. “I don’t know if one of those five-year-olds is secretly the Six Million Dollar Man or what but the whole door is off-kilter like somebody had a bad day and took it out on the frame, plus the key kinda sorta broke off in the lock and that’s, well, that’s kinda sorta my fault but…”
“All right, all right,” Luke interrupts her. “Let’s just take a look, okay?”
He seems like he’s trying to be surly, but Lorelai smiles at him and it’s like he can’t help but smile back.
It takes Luke a weirdly long time to fix the door.
Because, well, Loreali’s no expert in home repairs, but how long could it really take to change a lock? An entire day, apparently, if you’re Luke Danes. He spends hours making sure he’s got the right tools and the right parts, not to mention actually doing the work.
When Lorelai calls him out on it, he complains that it’s her fault for loitering around and distracting him with all that damn chatter. His words, obviously.
But after the lock is fixed and the door is straightened, he points out how worn out the door looks, and he takes it upon himself to re-stain it, pro bono. He’s just about done with that, two full days after the lock was fixed, when Miss Patty comes into the studio.
She looks at Lorelai, lying on her back on the floor with her hands tucked behind her head, passionately belting out the lyrics to a song from some old movie, while Luke fusses with the door and mutters halfhearted complaints under his breath and tries to pretend he’s not half in love with the sweet girl already.
“Oh, Luke,” she says airily, nonchalantly, a trained actress. “I didn’t know you were going to stain the door! I hate to tell you because it’s so sweet of you, but I’ve been meaning to get it painted green. Don’t you think that would look just wonderful? Would you mind? I feel terrible asking since you’ve just gotten it so nice…”
Luke almost looks annoyed for a split second, but then he smiles. “Of course, Miss Patty. What kind of green are you thinking?”
Lorelai’s switched to humming, her eyes closed, enjoying the breeze coming through the open door. Miss Patty is the only one who notices when she smiles, too.
It’s the fourth day of the project and Lorelai has stopped pretending she isn’t coming to the worksite, as it were, just to hang out with Luke. Today she brings a magazine and a pillow to sit on, plus a bag of chips that she has no intentions of sharing.
“I wouldn’t eat any of that processed garbage anyway, and neither should you,” he grumbles when she tells him as much. “You’re eating yourself into an early grave.”
She just grins widely at him, grabbing as big a handful she can manage and shoving them all into her mouth at once, giggling as she spills chips all over her chest.
Lorelai Gilmore, you sure know how to seduce a man.
…Not that she’s trying to seduce Luke.
She glances at the boy in question and he’s shaking his head in apparent disgust, trying and failing to hide his smile.
“You think I’m adorable,” she realizes.
Now he smiles straight at her. “Not even a little.”
They fall into a comfortable silence for a while. Lorelai flips through her magazine, feeling more content than she would have thought possible three weeks ago.
A few people stop every now and then, lingering to chat as they pass by the studio, asking about the progress on the door, asking about how Lorelai is liking town.
She laughs and makes conversation with all of them until they finish their pleasantries and move on, while Luke is more wont to grunt a greeting in their general direction and keep his focus on working on the door.
“I do hope you’re enjoying your time in Stars Hollow, Lorelai,” Taylor tells her, wrapping up a fairly draining ten minute conversation/lecture late in the afternoon. “We’re certainly glad to have you here, regardless of…circumstance,” he adds, putting a bit too much emphasis on the final word for Lorelai’s taste.
“Thanks, Taylor,” she says, not sure how much sarcasm leaks into her voice. “Much appreciated.”
Maybe there was a bit more fire in her eyes than she thought, because Taylor scampers away pretty quick after that. Lorelai leans against the wall and turns her attention back to the boy in the doorway, crouched and wiping a paint spill off the door frame.
“So, uh, hey, what does bring you to town, anyway?” Luke asks, finally glancing up at her, and she almost laughs, because he’s kidding, right?
But he looks at her with clear, unassuming eyes.
It hits her all at once.
He doesn’t know she’s pregnant.
For a moment, she thinks about making up a story. About getting in trouble at school, about jail time, family illness, any other reason she might be staying with Miss Patty.
She thinks about having one person who doesn’t know.
The idea is dismissed almost as soon as she thinks of it. Even if Luke is tuned out of the main line of town gossip, he’d find out eventually. And even if he didn’t…well, Lorelai doesn’t want to lie to this guy she just met, who may just be one of the only friends she has in the world.
So she takes a breath and forces a smile.
“I’m pregnant,” she says.
Luke drops the rag he’s holding. “Oh. Oh!” His eyes are wide as he pushes to his feet, flicking between her stomach and her face like he’s trying to be polite but can’t keep himself from checking to see if her stomach has magically grown since he last time he saw it.
“Yep,” she says quickly before he can form a sentence. “Caused quite a stir in the Gilmore household, quite a—um, a scandal, so I’ve been shipped off like an indiscreet nineteenth-century harlot to skulk in the countryside and have my shame baby in private.”
Her tone is as light as ever but the joke falls flat. Luke’s eyes soften, and she hates the hint of pity she sees there.
But he smiles, recovering, and says, “Well, congratulations, Lorelai.”
The crazy thing is that he sounds like he means it.
The crazy thing is that no one—not a single other person—has congratulated her on her pregnancy. No one else has treated it like a good thing, something to be celebrated. Some, like her mother, were furious or coldly disappointed. Others, like Miss Patty and Taylor, acknowledged it as an unfortunate accident that would turn out all right in the end.
Luke treated it like something to be excited about. A new life, a new person to celebrate.
She can’t help smiling, even as she thinks she might cry. “Thanks, Luke,” she says hoarsely.
“So are you—are you okay? Are you good? Is the paint smell too much? Do you need to sit down?” He reaches out like he might touch her arm, but pulls back at the last second.
Lorelai laughs. “I’m the same amount of pregnant I was when I walked in here. I’m fine, really.”
“Are you sure?” he presses, but he’s calming down a bit. Adjusting.
“I’m positive. Thank you, Luke,” she adds. “It…it means a lot.” It means a lot that you care, she doesn’t say.
He goes back to painting and a comfortable silence stretches between them. Lorelai sits cross-legged on the floor and goes back to her magazine, occasionally humming softly.
Finally Luke finishes up, closes up the paint can, sits down beside her, wipes his hand on his rag.
“So,” he says, and Lorelai looks up when he doesn’t continue. He looks embarrassed, awkward. “The, um. The guy…?”
Lorelai’s heart lurches a little, and she forces a smile. “Chris,” she says. “Christopher Hayden. We’ve been together forever. Or,” she amends, letting the smile drop. “We were.”
Luke looks like he regrets asking. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I shouldn’t’ve…I didn’t mean…”
“It’s okay,” Lorelai says, mostly meaning it. “No high school relationship is supposed to last forever, right?”
Luke gives a cynical huff of a laugh. “Is any relationship, really?”
“I hope so,” is all Lorelai says, soft.
He doesn’t ask what happened between her and Christopher, but she finds herself telling him anyway.
“It wasn’t that he didn’t want the baby,” she says. She doesn’t want Luke getting the wrong idea, thinking that Chris is the bad guy in the situation. “Or that he didn’t want to try to do it together. I don’t think he wanted to break up. That was all me.”
She’s quiet for a moment. Luke just watches her, careful.
“His parents wanted me to get an abortion,” she tells him. “But I didn’t want that, and neither did Chris. Or my mother,” she says, choking the word out. “Christopher proposed. And I said no.”
She startles when she feels Luke’s hand on her arm, awkwardly soothing. She hadn’t realized she’d started crying.
“You don’t have to—” he says, but now that she’s started she can’t seem to stop telling the whole tragedy of it.
“Obviously my mother couldn’t have an unwed pregnant girl living under her roof,” Lorelai said. “What would her friends think? What would her enemies think? She was absolutely furious when she found out I refused Christopher. So she had to find an alternate arrangement.” She pauses. “That’s what she called it. An alternate arrangement. Like I was something she had to handle, an inconvenience she had to deal with.”
She can still see it, the disappointment in her mother’s eyes, the judgement, and worst of all the embarrassment. It makes her want to yell and scream, to sneak out her window so she can meet up with Christopher and vent like she has a thousand times, to participate in some—any—act of delinquency or vandalism, to break down and cry.
“It was like I wasn’t even her daughter,” she says finally. “There was no…concern. No sympathy, no comfort. All she cares about is her image, what other people will say about her.”
Luke tries to be kind. “I’m sure that she…” but he trails off, not even convincing himself.
Lorelai surprises herself when she pulls Luke into a hug, but she knows she surprises Luke more. He lets out a little oof of breath and his arms stick out awkwardly at his sides for a second, but when they come around her they’re firm and warm and unbelievably comforting.
Grouchy Luke Danes gives great hugs, Lorelai thinks. Go figure.
“Thank you, Luke,” she says, hoping he can’t tell she’s almost crying. Her voice is muffled against his chest.
“For what?”
She smiles, pulls back just a little, swipes a quick hand across her eyes. “Oh, nothing,” she says, and he smiles, too.
Lorelai Gilmore feels amazingly…content.
Even she kinda can’t believe it.
She’s been in Stars Hollow for exactly one month today.
One month of friendships and laughter and food and late night conversations sitting on Miss Patty’s porch or the stoop of Luke’s dad’s hardware store. One month of tea with Miss Patty, and practice trying to convince herself it’s as good as coffee, of watching all kinds of dance classes. She’s repaired more than a few tutus and costumes that suffered mishaps during practice. She’s good at sewing, it turns out. And she likes it.
She starts work at the Independence Inn next week. She’s going to start off as a maid, but she has big plans and bigger dreams.
Right now, she’s going to meet Luke, and they’re going to go for a walk. He promised he’d bring her, in his words, the best damn sandwich she’s ever had.
“It’s not a picnic,” he’d grumbled when she had dared to suggest such a label for the outing. “It’s the middle of winter.”
“Oh, Luke, it’s a perfect day for a picnic! Do you have a checkered blanket? A wicker basket? A parka?” she’d pressed, chin in her hands, elbows propped on the counter of the hardware store. He was working, and she was visiting him. That happened a lot, lately.
“It’s not a picnic!” he repeated. “And if you keep it up we won’t go at all,” he added, stern.
Lorelai put on a face of overblown repentance: “Oh, please, Luke, don’t take away our lovely pic…I mean, our outdoor excursion with a meal component!” she amends at his glare.
He’d allowed himself a reluctant smile, and promised to meet her outside Miss Patty’s house at noon.
“I’m off, Miss Patty! See you later!” Lorelai says now, coming out of the old storage room her host had converted into a bedroom for her and pulling on her jacket. She gave the older woman a quick one-armed hug before heading to the door.
“Have fun, Lorelai!” Miss Patty calls after her as she skips out onto the porch. She can see Luke walking up the street towards her, and he gives a little self-conscious wave. “Don’t stay out too long! Remember you have a doctor’s appointment this afternoon; we need to leave around three o’clock.”
The reminder startles Lorelai. Not the reminder of the appointment, she knew that was coming. But the reminder that Miss Patty is going to take her. To go with her. That Miss Patty is concerned about her well-being and the well-being of her baby. That she won’t let her struggle through everything by herself.
That neither will Mia. Neither will Luke.
She’s broke and pregnant and still a little heartbroken. But it hits her all at once that she’s not alone. Not anymore. She has people, somehow, people who care about her. And she’s going to get through this.
She puts her hand on her stomach. She’s starting to show a little. She smiles when she realizes it.
They’re going to be just fine.