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Lorelai Gilmore is extraordinarily frustrated with Christopher Hayden.
She dials his number for what feels like the seven hundredth time and is at least the seventh in the last ten minutes, tapping her foot impatiently as she listens to the ringing.
She tries not to think about the fact that she has his phone number memorized. She’s not sure it’ll ever slip through the cracks in her brain. She’s thought about dialing it a hundred times, a thousand times, in the last eight months. Sometimes, when she goes to call someone else, she still gets halfway through his number before she catches herself and starts over.
Here in Stars Hollow, the string of numbers feels like the tiniest, thinnest, most precious link to Chris. To Hartford. To her old life. The one she missed so much more than she expected. The one she isn’t sure she wants anymore.
Chris came to see her, once. It had been…awkward. He spent the whole time alternating between staring at her protruding stomach and staring at Luke.
Luke had worried over whether he should be there in the first place.
“Are you sure?” he’d asked. “I don’t want to intrude.”
She’d taken his hand. “I want you there,” she said simply, and that shut him up.
It shut Chris up, too, when she’d introduced him to the boy beside her: “This is my…this is Luke.”
Lorelai feels bad, still, about the way the light had drained from her ex-boyfriend’s eyes. Christopher knew, probably even more than Luke did, that Lorelai’s heart had shifted loyalties.
As the interaction dragged on Chris became more and more distant. He “mmhm’d” his way through talk of sonograms and Miss Patty’s antics, offered no anecdotes of his own—or really, any independent thoughts—until Lorelai felt ready to scream. She’d felt bad, a little, that he felt…however he felt.
But it had been five months since she’d heard from him—he didn’t reach out, for almost half a year, to the girl carrying his baby. The meanest part of Lorelai decided that he needed to deal with the consequences of that decision himself, and at least not be a jerk to her just because his feelings got hurt.
The part of her that was still—might always be—a little bit in love with him still feels guilty for moving on without him.
But of course, here she is now, getting ready to go to the hospital to give birth to a baby—her baby, hers and Christopher’s—and he won’t answer his phone.
She smashes the phone down in frustration. She’s been trying to call him for the last couple days, has left him dozens of messages telling him to keep an ear out for a call saying she’s going into labor. She hasn’t heard back. And now here she is, contractions out the wazoo, hovering by the phone like a neglected girlfriend on a Friday night.
“Keep me updated on this stuff, okay, Lor?” Chris had said when he left that day a few months ago. “Like, if you need anything, or whatever. And whenever it…you know…happens.” He gestured aimlessly at her stomach.
Well, it was, you know, happening, and Chris was being as flaky as ever.
“Lorelai, get off the damn phone and get in the damn car,” Luke yells from outside.
It’s fairly adorable, how panicked he is about her going into labor. They’d been sitting on the floor of Miss Patty’s living room, watching movies. She was all wrapped up in blankets, sipping from a mug of tea, thinking that she could stay there, leaning against Luke Danes, feeling the rumble of his chest as he grumbled about the stupid dialogue in the movie, for a very, very long time.
Then the contractions started, and Luke’s eyes had gone wider than she’d thought human eyes were capable of going.
“Oh,” he’d said, once he realized what was happening. “Oh! Miss Patty!”
He’d grabbed her shoulders, then abruptly let go, letting his hands hover in the air as he tried to figure out what he was supposed to do.
“Hospital,” he’d said. “We’ve gotta get to the hospital. Did you pack a bag? Miss Patty! Lorelai, are you okay?”
As soon as her first contraction was done and she was sitting calmly again, catching her breath, he was off in a stumbling, nervous whirlwind of activity, transporting an absurd amount of blankets and supplies to the car and shouting back and forth with Miss Patty, who immediately started packing Lorelai a bag for the hospital.
Lorelai, for her part, struggled to her feet and waddled straight over to the phone, dialing one of the two phone numbers she knew by heart, the only one she could dream of calling right now.
After four looong rings and a voicemail message, she forced a smile onto her face so her voice would sound chipper and not disappointed as she chirped, “Hey, Chris, it’s me. You told me to tell you when it’s happening and, well, it’s happening! I think I’m going into labor. We’re going to the hospital, so. Try to be there. Or whatever. If you want.”
“Lorelai!” Miss Patty had called. “Do you want your blue or green pajamas?”
“It doesn’t matter!” she shouted back, dialing again, hoping this time he’d pick up.
(He didn’t.)
Six fruitless phone calls and one more contraction later, Luke all but dragged her to the car, letting Miss Patty climb up after her, and away they went.
---
It turns out that having a baby is damn hard work.
For a little while it seems pretty standard--uncomfortable, certainly, but nothing Lorelai can’t handle. It’s around the four hour mark that she starts having an existential crisis.
“I’m having a baby,” Lorelai says. “I’m having a baby, Luke!”
“I know!” he says, wincing as she grips his hand tighter.
They’re the only two in the room right now. Miss Patty has been flitting in and out, but a lot of her time has been spent flirting with any doctors she can find. Maybe Lorelai should be offended, but--well, it’s not like her priorities are bad. Labor takes a long time, and Lorelai would definitely take as many breaks as Miss Patty given the chance. Plus, Patty’s been checking in regularly and enthusing about the imminent arrival of what she’s been calling her quasi-grandchild to anyone who will listen, which definitely hasn’t made Lorelai cry. Much.
She’s not really sure where the nurse went, though. Bonnie, or whatever her name was, had probably said where she was going, but Lorelai can’t remember. Are the nurses supposed to leave? She doesn’t think the nurses are supposed to leave. Things have been pretty quiet for a while, yeah, but that doesn’t mean they ought to abandon her to squeeze this baby out herself.
Or, with Luke, she guesses. But he’s a little busy trying to help her through her existential crisis.
She’s trying not to cry. “I don’t know how to have a baby,” she says. “I don’t know how to take care of a kid, I’m going to be a crap mother.”
Luke shakes his head. His voice is stern when he says, “No, you won’t.”
“You don’t know that,” she says. “Neither of us knows that. I’ve never had a kid before, we don’t have any kind of comparison point. Literally anything could happen. I could be the actual worst mother of all time. I could be worse than my mother, Luke!”
“Lorelai,” he says.
“Luke!” she replies.
“Lorelai!” he says, more urgently.
“What?” she’s half-yelling. She’s not sure she’s ever been more terrified.
Luke shifts his weight from foot to foot, and the words all come out in an sudden, exasperated-sounding rush: “Lorelai, will you marry me?”
She's still gasping for breath, but she freezes suddenly, her eyes full of tears. When tripping over her words. “I—I—Luke, you don’t have to do this. I appreciate it, I really do, but I don’t believe you have to be married to have a kid, if I believed that I’d’ve let my parents bully Christopher into marrying me, you don’t—”
“Neither do I,” Luke says.
She stares at him.
“I don't think you have to be married to have this kid,” he repeats, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.
She takes a breath. “So you...?”
“I just want to marry you,” he says gravely.
Lorelai reaches out her hand and he takes it. “I love you, Luke Danes,” she says.
He lets out a breath like he’s been holding it for years. “I love you,” he echoes, grateful, desperate. “I love you…a lot,” he trails off, weakly, like he wants to say more but doesn’t know how.
“Let’s maybe hold off on the marriage talk until we get this baby and maybe a few dates under our belt, though, okay?” she says.
Luke smiles. “Okay.”
She squeezes his hand, and he starts to squeeze back before her grip suddenly increases tenfold and she gasps in pain. “Speaking of babies—!” she says, and ever-panicky Luke calls for the nurse to come back.
---
Lorelai’s baby is born after about eight hours of labor, just past two a.m. She’s the most beautiful thing Lorelai has ever seen in her entire life. Lorelai can’t believe she’s real.
Miss Patty seems to be seriously considering kidnapping her when she holds her the first time. “Oh, Lorelai, her eyes!” she gasps. “She’s going to be a marvelous dancer, you can already tell. And a heartbreaker, too, just like Mom.” She winks at Lorelai, who can’t contain her smile at all.
“I’ll leave you three for some family time,” Miss Patty says with a wink, returning the baby to Lorelai’s waiting embrace, because Miss Patty knows everything and isn’t afraid to cross embarrassing boundaries. “Who wants a cigar?” her voice carries back to the room, boisterous and pretty much representative of all the good things in Lorelai’s life lately.
Like this little girl in front of her.
“Hi, baby,” she says, still more tears welling up in her eyes. “Welcome to the world. Your mom’s a little crazy, as is your entire town, but I think you’ll be okay.”
Luke is hovering awkwardly, and Lorelai grins at him until he comes closer.
“This is Luke,” Lorelai says, her voice still pitched at a whisper. “We like Luke.” She pauses. “Actually, we love him.”
His ears go pink, and he smiles softly. “Hey, kid,” Luke says to the baby, gruff as ever.
The peppy nurse--Brenda, or something--makes a small noise, and Lorelai suddenly remembers her existence. She hadn’t even realized she’d come back in the room. The nurse takes the perfect little bundle of joy out of Lorelai’s arms and bounces her, cooing.
“She is just beautiful,” she says. “Do you have a name picked out?” she asks.
Luke glances at Lorelai. “Um…” she says.
The nurse smiles. “You have some time to think about it,” she tells them. “No need to rush.” She gives the baby back to her mother, who had been thinking about snatching her back anyway, and left the room, saying something about being back soon.
No need to rush, Bethany.
As soon as she’s gone, Lorelai starts talking.
“I’ve given this some thought. I want to call her Lorelai,” she says. “I wanna name her after me. And I know that that’s really self-involved, and it’s not normal, or whatever, for girls to do it, but that’s--that’s archaic and misogynistic and--I don’t know, other big words that I can’t think of this doped up, but I want to name my daughter after myself. And I know you probably think it’s stupid, but it’s important to me, and, I mean, guys do it all the time, so why can’t I?”
She finally stops, breathing heavily, baby clutched to her chest, looking up at him with something bordering on desperation.
“So?” she finally says, when he doesn’t say anything in reply. “What do you think?”
"I think it's a great idea," Luke says, smiling indulgently.
It’s like she lets out a thousand sighs of relief all at once.
"We can call her Rory," Lorelai says, soft.
We. The word echoes through her mind. We. Luke and me. We're a we.
It’s still so much to deal with. Sometimes she looks at him and she’s struck by how young he is. How young they both are. She forgets, sometimes, that she’s not a thousand years old. She’s sixteen, and she’s a mother, and Luke is eighteen, and he might be the love of her life. It’s too soon to say, of course, but she’s got high hopes.
---
It’s possible that Lorelai has never been happier in her entire life. She’s sitting in a surprisingly comfortable hospital bed, holding her baby--her baby-- in her arms, Luke Danes perched next to her, leaning against her shoulder, clearly just as thrilled with the little human as she is. Miss Patty had gone off again, this time in search of food, and as she left Lorelai had heard her singing Rory’s praises to anyone who would listen.
Even though she knows it’s not true, she lets herself believe it is a moment, an hour, a day, a life, of total, beautiful peace and joy.
Lorelai hears her mother’s voice (loud, shrill, demanding) moments before the woman herself bursts through the door.
“Oh, Lorelai!” she gasps, her eyes lighting up at the sight of the tiny infant in her daughter’s arms. “I’m so sorry we’re late. Is this her?”
Lorelai can’t breathe. She feels like even blinking will make this apparition, her parents, after so much time, disappear. “Who else’s baby would I be holding, Mom?” she manages to croak out, but there’s no bite in it.
She straightens up, a little, holding Rory closer to her chest instinctively as her parents slowly, cautiously approach the bed. Neither of them seems to notice Luke, who had leapt off the bed at their entrance, until he awkwardly shifts away from Lorelai to make room for their approach.
“And who are you?” Richard demands, a little blustering, like he’s embarrassed he hadn’t noticed the boy in his daughter’s bed.
“I--um, I’m--” Luke stammers, floundering in the face of Richard Gilmore’s trademarked Stern Voice.
Lorelai breaks in. “Mom, Dad, this is Luke,” she says. “He’s my best friend.”
The phrase, though accurate, feels too weak for what Luke is to her, but color rushes into his face anyway, and he glances at her with a pleased smile.
“It’s good to meet you, sir. Ma’am,” he says, the words sounding too stiff, but Lorelai’s heart swells at his effort.
Richard shakes his hand and it doesn’t fall off, and Emily directs a brief, slightly awkward smile at him before re-devoting all her attention to the baby, and Lorelai counts both of those as wins.
Then it’s back to the baby.
“What’s her name?” Emily asks, gazing down, wonderstruck, at the perfect little human Lorelai made.
“Rory,” Lorelai says. “We’re gonna call her Rory.”
“Rory,” Emily repeats, her voice just a breath, like it’s a magic word.
“Short for Lorelai,” Lorelai adds, only a little smug.
Emily looks like she’s considering rolling her eyes at that, but with another glance at the baby she decides against it. “That’s lovely,” is all she says. She hesitates a moment. “May I hold her?”
It’s only with a little reluctance that Lorelai hands over the bundle. Her heart is racing. Is it possible that her baby is cute enough to kickstart the repair of a relationship scarred by sixteen years of damage?
I mean, if anyone’s baby had that much cute potential, it would be the child of Lorelai Gilmore, the Queen of Cute herself.
“How did you know I was here?” Lorelai asks. “Did Patty call you?”
“No, silly, Christopher did,” Emily says, and Lorelai feels her heart drop into her stomach.
She forces herself to take a calming breath before she says anything, but even then her voice shakes. “He called you?” she asks. “Tonight?”
Emily seems confounded. “Yes, of course, tonight. When else would he have called?”
Lorelai forces a smile. “Oh, yeah, I don’t know. Sorry. Residual pregnancy brain, I guess.”
Her mother seems satisfied by this response, or at least captivated enough by her (admittedly incredible and flawless) granddaughter not to push it.
“I’ve barely heard from that boy in months,” Emily says. “Though I suppose he has his reasons.” She glances at Luke, and Lorelai chooses to ignore that. And the fact that Christopher got enough out of her messages to brief her parents on her whereabouts, but not enough to show up himself.
It’s fine. It’s really fine.
Lorelai’s voice is small when she says, “Mom? Dad? I’m glad you’re here.”
Emily’s face softens. “So am I,” she says.
Richard awkwardly pats her arm and smiles to show his agreement.
Lorelai thinks everything is going to be okay.
---
Lorelai loves her parents. She really, really does, despite everything. But after an hour and a half of semi-awkward small talk after some eight months of not speaking at all, she’s feeling incredibly drained.
It is pretty funny to watch Emily and Patty shoot thinly veiled barbs at each other, though. Lorelai kinda wishes she had some popcorn to munch on. Richard kinda looks like he wants a drink. She starts to entertain herself by keeping tallies of the number of times Richard looks at his watch, and the number of times Luke looks at her in horror when one of her parents tries to talk to him.
Eventually, a woman walks into the room in brightly patterned scrubs. She’s not the nurse that had been in and out before--Becky something with the giant fake smile. This nurse had a smile that was even bigger, though possibly less fake.
“Alright,” the nurse says. “I hear it’s time to try feeding baby again. Everyone out but Mom and Dad,” she adds, shooting a smile towards Lorelai and Luke.
Luke blushes. “Oh, I’m not--” he starts, starting to extricate his hand from Lorelai’s, but she clings tight, shooting him a warning look.
“Yep,” she says. “All you other suckers head on out. We have a young’n to feed.”
The nurse gives a nervous kind of chuckle, and her father almost looks like he wants to say something, but eventually her parents and Miss Patty leave and she and Luke are left alone with Rory and the nurse.
Lorelai winks at Luke, and he blushes. She’s glad that even directly postpartum she can keep the boys swooning at her feet. Or, at least, this boy. The one she wants to be.
“Hey,” she says to him, quiet.
“Yeah?”
“I love you.”
He smiles. “Yeah, you’re not so bad yourself.”
---
The weeks following Rory’s birth honestly feel a bit like a fairytale to Lorelai. She’s speaking to her parents. She’s spending most of her time with a tiny person that she created. She’s kissing Luke a lot. She half expects animals to start singing at her as she walks down the picturesque Stars Hollow streets.
It’s not like anything is going to top the birth of her perfect child, but amazing things just keep happening. Most notably, Mia lets her turn an old potting shed behind the Independence Inn into a tiny, beautiful house for her and Rory. She spends days picking paint colors and furniture and lamps, and Luke grumbles and helps her with it all without hesitation. The whole thing feels like the sort of magic a fairy godmother would bestow.
She still spends a lot of nights as Miss Patty’s, and a lot of time during the day at Luke’s, but she can’t ever find the words to describe how incredible it is to have a place that’s just her own, that she can build up for herself and for her daughter. She knows her parents want her to come home, but...she’s just sixteen, she knows, but in so many ways they all know she has outgrown her parents house.
They reached a compromise, though--dinner in Hartford every Friday night, like clockwork, and a whole weekend spent at home every month. She won’t admit it, but Lorelai is actually glad to have an excuse to go to her parents’ house without having to admit she wants to. She thinks maybe, if it goes well, she might pop by even on unscheduled days.
Maybe her magic baby can fix everything, after all.
Rory is about a month old when the first snow hits Stars Hollow. She and Luke are on the floor of his dad’s closed hardware store, Luke trying to entertain the infant with various shiny objects and Lorelai sitting on the counter laughing her head off at his frantic attempts to get her to stop crying.
Suddenly Lorelai glances out the window and gasps.
“Snow, Luke,” she says.
He’s confused at first, but Lorelai hurries to bundle Rory up in what seems like a thousand blankets and hats and they go out to the square. Someone has already set up strings of lights across the trees and the gazebo, though it’s only early November. That small town charm, Lorelai thinks.
“This is the most perfect first snow of all time,” she whispers.
She knows they can’t stay out long with an infant, but this moment, right here--this is all she needs. Luke presses a kiss against the top of her head, and Rory coos in her arms, bad temper behind her. She feels so warm, and so happy, and so very eager to see what the future holds.