• 1-Drama Mama
• 2-Femme Fatale
• 3-Crosstown Counterpart
• 4-Little Orphan Antsy

Five and a half beers later, Luke and I have settled down considerably.

The air is cool, the coffee is hot, and the minutes are broaching midnight but we’re still gabbing away effortlessly—or at least I am.

Surprisingly enough, this is actually turning out to be one of the most relaxing evenings I’ve had all year. There is no worry, no disruption, only the age-old amusement of two good friends laughing their asses off at nothing in particular.

Then again, the bulk of our happy hour has been intimately complemented by the fact that I’m now wearing Luke’s clothing…

After my dinner dress got all damp and dewey and we had knocked back a few, Luke got it in his head that there was no way he was going to let me go back home and change. Now being the well-bred, well-mannered, and classy young broad that I am, I naturally protested. Honestly, there was much remonstration on my part. But poor selfless Luke, he just kept on insisting and insisting and well, here I am, feeling small and dainty amid a sea of blue flannel.

And in spite of my ongoing threats to belt out the Lumberjack Song, I think I’m finally beginning to understand the fabric’s mass appeal to the working man.

Or is it just that this so-called “working man” is finally beginning to look massively appealing to me? Hmm…

“Lorelai!”

Who? Huh? What now?

“Do you always take up the entire couch or is this just some neurotic compulsion to run me out on the floor?”

Aggh, I grimace, bolting from a cloud of contemplation. Luke’s grumbling has pretty much killed my short-lived fantasy of the two of us getting hot and heavy in the stockroom.

“Why do you always have to ruin the moment?” I whine, swatting him with a sofa pillow in an overly callous fashion. It’s infuriating to discover that for all my drive he takes little offense.

“What are you talking about? What moment?”

Swat>

Once again, Luke barely flinches. No way is he going to pretend he doesn’t remember backing me up against the wall and kissing my neck inside that really trippy electric purple haze, is he?

“Seriously, What mo—”

“Nevermind!” I swat one last time for emphasis before wistfully evacuating his side of the couch. “Far be it from your blue collar man-tality to even begin to comprehend the intricate inner workings of the modern day woman. We have needs, Luke. We need our moments! So you just go back to what you do best. Sitting pretty.”

And I manage to let that one sink in for all but four seconds before Luke develops the nerve to retaliate, swatting back. Oof, I rub my shoulder. That’s smart.

“All right, I don’t really know what’s going on in that freak show head of yours but I’ve got a fairly strong hunch you just insulted me… somehow.”

“Lighten up, Floyd. I was only jg.” g.”

“Floyd?”

“Yeah, Floyd. As in Pretty Boy Floyd.”

“My dentist’s first name is Floyd. There is nothing pretty about him.”

“But you have pretty teeth.”

Ah, the telltale visage of utter and complete confusion on Luke’s face. Does it ever get old?

“Ooo, ooo, ooo! Platypus!” Ever prone to distraction, I yank myself upright and start pointing at the screen in front of us.

“Plata-what?” Luke questions lazily, my toothy-comment quickly forgotten.

“Who are you, Jessica Simpson? Platypus. As in duck billed platypus, the semi-marsupial of Australia.”

“Semi-marsupial?”

“Eh, well there’s somewhat of a debate going on about its genus. Kind of like that whole panda debacle only with less prestigious biologists. I guess those egotistic ‘head honchos’ aren’t very interested in the platypus.”

“And you are?” I look over my shoulder and discover Luke staring at me as if I had two heads. And who knows? Maybe in his inebriated state I do.

“Hello, it’s only the greatest animal on the face of the earth! Totally unique. And did I mention that it quacks and growls?” I beam at him pointedly.

Luke throws his hands up in the air. “I’m sold.”

“I knew you would be.”

And then we revert to the Discovery Channel.

“They’re sorta funny looking, aren’t they?” Luke offers, scratching his head in contemplation and throwing his feet up on the coffee table.

“Luke, please, you’re insulting my familiar.”

“Familiar?”

“In a past life.” I nod sagely.

Luke grumbles and shifts away, signaling that I’ve confused him to the point where he’s up and ready for a change of topic. I figure I’ll let him pick this one.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Shoot,” I yawn, stretching out my bare thigh in front of me idly. It’s done in part to alleviate my strained muscles but there’s also the underlying motive of attracting Luke’s interest. I try not to smile when I catch him studying the movement more than passively. Good thing I shaved this morning.

“What do you think your life would be like if you… if you hadn’t had Rory?”

“Wow,” I whistle, tucking my leg ban a n a retired position. “Congratulations, Luke. You must make the fifty-hundred-thousandth person to ask me that question.”

“Ah, jeez, really?” The words slit, st, slightly slurred but unmistakably regretful. “Screw it then. I’m sorry, I—”

“Relax, hun,” I giggle, touched by his inadvertent spout of sensitivity. “It’s not your fault. And you’re in luck, actually, because you get the sparkly polished answer.”

“Oh?” In the blink of an eye, Luke has mellowed and he slides closer to me expectedly. So close that we’re hip to hip and his arm is resting behind my head, like a couple of care free teenagers at the drive-in. His body’s so inviting and the arrangement so near compromising that I can almost pretend it’s flirtatious. “Which is?”

“Well,” I giggle again, thrilled at the irony of Luke relocating to my side of the couch. “I probably would’ve gone to Yale. Ultimately not because my dad wanted me to but because I wanted to, since I was wee and small. And then there would’ve been graduate school, presumably the West Coast because I’d always wanted to go there and, you know, give birth to a whole new wave of rock and roll.”

“Of course.”

“Let’s see… and if I hadn’t had Rory I probably never would’ve stumbled upon Stars Hollow so I doubt I’d still be living in Connecticut. Damn… that would truly suck ’cuz I love it here. Oh, and I definitely wasn’t planning on having children until I was at least… huh, the age I am today. Wow. This is scary.”

“But what about occupation-wise?” The chatterbox-formerly-known-as-Luke asks, leading me to ponder over whether he’s been spending too much time with me lately. “Would you have ended up opening your own inn and everything?”

”Probably not,” I fathom, my brow furrowing with fine line of the hypothetical. “What I’m doing now is completely different from what I’d anticipated. But that’s how it is for everyone, isn’t it? Few people end up where they thought they’d be. Sookie wanted to be a surgeon—much as I tremble at the thought of her with a scalpel, Michel a dancer and-or head of an evil corporation, and right up until I had Rory I wanted to be Belinda Carlisle so God knows where I’d be.”

And then I shake my head in overload. This is getting to be a little too deep for my tastes.

“Well, what about you?” I spur, eager to grill him for a change. “What would you be doing if you hadn’t opened the diner?”

“I’d be a carpe.” .” The response is nothing short of automatic.

“Like Jesus and Bob Vila?”

“Yes,” he sighs. “Like Jesus and Bob Vila.”

“So how’d you decide between the cooking and the carpentry?”

“Oh, you know...” Luke toils off and darts his eyes downward, ill at ease. “I flipped a coin.”

The picture that comes to mind, of young Luke beside a railroad track with a pocket full of pennies, sends me reeling.

“Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait! Run that by me one more time. You based your entire financial future and livelihood on a coin toss?”

“Yup.”

“Luke,” I chuckle in amazement, “that’s insane.”

He rolls his eyes. “Then I take it we’re kindred spirits.”

And gazing upon him just now, perfectly and delectably handsome with just short of a six pack in his belly and not even a scrap of an effort, I start to wonder if maybe Luke’s right. Maybe we are alike, in some kooky, kismet kind-of-a-way. Maybe we are the yin and the yang and the Frankie and the Johnny and the abstract and the concrete rolled up into one big whole. Maybe we are… meant to be.

…

Oh, no. Not this again.

How many times are we going to have to go through this? Bad, Lorelai, bad! You’re taken. You have a boyfriend. An exceptionally witty, elegantly dressed, somewhat eccentric boyfriend whose Dutch, yes, may be a tad on the rusty side but he’s still a catch! Jason’s crazy abouu. u. And Luke—Luke’s not your soulmate. He belongs to Nicole.

That’s r,