Title: Chances and Choices
Author:  Megan Reilly
Rating: PG
Summary: It's better to take a chance and have it turn out bad than spend your whole life wondering what might have been.
Disclaimer: Gilmore Girls belongs to Amy Sherman-Palladino, the WB, etc.
Archiving statement: OK for Mystic's archive. Other archives, NO. Please do not archive this story without my permission.

Luke finally summoned up the courage to kiss her.

In retrospect, he wasn't even sure how it happened. She was standing on the other side of the counter, waiting for her coffee, and when he turned around, he just...kissed her.

She took a step back with a puzzled look on her face. He tried to smile as she raised her hand, almost to the level of her lips, and gave a tiny wave before she walked out of the diner. Then Lorelai was gone and everyone in the place was staring at him.

"Mom, are you okay this morning?" Rory inquired, loading up her backpack at the kitchen table. She couldn't find her bus book, but that didn't worry her as much as her mother's blank stare did.

Lorelai seemed to shake herself out of a daze. "I'm fine," she said. "Nothing happened. Why do you ask?"

Rory shrugged. "You're acting weird."

"No I'm not," Lorelai said, and it came out a little more snappish than she intended it to.

Rory held up a packet of Pop-Tarts, still wrapped in their silver foil. "Since when is trying to put this in the toaster not considered weird behavior?"

"It's happened before, how do you think the toaster got broken last time?" Lorelai shot back. "Why are you acting like the Spanish Inquisition this morning?" she continued. Then she saw the shocked expression on Rory's face and knew she'd been too sharp. "Rory, I'm sorry. I haven't had any coffee, and ..."

"No, don't worry about it," Rory said, a chill coming off her words as she shouldered her heavy backpack.

Lorelai sighed. "Rory, I didn't mean..."

"It's fine. Have a nice breakfast." Rory thumped the Pop-Tarts down on the table in counterpoint to her sweet-tempered words. "I'll see you after school."

Lorelai trailed Rory to the front door. "I hate it when we fight," she said.

"Well, who started it?" Rory pointed out, meeting Lorelai's glance with eyes that shone a little too brightly.

"Rory," Lorelai said gently. "I'm sorry, babe."

Rory's face didn't change. "I'll see you after school," she said again, and left.

"Teenagers suck," Lorelai grumbled to herself, and reached for her keys. Of course, they weren't in the dish on the entryway table where they should have been. The keys had probably run off with the phone again, to continue their ill-fated love affair. But Lorelai had no desire to
contemplate love affairs. "I suck," she muttered, and went off in search of her keys.

Lorelai went directly for coffee when she reached the inn. She picked up a cup, but considered just chugging directly from the coffeepot. She stood there for a moment, considering her options.

"Sweetie, what's wrong?" Sookie's voice came from behind her.

"What?" Lorelai asked, pouring the coffee into a cup after all, which she then quickly drained and refilled. Sookie looked pointedly at the cup. "Nothing's wrong," Lorelai replied. Sookie raised her eyebrows, waiting for the real answer. "Minor argument with Rory, that's all," Lorelai confessed.

"She's been awfully moody lately," Sookie commented. Now that she'd had the truth from Lorelai, she moved away slightly to sprinkle powdered sugar artistically over several plates of French toast.

"Rory's a teenager," Lorelai said. "But she's an angel. It was my fault, Sookie. I was sharp and nasty and there was no reason for it. And when I tried to apologize, she wouldn't listen."

"Why?" Sookie asked.

"I don't know why," Lorelai said, leaning against the counter, watching her best friend work.

"Well, did something happen this morning?" Sookie asked.

Lorelai's heart went into overdrive. Did she know? No, Sookie wasn't smiling - she would be smiling if she knew something. "Nothing happened this morning," Lorelai said, an outright lie, and then she felt terrible for lying. But she couldn't...how was she supposed to explain when she didn't understand it herself? "I'm turning into my mother," she said.

"That's not true," Sookie said.

"No, it is true," Lorelai replied. "I'm acting with Rory the same way my mother did with me. I'm being nasty and critical and there's no reason for it. Of course Rory doesn't know how she's supposed to react. I'm not making any sense."

"Okay, you got me there." Sookie grinned at Lorelai.

Lorelai wondered how Sookie could be so happy all the time. Or appear to be so happy. Was she as clueless about Sookie as she was about everything else? "Sookie, do you want to talk about anything?"

"Like what?"

"I don't know," Lorelai said. "But, if you had something that was bothering you, you'd let me know, right? You wouldn't just keep it inside and go on dazzling me with your bright, bubbly personality."

Sookie looked confused. "Is this one of those things where you start a story about 'my friend' but that story really turns out to be about you? Like, 'my friend has these terrible freckles and wants to get rid of them, but lemon juice didn't work, so...'"

"No!" Lorelai said, perhaps a little too quickly. "Sookie, come on, I am not Jan Brady. I was just wondering if you had anything on your mind."

"Is there something I should have on my mind?"

"I don't know, but if you did have something on your mind, you'd tell me, right?" Lorelai asked again.

"Lorelai, you're not making any sense this morning," Sookie told her friend, as kindly as she could. "Maybe you should take a break. Go to Luke's, have some coffee ---"

"NO!" Lorelai exclaimed. Sookie looked at her curiously. "I have to run the inn. I can't just...take a break every time I feel like it. I have responsibilities. Is that the mail?" She reached for a stack of papers that was clearly not the mail.

"Did something happen at Luke's this morning?" Sookie asked, her voice hushed and dramatic. Lorelai said nothing. "Lorelai?"

"No, nothing happened. Everything's fine," Lorelai said.

"Lorelai," Sookie pressed.

"Everything's fine," Lorelai said again, managing to inject some lightness into her tone. She glanced at the pile of old menus and ingredient lists. "This isn't the mail. I'll see you later, Sookie. We'll have lunch." She hurried out of the kitchen, ready to bury herself in work at the front desk.

But there was no one at the front desk. In fact, there was no one else in the entire lobby. The phone didn't ring, and the mail hadn't yet arrived, so Lorelai was alone with her thoughts.

Rory was vaguely aware of footsteps behind her, but she could see the bus at the stop and didn't want to miss it. She was already running late, and if she missed the bus, then she'd be late for school. So she increased her pace, and her shadow did, also. She wondered if she should be worried that someone was following her, so she turned her head.

Jess. Of course. "What?" Rory asked.

"Nothing." The pause had given Jess enough time to fall into step with her. His hands were shoved into the pockets of his jeans. "Just thought I'd say hi."

"Hi," Rory replied, somewhat sarcastically. Jess didn't say anything, just continued to walk alongside her. "I said hi, aren't you going to head off to school now?"

"It's a holiday," Jess said.

Rory glanced in the direction of the high school. "Somebody forgot to tell the other kids," she pointed out.

Jess shrugged. "What do they know?"

"Jess, I have to..." She could see the bus driver was thinking about leaving her. "Bye," she said decisively, broke into a run, and hopped up the stairs into the bus. The driver was looking at his watch. "Sorry," Rory said as she fished out her bus pass and showed it to him. Even though she rode the bus every day, and he knew she had a bus pass, he still had to see it. Every day. She flopped down onto a seat and unzipped the side pocket of her backpack to retrieve her book.

Jess darted onto the bus at the last possible second and jumped into the seat next to her.

Rory stared at him, feeling infuriated, but knowing she didn't have a good reason to feel that way. "What are you doing?"

"Going to Hartford." Jess crossed his arms and settled more comfortably into his seat.

"That's crazy."

"Yeah, well, crazy seems to be catching this morning." Jess smiled cryptically.

"What does that mean?" Rory inquired, but Jess said nothing. This is why she felt infuriated the moment she saw Jess. He did this on purpose. Made leading statements without following up on them, because he knew it got to her. "Who else was acting crazy this morning? Jess?" She waited for him to answer. He didn't, so she opened her copy of "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" to where she'd left off.

Jess couldn't bear to be ignored. "You weren't at breakfast this morning."

Rory shrugged, knowing her silence would bug him.

"I thought you and your mom ate breakfast at Luke's every day."

"Running late," Rory replied. "Did you miss me?"

"Nah, course not," Jess lied casually.

"Good," Rory said. "What are you planning on doing in Hartford?"

"You know, I bet Uncle Luke misses you when you don't come in."

"Seeing as how we're the bright spot in his morning," Rory said, a little more sarcastically than was called for.

"Your mom was probably the bright spot this morning."

Rory lowered her book and looked at Jess. He was smirking. "What are you talking about?"

"Nothing," Jess said innocently. He reached over and put his hand over hers, tilting the book so he could get a better look at it.

"Jess," Rory said. He was now absorbed in looking at the picture on the cover of her book. "Did my mom go to Luke's this morning? Did something happen?"

Jess removed his eyes from the book, although he didn't move his hand. Rory was too distracted to notice. "Well." He drew the word out, as though he was trying to decide whether to tell her. "I wouldn't want you to hear it from anyone else first."

"Something did happen." Rory frowned, recalling Lorelai's strange mood that morning. But she couldn't think of anything that could have happened to prompt it. It would have to have been something bad, and nothing bad ever happened at Luke's. "Did they have a fight?"

"Not exactly."

"Jess, we're three blocks from my school, and you're going to burst if you don't tell me, so I suggest..."

"He kissed her."

Rory's mouth dropped open. She was stunned.

"What, like you're surprised?" Jess asked.

Rory's mind was completely blank. It was kind of a novelty. She tried to say something, but there was nothing...

"Rory." Jess waved his hand in front of her face.

"I..."

"You just missed your stop," Jess pointed out, and Rory turned her head to watch Chilton go past through the window.

It's not that big a deal, Lorelai told herself. It's just a kiss. I've kissed lots of guys. Lots of guys have kissed me. It doesn't mean anything.

But all those people...how many times had someone told her that Luke was into her? That he liked her? And she always said, 'Come on. Luke? We're just friends.' How did it turn out that they were right and she was wrong?

I'm blind. If I'm blind to that, I could be blind to a hundred other things. And I lied to Sookie - why would I lie?

Lorelai had no answers for the questions she was asking herself. She thought she just needed time to deal with it, but that implied there was
something that needed to be dealt with. If this was something that needed to be dealt with, it meant that it was not nothing. She wasn't sure why she needed it to be nothing. She just did.

Not to mention she'd been standing at the front desk for more than an hour, uninterrupted by anyone. If she just needed time, she'd had plenty. More coffee, she thought. More coffee is the solution to any of life's problems.

Sookie was on the phone when Lorelai went into the kitchen. She didn't think anything of it until she realized Sookie was staring at her as she poured her coffee. "I've got to go," Sookie said quickly as Lorelai headed back toward the front desk, and then she ran to catch up.

"Lorelai," Sookie said breathlessly.

"Sookie," Lorelai responded, teasingly, using the same tone. But her stomach was in a knot. She knows, Lorelai thought. "Who was that on the phone?"

"Jackson," Sookie replied.

"How are his squash?" Lorelai asked.

Sookie frowned. "Squash is a fall fruit."

"Strawberries, then?" Lorelai said. It was so easy to distract Sookie sometimes.

"They're ripening," Sookie said. "He heard an interesting story this morning from Taylor."

"I bet that red light was on the fritz again. Man, ever since they put that thing in, it's been nothing but blink, blink, blink..." Lorelai trailed off when she saw the serious look Sookie was giving her.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Sookie asked.

Lorelai glanced away. "I don't know. I just couldn't."

"I'm so happy for you, Lorelai!" Sookie cried.

Lorelai looked at her suspiciously. "Wait, are we talking about the same thing?" she asked.

Sookie nodded vigorously. "You and Luke! I think it's great!"

Michel had appeared, apparently from nowhere, to listen in on their conversation. "You and the hamburger man?" he sniffed.

"Jealous?" Lorelai asked. Michel looked like he was about to get huffy, so she ordered him back to the front desk. And then she waited to make sure he had actually gone.

"What's wrong?" Sookie asked Lorelai. "This is great! Why do you look like something's wrong?"

"I'm just not sure this is such a good thing, Sookie," Lorelai admitted.

"Why wouldn't it be?" Sookie blinked, as though she didn't understand.

"It's Luke, Sookie."

"Luke adores you, honey," Sookie pointed out. "And you've been on your own since the thing with Max -"

"There's a reason for that, Sookie," Lorelai said seriously.

"I know it took you some time to get past that, but -"

"I hurt him, Sookie. I hurt Max, just like I hurt every other guy who's stupid enough to get close to me," Lorelai said.

"You're worried you're going to hurt Luke," Sookie said, and Lorelai just nodded. "I thought you liked Luke."

"I do like Luke. We're great friends. I'm just not sure I _like_ Luke," Lorelai said.

"You're not sure," Sookie said. "You don't know?"

"I don't know."

"So it's possible you do like him," Sookie said brightly.

"But it's possible I don't...Sookie, I don't want to ruin a great friendship. I don't. I wish this had never happened," Lorelai said. Sookie just looked at her, and Lorelai knew she'd disappointed her friend. Which was crazy. Sookie had no reason to be disappointed. Except Sookie only wanted Lorelai to be happy, Lorelai knew that.

"Lorelai," Sookie said seriously. "Obviously you're going to have to figure out what to do about this."

"I know."

"I just want you to consider one thing, before you fly off the handle or go on a road trip or decide that from now on you're only going to eat at Al's Pancake World." Sookie held Lorelai's gaze. "Great friendships...great friends...they make the best lovers."

Lorelai pressed her lips together and nodded her head. It wasn't advice she'd wanted to hear. "I will keep that in mind," she said as positively as she could.

To be continued...

02 >>>