STOLEN DANCE || GILMORE GIRLS

41: Mystique Guy

Lorelai lowered her hands, shaking her head. "Oh, now, don't mock," Lorelai told her before standing up from the table and going outside where Luke was. For the last day or so Luke has spent every free moment at the Gilmore house, fixing random parts of their house. "Hey! Who was the guy who used to run the auto body shop?"

"The stretch Cunningham guy?" Luke asked as he looked down at her from their roof.

"No, the Dick Tracy guy," Lorelai responded. 

Cassie, who was watching them from the kitchen table smiled. "I like having Luke around," Cassie told Rory, listening as Luke and her mom talked outside.

"I like being on time for school," Rory replied, looking over at the clock as she stood up from the table. Cassie frowned, looking down causing Rory to sigh. "You just realized something," Rory said, seeing the look on her sister's face.

"What? No I didn't."

"It's all over your face," Rory said as she pointed to her own face. Cassie put on an overly enthusiastic smile, trying to prove to Rory that there was nothing to see. "What'd you realize?"

"Nothing," Cassie assured her, Rory waved her hand, giving up. Cassie's smile fell, watching as Rory walked away going over to the front closet. 

Rory didn't know that Cassie was thinking about their dad. Cassie missed her dad. She knew she didn't say it often but that didn't mean it wasn't true. She wanted her dad to stick around for longer than a day. She wanted the four of them to be a family, a real family. Cassie was afraid that if Chris met someone else he'd have another reason to not visit them. She didn't want to lose her parents, she didn't want them to leave her.

"It had an ING at the end," Luke yelled down, he and Lorelai were still trying to figure out the name of the auto mechanic. "Banning?" 

"Glanning?" Lorelai wondered. "Dunning?"

"That's it."

"Oh, hey!" Lorelai said excitedly as she turned around to walk back into their kitchen. "Jim Dunning was the Dick Tracy guy," Lorelai told Cassie, searching the room for Rory. "Jim Dunning, that's the- oh," Lorelai sighed, looking at the box in Rory's hand. 

Cassie leaned back in her chair, trying to get a better look at what was going on in the hallway. "Uh oh," She whispered recognizing the box.

"The Dean box. Okay, I know I was supposed to throw it away, but I couldn't. I mean, you're young and your head's all weird, and you don't have any perspective because of that whole young weird headed thing, so just please listen to me before you get mad," Lorelai said quickly, wanting to get all her thoughts out before Rory could get mad. "You're gonna want that stuff one day, when you're old and married, and looking back and thinking, I certainly had an interesting life. And then you can pull out all your old boyfriend boxes. Which is good, because I threw away stuff I'd kill to have today. Look, I put it in with the Max box so they could chat and keep each other company and commiserate about how they had a Gilmore girl and lost a Gilmore girl and... sorry."

Rory didn't say anything; she just moved forward, kissing Lorelai's cheek. "Thanks."

"The Colonel's in my closet," Cassie announced and Rory smiled at her before going back into her room. "That went better than I thought it would," Cassie told her mom.

"Yeah, it did," Lorelai nodded, "Rory's back."

"Yes she is."

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