❝I'm an asshole. You're kinda
needy. I said it was casual
and you pretended to believe me.❞
- Miles Heizer, I'm an Asshole
___
FIVE
___
"I-"
Smack
"should-"
Smack
"not-"
Smack
"have-"
Smack
"done-"
Smack
"that."
Smack
"What the hell was I thinking?" Luke whined, exhausted from having relentlessly smacked his head on the surface of his repurposed desk. Well, Mr. Luke Philip Vance, you were thinking of exploiting a homeless girl for stories, so you could write a bestseller. Now, you realized it's not a fucking walk in the park so you're sulking like a baby and smacking your thick skull against the, surprisingly, much thicker oak study.
Did I miss something?
A lot of you readers may have wondered why such a harsh commentary on a struggling writer working towards a perfectly reasonable cause. Let's just say, I know the whole story, and you now have first class seats as I narrate it. Imagine me as your own Emma, only snarkier and less compassionate.
It's been a few days since the dumpster deal. Wow! That sounded wrong and unhygienic, but you knew what I meant. Emma had been insisting on meeting Luke to discuss when it was best to shadow her, considering there are parts of town which were not safe for him and some other reasons he barely heard.
She had called him 3 times now on the dorm phone and 4 times on his cell. He always dodged the question on when they couldn't meet to talk about the details and get to know each other even if he knew, those quarters she used on the payphone could have had much better use.
Emma thought it would make the observation less awkward for both of them. His malicious brain countered that meet-ups like that made their relationship personal rather than business.
Luke's not too fond of personal relationships.
So imagine his surprise (or horror) when he saw Emma leaning on the railing of the steps leading up to his dorm this morning, before he had this mini meltdown. "Damn it! This is what happens when you give your stupid dorm address. Never again! Idiot! What if she wants to move in with me? Shit! My roommate's gonna flip if he found out I brought a hobo near his pristine grandma sheets." Luke's thoughts came barreling in as she walked up to him.
"Hi!" Emma greeted brightly despite her obvious state of being frozen like a popsicle, a purple popsicle.
"What are you doing here?" Luke asked through gritted teeth, already aggravated.
"Rough week huh? Finals?"
"Yeah." His answers were short, knowing full well that if he said more, he was gonna say something awfully rude.
"Okay then. You wanna grab some coffee before class? I can walk you to your room."
"No, I'm in a rush."
"Oh that's fine. Here, I wrote down the address for your first observation. If you have questions, I'll be at the art center tonight. If not, I'll call you from the payphone like usual, okay?"
He nodded then took the piece of crumpled paper she was handing him.
"Bye! Don't worry too much about your exams, you'll do great Mr. I'll-do-my-junior-project-a-year-early. Besides, in the grander scheme of things, there's more to life than numbers... or letters, in your case." Emma offered as she turned to leave. She gave him on last, cheery smile and a wave before she walked off towards the subway.
After that, he forgot what he was supposed to do and bolted back up to his room where he threw the mother of all tantrums, resolved to smack his head against his desk until one of them broke. Sometimes I wondered where his matured, take-control side goes when he's in one of his fits.
"Vance," he heard someone yell from the end of the hall.
"Damn it Vance! Will you hook up with this chick already! The phone keeps ringing, and you know we have to study." Some upperclassman said, clearly pissed by the recent spike in his incoming calls.
"Vance! Faster, you idiot!"
"I'm coming. I'm coming," he said as he walked hurriedly to where the voice was coming from.
Standing in front of Luke was one of the bulkier dormers on his floor, holding out the phone impatiently to him.
"Calm down man," said Luke in the most poised voice he could which, considering the size of the other guy, was a damn good effort.
"Shut up Vance!" He said as he roughly shoved the cordless phone to Luke's hand and stomped back to his room which right beside the lounge where the phone was.
Luke stared at the phone, cursing it to the ends of the Earth. Oh, he was giving Emma a mouthful now. He didn't think she'd be this needy and clingy. He hated girls like that. It was partly the reason why he avoided girlfriends.
He took a deep breath and put the phone up to his face. He tried to keep his tone as even as possible.
"Emma, weren't you just here? Why would you need-"
"Emma?"
"Shit," Luke thought. There were a few more obscenities that followed that, but you don't need to hear them.
He knew that voice, and it was definitely not Emma.
"Mom," he managed to say in between gulps and deep, anxious breaths.
"I was calling to remind you about your flight home for the holidays, but who's Emma?"
"Some girl, she's working with me on a project." Half true, at least.
"Oh?"
A mother's oh is never just an oh. Luke knew that.
"No ohs mom, she's nobody."
YOU ARE READING
In Her Words
General Fiction"When he first heard her, he knew. She was his bestseller." Before there were great stories, there were only words. Luke's were smart and eloquent but hollow. It was nothing like Emma's story, bleak and awkward, but honest to a fault. This is a comi...
