A/N: The last few updates have been erratic, and I thought it best to explain to all my readers why. If you've read any one of my posts, then you know it's a hodge podge of many different things, mostly technology-related.
For a week, almost 2 weeks ago, the WiFi in the region where I'm from miraculously (or not) turned completely off. It was later explained that they had some malfunction with the underwater cables. Lucky, huh? Last week, we've had some power interruptions due to severe weather disturbances. Thank the gods of Olympus, it wasn't as bad as we thought it would be or else I wouldn't even be able to post this update today.
Not to worry, I shall be back to my regular update schedule (once a week) moving forward. Fingers crossed, the tech gods will be in my favor this time.
P.S. Thank you for over 2k views on the last chapter. Whatever I'm doing right, I hope I keep doing it. One small favor though, please do vote or leave a comment. I would truly appreciate it.
*hugs all of you tightly* It feels good to be officially back.
***
❝We are surrounded by all of these lies
and people who talk too much.
You've got that kind of look in your eyes
as if no one knows anything but us.❞
- Tenerife Sea, Ed Sheeran
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EIGHT
___
"Emma! Where the hell are you?" Luke called out a bit too loudly.
Clearly, impatience was still Luke's best feature, and sarcasm was mine. He didn't even think twice to half-scream in the middle of the city library where there are people trying their best to read.
With heavy steps, he stalked to each aisle, checking if Emma was hiding in any of them. Even to those who didn't know him like I did, he looked more frustrated than the man who won the lottery and lost his ticket.
Wait, was that how he saw Emma?
"Damn it, Emma! I swear if this is your ploy to get me to buy you a phone, it's not fucking working."
Or not.
"Em-"
Luke stopped mid-step when he saw Emma engrossed, clutching in her hands a beat up copy of Les Miserables, her face inches from the paper. I would say she looked more like she was dissecting the page rather than reading it.
"Are you that nearsighted?" Luke asked, now fully facing Emma as he stared at her.
Silence.
"Emma!"
Her body lurched forward instinctively, and she nearly fell off the table she was sitting on.
Ever true to his jerk persona, Luke started laughing-his back trembled, almost out of breath, as his hands tapped his knees and his eyes watered. Yes Luke, that was how you react to your friend almost breaking her neck because you scared the living shit out of her.
After a good ten minutes, Luke finally got over his fascination for Emma's embarrassment, and calmed down, at least enough to realize that she had been staring at him with a smile on her face the whole time. She was enjoying the buffoon's theatrics! I would much rather have slapped his head, but that's just me.
"Here," she said before she threw the book to him.
It fell with a thud on the floor. Luke blinked at it for a few seconds, looked back up at Emma, then stared at the book again.
"Uh," Luke stammered as he picked it up. "Why did you just throw a book at me? With a very lame hand, by the way."
"I wasn't aiming to hit you." Emma reassured, laughing.
"Okay?"
She patted the space on the table right beside her. Luke eyed the spot where her hand rested and gave her a questioning look. By now, he knew what she meant. She always did this—asked him to sit beside her on the bus instead of a few seats away, shared the same couch in the bookstore or ate on the same table at the diner.
With a sigh, he relented and sat beside her.
"What now?" Luke asked, interested with what this unusual girl was planning to put him through today. After she asked him to take over a class at the art center with her the other day, he had learned to accept that she was the type to put him through anything. He wasn't sold on whether that was good or bad yet.
"Read it to me."
"What? Why? Read it yourself!"
"Please."
"Why?"
"Because."
"Because is not a reason." Luke whined.
"Why do you need one?"
"Because, Emma, it's fucking embarrassing. You're making me look like a suburban mom reading to her 5-year old. Damn it!"
"So I look like a 'suburban mom telling stories to 5-year olds' then?"
"Yes," Luke begun to say when he realized what she just did there. "Wait! What? No! Stop putting words in my mouth."
"I'm not," she said, suppressing a snort.
"It's different with you. You're good at it; I'm really not."
"How do you know?"
"I just do."
"Well, I don't so let me hear it."
"Ugh, Emma," Luke grunted in frustration. There was no way he was winning this argument, not when she was this determined. "Why won't you just give up?
"I didn't like how it felt."
That shut him up.
Luke was oblivious, but not stupid. He started to pick up on slips Emma made when she said things that meant more than just how she used them in conversations. With her, there was always a bigger story.
"I've been telling you stories all month. I'm only asking you to read me one."
"Blackmailing me now?" Luke feigned hurt in an attempt guilt her into dropping the subject... or maybe even make the air between them lighter. Yes, Luke can be human.
"No, I'd still do what I promised. I just thought it might be a fun change to listen to you instead."
Luke sighed again and mumbled, "You're a bad haggler."
"I wasn't trying to haggle."
"Still...you should have."
"Read to me, Luke."
He stared at the book and tried to remember how many times he's read it. A lot.
"Please."
A few seconds pass in silence.
"So long as there shall exist, by virtue of law and custom, decrees of damnation pronounced by society, artificially creating hells amid the civilization of earth-"
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...
