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27 - Purple

this chapter is obscenely long im so sorry but oMG IM SO EXCITED

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27 - Purple

Maya Sumedh

The weeks passed uneventfully.

 Luke and Sam went back to school after our little debacle (Sam didn’t stop cackling for days after he found out what happened). I was stuck at home on my period trying to study for the SAT, which was looming closer with every passing day – college was becoming almost omnipresent even though it was a year away. Studies became the prime focus for the next one and a half weeks – Luke and Sam had a series of tests in their respective subjects. I felt oddly disgruntled (but weirdly turned on) when it came to light that Luke basically aced every single of them. And I mean every one of them – even the Indian history tests (“I’m trying to be responsible, Maya, my school needs to see that I’ve done something during my time here”).

 He was actually brilliantly smart; I hadn’t even consciously realized it before. Most of our evenings were spent in the drawing room, studying of all things, me with my SAT coursebook, Luke with his pol. science or history or economics textbook, Sam coasting along with his physics and math (he usually ignored chemistry till the day before the exam and it always came back to bite him the ass). During the day I would amuse myself with Layla if she was free – her stint at The Times of India was going to end in a week. After that she had a month free before she had to get into the college grind as well. She came over a few times in a week; Sam flirted endlessly with her and enjoyed the redness in her cheeks whilst Luke and I bit the insides of our cheeks behind their backs to stop our laughter. It was really only a matter of time. Sam seemed to be well over that bitch Meera anyway.

 My parents, to my relief, didn’t make things weird now that things were out in the open. But I knew from my mum’s face that she was trying to act cool about it – she wasn’t actually. That look faded after a few days and I dared not confront her. It could all come later. But I needed things to calm down. I needed to come to terms with everything that was happening.

 My words were bitten back more often than not – in the many evenings spent with Luke with nothing else for company except the soft glow of the lamps and turning of textbook pages and his camera sitting stoutly on the table, watching him scratch his nose or jiggle his foot, I wanted nothing more than to just hug him and tell him how I felt but I didn’t, I couldn’t. I kept telling myself it was because neither of us was ready but inside I knew that that wasn’t the reason.

 I didn’t want to ruin things, if I was being honest with myself. Because honestly, what were the chances that Luke felt the same? I knew the way he looked at me was special. I knew that we did have something special – and I knew that I loved him. It hadn’t hit me out of the blue, it just was. But did he love me? Was it something long-term for him? Was he planning to just break up when he left?

 I knew nothing. I wasn’t a mind reader. I needed him to tell me, to talk to me, but he didn’t. I tried not to let it show up but sometimes he caught it and he would look at me with those eyes silently asking me what’s wrong and I’d shake my head and tell him nothing. He never fell for it. We pretended to forget about it the next day but it didn’t work. I wasn’t fooling anyone, let alone myself or him. Things would’ve been simpler if we had more time but we didn’t, it was a race and time was way ahead of us.

 More excitement was looming on the horizon, if I looked on the brighter side of things. Sports Day was coming up. Luke had been sorted in Perseus house, much to my delight because that had been my house when I’d been at school and to say I was a fiercely loyal captain would be an understatement. I still had the purple shirt and I would have worn it more often if it...well, if it didn’t make me look like an absolute effing dork. Anyway, it saved me the trouble of having to cheer for either my boyfriend or my house (actually, I think I’d have chosen my house – of course). Sam was in the green house; Orion. Nick was in blue – Andromeda, so the competition was evenly placed when it came to the races amongst the boys. Some days Luke and Sam would stay back after school after hours to practice, with Luke breaking in his new shoes. I would drag Layla along and we would watch (and occasionally run with them).