Stuck In Reverse (Luke Hemmings)

Chapter 20: Explanations

"Jules, ready to go?" Luke asked, knocking on the hotel bathroom door as I finished getting ready.

"Yep, I am!" I called back, quickly giving myself another once over and fixing my lipstick before opening the door and seeing Luke standing there in his dress shirt and jeans.

We'd had a night off, so while the guys went out exploring around Denver, Luke had asked if he could take me on a date, which, of course, I accepted. He'd said it was a nicer restaurant, so we'd both dressed up for the occasion. With coordinating colors, of course. He wore a blue dress shirt with a black tie, which had matched my black dress, and my jewelry had been picked to match the blue.

"Wow," he said, not taking his eyes off me. "You look.... holy shit I'm a lucky guy."

I couldn't help but look downwards as a blush crept across my cheeks. "You look nice, too." I said, finally looking up and meeting his eyes. He held a flower in his hands, which he then handed to me.

"Come on," he said, reaching his hand out and taking mine, intertwining our fingers.

I still hadn't told Luke about my acceptance to UCLA. Only two people knew besides Lou and my mom. Not even Harry knew. After acting weird that day, it didn't take long for Liam to corner me, and then Michael shortly after. They both agreed that I have to tell Luke, but they understood why I hadn't done it yet and let me wait until I was ready.

Luke hadn't mentioned anything about me acting weird. Only asked me a couple of times if I'd been feeling well, both of which I'd said I hadn't and then excused myself to go lie down on the bus while the show was going on. So I'd put it past me eventually and tried acting normal again, thinking it would make everyone forget about it.

Of course, I'd been wrong.

"Jules?" Luke asked after we'd finished dinner, and were getting ready to leave to walk back to the hotel.

"Yeah, babe?" I asked him, looking up at him as we held hands.

"What's been going on with you?" he asked. "You've been acting really strange, and avoiding us a lot. I know you say you're not feeling great, but you always seem fine otherwise. I'm not calling you a liar, I'm really not. I just wanna know what's bugging you, because I want to make you feel better."

Here goes.

"Luke..." I started, "I got... accepted into college."

"College?" he asked, confused as to why that was my reasoning.

I nodded. "UCLA," I told him.

"But Julie, that's been your dream, why are you...?" he asked then.

"Because it's for this fall. Next month. So I won't get to go to Australia with you guys and do everything we planned to. I won't get to meet your family, or your childhood friends, or see the place where you grew up and all of your favorite little places. We've had all these plans we've been making and I'm going to have to cancel all of them. I've been avoiding you because I didn't know how to tell you." I told him, stopping walking midway through.

"Julie..." he said, wrapping me in a hug. "It's okay, honey. We can make this work."

"But all of our plans," I told him, and he shrugged.

"Am I upset that the plans fell through?" he asked, nodding. "Yes, I'm sad that I won't get to take you home to meet my family as soon as we'd hoped, but it's not that I'll never take you to meet them. So we'll have to postpone our plans a little bit. That's okay. It's not forever, only a few months. And college is only a few years. We can make this work. This is your dream, baby, and I'm so proud of you."

"Thanks," I told him, "and I believe you. It'll be hard, but we can make this work."

Sometime through our discussion, we'd started walking again, and had made it back to our hotel. We got inside our room, and I quickly went to change into pajamas and take my makeup off while he got out of his dress clothes and into a pair of shorts.

"I'm still never used to seeing you shirtless," I told him, climbing into bed. "Whenever we're at the beach or anything, you usually keep it on unless you're getting in the water."

He shrugged. "I'm shy, I guess. Not a huge fan of my body."

I snuggled up into him then, and he wrapped his arms around me, leaving a kiss on the top of my head.

"So you really think we can make this work?" I asked him, looking up at him.

"I know we can," he said. "Because I love you. A lot. And I know that we're strong enough to not let this come between us."

"It's a lot between us, Luke," I said, "it's a whole entire planet."

"The world's pretty small, you know," he said. 

"Not when a big part of my life's on the other side of it." I said.

"I love you," he said, looking me in the eyes.

"Show me," I blurted, and his eyes widened.

"Wait..." he trailed off, "show you as in... show you show you?" I nodded. "Are you sure, Jules?"

"I'm sure," I told him. "I love you, Lucas Hemmings. And I want to give you every part of me."

"I want to give you every part of me too." he said, "Just promise me that if you change your mind or want me to stop you'll tell me, okay?"

"I promise," I said, watching as he kissed me again, closing the gap between us.