Critical || Luke Hemmings

Chapter Two

“Sydney, are you even listening?” Ashton says, waving a hand in front of my face snapping me out of my thought process and making me jump.

“What?” I shift my gaze from each of them and realize they’re all staring back at me.

“You’ve been staring at your food for the past ten minutes and haven’t eaten any of it,” Michael mumbles while grabbing a piece of bacon from my plate.

“Oh yeah, sure Michael, you can have that” I scowl as he shoves the piece in his mouth. 

“I asked if you knew what we were doing today,” Ashton says between chews. 

Grabbing my phone, I type in my code and look up the boys schedule for the day.  “You’ve got sound check at noon and then interviews before you go on for tonight,” I say locking my screen and putting my phone back in my pocket. 

“So we don’t have any time to go out and see anything?” Calum slumps forward in his seat and pouts. 

“What state are we even in right now?” Luke says while patting Calum’s back.

“We’re in Florida I think,” I say trying to remember what the managers said last night before I fell asleep.  “I know we’re here for a few weeks if that makes you feel any better Cal.”

“Can we please for the love of God go to Disney World?” Ashton practically begs.

“And you’re the oldest,” Luke chuckles.

“Personally, I’m with Ashton on this one,” I say raising my hand in agreement.  “Tomorrow, you guys have all afternoon free, so I’ll go with you Ash.” I smile as I watch his face light up with excitement.

The rest of the boys agree to go with us as I start to clean up the rest of breakfast before they run off to get changed.

Luke’s the first one to come back out and join me.  He’s wearing his signature black skinny jeans with the rips in the knees and his “YOU COMPLETE MEss” shirt with his red snapback.  I couldn’t help but check him out. 

“If you take a picture, it’ll last longer,” he grins.

“There’s nothing to look at though,” I counter, giving him a quick smirk.

He opened his mouth to say something else but was cut off by Calum and Ashton who were in the middle of a serious discussion about who owned the beanie Calum was wearing.

I glanced back at Luke who was still looking at me while playing with his lip ring.  He was so effortlessly hot it was annoying. 

He and I have a complicated relationship.  We’ve been flirting with each other from the second he and I met.  The others swear that there’s sexual tension between us and have placed multiple bets on how long it will take before we hook up.  None of them have won.  I’ve been around for three years now and Luke and I have never gone past cuddling.

There’s a small part of me that wants to see what would happen if we ever got past the just friends who flirt thing.  But the bigger part of me knows that if I cross that line, there’s no turning back and god forbid anything bad happen, it’ll ruin everything.  I’m not willing to take that risk, and neither is Luke. 

Pulling myself out of my own head, I directed my attention towards the window and peaked outside, seeing a small mob of girls forming around the gates to the venue.

“You’ve got fans lining up outside already, I’d head in now before it gets any busier out there,” I suggest, nodding towards the door to the bus.  “Go make some girls the happiest people on earth.”