midnight memories | luke patterson (on hold)

7

"I knew I'd find you here." I laugh as I walk up to the boy sitting on the beach. "You did tell me to look for you, so I had some hope you'd come back here or else I'd be completely lost." Tyler looks up at me, smiling.

"Long time, no see." I sit down next to him. "How's the ghost life been?" He looks at me. "I mean... for being dead, not too terrible I guess." I laugh along with him. "So, about yesterday... I never asked why were you crying?" I looked down and sighed as he asked the one question I hoped he wouldn't ask. "Hey! Don't worry you don't have to answer if you don't want to." Tyler places a reassuring hand on my shoulder.

I haven't known Tyler longer, but I feel as if I can trust him, so I decided to pour my heart out to this sweet, brown haired boy. "Wow, I'm sorry Kelsey." Tyler gives me a look of pity, one of which I hate. "I haven't met this Luke guy, but I know he's an idiot for missing out on an amazing girl like you." He gives me a smile. I return a sad smile to him.

"Hey, I know what will lift your spirits, no pun intended." Tyler laughs. "What?" I raise my brow at him. "Wanna go haunt some lifers?" He stands up, stretching his hand out to me. "Oh, definitely!" I take his hand and we begin to walk.

The whole time I was hanging out with Tyler, I had this odd and uncomfortable feeling that somebody was watching me.

—

I poof back into the studio to see Luke and Reggie hanging out by the piano. "I know all your secrets. You know all my deep dish. Guess that means that some things..." Luke sings, but I don't recognize those lyrics. "Wait, so... When she says, "deep dish,"
is she talking about, like, pizza, or..." Reggie asks a question, a dumb one I assume, based off of Luke's eye roll.

"Hey boys! Hope you didn't miss me too much." I joked as I walked towards them. Luke quickly looked up, I felt his eyes hovering over me while he showed no emotions on his face, he then looked back down to the paper without saying anything to me. He's in a greaaaat mood. Reggie waves me over, "Hey Kels! Look what we're working on."

Reggie rips the paper out of Luke's hands, shoving it into mine to read over. "This is really good. Luke wrote these?" I asked looking over at Luke, who looked up at me. "Julie wrote them." Luke finally spoke up. "We're turning her poem for Flynn into a song." Reggie added on. "Would you guys like another hand?" I offered.

"Yeah actually! I need a break and you know how Luke is, he'll never stop until it's perfect just like you. You guys are so alike... gosh you'd make a perfect cou—" Reggie was cut off by Luke letting out a super loud cough. Reggie's eye went wide in realization, but I was just watching this exchange confused. "Uh... I'll leave you guys to it. Bye!" Reggie quickly poofs out.

"So..." I take a seat behind the piano. "Ok, before we can do anything, you need to tell me why you're acting like such a pissbaby right now." I let out a sigh. Luke's expression softens once I finish my sentence and he gives me a weird look. "What?" I asked confused. "How many times do I need to tell you pissbaby is not a word." Luke says as he starts to laugh. "It's a word if I say it is." I cross my arms and stick out my tongue at him.

"You really wanna start?" He asks raising his brows. "I don't know what you're talking about." I say innocently as I slowly begin to stand up. "Kels, you know better than to start something you can't finish." Luke makes his way towards me, causing me to quickly run towards the couch, grabbing one of the pillows. "It's so on!" I laugh as I begin to hit Luke with the pillow. He quickly grabs the other pillow on the end of the couch and attacks me.

We keep attacking each other until I finally over power Luke, pushing him to the ground. Of course Luke had to drag me down with him. I yelled as we both fell to the ground, Luke breaking my fall. I look down at him and start to laugh. He laughs back with me. As we stare into each other's eyes, our laughing stops and the only sound that can be heard is our breathing.

Luke makes the first move, lifting his hand to push back the strands of my hair that fell out of my ponytail. I'm completely frozen now. I don't know what's been happening lately, but we've had this tension between us. It was never like this back then with our pillow fights and prank wars. "Why do we pretend Kels?" Luke asks, snapping me out of my thoughts. "Huh?" I look at him confused. "We say we're friends, we play pretend." He speaks again. I am taken back by what he said. Is he saying what I think he's saying?

"Luke do you-." I began, when suddenly Alex appeared in the studio. "Oh... WOAH!" Alex jumps back in shock as he catches his little sister on top of his best friend. "I did not need to see that!" The blonde covers his eyes with his hand. "Will you stop being so dramatic." I laugh as I move myself off of Luke, who was blushing just as hard as I was. "We were just in a pillow fight and I showed Luke who was boss." I wink at Luke. "Mhm sure, "pillow fight," totally! Please just use ghost protection or something." Alex cries.

Before I could respond, Luke stands up and throws the pillow at Alex's head. "Dude, you are so dumb." The guitarist laughs. I high five Luke as the pillow hit Alex right in the face. "Is this bullying? It sure feels like it." Alex rolls his eyes.

"Hey wait... where's Reggie?" Alex asks. Suddenly, as if on cue, Reggie appears right next to Alex. "Oh! Oh, hey, man. Where you been?" Reggie asks, turning to Alex. I guess Alex had went on an adventure of his own too. "Um, kind of everywhere. Yeah. No, I met a new ghost friend." He answers. I look up at him with a smile, "A ghost friend you say?" I wiggle my brows at him. "Ew. Stop that. Please." Alex places his hand on my face and pushes me back.

"Ooooh, for real?" Reggie asked, curious about Alex's new friend. "Yeah, he answered a ton of questions." Alex smiled at us. "Yeah? Like whether Julie was gonna join the band or not?" Luke asks randomly. My face drops and I quickly turn to him. "What?" I ask. Luke's eyes go wide, realizing he hadn't told me about it. "Yeah, we wanna get Julie to join Sunset Curve." Reggie responds. "I mean makes sense, nobody can really see you guys without her so if she's not part of the band, there kinda isn't a band." I say.

"Um... Well, we didn't... We didn't really get to that, but I think I know why we're here." Alex starts, we all turn back to face him. "All ghosts have,
like, unfinished business. So, we need to do our unfinished business so that we can cross over." He finishes. Seems easy enough.

"Why would we do that? I'm just saying, this is like our second chance. All we need to do is get Julie to play with us." Luke makes his point. "Yeah. Not only can that girl sing, she can write too. Luke, Kelsey and I started working on a killer melody to one of her lyrics." Reggie picks up the song book from the piano and passes it to Alex. "Oh... Without your drummer. Cool." Alex sarcastically says as he reads over the lyrics.

Luke lightly slaps him on the arm, "Drumming is so '90s. Ok? We're just gonna... stomp our feet now." Luke says. "Ok. Well, you know what else is so '90s?" Alex asks. We all look at him curious to what his response is. "Being rude. All right? Get woke. These are sensitive times." Alex slaps the book into Luke's chest, looking at us. "Learned that from my ghost friend." He whispers to us. "Woke... that's a cool word." Reggie chuckles.

"What does it mean?" I ask, Tyler hadn't taught me about this one. "No clue." Alex gives us a confused smile. I face palm and begin to shake my head.

"Look alive boys!" Luke calls out to us. "If we want Julie to join our band, we need to finish this song so that her and her little friend can make up." We all nod and get to work.

—

pls i have to keep giving them little moments or else i will die. they're cute idc.