mercury || luke hemmings

letter sixteen.

dear diary,

luke and i are okay. we really are, we still talk but he talks to me like i'm small. like i'm bruised and battered. he's afraid to touch me.

"i'm not damaged, luke." i told him. he just nodded.

"i don't mean to treat you like this, but i don't like seeing you hurt, because it hurts me."

i didn't say anything after that.

i've told him everything about my life, about my dad, my mom, the letters, the woods, everything. he didn't have much to say.

"shit, man."

i laughed. and then he laughed, and it was almost like our fucked up lives didn't even matter. i was calm, and i didn't even have to smoke to feel that anymore.

even with everything that was going on around me he still made me feel calm.
he wasn't nicotine, he was much better.

we graduate in two months. he plans on going to a college across country, and i don't even know if i want to go to college. i mean, yeah, i want to go to college and make something of myself but at the same time i want to stay here and smoke cigarettes at the harbor and cry about a boy who i don't deserve.

i don't deserve luke. he's too good.

we were sitting at the harbor (it's become a thing now, it's much more calming than a patch of grass behind some buses) and we hadn't said in anything in quite some time.

i was resting my head on his shoulder while he played with the grass beneath us and it got me thinking of what the fuck were we? i loved him. i knew that, but love is fucking tragic. i knew that too. we both knew it.

maybe it was the way he twirled the grass between his fingers, or the way our breathing sounded like harmonies or maybe it was just the smell of water and dirt swaying in the wind, but something made my chest hurt and my fingers go numb.

i didn't mean for it to slip out of my crazy traffic jam of thoughts, but it did.

"i love you,"

he stopped plucking the grass and the wind stopped smelling like water and dirt and breathing stopped all together for a few seconds.

and then he laid his hand on top of mine and looked down at me. i looked up, and he smiled.

i smiled, too, because i knew.

he didn't say it back, but i knew.

and nothing hurt after that.

love,

mercury