Outside || Luke Hemmings

Chapter 85

'We've been to 17 places in total' I said.

'18 if you include the airport'

'That's quite a lot, isn't it?' Luke said sadly.

We were in the car on our way to the airport and I still didn't know what to do.

'It is, almost 2 months ago I had never been outside before, now I've basically seen the entire country' I said, folding up the map.

'Yeah, it's crazy' we stopped in front of the traffic lights and Luke looked at me.

He smiled, quickly kissing my lips before focusing back on the traffic light that had turned green.

I sighed, resting my chin in my hand.

'What am I going to do?' I mumbled, more to myself than to Luke.

'You've got to do what you think is the best thing to do'

'But it's not that easy, what if I make the wrong decision'

Luke parked the car and we slowly got out, it was a rental car that he rented at the airport in Auckland when he arrived and apparently, you could leave it at this airport as well.

We emptied the trunk and after checking if there was really nothing left in the car, we made our way to the airport.

Luke quickly paid for the car and gave them back the keys before he looked back at me and took my hand, leading me inside the airport.

We sat down on the first bench we could find and Luke sighed.

'Don't we need to go in a little further?' I asked.

'Not before you made your decision' he said.

'I can't go back once I go further and if you decide to go back home I'm going to get you on the right train' he explained.

I nodded, and sat down beside him.

'What do I do?' I asked, directing my question to him this time.

'You have to do what feels right.' Luke said.

'I'd love to help you make that decision but I think you know what I want'

'You want me to come with you' I said, looking down at our intertwined fingers.

Luke nodded, biting on his lip.

'But like I said, it's your decision. If it doesn't feel right to leave than you should stay'

I sighed, resting my head against Luke's shoulder.

'But, no matter what choice I make, it won't feel right either way. It doesn't feel right to basically abandon my parents, even though they're not alive anymore. But it also doesn't feel right to let you go'

'Alright, let's clear some things up then' Luke said, taking a notebook out of his suitcase and looking for an empty page.

I didn't even know he had been carrying a notebook around all this time but it didn't really matter right now.

'I have about an hour and a half left before I need to check in, so let's write down the good and bad sides to both of the options.' He said, writing down "leaving" on one page and "staying" on the other.

Underneath that he wrote the words "good" and "bad" and then waited for me to start talking.

I sighed, looking at the empty pages.

'Alright, a bad thing about leaving is that I'll leave behind everything I know, which is basically only just my house.' I said, watching Luke as he wrote it down.

'but a good thing is that I get to see you for a little bit longer' Luke smiled, writing down his name on the "good" side.

'A bad thing about staying is that the journey back to Auckland will take you 2 days' Luke said

'I mean, I think that's kinds of a bad thing'

I nodded and he wrote it down.

'But a good thing about staying is that I get to stay a little closer to my parents. Not physically but mentally. I have nothing except a piece of clothing from them now'

Luke nodded and wrote it down. We spent the next 15 minutes naming multiple good and bad things and both pages were halfway filled by the time I couldn't think of anything else.

Luke ripped off the first page so we could look at the pages at the same time.

His hands were slowly starting to shake a little.

He really didn't want me to stay here but he would let me if that's what I wanted.

'This didn't help a lot did it?' Luke smiled sadly.

'Well, at least it's a little clearer now.' I said.

Luke nodded and we both looked at the pages again.

The question wasn't necessarily if I wanted to come with him or not, because if it was only about that, we would've been checked in by now.

The question was with which "bad" things on the list I could live with and what "good" things I couldn't live without anymore.

It was, what I thought I would miss the least if I would let it go, because that would be the thing I had to choose.

That would be my answer.