In My Shoes | The Music Freaks AU | A Jailey Fanfiction

Chapter 25 - #Nostalgia

♡Hailey♡

So, for a little while, I suspected nothing was different about Luke and his opinion of my brother.

I was glad Zander had made a friend. He's not approachable or friendly in the slightest, so people are usually afraid of him. He gets called mysterious often. Apparently, some girls are into that, and although Zander is a walking pride flag, some girls still shoot their shots.

Those interactions never do end well.

In Minnesota, the only friends he had were two, identical, very nerdy twins, named Kaden and Jaden. The three of them would hang out after school sometimes, but Zander just usually kept to himself. He's just never had much interest in being surrounded by people.

And then Luke stepped into the picture.

They met the first day of school, when Zander was being stubborn and moody, and refused to tour the school with me. Luke always volunteers to show the new kids around, (or at least, that's what he's told me) and the two of them hit it off. They exchanged numbers, hence the three-hour phone calls that began to take place between them every. single. night.

Then, I began to pick up on certain signals I hadn't noticed before.

Luke touched him a lot. It was subtle, but noticeable if you looked carefully. He doesn't accidentally brush up against my side or graze my hand as much as he does Zander.

At first, I thought I was just overthinking because it's what I'm best at, but I kept discreetly picking up hints.

Luke put a purple heart next to Zander's contact name, but every other contact didn't have a heart next to anyone else's name.

Again, I just thought I might be reading too much into the situation.

I started documenting Luke's actions in an old notebook I bought at Target after I caught Luke staring, and I mean, staring, at Zander's lips. He didn't take his eyes off them for like two minutes. That's when I began to piece everything together.

Luke came over on Sunday without calling or texting first, and told me he needed to talk to someone, asap.

Zander wasn't home because he had gone to some piano exhibit a couple of hours before. I told him this, and he said "Okay, that's good" and I panicked for a second because, truth be told, I thought he might be confessing feelings towards me.

The main reason I assumed this was because I've overheard Lia talk about how Luke is obviously "super into me" during class several times. I usually ignore it, but it's been stuck at the back of my mind for a while now, making me feel a bit guilty for not feeling the same way toward him.

Luckily, this wasn't the case.

As soon as we were upstairs, Luke grabbed me by the shoulders, and I thought, "Oh shit, he's going to try to kiss me", but I was wrong. He had no hesitation and just straight up said, "I think I'm in love with Zander."

We just stared at each other for a few moments before Luke released his grasp on me, and faced the wall, groaning into his palms.

I didn't say anything for about a minute, because I was busy processing this new information. I had suspected that Luke had a thing for my brother, but I'd always just thought of it as another one of my unrealistic, silly headcanons.

We sat at the top of the stairs and had a two-hour-long conversation. He explained how he had felt butterflies in his stomach when he met Zander, but shrugged it off as nerves. How he had slowly come to realize that his affections for my brother were deeper than simple friendship.