The Middle | Hemmings + Styles AU

20. this isn't a date

"Luke said it was okay if I came," Michael blurted out, in way of an explanation for him being here.

"You know," Luke began, "since this isn't a date or anything." He cocked his head slightly. He was teasing me and I had the urge to ruffle his hair and mess up his quiff. 

"And here I thought it was because you'd changed your opinion on threesomes," I grinned, taking my leopard print purse off of the couch. Michael's eyes grew three sizes at my comment while Luke laughed. 

As we were getting into the car - I opted for the back seat - I heard Michael mumble to Luke: I like her. You've picked a good one. 

At the venue, about half the people there already were wearing band shirts with The Forgotten Kids plastered across the front, identical to the ones that Harry had dropped off the other day. I started to regret giving Harry such a hard time about the band because maybe they wouldn't suck as much as I thought. 

Michael volunteered to order the beers while Luke and I navigated the room until we found a table with three bar stools. I dug inside my purse and took out a bunch of fliers I'd designed with Grunge this week and after dividing the stack into two, I handed half of them to Luke. 

"Would you mind putting your good looks and witty charm to work?" I asked as he read over one of the fliers. "I want to get as many of these out as possible." 

Our eyes locked. "Good looks and witty charm, hey?" 

"Shut up, you know you're gorgeous." I couldn't even hide my smile. 

Luke took the remaining half of the fliers from my hand, "How about I hand them all out?" 

"Why?" 

"Not everyone loves your sarcasm and sass the way I do," he winked, before climbing off of the stool and walking straight over to a few girls that were standing near us. 

He said something to them and the blonde girl laughed. Then the red head leaned up, speaking into his ear. Next he was handing them each a flier, before sending me another wink and moving onto the next group. 

"He's such a flirt," Michael laughed, setting the three beers on the table. We watched Luke move from the second to the third group, the stack of fliers in his hand growing smaller by the second. 

"He does it well," I nodded, taking a sip of my beer.
 

"You're not like other girls," Michael said in an observing tone. It was one of those comments which can either be an insult or a compliment. I decided to dig a little further to decide which way he was going.

"How so?"

"Like, you're not all jealous and crazy." Michael had already finished half of his beer. "We see a lot of those, I guess. It's cool to see someone normal." 

"Normal," I laughed. "Don't think I've ever been called that before." Short, sarcastic, stubborn, weird; sure, but normal? Never. 

"What's he doing anyway?" He gestured towards Luke, who now had his hand on the lower back of a brunette, her eyes practically ripping off his clothes as he spoke. 

"Handing out fliers for the store," I explained, drinking more of my beer. "We've got some merch for the band that's playing tonight."

"You really love that place, huh?" 

I thought about it for a moment, trying to figure out how to describe the fact that it wasn't just a CD store to me. 

"You know when you go to a concert to see your favourite band," Michael nodded. "And afterwards, you feel like one particular song has changed your life... like, there were lyrics that just spoke to you or a song that made you feel invincible," he nodded again. "The store is sort of like my version of putting on a show. When someone walks out of there, I don't think that they're simply walking out with a new CD. They're walking out with a library of songs that just might change their life."

When I finished, Michael stared at me in silence. I mean, really stared, and I knew I'd said the complete wrong thing - Olivia was always warning me about how I had a habit to ramble when it came to bands and music - but then Michael finally nodded, with a big dopey grin on his face and said, "You're so fucking cool." 

And I returned his compliment with my own dopey grin because never in my life had I ever been called cool, in fact, quite the opposite. 

And I promised myself that I'd email my parents tomorrow and thank them for always insisting I didn't cave to peer pressure in high school or stop being the weird girl at school who preferred music to people. Because now, I'd found my own group of people who liked me for being that weird girl, and who appreciated my intense love for music.

And being accepted for being the person you genuinely were? Well, that was so fucking cool.