Comfortable Silence || Luke Hemmings

Chapter Eight

“Sure. But be prepared for your arse to be kicked.” I tease, he raises his eyebrows, and moves back a bit.
“Oh, really now? Miss. Blue thinks she can beat, the incredible Hemmings? I think not, I’m going to pulverize your girly arse.” Luke says, bouncy the ball on his floor, not taking his eyes off of mine.

“For your information, I was a tom boy back in the day, I use to eat, breath and sleep sports. Mr Hemmings…don’t judge a girl by her cover. Cause I ain’t what I look like on the inside.” I say, gathering my hair up into a ponytail. Luke smiles. I follow Luke out of his room and we go silent for a while before he speaks.

“Back in the day? What are you? Forty? My mother says that.” Luke says, I lightly shove him, and he smiles keeping his feet planted on the ground. 

“Oh, shh. Hemmings.” I say, he looks up, and grins before continuing to bounce the ball on the wooden floor boards. I follow him into his backyard, he has a concrete patch in the middle of big open green patch of grass, what I’m saying is, that he practically has a backyard the size of our schools oval, except his has a square concrete patch, with a basketball hoop.

I take off of my cardigan, and sit it on the grass, Luke bounces the ball around while waiting for me, shooting it into the goal occasionally missing it every few shots. 

“Let’s play.” Luke says, smiling. Just pin pointing this out; Luke smiles a lot, he never really smiled when I first met him, but now he seems to do it a lot, maybe you had to get to know him better a little, and then you see that he’s quite a happy person.

I walk over to Luke and he starts with the ball, I try grabbing the ball off of him, but he holds it over his head, using my height as an advantage. I scowl at him.

“You’re using my height as an advantage, that’s mean, Lukey.” I say, poking him in the chest while folding my arms across my chest. I pout at him, most likely looking either like a little five year old girl, or some creepy chick, trying to act cute.

“Lukey? That’s new.” He says, smiling. "Much better then Bob." He keeps the ball over his head, his muscles showing in his arms. I think for a while, and he stands there tapping his foot, while whistling the tune of some song. I could try tickling him? While he’s looking away, I tickle his neck, he giggles a few times before dropping the basketball. I grab the ball smiling, and line myself up to the hoop, I go to shoot the ball in the hoop but Luke wraps his arms around my waist from behind me and spins me around making me drop the ball.

“You’re using my ticklishness as an advantage. That’s mean, Nessy.” Luke says, mocking me from before. He let’s go of my waist, and stands in front of me. He folds his arm over his chest, and pouts, exactly like what I did from before. Except he most likely looks a hell lot better then what I did doing it.

“Keep mocking me, and I will step on your foot.” I say smiling. I will sure as hell step on Luke’s foot if he mocks me again, only because I know it won’t hurt. With what happened between Megan, Sarah and I, shall never be seen again, that was a one time thing only.

He chuckles. He walks away grabbing the ball that was still rolling towards the grass area, Luke returns and hands me back the ball. I cock my head to the side wondering why he did so.

“Shoot.” He says, nudging his head up to the hoop, I cock up an eyebrow. What is he planning to do? 

“Why?” I ask, nudging my head to the side again, he shrugs. I line up with the hoop again, and shoot the ball. It gets in and Luke smiles. 

“Well, you aren’t that good, I think your biting off more than you can chew, you better spit some out or you’ll choke.” Luke says, once more I cock my head to the side. I’ve heard the whole ‘bit off more than you can chew’ bit, but never ‘better spit some out or you’ll choke.’ I’m starting to the think Luke’s a little bit odder then I thought he was, but it makes sense I guess, what he said. Another thing, I can't say much because after last night I'm sure that I'm like seven, ten times odder.

“Never heard that, but at least I got it in. You missed more then you shot  just before. So, same to you. You better spit out some before you choke.” I say.

Luke and I have been playing for around thirty minutes, Luke and I keep stopping in between bagging each other’s shots. Luke has shot seven goals, while I’ve shot eleven, but I have a feeling he’s purposely letting me win, he does the whole sloppy throwing thing, then says 'shit' afterwards with a smirk, I don’t know but I feel that he is, from watching him playing before we played, he look a lot better at basketball than what he’s doing now.

He lines himself up, lining the ball up to shoot. He throws it, pushing so much power into the ball, and it knocks the backing board, bouncy back onto the ground. Luke face palms himself.

“Again?” He says, looking over at me smiling, before face palming himself again. 

“Are you purposely letting me win, I don’t think your that bad at basketball.” I say, folding my arms over my chest, while walking towards him. He looks up at me, and smiles.

“Maybe, maybe not…yeah, I am.” Luke says, sitting down on the ground. He lays his legs flat, placing the palms of his hands on the concrete. He leans back, and the sun shines on him, making his tan skin shine more.

“Well, let’s start again. I want to say how good you really are at basketball.” I say, sitting down next to him, in the same way. Luke flops his head over to look at me. Letting me win, is no fun. I’d rather loose then have someone purposely let me win, I don’t take games seriously but it’s more fun when you’re playing with your real skills.

“I’m tired.” He says, leaning his head on my shoulder. “How’ bout another day?” 

I nod my head. 

“Do you play video games? I have a bunch in my room, we can play Call of Duty or something if y-“ Before he finishes I had already interrupted in him, saying yes. Who doesn’t love video games? They are the cherry to my tub of ice cream. Goodness me, I need to work on my metaphors, I love video games, that’s what I’m trying to say, maybe a tad more than my burgers.

“Sure.” I say, standing up, brushing dust of my bottom from sitting on the concrete, I hold my hand out for Luke to grab, and help him up. He sends me a smile, and I send him a toothy one in return, he chuckles.

“You have a nice toothy smile.” He says, I look down at the ground, I use to hate my smile, but I guess it isn’t as bad as I thought it was since Shane thinks it’s beautiful and Luke thinks it’s nice…the public has spoken! My smile isn’t ugly. 

I tuck as strand of hair behind my hair, while I continue looking at the ground as we walk to the back door.