flipped :: lh [UNDER REVISION]

11.ashhole

Calum picks up the small checkered menu in front of him, he pin points a few items and Cheryl either nods in agreement or glowers at him. While he does so she putters around with her car keys, pulling them individually apart, gliding each key gently over the surface of her fingertips. Luke wonders if she even realizes what she’s doing, he figures it’s an absentminded activity she does without conscious thought. 

Calum is talking to the waitress when he notices her antics. His face drops, brown eyes deepening as he places his hand over hers, benign and almost out of habit. Cheryl stops immediately, her movement sharp as she turns toward the window but not before decidedly pointing at whatever food item she wants. Calum nods, but Luke notices the way he doesn’t once stop watching her face – Luke figures in that moment that maybe Calum feels the same way about Cheryl, maybe he just doesn’t realize it.

When Cheryl picked Luke up from her house she’d acted like nothing had happened between them that Friday morning, as if her fight with Calum was from a past life. She was all smiles and talked about how excited she was to see Ashton (apparently she’d not seen him in a long while, Ashton had a conflicting schedule with hers). Luke was confused but didn’t really question the way she kept gesturing with her hands all the things she couldn’t convey properly with her words.

Luke listened, laughed when he needed too, but he couldn’t help the weird itch at the back of his mind that wondered why she was acting the way she was. Her attitude was more forced, her smiles never really reaching her eyes. She hid it well Luke had to admit. And maybe, just maybe, if he couldn’t relate to the way her expressions didn’t match her enthusiasm, or the way she exaggerated her stories so well – he wouldn’t be able to tell how she really felt.

He dreaded it. Hated the way he knew she was hiding something. And if he were a little braver maybe he’d be able to ask her what exactly it was.

After Calum orders the table falls silent. Luke decides he’ll pick off whatever food from the others he wants, he’s not as hungry as he might have been when he first arrived. Calum doesn’t seem to mind, Cheryl is a different story altogether.

They’re settling in, divided conversations about everything and nothing picking up. Luke listens, his fingers tapping at the edge of the table, the plastic melded surface chipping away in certain places. There’s a few scrawling of loopy handwriting, little letters here and there, even a minimalist heart with an arrow through it with the letters H + L written in blue ink. Luke traces the lines that seem to run through the table, feels the indents and scratches. He figures it was written recently, the ink slightly rubbing onto his finger at the touch.

“Luke.” Calum hums, he’s drawing on a napkin with a worn down pencil. The thing is more of a stub than anything.

“Hmmm?” Luke hums back. He continues tracing delicate patterns onto the spaces in the table, between the heart and the smudged letters of a note long washed away with dish clothes and people replicating a lost letter as he’s doing.

Ashton clears his throat and Luke snaps back to reality. He’s smoothing his hair back from where it’d flopped in his face, he looks serious even with those big eyes and lopsided smile Luke is sure means he's thinking to himself. Luke takes the time to acknowledge Ashton by returning his smile halfheartedly (he's still not all too sure about Ashton to begin with. Aries talked so highly of him, so, Luke figures he can give him a chance – not like he has much of a choice to begin with.)

"I can see why Aries likes you," Ashton blurts out bluntly, he seems all too satisfied with himself. "I mean you've got those blue-blue eyes and –" Ashton is quickly cut off by Aries who is blushing madly. Her eyes are the size of saucepans and Ashton is desperately trying not to snort from all the laughing he's doing.