Outside || Luke Hemmings

Chapter 19

'So, what can you do with this thing?' I asked when Michael hung up the phone.

'Everything' Luke answered with a grin plastered on his face.

'That's impossible'

'No it's not,' Luke grabbed his phone out of my hands and sat down a little closer to me.

'Look,' he said 'you really can do everything with it. If you need to text someone, you can use this or this, or this, and if you need to...call someone, you can just call them here, and if you want to take a picture, you can just use this' Luke explained, showing me a bunch of stuff I was never going to remember anyway.

He clicked on the little camera and within a second, I could see our faces showing up on the screen.

I pushed it away and grinned, already figuring out what he wanted to do.

'we're not taking pictures Luke' I said.

'Yes we are' Luke argued. 'just one'

He lifted his phone up again and looked at me.

'Just one' he repeated.

I shook my head again and looked at Luke's phone.

I tried to push it away again but he was prepared this time.

'Please' Luke said.

I put my face in my hands and shook my head, dropping it to the side so it was resting on Luke's shoulder.

'I'm not letting you take a picture of me' I mumbled.

'Why not?'

I lifted my head up and pulled my hands away from my face.

'Did you even look at me yet?' I smiled. 'Just because I had never been outside until a couple days ago, doesn't mean I'm stupid enough to take a picture with you when I look like this.'

Luke inspected my face and shrugged. 'There's nothing wrong with that. I've seen worse, trust me'

'Well, I haven't so until I have seen worse, I'm not taking a picture with you'

Luke's smile grew bigger as he clicked the camera on his phone away and started scrolling through his pictures.

'What are you doing?' I asked suspiciously.

Luke didn't answer and continued going through his pictures.

I watched him carefully and noticed how he started laughing when he clicked on a picture.

'Look at this' he said, showing me the picture.

It was a picture of a guy with black hair. He was fast asleep and shamelessly drooling over his pillow.

His hair was standing in every possible direction and someone had been doodling all over his face.

I laughed and looked back up at Luke.

'You've seen worse now' he said.

I sighed and looked away for a second.

'Okay, fine. But you get one picture, nothing more and you're not sending it to anybody'

Luke nodded and turned his camera back on.

'I promise'

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50 pictures, 1 breakfast, 2 showers and 2 hours further, we were both ready to leave the hotel.

'Where are we going next again?' I asked as we walked back to the car.

'Kerikeri' Luke answered.

'oh, right. That one place. Yeah. I know that place.'

Luke grinned but didn't answer, probably because he didn't know what we would be finding there either.

We got in the car and Luke drove away.

We went back on the road and we went silent again for a little while.

It was around 1:30 PM and up until now I didn't think about my parents even once.

I felt a little guilty for just forgetting about them, but deep inside I knew they wouldn't want to see me cry over them anymore.

I sighed and looked around me. There was so much to see and I wanted to remember all of it.

'It's so beautiful' I mumbled. I didn't even mean to say it, it just kind of happened.

'It is, isn't it? A lot of people say it's one of the most beautiful places on earth.' Luke answered, looking at me before focusing back on the road.

'Really?' I asked.

Luke nodded.

'yes, but honestly, every place I've been to so far had its own kind of beauty. It sounds really cliché, but it's true'

I smiled. 'cliché doesn't exist in my world'

'It will soon enough, I'll make sure of that'