𝙏𝙀𝙈𝙋𝙏𝘼𝙏𝙄𝙊𝙉 • 𝙇𝙍𝙃

24. hickey

luke had been crashing with maya and emma for nearly a week now. he and maya had a much needed heart to heart talk, and they were able to patch things up despite his newfound feelings for the girl in the next room.

maya is far less emotional when she's sober, and she understood that luke and her were simply at different points in their relationship, and that was okay. maya knew that she had no right to be upset with luke for simply being honest with her, especially when she had done something almost unforgivable.

after the night luke and emma had slow danced in the living room, he had been keeping his distance from her. he even begun picking up more night shifts at the bar so he would be at the apartment less often. he knew if he wanted his and maya's relationship to survive, he would have to stop putting himself in positions to be alone with emma. he didn't want to like her, but you can't help who you fall for.

now that luke had admitted his feelings to himself, he tried his hardest to stop thinking about her. but something as simple as looking at her could make him weak in the knees. he was trying his best to shake the feelings away, because he knew it would only end badly between them if he didn't.

but then luke thought what if she likes me, too?

it wouldn't be the most bizarre thing, she did always want to spend time with him. and there were a number of times where luke noticed emma staring at him for a little longer than she should have.

there were some nights where staying away from emma was unavoidable, like when they worked together. or that one night where maya had wanted to have a movie night with luke and emma.

she soon regretted that decision, though.

the three sat on the couch, with luke in the middle. instead of paying attention to the movie, luke and emma had been caught up in their own conversation.

maya narrowed her eyes slightly at the sight of luke — her boyfriend — and her best friend laughing at yet another joke about work that maya wouldn't understand.

if you didn't know them, you would assume they had known each other for years. which confused maya, they had only known each other for a couple of months and have only hung out together a handful of times – so why did they act like best friends?

she hated to admit it, but maya hated how emma made luke smile.

she loved his smile — how his eyes wrinkle in the corners and showed the curve of his lips — but there's a twist of something inside of her that settles uncomfortably in her stomach when she's not the reason behind it.

she suspects it's jealousy, and she hates being jealous of emma — she was her best friend, after all —but there was something in the way luke's blue eyes never left emma's, how their knees almost touched, how their hand's grazed one another's arms when they laughed — that bothered maya more than she would like to admit.

and when luke had sat the girls down and told them the real reason ashton had kicked him out — he had been dealing drugs — maya noticed the lack of surprise on emma's face. did she already know? of course not, there was no way luke would tell emma something and not tell maya.

but what if that was where emma snuck off to in the middle of the night? it surely made sense, and it was more realistic than the possibilities maya had come up with. but maya chose to always see the best in people, even if it meant pushing away every suffocating thought that threatened to make her question the very relationship between her bestfriend and her boyfriend.

emma was very adamant on the fact that she did not like luke. was there an obvious physical attraction between them? yes. but that didn't equate to actual feelings for each other. emma would deny that very attraction until it started to set her soul on fire.