I shot up straight out of my chair, putting the notebook behind my back as I awkwardly turned to face him. We were only separated by the cushioned chair between us which was the only thing keeping him from ripping the thing out from behind my back.
"What's behind your back?" He sleepily asked. It was obvious he was only half awake and I tried to use that as an advantage.
"Nothing." I quickly replied, giving him a fake smile that I'm pretty sure he couldn't see since it was pretty dark. I stuck my fingers through the last page of the book where I had written down my thoughts and grasped in between my pointer finger and thumb.
Just as I expected, Luke attempted to snatch the book from behind my back, even though he didn't exactly know that was the object behind me. Luckily I was quick enough and flinched back and out of his reached. He was now leaned over the chair with his hand gripping the back of it while the other was clinging onto the arm.
He peered up at me from his spot by the side of my waist. I raised my eyebrows at him, slowly tearing out the back page without breaking eye contact with him. I crumpled the paper in my hand as his eyes inched back to the crinkling noise.
"What is it?" He asked again. He attempted to lunge for the object once more, but I was able to slip out of his way and to the side of the chair. He stood up with a blank look on his face as I secretly slipped the crumpled paper between the frame of my bed.
I held out the notebook to him and watched him switch his attention from me to the sleek cover that had a glare from the lamp behind me.
"Oh." He simply said. He reached out towards the book and slipped it out of my fingers. I gulped in the fear that there was something else that was related to Luke in there.
To my surprise, he tossed the book back onto my desk and gazed back over at me with his same lazy eyes. Usually he would've peeped through the as that was a part of his nosy nature, but somehow I had the feeling that I knew he didn't want me to look through it. Maybe because he knew he wouldn't want anyone to look through his, even me.
Luke grabbed my upper arm, dragging me towards the bed. I followed his lead and crawled into my bed with him for a second time this night. He was already lying down and facing me just as I could sit down.
"You have your own room you know." I stated as I pulled my comforter over me and adjusted my pillows before I laid down next to him.
"I know." He cheekily sighed, slinging his arms and legs around me. His long limbs resembled a koala around my smaller body. I hadn't gotten exactly comfortable before he leeched onto me, but there wasn't much I could do about it.
I hadn't gotten much sleep that night from the surprise of finding that I had thought that I had fallen in love with the doof beside me. Over the hours of the night, he had untangled his body from mine and returned back to his normal state. But once I rolled on my side to face my back to him I could feel the exhale of his breathing on the back of my neck along with the few fingers that tickled on my spine.
In the moment I hadn't forgotten the situation with Ellis. I had forgotten that Luke was someone I've known for years, someone I grew up with, who proved that he knew me better than I knew myself. The internal conflict I had was whether I was attracted to him himself or what he offered me. His touch was beginning to drive me wild and he knew it did too.
-
"Luke Hemmings get your huge ass off of me!" I shouted at him. I had just lied down after we got in from school and I felt beyond exhausted and Luke wasn't doing much to help me.
"My ass isn't that huge!" He yelled back, as if he was offended. His chest as pressed against my back as his tall body engulfed mine as he completely sprawled his body out over mine. He had grabbed my wrists and pinned them behind my back and had no intentions of letting them go. I couldn't kick my legs very well as his were tangled with mine. Basically I was stuck under him and there was nothing I could do.
Over the course of a the next few days, I had put a lot of thought into the sentence that was unconsciously written in the back of my notebook. I couldn't decipher whether it was my confused emotions or an actual fact, but I did come to the idea of just letting things flow. I didn't want to think about this or push anything more than it already was, so I decided to let it be. Whether it was going to set off or fade was beyond my knowledge.
But I was quite clear to me that Luke wasn't just messing with me, just playing me. If he was, things wouldn't have slowly been pushed to the spot we are now. It was an on and off thing, sometimes we acted as if our lips have never touched and sometimes we acted as if they have a thousand times. I was beginning to become more and more drawn to him, but I still wasn't sure whether I had loved him or not. I would think that if I did it would've been obvious a long time ago.
"Do you still want to take a nap?" Luke asked, the side of his head resting on mine. One of my cheeks was squished into the couch while the other was squished against him.
"Yes." I whined.
"Me too." He nuzzled his head into me and by this time I'd gotten used to his weight. "Goodnight." He quickly said. I tried to thrash around underneath him, but getting him off that way wasn't helping at all and only made me more tired. I started to attempt to roll over towards the edge of the couch in hopes that he would topple off of me and to the ground.
"Luke," I groaned. No answer. I fidgeted underneath him as I started to lean over the edge and soon enough he was looking for something to stabilize him so he wouldn't hit the ground. He was just a second to late and landed on his back on the carpeted floors with a thud.
"Hey!" He shouted, furrowing his eyebrows together at me. I peered over the edge of the couch, finally able to breathe properly. Before I was able to yell back at him he grabbed my arms and pulled me down on top of him.
I felt a sharp pain in my hip from where Luke's hip and dug into. I noticed a round purple bruise this morning from where I had ran into my desk in the dark last night. I winced from the pain and a wave of worry washed over Luke's face.
"Did I hurt you? I didn't mean to hurt you. I'm so-" He tripped over his words as he spoke, causing a breathy laugh to escape from my lips.
"No, I'm fine. I just bumped my hip into my desk last night." I explained as I went to put my hand over the sore spot, but had felt that Luke's was already lying lightly there, as if his hand was almost hovering over the spot to keep from hurting it once again.
I propped my elbows up on his chest, careful that I wasn't digging too deep into his chest. I leaned my head in my hands and batted my eyelashes a few times down at him. I felt him shift his legs behind me which had made both of us more comfortable, even though there wasn't much comfort on lying on a boy on the carpet.
"Comfortable?" I asked, putting on a cheesy smile and taking in how light his eyes had faded to.
"Not really." He confessed as he peered down at our touching torsos.
"Good." I collapsed back onto him without warning, earning a small groan from him. My ear was pressed right to the center of his chest and was beginning to count his heartbeats but was stopped when I felt myself being lifted of off him.
Luke had grabbed me by my upper arms, dragging me up and off the ground with ease. He took me by surprise and I hadn't even realized what was going on until my feet were planted firmly on the ground. I glanced down and around then back up to Luke who had released his grip on my arms.
"That's not fair." I frowned.
"A lot of things aren't fair." He chuckled, walking into the kitchen. I followed behind him with my arms crossed, something I found myself doing too many times.
"Like what?" I asked as I stopped in the middle of the room. He patted the empty counter next to him, signaling for me to go and sit up there. I hadn't questioned it since asking Luke what he was up to never worked out for me since he was quite vague.
"Things." He stated, shrugging his shoulders. I started swinging my legs back and forth as he pulled out a plastic bag from one of the drawers. "Such as how you have a nasty bruise from running into an inanimate object." He said, opening the freezer and digging out a handful of ice. I cringed from the idea of straight up ice on my finger tips, I was never the one for the cold which was ironic since I did live in New York.
"Very funny." I sarcastically said. He wrapped the bag of ice in a paper towel and brought it over to me as I held my hand out for it, but he had pulled it further away from my reach.
"Let me see." He raised an eyebrow at me and looked down once to my hip.
"It's not that bad." I assured him. Even though the bruise actually was pretty bad and I flinched when it had gotten even a few inches from anything that came near my body.
He gave me a disapproving look since he knew I was lying, I was never too good at it. I rolled my eyes and peeled up the hem of my shirt gently, exposing the purple spot to him.
"Jeez, Autumn. Did it hit you back?" He questioned as he carefully put the ice down over the spot.
"It's an inanimate object." I taunted, mocking his words from before. I noticed he was about to drag his finger from his free hand over the bruise, making me slap it away. "Don't touch it." I demanded.
"It goes even further down." He pointed out, glancing up at me quickly. "Move your waistband down." He said.
"No?" I furrowed my eyebrows at him, as he stood straight up yet still held the ice in place that I was sure I could do myself.
"Come on."
"I'm not standing half naked in my kitchen. We eat here."
"You won't be half naked, it's just your hip." He explained. I rolled my eyes at him, giving in and stretching the side of my leggings down just an inch or two further down which is luckily where the bruise stopped. "And besides," He began, examining my hip. "I've already seen you naked." He smirked lightly without breaking his focus.
"Why do you always bring that up?" I groaned. I buried my face in my hands and he referred to the embarrassing moment after I was changing from a shower I had taken when we were back home. Even though I told him countless times I was only half, he didn't care. He still thought it was funny.
"Because it bothers you." He told me. I grabbed the ice in his hand, snatching it away from him. He glared at me just before he took a step back from me and placing a hand on either side of my knees. I continued to swing my legs back and forth, careful not to kick his chest even though I felt as if he needed one right now.
"So," He started. "I'm leaving in a few days." He stated. I already knew this, but Luke was very good at stating very obvious facts. "What are you going to do without me?" He wiggled his eyebrows at me and received the well deserved kick to his chest. It wasn't hard at all since I could never really hurt him, but just enough to tell him I wasn't taking his jokes.
"It's 3 days, Luke." I matter-of-factly said. I shooed his arms away, making him stand up as I jumped off the counter as I pulled up the side of my leggings. "What could actually go wrong?" I asked over my shoulder, more as a rhetorical question than anything. I waltzed towards my room, feeling much less tired than I had before.
He followed behind me as I suspected and I flopped onto my bed, waiting for him to appear in my doorway. I let my chest rise and fall as I stared at my ceiling with empty thoughts. With everything that's been preoccupying me you would think a break would be nice. A few moments later Luke peaked his head around the corner of the door.
"Hey Autumn?" He softly asked. I picked my head up that was resting on my pillows.
"Yeah?" I chirped.
"Are you okay?" He tilted his head to the side as he asked his question, one that I wasn't necessarily expecting.
"I'm alright." I smiled lightly at him and the rest of his body dragged into my room.
"Okay." He plainly said, now stopped in the middle of my room. He stared down at the ground for a second then back up to me. "Are you sure?" He was fiddling with the bottom buttons on the flannel he was wearing and it was rather distracting, but I finally pushed a real answer out of me.
"No." I shook my head as I sat up. My eyes trailed up from his fingers and to his eyes that looked more pained than anything.
"Okay." He blankly repeated.
Luke walked over to my bed and I moved the bag of ice I had laying by the foot of my bed. It seemed we'd been here a hundred times, silently sitting in the comfort of each other's presence. I scooted over to him as close as I could and leaned my head on his shoulder as he wrapped an arm loosely around my waist. We had sat there for as many minutes as I could count on one hand and eventually he broke to silence.
"Do want to talk about it?" He slid back from me and glanced up once at him, shaking my head a few times. I knew that Luke knew I was beginning to get overwhelmed by a few things, but he still hadn't know that the thought of me being in love with him had crossed my mind more than a few times.
I sat beside Luke for the longest amount of time, just silently making up my mind, feeling his fingers caress my skin that was barricaded by my thin t-shirt. His touch was more sentimental than sympathetic and that's what made me realize that this, or us, was something he really wanted. He hadn't had said it to me, but things like that weren't needed to be said, they were meant to be felt.
Being with Luke was something I wanted everyday and for the rest of my life and whether we were friends or more would be determined later on. I wanted to give this a try, though. Something in the back of my mind was telling me to go ahead, take a risk. But the more I thought about it, maybe Luke was that something. Maybe Luke was metaphorically the voice in my head telling me that maybe, just maybe, I loved this boy.
-
A/N:
sorry if this was a little boring, it was more of a filler chapter, but this kind of cleared up her feelings about luke :~)