Once

Chapter 7

As class is dismissed I mentally build up my confidence for wherever this conversation with Luke will take me.

I silently follow him out to the parking lot before calling his name. He turns around instantly and waits for me to catch up.

"Can we talk?" I ask. "Please?" I add to slightly soften my harsh tone.

"About what?"

"You know what" I glare at him. he really does get get on each and every one of my nerves.

"Fine" he agrees. "Let's take a seat" he says and gestures to the curb.

"Please, don't interrupt me. I just new. to say this and you can tell me how you feel about it afterwards, okay?"

"Okay" Luke agrees.

"Yesterday, you said you kiss lots of girls. But when I talked to Meg about it after that, she said you never kiss girls, or even anything in that nature actually. And me, being my nosey self, I asked her why. She began to say something, but then caught herself before she could really let anything slip. She said you would most likely tell me that reason?" I say to a blank-faced Luke.

"Erm, yeah. That's true. All of it." He states.

"So then will you tell me that reason?" I ask.

"Yes" he agrees, to my surprise. "But not here. You got your car?"

"Yeah?"

"Great. I'm driving" he says and grabs my keys from my purse. He jogs to my car and starts it up.

"Where are we going?" I pester.

"Away from the crowds. Somewhere quiet, so I can tell you the lovely story of how my heart was shattered." He says, his eyes never leaving the road.

We pull into a little restaraunt, where we each order a coke and sit down.

"Okay, enough stalling. Spill." I urge.

"Fine. You remember Jocelynn, from high school, right?"

"Yeah" I nod. I remembered her. She was a cheerleader, she was nice enough I guess. she was my lab partner sophomore year, though we never seemed to click very well.

"Well I dated her, if you don't recall. It was a while ago. I still played soccer, so you may not have known me then. I wasn't as well known. I had spent the first two years of high school fawning over this girl. She was the most beautiful girl I had ever laid my eyes on. Finally, in March of sophomore year, I grew the balls to ask her to our schools masquerade dance. She accepted my invitation, of course. After that night we started dating. We did everything we possibly could together. I was head over heels." he sighed. I give him a look of sympathy, the look I have worn since his story began. I can tell that this is a difficult subject for him to talk about.

Our waitress brings us our pops and we, well, I thank her. Luke just takes a drink with no words at all.

"Anyways, back to my story. One day, I went to go support her at her cheer competition. She did amazing, but no surprise there. I went to find her to congratulate her. That's when I found her kissing that Cody Barnes kid. I lost my shit. I beat him to the ground. Me! a weak soccer kid beating up the football team's captain. This didn't please Jocelynn one bit. She dumped me, although she was the one cheating." he laughs and rolls his eyes.

"Okay? I'm sorry to hear all this but none of this explains why you kissed me when you never kiss people. Which you haven't explained that part either by the way." I point out.

"I know geez chill. I'm getting there." he says.

"After Jocelynn dumped me was when I began to go to parties, the ones where I first met Meg. I was so desperate to find that feeling, that spark that Jocelynn made me feel inside. So I kept hooking up with girls. Left and right.
None of them provided me with the feeling that I so badly needed to feel again, so I tossed them to the side. Some of them fell for me, but I didn't give a shit. I needed to feel that feeling of sparks inside of me again. After a while, I was done searching. I cowed to never kiss a woman again, unless that woman was Jocelynn. That's where you come in." he says and points to me.

"This makes no sense" I groan. "what does any of this have to even do with me?"

"Just listen, I'm getting there. So. When I saw you in Meg's, uh, your dorm, something inside me flipped. Like a switch or something, I don't know. Anyways, I needed to see for myself if my feeling was right. Now, before I continue, please remember I spent my first half of high school infatuated with one girl, and the other half being too stoned to notice anything around me, so I never really took any notice to you. At all, actually." He says before taking another deep breath to finish his story.

"When I saw you, I knew there was something different about you, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. That's when I kissed you, to see if I was right. I was. Kylie, when I kissed you, I felt more than just the sparks I felt with Jocelynn. I felt fireworks. I felt like a Fourth of July ceremony was going on inside of me. That feeling scared me because I though Jocelynn was the only woman I was capable of loving." he breathes out.

wait.

Love?