Moving On

Twenty-two

Twenty-two / Sandra

Austin and I are on our way to Jess' café back in Columbus to meet with Liz and Calum.

I know I should've told Calum when I called him that I was going to bring the guy that will help up us on this investigation, but it slipped my mind. And now they're going to be shocked as fuck when they lay eyes on him. Maybe I should've warned them first.

"So, why are we going to Columbus again today?" Austin asks. "We're don't have babysitting duties today, remember? Isn't Dev's dad home or something?"

"I, um... I'm going to see some people today, and I just wanted to have a friend come with me." Well, it's not the truth, but technically, it isn't a lie either.

"I should be sleeping right now," he complains and he yawns to prove his point.

I ignore him after that.

After a few minutes of silence, we finally got off the bus. The university district is not having its usual volume of people because students are on term break.

God, I miss Columbus. Maybe I should've just come home after the accident... maybe I should've just... I sigh inwardly. There I go again with the maybes.

I stop Austin before we go into the café. "Look, these friends I'm meeting... they kind of know Justin so please don't be mean when they say anything weird."

He rolls his eyes, because this thing happened so many times before. "Okay, okay. I'm starting to hate my parents for making me look like your Justin friend," he says. I give him the look. "Oh, you know I'm kidding," he teases.

"I know," I laugh.

We get in the café and it's practically empty except for a few of the regulars. I don't see Calum or Liz anywhere, and I whisper to Austin that they aren't here yet. I tell him to go sit down first while I whip up us something to drink.

I get back behind the counter and start to make our drinks. Martha, one of Jess' employees, comes out from the kitchen to take a break, I assume.

"Oh, hey, Sandra," she greets me. "Aren't you supposed to be on leave?"

"No, we're just here to meet some friends," I explain. "You guys don't mind if I whip something up, right?"

"Yeah, no, it's totally fine," she says. "I have to go, though; I only have a few minutes of break left." And then she was gone. So I was right, she was on her break.

I make one iced Americano for me and a French vanilla frappe for Austin; non-fat cream and no whipped cream, just like he likes it. It's kind of weird, though; I would've pegged him to drink the Americano and me the frappe. We're weird.

I get myself a slice of blueberry cheesecake from the display freezer. "Do you want anything to eat?" I shout at Austin.

"Chocolate donut," he shouts back.

I ask one of the other employees to take the drinks to our table and I'll take our food. Liz or Calum were still nowhere to be seen.

As Austin happily eats his chocolate donut that's probably stuffed with a thousand calories, I stalk Luke's twitter account.

I haven't done this before. I'm not the stalking type. But I just suddenly felt the need to see how he's doing. Even though I'm consumed by school, Carly, Dev, and all of this, I still have feelings of my own. And I miss him.

His tweets were the usual: tour announcements, goofing off with the guys, and sometimes the occasional deep tweet about life or something. But what really got my attention was a tweet of a fan that he quote tweeted.