Song I recommend for the chapter: Snake Eyes by Mumford & Sons
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I am startled awake by the loud vibration of my phone on the nightstand. I pull myself out of Luke's arms and am surprised, but glad, that it did not wake him up as well. A picture of Ben and I huddled together in a blanket at a high school football game is on the screen. The old photo puts a smile on my face and I rub my eyes as I answer the phone.
"Hello?" I ask with a yawn.
"Hey, what's up?" He asks.
"Well I was sleeping, considering it is 2:34 in the morning. What are you doing awake?" I laugh.
"Driving, I can't sleep. Wanna go somewhere?"
"Uh, sure. I'll get dressed," I respond.
"I'll be there in about five minutes," I hear before a click. I pull the phone away from my face and see that he has hung up. Why was he up this late?
I turn around and kiss Luke's cheek before getting out bed and into the cold world that is not his arms. I throw on a pair of Luke's sweatpants that are laying on my floor and roll the waistband over three times since they are too long otherwise. I grab a jacket just in case it is cold outside and exit my room as quietly as possible, not wanting to wake the sleeping beauty in my bed.
By the time I get downstairs, I see headlights shining through the entryway windows and quietly leave through the front door. I climb inside the shiny, new-looking rental car that they had to borrow while staying here.
"Hey," I say with a slightly confused look on my face. "What are you doing up so late?" I ask with a giggle.
"I told you I couldn't sleep, and I wanted to see you," he says as he checks the rearview mirror as he backs out of my driveway. "Why are you up so late?"
"Well I wasn't until I was rudely awakened by someone calling me," I say and wink when he looks at me. "Is Abigail asleep?"
"Yeah," he says as he drives down the road, taking us somewhere I don't know. Abigail and Ben were staying in a hotel a few minutes away from our house.
"Where are we going?" I ask.
"I was hoping you could tell me that," he laughs.
"Well where do you wanna go?"
"Anywhere you want," he says with a small smile.
"Well there's not much to do at almost three in the morning," I giggle.
"Then we'll just drive," he responds.
And that's exactly what we did; just drove. We rode around for hours, talking about nothing and everything at the same time. This was the Ben that I knew, the Ben that I had missed. It was like I hadn't even been gone, like nothing was wrong between us. At the moment nothing was wrong, and I had forgotten all about the fact that he hadn't talked to me in weeks while he was back in America. It felt like I was talking to my best friend again, and I was completely happy with that. There was a small tension between us though and I didn't know what was causing it. It was as if an invisible thread was connecting us, and the wrong words out of one of our mouths would be the small scissors that would cut right through the string; releasing an enormous amount of built up feelings and stress, something that I did not want to see.
Sometimes he would just stop talking and stare at me, it gave me a feeling and I couldn't tell if it was a comfortable or uncomfortable feeling. It was a feeling nonetheless, but I tried my best to ignore it. I didn't want to think about the tiny serenity that I got in the pit of my stomach when his brown eyes met mine. It was a feeling that I knew all along, the feeling that he did have some kind of feelings for me. It is all too real when he is sitting right next to me, rather than trying to figure it out while he was thousands of miles away. I don't want to believe that it is real and I push it aside, hoping that he won't bring it up.
