3 am (l.h.)

3.3

Luke

"Wait, okay, tell me again what happened," Michael says, sipping his coffee from a straw, something he's always done but I've never understood. "I'm not entirely sure what's going on with you guys."

I groan and place my head in my hands. "I've been over this like three times today!"

He puts his hands up in surrender. "Sorry, sorry. I know what happened up until you guys ran out on the street, but after that, I stopped listening because it was such a long story and-"

"Mikey, shut up!" Ashton interjects.

"Will someone who listened please go over what happened?" I sigh.

"That would leave me out," Calum tells me, and I groan again.

"You guys are such idiots," Ash scolds. "After Luke brought Audrey home, he gave her her anxiety medication, but she refused to take it, and Luke asked her why and she told him that she doesn't take medication anymore."

"Did her psychiatrist tell her to go off her meds?" Mike asks.

"No," I sigh, rubbing my eyes.

"Right," Ash continues, "she went off of her medication without a professional telling her to, so that's why things have been so rough, but she says they weren't helping, anyway, which isn't true because she got 10x worse after she stopped taking them." He stops to take a breath and shake his head slowly. "Then they got in a fight, and luke stayed relatively calm and hardly got a word in, but Audrey wouldn't stop screaming at him. So he called Laura and now she's staying with Audrey and Luke's staying here with us."

"Wow," Mike says as soon as Ash finishes. "That's rough, Lukey, I'm sorry."

I shrug. "It's okay." It's not.

"So are you guys broken up?" Cal asks after a minute or two of silence.

I shake my head rapidly. "No, no, we're not broken up. Laura just knows better about this stuff since she's been through it, and Audrey listens to her more than she does to me, so..." I trail off.

"You guys are gonna get through this, you know that right?" Ash reassures me.

"Yeah, we'll be okay. It's just rough right now." I sigh and rub my temples, this whole situation giving me a headache.

All three boys pull me into a group hug as a few tears fall from my eyes. "It's gonna be alright, Lukey," Mikey tells me, and Ash and Cal mutter agreements. "You're going to be okay."

**********

I meet Audrey at the coffee shop that we had our first out-of-hospital hang out at.

I give her a hug and we awkwardly kiss each other. "I missed you, Auds."

"I missed you too," she mumbles, but doesn't seem to mean it.

She's already ordered her coffee (not decaf like usual), so I go up to the counter and order my coffee from the barista, and she seems really familiar. I think she recognizes me too, and we stand there, trying to place each other. Then I realize. And I think she does, too.

"I'm sorry," she begins, "this might sound crazy, but did you save my life?"

My heart falls into my stomach and my breath catches in my throat. It's her, it's really her. I force myself to breathe. "Yes."

___________________

OHHHHHH SHIT

Short chapter but it sets the groundwork for some important things

We're literally .01k away from 3k WE CAN DO IT GUYS

Dedicated to take-me-back-love bc she wrote a super cool fanfic for the Girls Like Girls music video by Hayley Kiyoko and it's really cute so go read it!!

k bye

-Lo