Wasted Time

Chapter 19

Luke's POV

"Anything on?" Ashton asked, flopping down on the sofa next to me, where I was channel-flicking.

"Not much," I admitted. Ash and I had the house to ourselves today, because Calum was staying over at Flavia's and Michael was over at Dean and Annabell's house.

"Michael spends a lot of time over there, doesn't he?" said Ash, as if reading my mind.

"I guess so," I shrugged.

"Maybe he wants to see more of a certain person..." Ash hinted.

"I still haven't met her yet," I observed. "Maybe he does like her."

"She seemed nice enough," Ash said. "Not sure if she's Mikey's type, but you never know with him." I agreed and continued to scroll through endless channels of rubbish. It was about a week since Maddy and Emily had left, and none of us had heard from either of them, except perhaps Michael, but he didn't talk about them, knowing that it was a sensitive subject.

The house felt empty without them, even though they hadn't lived here very long, and I was really beginning to miss their presence. I had texted Emily loads, and tried to call her too, but she was ignoring me. I had hoped that she would come to meet me after the party, as she was usually open-minded and didn't make judgements quickly, but I had never heard from her. I was devastated, because of course I didn't want to break up with her, I only said that to please Ashton. I had thought at the time that it would be easily sorted, that I would be able to keep meeting up with her in secret, but she hadn't given me the chance to explain and now she was gone.

Perhaps she went to the laundry room and didn't find me there, then went back to the flat? I had been held up by the arrival of Charlie, who had come to check that everything was okay. She was such a good friend; she had hugged me and told me that it would be okay, whispering words of comfort to me when we sat on the sofa in our block of flats. We had been friends for as long as I could remember, supporting each other through everything, but we could never be more than friends, and I was sort of glad of that. People who didn't know us very well or saw us together without knowing the situation often assumed we were a couple or thought we should be, but really we were just close in a sibling way.

"Hey, go back a second," said Ash, frowning at the TV. I flicked back to the channel we were previously on.

"That's Maddy and Chris's film, isn't it?" I asked as some chat show appeared on the screen.

"Yeah," said Ashton, leaning forward.

"...and we're lucky enough to have the stars of the film here in the studio with us, so please welcome Maddy Cooper and Chris Evans!" a false blonde woman in a red dress announced from the screen. The camera panned to a door where Maddy and Chris were entering the room, smiling and waving as they walked over to sit on a sofa next to the interviewer.

"I didn't know they were doing this!" said Ashton, a mixture of excitement and disgust in his voice. "Did you know?" I shook my head.

"So, guys, you're still filming New Beginnings at the moment, is that right?"

"Yep." They both nodded enthusiastically.

"And when can we expect to see this film in cinemas?"

"Hopefully early next year," said Chris. "We're nearly done with the filming, and then obviously some editing needs to happen, but we're really excited for the release already."

"So, obviously, you can't give away a lot about the plot of the film, and we haven't got a trailer yet, but I think we can guess that your characters share in a relationship?"