fatherhood // lashton

25

Luke was seated in the restaurant of the hotel, an untouched glass of water placed in front of him as he stared straight ahead. His eyes were locked with those familiar hazel-blue ones, and his fingers were curled into the table.

"Is this where you moved? To New York?" Luke asked and shook his head slowly in disbelief.

Dani bit her bottom lip and held her cup of coffee in both her hands as she looked down at the table and shook her head.

"No, I live in Miami" she whispered out and Luke nearly scoffed.

"Then why are you here?" he asked instead, still keeping his eyes locked with her perfectly smooth porcelain skin, her thick, brown, curly hair, and those long eyelashes that all reminded him of Leon.

"I'm working here for the summer. My grandpa works within the hotel industry-"

"I know, he gave me a job when you were pregnant" Luke spoke, making Dani tense up and nod her head.

"Yeah, that's right," she whispered and slowly lifted her head to look at Luke again, "I remember"

Luke locked his jaw and looked into Dani's teary eyes. It was quiet between them and maybe Luke should just stand up and leave, but he couldn't. He didn't want to either, because he felt the need to stay and talk. To clear some things up.

"So, why are you here? Do you still live in Chicago?" Dani asked after clearing her throat in the uncomfortable silence.

"Yeah," Luke said and nodded his head, "I didn't really feel the need to flee the city"

Luke watched Dani close her eyes shut and lick her lips in a way to keep the hurt feelings down. But both Luke and Dani knew she deserved this, so she sat still and let Luke give her what she deserved.

"And I'm here for my work" Luke added quietly. Both their voices were soft and quiet, like if they were to talk any louder, one of them might crack like delicate glass.

"What do you work with?" Dani asked, her big eyes eying him carefully, like if she wasn't sure if she was allowed to look at him.

"I'm a chef," Luke spoke and let his tongue anxiously play with his piecing before speaking again, "Just like you wanted me to be"

Dani looked at Luke for a while before finally letting a tear fall from her eye as she smiled at him. "Yeah, yeah I did" she breathed out and let the rest of her tears slip.

Luke didn't comfort her because he didn't know what those tears meant. He only sat still and watched her smile small at him, while he gripped the table harder.

Silence spread around them again. Luke didn't know what to say, and neither did Dani, so the two of them only looked at each other while breathing heavily.

It was weird how someone you loved so deeply, could turn into a complete stranger. Luke and Dani had known each other for years, and then started dating. They had been intimate with each other, they had loved each other, but yet they acted like they were foreign to each other.

"I, um, I'm in medical school. Just finished my second year. I want to be a surgeon" Dani said after a while, a crooked smile on her face as she spoke.

"What happened to your plans with studying law?" Luke asked. That had been the only thing Dani and her parents had talked about, even when Dani was 9 months pregnant.

"I figured out that that's not what I wante to do. It also took me long to graduate from high school, so I took another path after that" she explained.

Luke understood that. A few months after she got pregnant, she stopped going to school and tried to study online. It was hard to work things out though, and in the end, Luke suddenly graduated by himself as a single father.