|Damage||cth| -au- DISCONTINUED

|Seven|

Aria:

Five minutes.

That's it. And I was out of here.

With my shitty luck, I had every class with Calum and Luke. Luke and I had pretty much talked to each other all day after lunch. No one was really doing anything and everyone had been talking. Our teacher had given up on going over classroom procedures and let us do whatever. Personally, I didn't like this. I liked structure so these 'laid back' first few days of school were my least favourite.  Luke had been telling me a story that I tuned out of as soon as he started.

Maybe I'd like being in here a lot more if I had friends or people who cared about me. I guess Luke was my friend now. I hope. Part of me thought that this was temporary for him. He was still trying to figure things out and as soon as things with Calum, Ashton, and Michael got back to normal, he'd drop me. He needs me now because he finally knows what it's like to be me so I guess he figured that it would suck a lot less with me.

I don't want to trust Luke. Especially after I think he admitted to liking me. That was bullshit. He was probably joking around to see if I'd have feelings for him. Maybe, I did like him. He wasn't bad looking at all. He really wasn't bad looking. He was really hot actually. I'm not going to lie, I like the attention he was giving me... I like it a lot. No one ever paid attention to me, especially boys.

"... so then, Dakota fell out of the- are you even listening Aria?"

No.

"Mmm hmm," I lied.

"You're a shitty liar. If you didn't care, you could have just stopped me."

"Sorry, I'm kinda preoccupied."

"Uh, do you want to do anything after school?"

Just as I was about to answer, a pencil hit the side of my eye. My eyes became a little teary-eyed and I noticed Luke's attention adverted to Calum.

"Sorry, it slipped," Calum snickered.

I rolled my eyes and began rubbing my irritated eye. I picked up the pencil to give it back to him but Luke took out of my hand.

"He's an asshole."

He took it and threw it back at him while he wasn't looking.

"You didn't have to do that for me, Luke."

"It's fine. He needs to pick up his own shit. So... about after school are you busy?"

I thought about it. Dakota and I don't usually do anything special on the first day of school and it would be nice to hang out with someone new for once. I didn't see any harm in that

"No."

"Well...would you-"

Luke was interrupted by my loud text notification from Dakota.

can we hang out?

i think i'm hanging out with your brother.

"Sorry. It was Dakota."

"Doyouwanttodosomethingafterschooltoday?" he rushed.

"I guess. I don't do anything anyways." I attempted to sound cool. I just sounded lame. Really, really fucking lame.

'Sure Luke.'

That's all I had to say.

I glanced at the clock and we were down to seconds. I would do anything to distract myself from my awkwardness.