Fall.

Chapter 6.

"Why are you ignoring me?" Luke slammed down his lunch tray on the table across from where I was sitting.

"I'm not." I replied harshly. That was a lie, I was ignoring Luke. I was still mad at him for what he pulled last week when I was at the movies with Ashton, and I hadn't talked to him all week.

"Stel, I know that's not true." He used his foot to pull out a chair and sat down. I glanced around the lunchroom for any sign of Michael or even Ashton. I had gotten down here first so I was sitting at our usual lunch table by myself. I hadn't been expecting Luke to show up here.

"Just leave me alone." I shrugged him off.

"Why are you acting like this?" Luke demanded.

"I'm not acting like anything, what are you talking about?" I asked, playing dumb.

"You haven't talked to me all week, you didn't even show up at the library on Tuesday like we planned. I didn't do anything wrong, Stel. You can't just... ditch me like this." Luke sighed. He ran his hands through his hair and looked down at his lunch tray, which only had a bag of chips and a can of Coke on it.

I realized that Luke was probably feeling very similar to how I was feeling a few weeks ago when he did this same thing to me. Though I was mad at him, I did feel a little bad about it. I still didn't really want to talk to him, but I felt bad. It seemed like lately Luke had really opened up to me a lot more, and the fact that I'm ignoring him over this probably didn't make him feel very good. This didn't mean that I was just going to forgive him because I was feeling sorry for him, but I couldn't help but feel a little guilty about how I was treating Luke.

"I'm mad at you." I stated. I leaned back in my chair and crossed my arms. I hadn't gone up to get my lunch yet because I was waiting for Michael to get here, but I wasn't even hungry anyway. Luke didn't bother eating his food either, not like he had much to eat in the first place.

"Why?" Luke asked. I found it hard to believe that he actually didn't know what I was mad about. I knew Luke almost too well by now, he was too smart to be this oblivious.

"For how you acted on Saturday." I let out a big sigh. Luke was nothing but rude to Ashton and I when we were at the movie theater on Saturday, and he even knew that I didn't want him there. I made it very clear to him that I didn't want him messing things up, and although he didn't cause any damage to my relationship with Ashton it still made me mad that he attempted to sabotage it in the first place.

"Seriously? You're upset about that? I should be the one that's upset over that." Luke rolled his eyes. He finally popped open the can of Coke sitting on his trey, but still didn't dare to drink it.

"And how is that? I didn't do anything wrong, it was all you!" I defended myself.

"You ditched me for Ashton!" Luke yelled. He didn't even bother looking around to see if anyone had heard him yell, it was too noisy in here for anyone else to be paying attention to either one of us anyway.

"What was I supposed to do?" I nervously laughed. "I wasn't just going to say no, Luke."

"We had plans." He was biting on the inside of his cheek again.

"No we didn't." I argued.

"We were in the middle of studying." Luke said through gritted teeth. I just couldn't get myself to understand why he was so upset about this, it's not like we were getting much done back at my house anyway.

"Actually we were in the middle of Central Park." I countered back.

"Okay, I didn't ask for you to be such a smart ass about this, Stel." Luke snapped at me.

"Don't call me that." I ordered.

"I thought you liked it." Luke said, giving off a small smirk.

"Not when I'm mad at you." I just barely laughed and shook my head.

"Okay, Stel. Sorry." Luke bit back a full smile.

"Why are you even bothering to apologize? You still called me it." I looked around the lunchroom again, still no sight of Michael or Ashton. I desperately wanted them to come, because I knew that as soon as one of them did Luke would seemingly disappear. He may be upset at me for this but he wouldn't dare get one of them involved.

"Exactly. Ever heard of sarcasm, Stel?" Luke raised his eyebrows.

"Stop." I ordered.

"You stop ignoring me first." Luke offered.

"I'm obviously not ignoring you if I'm sitting here talking to you right now." I gave a small laugh.

For the next few minutes we stayed silent, staring at each other from across the table as if the first one to talk was going to lose some horrible bet. The expression on Luke's face didn't look upset, like I'm assuming mine did. Instead he looked curious, as if he was just trying so hard to figure me out. His pale blue eyes seemed to stare right through me and I felt very vulnerable, I felt that Luke already knew everything about me without having to even talk to me.

Luke was the first to speak. "Are you and Ashton dating now?" He blurted out.

"Uh, I don't know?" I questioned.

Truth is, Ashton and I hadn't spoken at all about "us" since we were at the movie theater. It was something that I had wanted to discuss many times with him, but I could never find the right words. Sure, maybe in the past few days we've held hands a little more often and hugged a lot more frequently, but we have yet to bring up what we actually are. All I really wanted to know was how we stand in our relationship with each other, but I guess I would just have to wait until the right time.

"How do you just not know?" Luke fidgetted awkwardly in his seat.

"I'm still mad at you." I reminded him.

"Ugh." Luke groaned. "Why, Stel?"

"I already told you, because of the way you acted on Saturday night!" I threw my hands up in the air, still not getting how Luke didn't see why I was so mad at this point.

"It wasn't that bad, it's not my fault I was there. I didn't even remember you and Ashton would be going to the movies."

"Bullshit, Luke. You and I both know that's a lie." I laughed meanly at him.

"So? Why do you even care? We only talked for about 30 seconds." Luke grumbled. He opened up the bag of chips and shoved a handful into his mouth.

"I care because I thought that I had made it clear to you that I didn't want you showing up there that night. You knew that me going on a date with Ashton was important to me and I didn't want you messing that up." I tried to explain myself a little further, in case Luke still didn't understand.

"Well obviously I didn't ruin anything." Luke spat out.

"Why did you come if you knew I didn't want you to? I know that we aren't exactly friends with each other but I thought that you would at least have the decency to respect what I do and don't want." I asked. At this point I wasn't even worried about where Michael and Ashton were now, I was just focused on figuring out what was going on with Luke.

"Because I was jealous, Stel! Last I checked, friends were allowed to be jealous of each other, or am I mistaken?" Luke stood up from the table and stormed out of the lunchroom.

It only took me a few seconds to realize what Luke had just said and follow him outside. "Luke!" I called after him.

He was practically running down the hallway, trying to get away from me as fast as he could. I wasn't just going to leave him alone, though. I was in too deep to just forget about this. As much as I didn't want to admit it, Luke had become way too important to me to let him run away from me.

"What do you want?" Luke spun around before I could say anything else. He stopped walking and let me catch up with him. A few of the longer pieces of his hair began to fall forward but Luke raised his hand and stopped them before they did, running his hand through his hair and setting them all back into place.

"What did you just say back there?" I asked, slightly out of breath from chasing Luke down the hallway.

"I said that friends were allowed to be jealous of each other." Luke leaned up against a locker. Part of me was surprised that he gave in and told me exactly what he said so easily. Normally Luke was too stubborn for that. He would have fought with me until he was too tired to go on anymore.

"So.." I paused. Did he seriously just call us friends? "We're friends now?"

"Well shit, Stel! I don't know, are we friends? Because I'd like to think that after spending more than two months together I may have become something more than just a fucking math tutor to you! I've told you a lot of shit about my life Stel, and I don't just go around saying those things to anyone who is willing to listen. So fine, if you don't consider us friends then fine, fuck you! I don't need you anyway." Luke turned around and punched the locker he was leaning against before sliding down and sitting on the floor. He pulled his knees close to his chest and buried his face in between them. "God, I hate you so much."

I knew that wasn't true, and Luke did too. I never meant for him to get so upset by this, my seemingly harmless question had gotten him all worked up. I didn't care that Luke wanted to be my friend, because I wanted to be his friend. All I meant to do by asking that question was see if Luke really wanted the same thing I did, it wasn't supposed to make him want to hate me.

"Luke-"

"Don't say it, Stel. Don't." Luke cut me off.

"Say what?" I asked. I sat down next to Luke and tucked my legs under me.

Luke looked up at me and laughed quietly. "I know you're going to say, 'Luke, you and I both know that's not true'." Luke imitated my voice.

"So that means you already know?"

"Yes." Luke threw his head back so it gently hit the locker.

"You don't really hate me, Lucas." I laughed, trying to force at least a smile out of Luke.

"That's not my name." Luke whined, and I could see a small smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

"I wasn't going to tell you that I didn't want to be friends with you." I said slowly. I wanted to make sure that Luke understood what I was saying.

"I know. I overreacted." Luke sighed. And that was it. He had nothing more to say about this. I wasn't sure that I minded, though, because I didn't really want him to say anything else. He didn't really need to apologize for anything, I knew that technically I was the one that caused this whole thing.

"So... Friends?" I asked. I held out my right hand for Luke to shake, as if we were closing a deal.

"Yeah, friends." Luke smiled and shook my hand. He looked at his other hand, the one that he punched the locker with. "I feel like I broke it."

"You should go to the nurse, then." I laughed. When Luke first punched the locker he had looked like it hadn't phased him at all, but I knew he wasn't that tough.

"They'll just tell me to go to the ER." Luke shrugged. He examined his hand again.

"Well, I mean, if you think it's broken you should go. They can call your mom and have her take you there." I suggested. I didn't think that Luke's hand was actually broken, maybe just a little bruised.

"I don't want my mom to take me out to the hospital and then have us find out it's not actually broken. She'll kill me for messing up her work schedule like that." He sighed. "Besides, she won't come get me in the middle of school anyway."

I stayed silent. I hadn't met Luke's mom before, but from what he had told me I really didn't like her. All Luke ever talked about was how she didn't care about him unless he got his good grades. Obviously getting the grades wasn't very hard for Luke, but I can still see how him having a mother that acts like that could make him feel bad. Whenever Luke mentioned her he seemed to get a hurt expression on his face, like he knew that his mom really didn't care all that much about him.

"I'll just go by myself after school. I'll take the subway." Luke shrugged again. I pushed myself up off of the ground and then held out a hand for Luke, to help him up as well.

"Are you sure?" I asked, even though I already knew that Luke didn't really need to go to the Emergency Room.

"Yeah, I'll be fine. You don't need worry about me, Stel."





I'm sorry if this is short but I have a lot going on this week and I was going to hold off on updating but I didn't want to make you guys wait. I hope you all like it even though it's a little short :)