Fall.

Chapter 7.

I usually woke up at around 6:30 AM every morning. That gave me enough time to get myself ready, eat something and meet Michael to get on the subway all before classes started at 8:30.

Today, though, I woke up to the sound of my phone feverishly vibrating in my bed next to me. I picked it up and squinted to read the incoming texts.

Stel, are you awake?

Stel?

Hello?

Call me as soon as you wake up please.

They were all from Luke. He and I had exchanged numbers about a week ago when the two of us decided to make the mutual agreement to become friends. We hardly ever texted or called each other. I think getting each other's phone numbers was just something that we felt needed to be done. Something to make whatever friendship we had now official.

In the past two weeks Luke and I had become "friends" but were still a little awkward when speaking or hanging out with each other. It wasn't really a surprise, because I knew how new Luke was to friendships and also that he wasn't just going to start being my best friend straight away. Besides, I wasn't really sure if I wanted him to act as my best friend. Of course I thought Luke was a nice guy but I wanted to get to know him before becoming so attached to him.

I decided to give Luke a call even though it was only just past 6 AM. His texts seemed very urgent, and if something was wrong I knew I would be the only one Luke would even think of coming to for help.

Luke picked up the call on the third ring. "Hello?" He answered. His voice was muffled and scratchy, either from sleeping or the cold he was coming down with or both.

"Hey, what's up? Is everything alright?" I whispered. I was trying to make sure not to wake up Mom or Eric since it was so early, even though Eric could sleep through almost anything.

"I'm sick." Luke said, then coughed as if he was just trying to prove his point.

"I know. You told me that you thought you were coming down with something yesterday." I sighed, realizing now that Luke hadn't woken me up because wanted to talk to me about anything important.

"Well now I feel really sick, and I'm not going anywhere today." Luke whined.

"What does this have to do with me?" I asked.

"Aren't friends supposed to do things like this?" Luke sighed. "We're supposed to.. talk to each other about our lives?"

"Yes, I guess. What do you want me to do, Luke? Did you really have to wake me up just so we could talk about how sick you are?" I said sarcastically, suddenly mad at the fact that Luke woke me up a half hour early for this. "Do you want me to go to all your classes and grab your homework for you or something?"

"Fuck homework." Luke tried to laugh but ended up coughing again. "And fuck you too."

"I'm sorry." I stifled a laugh.

There was a silence between both of us for a long moment until Luke finally spoke again. "Can you come over?"

"Can I what?" I asked Luke to clarify for me.

"Come over, to my house. Just ditch school and take the subway over here. Please. I'm sick and lonely and I need someone to make soup for me and I already feel kind of loopy from all the medicine I took." Luke begged.

It was still so strange to have him talk to me like this, for him to not be so rude all the time. He still had his moments - and there were lots of them - but lately he'd been acting much kinder towards me, and I honestly wasn't sure if I was enjoying it or not.

"I don't know, Luke." I replied hesitantly.

"Stel, are you saying you'd rather go to school than hang out with me all day?" Luke asked.

"What about your mom?" I asked. I didn't really want to run into Luke's mother, I already knew that I wouldn't like her.

"She'll be at work all day. You'll be gone by the time she's back." Luke assured me.

"I was supposed to go out to lunch with Ashton today." Since Ashton was a senior, he got off campus lunch privileges and was usually able to sneak either me or Michael out with him.

"Fuck-" Luke paused to sneeze. "Ashton."

"I mean, I'd like to-"

"That is not what I meant." Luke snapped, cutting me off. He sounded upset, but I was only kidding.

"Oh, come on. I wasn't serious." I snapped back.

"Fine, if you'd rather go get shitty Chinese food with your precious little boyfriend then you can. I just thought you might want to come over." Luke said. I could tell what he was doing, he was trying to guilt his way into getting me to come over.

"Luke-" I tried to interject, but Luke cut me off once again.

"I don't even know why I asked. I mean, we're hardly even friends. I shouldn't have expected you to want to come take care of me all day. Whatever, I'll make myself some damn soup." Luke grumbled to himself.

"Fine, Luke. What's your address?"

~

I arrived at Luke's house about an hour and a half later, after waiting for both Mom and Eric to leave. I had lied to them and said that I wasn't feeling good today and would be staying home. I didn't think it was a very big deal that I had lied, it's not like they would ever find out I left the apartment.

The house was huge. It was odd to think that Luke was practically living here alone when my family was crammed into a tiny apartment. We didn't have much of a choice though, and most of the time I didn't even mind it. I loved living right in the middle of the city instead of a small neighborhood like Luke. I just felt that it was a bit strange that Luke lived in such a big house while he hardly even used it.

I knocked on the door and patiently waited for Luke to answer. Finally a couple minutes later, the door finally creaked open. Luke's head popped around the corner, his hair messily placed atop his head. His nose was slightly more red than usual, probably from blowing it so much.

He actually looked very cute, wearing a pair of baggy sweatpants and T-Shirt with the sleeves cut off. I was dressed similarly, seeing as we weren't really doing anything today, but Luke pulled off the lazy look much better than I did.

"Hey." Luke pulled the door open wider and gestured for me to come inside.

"How are you feeling?" I asked, a little awkwardly. I was still unsure of just what to talk about when I was with Luke. I always seemed to want to ask him a lot of questions, but I knew that he didn't like that. I just wanted to figure him out.

"Awful." Luke laughed.

"Do I still need to make soup for you?" I shifted awkwardly back and forth on my feet. We hadn't even moved and were still standing in the front entrance to Luke's house.

"I was actually kidding about that." Luke gave me a small smile.

"Oh." I looked down at the floor.

"We could work on some math while you're here, if you want." Luke sniffed. "I mean... you have that test on Friday, right?"

"Yeah, I guess." I said, shrugging.

"This is kind of awkward." Luke sighed and finally lead me into a different part of the house. We entered a room with multiple couches and chairs and a large TV hanging on wall. Luke slowly sat down on a couch.

"I know."

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have made you come over. I was just bored and I thought that you might want to come over and-" I cut Luke off.

"It's alright, really." I said. I was sure that once Luke and I warmed up to each other a little this wouldn't be so painfully awkward for us.

Luke shrugged and began to look around for something, dismissing the conversation all together. "Maybe they're in the pool room." He mumbled.

"Pool room?" I asked. I knew that Luke had some money but I didn't know that he was rich enough for a pool, much less a pool room.

"It was my moms idea, even though she hardly uses it." Luke sighed. He looked as if he'd given up his search for whatever he was looking for. "I'll be right back."

Luke came back a few minutes later holding a stack of movies. He laid them out on one of the couches so I could see them. We had seemed to decide on having a movie day without even talking about it. I scanned over the titles, and laughed when I saw one that seemed out of place.

"Toy Story?" I asked, holding it up. The other movies varied from horror to action to drama, Toy Story did not seem to fit in there.

"Toy Story 3." Luke corrected me.

"You didn't really strike me as a Toy Story guy." I smirked.

"Yeah, I don't really give off that vibe." Luke shrugged. He took the movie out of my hands and popped it into the DVD player, knowing that it was the one I would have chose anyway.

I sat down on one end of the couch and Luke sat at the other, neither one of us dating to inch any closer. Luke pressed play on the remote and stared straight ahead as we waited for the movie to begin.

Luke left multiple times during the movie, whether it was to get more tissues or water or go to the bathroom, he couldn't seem to sit still. Even when he was sitting down, he was still fidgeting. He went from having his legs tucked under him to laying half across the couch and then to sitting on the floor. He never spoke though, and neither did I.

Right as the movie ended, Luke spoke again. "Thanks for coming over."

"No problem." I nodded. This honestly wasn't that bad, it was nice to just have a relaxing day like this every once and a while.

"I mean... Thanks for giving up your plans with Ashton for me." Luke said quietly. Just the mention of Ashton's name made my cheeks heat up.

"It's no big deal." I tried to hide how red my face was. I pulled my phone out from the pocket of my sweatpants and pretended to be occupied with it.

As I was pretending to play around with my phone, it started ringing. Michael's name flashed across the screen, and I realized that the time was almost 11 o'clock. Ashton and Michael would be at lunch by now.

"Where the hell are you, Stella?" Michael yelled into the phone before I could even say hello. "We're getting Chinese food without you."

"I'm home sick." I said, glancing over to Luke. We had both silently decided that we wouldn't mention this day to anyone else at school, not like either of us had many people to tell.

"Oh, bullshit." Michael scoffed. "You're with Luke, aren't you?"

"Why would you think that?" I asked. Michael wasn't supposed to be good at guessing like that. It was always my thing to make him play little guessing games like that and he pretended that he hated them. Apparently he was better at predicting things than I thought.

"You and Luke are both absent on the same day, do you have any idea how suspicious that looks?" Michael laughed. "Especially with how much time you've been spending with him lately. Stella, I see right through you."

"Are you with Ashton?" I asked, trying to change the subject. I'd rather talk to Ashton than Michael.

"Yes." Michael huffed. "Do you want to talk to him?"

"Well if it's not too much trouble." I said sarcastically. Michael definitely had an attitude today.

I heard static and muffled voices on the other side of the phone and assumed that Michael was passing over the phone to Ashton.

"Hi, Stella! How are you?" Ashton's voice chirped into the phone.

"I'm sick." I lied. I even faked a cough to make it more believable.

"Aw, I hope you feel better. I was looking forward to having lunch with you today." Ashton sighed, sounding disappointed. I suddenly felt bad for ditching him like this, but I felt bad for Luke too. I was torn.

"I'll be back tomorrow. It's really not that bad. I just need to rest, you know?" Luke stood up from the couch and left the room.

"Alright Cutie," Ashton said, using his little nickname for me. My face turned even more red. "I'm going to get going now, our food is almost ready. I'll see you tomorrow, okay?"

"Okay. See you tomorrow." I smiled, biting my lip. I really had to get over how nervous I got when I talked to Ashton, we'd been talking regularly for almost two months now and I still freaked out whenever we spoke.

"Get better, alright? I don't need you getting me sick!" Ashton laughed before hanging up the phone. I slid it back into my pocket and got up, waking in the direction that Luke left from.

"Luke?" I called. I wandered off into where I figured the kitchen was.

"In here." Luke yelled back. I was right, he was in the kitchen. He sat on a stool with his back facing me at a large granite island in the middle of the room.

"Sorry about that, I just talked to Ashton for a few minutes. I actually forgot to tell him that I wasn't coming to school today." I rambled on. I sat down on the stool next to Luke.

"It's fine. I mean, he is your boyfriend, right?" Luke asked. He knew that Ashton actually wasn't my boyfriend but he liked to tease me about it, just like Michael did.

"Not officially." I sighed. It was clear that Ashton and I both liked each other but we were taking things slow for now, we weren't rushing into anything just yet.

"It might as well be." Luke muttered under his breath.

"What?" I asked him to repeat himself.

"Nothing." Luke sighed, shaking his head. I ignored him and stared straight at him as he blew his nose yet again instead.

"What are you looking at?" Luke asked while he gave me a small smile. He stuffed his tissue back into his pocket.

"What?" I turned away from Luke, startled by him suddenly speaking. "Oh, nothing."

"Sure, whatever you say Stel." Luke rolled his eyes at me and hopped down from the stool. He slowly padded across the kitchen floor and opened up a cabinet. He pulled out a bag of popcorn and slid over to the microwave.

"Do you ever even eat actual food?" I asked. I don't think I've ever seen Luke eat anything other than popcorn and chips.

"I had pizza that one time." Luke shrugged. He put the popcorn in microwave and set the time. Leaning against the counter, Luke folded his arms across his chest and smirked at me.

"What are you looking at, Lucas?" I smirked back at him. Luke rolled his eyes again at the fact that I called him Lucas, but didn't say anything.

After a long pause Luke said, "You."

I wasn't sure exactly what he meant and I also wasn't sure how I felt about it, but Luke saying that somehow put butterflies in my stomach. I liked when Luke acted like this, when he wasn't so stubbornly shut up about everything. I enjoyed talking to him about normal things, like popcorn and Toy Story. Lately I had been getting along with Luke much better than before and I was honestly scared of what things between us will turn out.

I opened my mouth to speak but the beeping from the microwave stopped me. Luke pulled the bag out of the microwave, without letting it sit and cool first. He burned his fingers and dropped the bag on the floor. Luke muttered a few curse words before bending over to get it. When he came up, his cheeks were extremely red.

"I didn't mean to sound weird when I said that." Luke bit down on his bottom lip.

"You didn't."

"Good. Popcorn?" Luke asked, holding out the bag to me. I took a small handful and popped it into my mouth. I hadn't realized how hungry I was until I actually look a bite of food. I wasn't surprised, after all it was lunch time.

"Once we finish this bag," Luke paused to eat more popcorn. "I want to show you something."

"Is it more exciting than the pool room?" I asked, still amazing that Luke's house had one.

"The pool isn't even that cool." Luke groaned.

"Then why do you have one?" I laughed.

"I told you, it was my moms idea. I used to play in it all the time when I was younger but then once I fell off the diving board backwards and hit my head and now I'm honestly a little scared to go on it." Luke babbled. It amazed me that in such a short time Luke had seemed to get so comfortable with me. A couple months ago he barely wanted to teach me math and now he was telling me stories about his childhood.

"You hit your head? Were you okay?" I asked, alarmed. I was always terrified about slipping and falling off of things.

"I had a small concussion, I think. I can't really remember, I was about 5 when it happened." Luke shrugged. "I just remember jumping around on the thing and then falling."

"Well it obviously didn't affect your brain." I laughed.

"Yeah, thank God for that." Luke scoffed. "You know if my dad hadn't taken me to the hospital it might have."

"Then I'm glad he took you." I nodded. I reached out for more popcorn at the same time as Luke, causing our fingers to brush. We both pulled away quickly, not even grabbing any more popcorn for ourselves.

Luke cleared his throat.

I pulled my hair back away from my face.

I wished that one of us would say something, but it seemed that neither of us could find the right words to say. So instead of talking with our mouths we talked with our eyes, having a silent conversation with each other about whatever we wanted it to be about. We hardly broke eye contact, Luke's blue eyes stay transfixed on mine while mine stay transfixed on his.

"Come with me." Luke almost whispered. He took hold of my hand and lead me through his house.

We stopped at the back door, where Luke slid on a pair of loafer-type shoes and grabbed a jacket off of a hook. I was still wearing my shoes, I hadn't taken them off right when I got inside. Luke opened the door and I was fast to wrap my arms around my own body to shield myself from the early December cold.

"Here." Luke said, and threw the jacket at me. He took another one off the hook and put it on himself. I hesitantly put the jacket on, but soon embraced the way it seemed to engulf my body. Luke loosely grabbed my hand again and pulled me out the door.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

Just like his house, Luke's backyard was huge. In one corner, there was a big fire pit and in another sat a big hot tub. I couldn't even picture Luke using that thing. Colorful and creatively placed stones carved a pathway to the back of the yard, where a table and chairs were placed amidst some trees. And my favorite part- there was no fence separating the yard from the forest behind it that expanded all down the whole block.

"You'll see." Luke sang, dragging me farther into the forest. Shortly after -but not too shortly, there was still a lot of walking and tripping over branches and arguing with each other about pointless things - we came to a clearing in the trees. Luke let go of my hand and walked out to the middle of it.

"This is it?" I asked. I hadn't been expecting this "exciting" thing to be a large patch of dirt.

"Look up." Luke pointed to a tree. In it was a treehouse big enough to house a small family.

"Whoa." I breathed out. I had never seen anything like that. Even when I was little and a couple of the girls I used to play with had treehouse's, none of them were this cool.

"It's mine." Luke said blankly, in case I hadn't realized it yet.

"You still go in it?" I asked. I was very jealous of Luke, that treehouse was everything I had ever dreamed us as a kid.

"When it's not too cold." Luke shrugged. He shoved his hands deeper in his pockets and shuffled his feet back and forth, and I could tell he was just itching to go inside the treehouse.

"Well, are we going to go up there?" I pointed to the treehouse. Luke took off running, around the back of the tree and up the ladder. I chased after him like we were little kids again.

"Ignore the sign." Luke called out as I reached the top of the ladder. I looked to the side and laugh at the wooden sign hanging over the door that read: "No girls allowed", written in a child's handwriting. "It's mainly for my mom."

"This place is so cool." I laughed in amazement, observing every inch of the tree house. This place had everything from board games to a mattress in the corner to sleep on.

"My dad and I made it together when I was 6." Luke nodded, taking a look around himself. "I used to be quite the tree climber but once I fell out of one and broke my arm my parents decided that a treehouse might be an easy compromise for us."

I walked over to the mattress laying in the corner and flopped down on it, Luke's jacket puffing out around me. "I'm extremely jealous."

"You should be." Luke chuckled. He shuffled his way to the mattress and sat on the edge of it, like he was still too scared to sit next to me.

"You seemed like a pretty normal kid growing up." I noticed, still wondering what made Luke decided to act so miserable all the time even though I now knew that he wasn't.

"I was." Luke shrugged.

"Before you started hating everything."

"Before I started hating everything." Luke repeated.

"You have a problem with falling, don't you?" I asked, realizing that Luke had told me two stories in the past hour about him falling and hurting himself.

"You have no idea." Luke close his eyes and tilted his head back. He ran his hand through his hair, messing it up even more than it already was.

Finally, Luke crawled on top of the mattress and made his way over to me. He slowly laid down next to me, still keeping his distance. I swallowed hard, trying my best not to focus on how attractive Luke looked. I shouldn't be thinking about Luke that way, I had Ashton.

Luke rolled over and pulled a blanket with him. He kicked off his shoes, flinging them across the treehouse. "Here." He said, handing me the blanket.

"Thanks." I squeaked. I took the blanket from him and suddenly realized just how tired I was. I guess that's what I got for staying up late every night to watch TV.

"You look tired." Luke laughed.

"I am. If I fall asleep, wake me up before 4. I need to be back before 5:30." I instructed Luke. I needed to get home before Mom or Eric, as they both thought I was home sick.

"Okay." Luke whispered, inching closer to me. I gulped.

"We never worked on any math." I whispered back.

"Consider this your get out of jail free day." Luke licked his lips. We were almost touching now.

"Funny." I smiled at him, still keeping my voice at a whisper even though there was no reason to.

"Yeah, I can be funny once you get to know me." Luke said, looking accomplished with himself.

"You were sort of funny even before I got to know you." I reasoned with him. He wasn't so much funny as it was humorous to watch him walk around like he hated the world.

"I know, Stel. I know." Luke whispered again. He leaned in even closer, and now our noses were just barely touching.

"Were we always this close to each other?" I laughed nervously, even though I knew that we hadn't been.

"Yes." Luke answered fast.

"Okay."

"It's surprisingly warm up here." Luke wiggled his eyebrows.

"Maybe because we're so close to each other." I suggested. I didn't mind laying like this with him, I actually really liked it. The fact that Luke was actually laying here with me made me feel all warm inside, like I had finally crack him into being a normal person.

Luke stayed silent for a long time. He began to lean in further, and I didn't bother stopping him even though Ashton was still in the back of my mind.

"Shit." Luke whispered, and sat upright so he could sneeze.

~

I woke up a long while later, my head resting on Luke's chest. He had one arm draped around my waist and the other holding me close to him. He had fallen asleep too, I guess. He looked so peaceful when he slept, with his mouth parted open slightly so he could breath with his clogged nose. I sat up slowly and rubbed my eyes with my hands. When my eyes were finally able to focus I realized just how dark it was.

"No no no." I mumbled to myself, and frantically searched around in my pocket for my phone. Once I found it I checked the time and saw that it was well past 5:30.

"Luke!" I yelled and slapped him hard on the chest.

"What?" Luke groaned, he reached out for me and tried to pull me back but I shoved him off.

"You were supposed to wake me up!" I shouted. I quickly scrambled up off the mattress and headed for the door of the treehouse.

"I fell asleep! You know you could have set an alarm!" Luke struggled to get himself up. He picked up his shoes off the floor and hopped around to get them back on his feet.

"Don't even start." I glared at him. I was going to be in so much trouble with Mom when I got back home. She hadn't called me or texted, but that's how I knew she was really mad. She was waiting for me to get back so she could attack.

I quickly made my way out of the treehouse and began running back towards Luke's house, wanting to get as far away from him as possible.

"Stel, slow down!" Luke chased after me.

"I need to get home." I called over my shoulder as I ran.

"I'll take you home, just slow down!" Luke yelled. I stopped running when I reached Luke's back door.

"I don't need you to take me home, Luke. I don't need your help, okay? I shouldn't have even come over here in the first place, I'm going to get into so much trouble. Thanks a lot, Luke." I was breathing heavily from all the running. I was never much of a runner.

"You're blaming me for this?" Luke threw his hands up in the air. I let out a loud groan and turned away from Luke. I wasn't in the mood to argue with him about any of this.

I opened the back door myself and threw Luke's jacket down on the floor. I ran into the room we watched Toy Story in and found my own jacket, right where I left it on one of the couches. I didn't notice that there was someone else in the room until a voice spoke as I was walking towards the doorway.

"Hello."

I turned around to find a woman sitting on the couch opposite of me. She looked like she was in her mid-forties and clearly resembled Luke, blonde hair, blue eyes and all. I knew exactly who she was.

"I was just leaving." I stammered, and began backing slowly out of the room.

"Stel, can you please- Mom?" Luke entered the room his cheeks red from behind outside.

"Who's this, Luke?" His mom asked coldly.

"This is Stel-I mean, Stella. She's the girl I'm tutoring in math." Luke spoke slowly, not bothering to even call me his friend from school.

"Why is she here?" She asked. I continued to back up until I was safely behind Luke.

"She came over for a while. I stayed home sick today." Luke shifted his weight from foot to foot.

"What do you mean, you stayed home sick? Do you even know how much work you're going to have to make up tomorrow?" His mom stood up, almost spilling the glass of wine in her hand.

"Mom, it was-" Luke stopped and began coughing again. "It was just one day. I felt really bad."

"You think that just because I work sometimes 14 hours a day you can just fake sick and stay home whenever you want!?" She yelled.

"He wasn't faking." I spoke up. Even though I was upset with Luke right now I didn't like standing here and watching him get yelled at.

"I wasn't asking you." She spat at me.

"Don't talk to her like that!" Luke yelled. The angrier he got, the redder his face became.

"Don't tell me what to do!" His mom yelled back.

I took this opportunity to walk myself out of Luke's house, not saying goodbye or anything. I would talk to Luke later, I was sure of that.

"Stel!" Luke grabbed my wrist before I could get out of the front door.

"Luke Hemmings! Get back here right now!" I could hear him mom yelling from further inside the house. She was really mad now, and I was scared to stick around any longer.

"I need to go, Luke." I pulled away from him.

"At least let me go with you." Luke pleaded. I could tell that he just wanted to get away from his mom, but I could not handle being around him right now.

"No." I shook my head and briskly walked through the front door, finally free of Luke's grasp.

"Stel." Luke whined.

"What?" I snapped.

"Nothing," Luke looked down at the floor. His mom was still screaming at him from inside. He looked back at the house and began shutting the door. "Just get out of here."

"My pleasure."


Luke and Stella have been "friends" for a few weeks now, that's why he's opening up so much to her. :)

Sorry if this is really long, I really enjoyed writing this chapter and I couldn't just cut it off. I hope you all like it!