Wherever You Are | lrh

three

Luke and I held onto each other for what felt like an eternity. Both of our hearts beating rapidly from the excitement and joy. He squeezed me tighter in his arms so I did the same. He started swaying back and forth, kind of like he was comforting me. It was an amazing feeling to be back with my best friend after five years. I felt like I could fly; like I could rule the world; like I could do anything. This was the happiest I had been since the day I moved away from Sydney and away from Luke. I felt him lightly laughing against me, which made me smile. He leaned away, still holding onto me, so he could look me in the eyes. I looked right back at him, clinging to his waist and smiled up at him. He replied with an even bigger smile before giving a happy sigh. "Wow, how I've missed you." Damn how his voice had changed. I kept smiling at him. "I've missed you too."

-

"Are you serious?"

We both burst out into uncontrollable laughter. For the past few hours, Luke and I had been up in my room catching up. We were currently playing 20 questions, and his third question to me was about my most embarrassing moment. It was the time in 7th grade that one of the drinking fountains suddenly sprayed everywhere while I was using it; spraying all over the front of my pants. I looked like I had seriously wet my pants, and everyone was making fun of me. I didn't tell him how I'd spent the rest of the afternoon crying in the bathroom, though. I could definitely leave that out the story.

"Okay, okay..." I said as got a hold of my laughter. "My turn." I paused and tried to think of a good question to ask him (besides the usual questions asked during this game: Are you a virgin, how many girls have you kissed, etc. Even though, knowing Luke, this conversation would get there eventually), I finally came up with an okay question to ask him. "How many instruments can you play now?" 

He finally stopped laughing so he could answer my question. "Still only guitar. And I still sing, me and my mate Calum are the lead vocalists in the group." He hadn't done much talking about the band so far. I didn't really want to focus on that. "Alright, time for me to ask." He moved on. "Now, don't take this the wrong way or anything-" I had a feeling of what question was coming. He awkwardly smiled. "How many boyfriends have you had?" Not exactly the question I was expecting, but still one I knew would eventually be asked. 

I gave him an awkward smile and sighed, knowing that he would probably make fun of me for this. "I've never had a boyfriend." He suddenly turned serious and then erupted into laughter. I knew he would make fun of me for it. Just like when we were kids, he made fun of me for everything.

He looked back at me and tried to control it. "No, Kaitlyn." he said between laughs. "I'm serious, how many?" He looked me in the eyes again. I gave him a look that said I wasn't kidding, and he stopped laughing completely. "Oh." he looked confused. "You weren't joking?" I shook my head no. "Wait, really? How?" 

I shrugged my shoulders at him. "Boys don't really like me, Luke. No one really does." I laughed lightly but he stayed serious. I wasn't lying when I said no one liked me. I literally had zero friends back in Sydney. I never felt the need to make any new friends when I moved there because I still had Luke at the time.  But once I got into 8th grade, we slowly started losing contact then one day we just stopped talking all together. Since that day, I've never made any new friends. But, I was okay by myself.

"Really?" again he looked confused. "Not even after we stopped talking?" I nodded and he sat back. "Wow. That's weird. I would have expected you to have had at least one boyfriend. I mean, you grew up to be a really beautiful girl..." he stopped himself and thought about what he just said and hurriedly tried to explain. "I mean, it's not like you weren't a beautiful 11 year old I just mean that you're even prettier now at 16 than you were at 11." He suddenly stopped talking and put his head down, looking at the bed. "Luke thinks I'm beautiful? Really?"  I didn't know what to say to him. I could feel my cheeks heating up and turning red. I never thought I would ever hear a sentence like that come out of his mouth.