Secrets » Luke Hemmings

Chapter 1

S U M M E R B R E A K

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ELENA'S POV

"Get up, lazy-butt!" Was the first thing I heard this morning. The phrase—commonly said by my best friend Iris—always meant that no matter how hard I tried, I'd be getting up in the next five minutes or else I'd suffer the consequences. Whenever I didn't get up after Iris said this, she would dump a glass of ice cold water on my head. Even if I was talking and awake, she would still dump it on my head if I wasn't up by the time my five minutes was up. Yeah, that's my best friend.

Letting out a groan, I covered my face with my arms and rolled over in my comfortable bed. "Iris, I got-" I stop midsentence to take a peek at my clock, "six hours of sleep."

"So what?" She asked, a hint of sass in her voice. My eyes had been shut after I looked at my alarm clock, but when she sassed me I opened them up. Greeting me was the bright sunlight coming in from my opened window.

I sat up, a yawn escaping my mouth. "It's summer vacation. I'm supposed to at least get ten hours every night. You know this." My head fell back into the pillows and I jerked my comforter over my head.

A tsk sound was Iris' only response. I knew this meant I had two and a half minutes to get up or else I got the cup of freezing cold water. Reluctantly, I tossed the comforter off my body and swung each of my legs over the side of my bed. Iris was standing, checking herself out in my mirror. "So, Elena, you know I love you, right? Oh, and you're my best friend in the whole world?"

Whenever Iris said these kinds of things, I knew I was in for an unpleasant announcement. She was the kind of person that was very predictable. Maybe not to other people, but since I had known her most of my life, it was pretty easy at this point. "What is it, Iris?" I asked, my voice having a hint of annoyance in it even though I didn't mean to sound like that.

"Well, you like that Luke guy, right?" She began, following me as I walked into my bathroom. She leaned against the doorway, watching my every move.

"Yeah, get on with it." I grumbled, checking out the damage my sleep had done to my long brown hair.

"Okay so—you're gonna love this—I talked to Miles last night. Originally it was just going to be just him and Luke renting a cabin for the summer, but then he said that you and I could come along!" She announced, causing my heart to sink to the floor.

Luke was my long time crush. The four of us go to school together, and now since we're over halfway through college, my crush on him has lasted longer than two years. It's sucked, watching him have girlfriends and stuff. I've never really been super close to him, whenever we talked I made things weird. A part of me is always confident when walking into conversations with him. I always think, this is it, just ask him to hang out sometime, but then I end up stuttering and telling him to forget it. The only time I get to talk to him is parties, so this whole summer will be the best time to make him like me back. As far as I know, right now, he's single.

Miles, on the other hand, is Iris's lover boy. She's been obsessed with him since she laid eyes on him. Half the time, he's all she talks about. But of course, because he's such a likable guy, he has a ton of other girls drooling over him as well as her, so Iris doesn't really have a chance in perspective. Although the offer to spend the summer with him definitely does change her chances.