Changing // Hemmings

9

-Jolene-

"Luke, stop!" I yelled while running down the street, unusual Australian rain falling around us.

"I'm not stopping till you give me back my phone!" he yelled back. Me, being an experienced runner ran further, getting farther away from him, and turned a corner. I saw a clothing store near us and looked behind me to see he wasn't around to see me, and ran into the shop. I walked through and sped up, trying to look for a hiding place before I spotted a rack if clothes near the wall. There was enough space behind it, and there was boxes pushed away from the wall so I could just squeeze past it. After looking behind me to see Luke running past the window, I hid behind the clothing before I heard the bell above the door ring; meaning someone just came in.

The phone lit up and I looked down at it to see a picture we had taken two days ago of us sitting on a bench with our backs together, sticking our fingers up doing a rock n' roll sign, and sticking out our tongues. I remember that day, we'd seen Carly and Tommy at school kissing at their table, I walked up and threw the necklace he'd given me at him, and Calum, Luke and I all decided to ditch the rest of the day. I was actually happy that day for the first time in about a month.

A month. That's how long its been since all of this has happened, and it only felt like two days. Things with me and Carly were getting worse and worse, but I had Luke and the rest of the gang to help keep it from it all getting to me. I was still semi-popular now, being cheated on by the most popular boy in high school sort of brought your rankings down I guess. She called me an abundance of names, and I'm not going to lie, a lot of it hurt. But what made her go mad was the fact that I didn't react to any of it. Tommy just ignores me, but when I look at him sometimes, it still hurts. It hurts a whole damn lot. Sometimes, I catch him looking back at me, and at times, it looks like a pained expression comes across his face, but then he tries to replace it with a smirk. But it always makes me wonder, does he even feel bad? Does he regret it? Did he even think about what he was doing?

I heard squeaking of shoes and looked in between two shirts to see completely black vans, meaning that Luke was here in the store now. He's the only person I know with totally blacked out vans. "Jolene?" he called out. He turned and started to walk away, and I saw his hair was completely flat against his head due to the rain before I giggled quietly. It must not have been as quiet as I had meant it to be, because he turned around and I could see a smile forming on his face. "Okay, you're terrible at hiding. Get out of the clothing racks."

"Clothing rakcs? Why, Mr.Hemmings, I haven't a clue what you're talking about." I said, imitating a formal accent.

"You know, now that you've been here for a year, you;ve started to get a weird mixed accent." he told me whilst pulling the clothing away from each other, leaving me out in the open. "And I found you. Now give me my phone before I  carry you out of here like a child." he held his hand out expecting me to hand it to him.

I pouted and crossed my arms over my chest. "No." I closed my eyes, biting back a smile that I was trying not to show. I felt something pick me up and I opened my eyes, only to then be literally thrown over Luke's shoulder and him carry me out of the store. "Luke! Put me down!" I yelled at him, feeling him vibrate from laughing.

"I told you to give me my phone, so no. If I put you down will you give it to me?" he asked stopping.

"Maybe. Maybe not." I said back in a sing song voice. He chuckled quietly then put me onto the ground.

"Phone, Jolene." he held his hand out and wiggled his fingers. I put his phone is his hand and he put it in his wet pocket. "I hate it when it rains here." he said.

"What? How can you hate the rain? I love it!" I said, stepping away from him and sticking my arms out. "It's beautiful! Especially when it's sunny too like it is now!" I start to jump around and twirl. I started to laugh and twirl more, but I stopped once I began to get dizzy. "What?" I asked Luke when I stopped and looked up at him, he had a goof grin on his face while his head was tilted to the side, watching me.

"Nothing." he replied.

-Luke-

"Alright, well if it's nothing then come over here!" she said, running up to me instead and grabbing me hands, pulling me with her. She dropped my hands once we reached the middle of the path way, then tilted her head up and smiled.

Jolene had seemed like she changed over the past few weeks. But, it was definitely a change for the better. She was different, and it as a good different. We've gotten much closer, and in all honesty, I can't bring myself not to smile around her. It was impossible.

"What?" I heard her say, now realizing that I had been watching her the past few minutes. "Luke, what are you looking at?" she asked while laughing, showing her straight, white teeth.

"Oh, nothing." I smiled back. She rolled her eyes and looked back up to the sky, closing her eyes.A sigh escaped her pink lips, then smiled again. "Why do you love the rain so much?" I asked her.

"I don't know, I just always have. It reminds me of Washington I guess." she answered.

"You know, you never told me why you moved here." I said, grabbing her hand and starting to walk back towards our apartments. "Why'd you leave?"

Jolene didn't answer. She stared ahead, then own at the ground, then the sky before redoing the cycle. She pulled her hand out of mine and crossed her arms starting to walk at a faster pace, walking in front of me a small bit. After a few minutes of silence, I swore I heard a sniffle. "Hey, are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine Luke." she said, pulling her small hand up to wipe the tears.

"Jolene... I know you're crying." I said, grabbing her hand again and stopping her. She turned towards me and the fact she was crying was obvious because of her puffy eyes. Instead of talking again, I pulld her into me and wrapped my arms around her, and I could feel her breathing heavily. She rested her head on me, and we stood there for minutes till the rain lightened up. It started to become cold and the sun began to fall in the sky.

"Hey, lets get you home. We have school tomorrow. And we have that big proect that we're getting and you shouldn't be tired when you start it." She nodded her head slowly, still resting it upon my chest. After still standing there for a few minutes, she still was standing there not making any type of movement, so I decided to do something risky to try to make her move. I dropped my hands to her waist and pinched them, tickling her. She jumped back immediately while laughing, then scolded me.

"Not funny Lucas." she said laughing and bringing her hand back up to her eyes. "Yeah, we should get home." she said, intertwining out hands once again. I knew hand holding wasn't big for her, it was a friendly thing between us. After all, she had told me multiple times we were best friends, when in reality all I wanted was just a little more. I wanted to be able to hold her hand at any time and people not question if we were dating or not, and if they did, both of us answer with a "Yes." I wanted to be able to go up to her, and hug her from behind and her lean into me. To be able to go and talk to Ashton and Calum and Michael and talk about her, say how happy I was with her. But that wouldn't happen, because as she's mentioned many times before, we're friends. Nothing more.  "Hey, are you alright?" she asked tugging my arm.

"Uhm.. Yeah, I'm good." I gave her a faint smile.

"Look, I'm sorry for that back there. I'm okay now. But somethings up... Luke, you can tell me..." she said still walking but looking up at me instead of ahead of her.

"I'm fine. I'm just thinking." I answered her quietly.

"About? she asked.

"It's nothing. It isn't  important." I smiled at her smally again.

*

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Short chapter, I know. But it's better than no chapter I guess.. It was sort of just a filler

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