romeo + juliet ↠ l.h

10

"I can't do this."

"Relax, Em, you're being dramatic." Alice tried to reassure me, but her efforts proved useless.

"What if someone see's us and then tells my parents? I'd be grounded for 6 months!" I exclaimed as we stood in the cold outside of Westside, a cute coffeehouse a couple blocks from our school.

It was Monday afternoon, aka time for the 'study group' I had so stupidly planned. Finals were in two weeks, and then I would spend my last Christmas break of high school in Bermuda. To say I was excited was an understatement. Since my plans after school were shot to hell, I decided to focus on what was in the near future. And what I had ahead of me was an island with lots of boys and lots of beach.

Sure, I'd be there with my parents, who I was still pissed at, but I could avoid them. They knew how mad I was, and although I returned home, I had not spoken more than a few words to my mom.

"Just come on, look they're already in there." Alice grabbed my hand and dragged me inside the small coffeehouse. I sighed and allowed myself to be dragged to the small table in the corner, where two boys in school uniform already sat.

You see, Mateo was new to our school, only having moved here the beginning of this year. Which means he must not have known about the feud, or else he would have never invited Luke. Everybody just kind of knew that Luke and I were to never be around each other, but nobody discussed it. I guess nobody had told Mateo.

"Hey guys!" Alice enthusiastically stated as she reached the table. Luke seemed to have already gotten his homework out. I guess he took school seriously.

We sat down and pulled out our homework, Mateo immediately starting to chat Alice up. Luke and I awkwardly sat in silence, both of us pretending to read through our notes.

After an agonizing 60 seconds, he finally spoke.

"Did you ever listen to that band's other stuff?"

"Yeah, I did." I softly spoke. Should I have played it cool and lied? Told him I never got around to it? Well, I definitely spent three hours of my Sunday night listening to Bad Suns' albums on repeat.

"Did you like it?" He anxiously asked, leaning forward and placing his fist under his chin. I noticed a set of crutches were leaned against the wall behind him.

"Yeah, I loved it. There was one that I really liked it was, um," I paused, struggling to think of the name, "Swimming In The Moonlight! That one is really pretty."

"Yeah, that one's good." He quietly spoke, his facial expression changing from interested to guarded. He must have remembered the stakes of us being here together. I, on the other hand, was starting not to care.

"Did you get this one done?" Alice nudged me, gesturing towards her paper. I was snapped out of whatever thoughts I was having about being here with Luke.

"Um..." I paused to shuffle through my binder, "Yeah. Here you can just copy mine."

I wondered if either of the boys noticed that for someone who had planned a study group, I had gotten absolutely nothing done. I was distracted, my mind running a thousand miles a minute.

As of that moment, I had no clue how to feel about Luke. What were we even doing? It's not like we could be friends, and he had never shown any interest in getting to know me before. What was with us running into each other practically everywhere? What was with him babying me into sobriety? Why did he even care? I had to let myself think rationally.