fifteen ; l.h.

her

numb.

that was what noelle felt when she stared in the direction luke had left in.

nothing processed in her brain. she couldn't feel her body, but she knew that she was crying. she couldn't hear her words, but she knew that she was pleading for him to stay.

to her right, she saw luke's phone still in its place on the ground. noelle shakily picked it up and felt more tears fall from her eyes when she saw his lock screen.

it was a picture she'd forced him to take of the two of them while they were sitting on the swings in her old park. their heads were touching cutely while noelle made a stupid face and luke simply looked at her in a mixture of annoyance and admiration.

more numbness.

she quickly slid her finger across the 'slide to unlock' area, thanking god that he didn't have a pass code. as soon as it unlocked, his phone app appeared. the last person to call him, approximately twenty minutes ago, was a blocked number.

if it were possible, noelle would've called the number and screamed her heart out to whoever the hell it was that they ruined luke and by doing so, they were ruining her.

she desperately wanted to yell and cry and explode, but no one would be there to listen. luke wasn't there anymore to laugh at how worked up she was, but later let her cry into his favorite shirt because 'oh, stop already. i hate it when you do this'.

he wasn't there anymore to listen to her ramble on about how great life really was, taking each reason into consideration and slowly (hopefully) rethinking his decision about suicide. they weren't even halfway through the fifteen reasons and already, he was gone.

luke didn't want some idiot reasons.

luke didn't want her.

luke didn't even want to live.

"no," she muttered, shooting to her feet faster than possible and sprinting up the metal steps two at a time as her mind finally put two and two together.

luke didn't want to live.and after the events of the night, he had nothing to hold him back from doing the one thing he wanted. noelle assumed that not even she could stop him; not this time. but she had to try.

reaching the top of the building, she spun in circles only to find that luke wasn't there anymore. she rushed to the edge and looked down at the streets below. no sign of a body or people stopping to look at one.

finally, she felt something: relief. so he hadn't done it. he was okay. her grip on his phone lessened slightly as she returned back to the fire escape and into her room, intent on giving luke the space he needed.

lying down in her bed, she was immediately hit by luke's scent. she wasn't sure what it was, but it was so entirely him that it made her heart clench in her chest and she shut her eyes to force back a new wave of tears.

god, it hurt.

~

after two days of being questioned vigorously by her parents and basically going through the motions of life as it didn't physically pain her to do so, luke's phone rang.

when noelle tentatively picked it up and saw it was the blocked number calling again, she immediately pressed the 'answer button' but not without feeling a wave of anxiety. she was invading luke's space and treading in a completely closed-off area of his life; she knew that.

"hello?" her quiet voice sounded shaky and unsure which made her cringe.

"you're not luke," a guy's voice said, "are you his girlfriend?"