Falling Slowly | Luke Hemmings

thirteen

{ Luke's POV }

I slam the door of my rusty old car shut, and start to chase Scarlet down the brick pathway leading to her house. I caught up to her, yanking gently at her arm to pull her back towards me. The summer rain was starting to pour down harder and harder as I tried to stop her from walking away from us.

"Scarlet, don't do this," I said, my heavy breath shaking as I got the courage to pull her back towards me, which was one step further away from her house. It felt strange as I said her full name, because I am always shortening it to 'Scar'. Her full name was absolutely beautiful, and I loved saying it, but she liked it when I shortened it. Her dirty blonde hair was all tangled getting more and more soaked as we stood outside in the humid, rainy weather. Her make up was starting to get smudged underneath her eyes, a few tear stains on her cheeks, but she has never looked more beautiful. Her make up slowly starting to wear off, letting me see her natural skin, which was perfect to me. My clothes were getting drenched, my hair falling flat until it was covering most of my forehead, but I could care less. All I wanted was to fix this with Scarlet, and not let her walk away from me.

"What Luke? What do you want?" She yelled, her lip trembling. My shaking hands were attached to hers, not letting her go.

"I-I want to fix things," I answer back honestly, hoping to get her to calm down, and try and talk to me.

"You have been ignoring me for almost the past week! Today, you finally agreed to spend time with me, but the whole time you stayed practically silent!" Scar yelled again, trying her hardest to pull away from me. I wasn't purposly ignoring her, how could I ever do that to her?

"Scar, you know I'm leaving soon..." I say, not wanting to this to be true. If I didn't say it, I thought maybe it wouldn't be true, and maybe I could stay here forever with her. But I had to leave, and go back home to live with my dad who needed me the most.

"What does that have to do with anything?" She asked me, seeming to calm down a bit. I could feel her hands shaking in mine. I took my hands and covered them over hers, trying to warm them up. Obviously it wasn't working because it was fucking pouring, but I was doing my best to try and keep her warm. She was wearing her usual, light skinny jeans, and a tank top, with my jacket draped over her. I had a plain black t-shirt on, with a pair of my usual black, ripped skinny jeans. As usual, I gave her my jacket in the car because I know she loves when I give it to her. She probably has around five jackets of mine somewhere in her house. She was still wearing it, having it look like a dress on her. She looked so cute in it that I didn't even want it back to keep myself warm. I wanted her to be warmer than I was, so I didn't bother asking for it back. I did whatever I had to do to whatever it took to make her happy, and if she was happy, I was fucking happy.

"I don't know Scar! That's the thing! I'm terrified to leave you, and that's why I haven't been reaching out to you as much. I've been thinking of all the possible things I could do to stay here with you, but I just can't. My dad needs me, and I can't just abandon him alone in Australia," I have more to stay, but I just stopped talking just in case she had something to say.

"So that's it? You're just going to leave me here? You know I have a lot going on, and Luke I need you here," she finished, as tears started to pour out of her eyes. No, I wasn't going to leave her here, but the thing was, I had too. I couldn't just take her with me. She had school here, and I had school across the world from here. I wished more than anything I could sweep her off her feet, take her to Australia and live happily ever after, but that just couldn't happen as much as I wanted it to. We still had about two weeks left together, and I don't want it to end now. There are about 15 days until I have to leave, and I was planning on giving her the best 15 days of her life. I didn't want to think about leaving, but this whole thing between us exploded in my face, and now we are here. We are here, standing in front of her empty house, in the pouring summer rain arguing.