Wherever You Are // A Luke Hemmings fanfiction

Part 7

(Luke POV)

“How’s Mikki, Luke?”

Calum, Michael and I had been spending our day off relaxing: playing a bit of X Box and swimming in the hotel pool, where we’d been for the past hour or so. Ashton had joined us when we were playing X Box in the room I shared with Michael, but when we’d decided to go swimming, he said he wanted to spend the rest of the day with Mikki, just to see how she was. Instead of tagging along, us three thought we would give them a bit of space: back home, Mikki and Ashton spent a lot more time together, without the three of us, and we thought we’d give them that.

Even if it bloody killed me.

“Why are you asking me?” I said, cupping my hands and splashing myself in the face with water so I could avoid their gaze. I’d known the second Ashton had decided to go to Mikki’s room that I was going to receive an interrogation from the other two about the way I’d looked after her yesterday. They hadn’t had a chance until now, because the pool had been crowded, but now everyone had gone off to have lunch, it was just the three of us. “Ash is the one you should be asking, he’s the one that’s with her now.”

“Don’t be bitter, Lukey,” Michael said, swimming nearer to me and shrugging his shoulders. “You know Mik and Ashton’s friendship goes back her whole life. It’s hard to compete with something like that.” “Plus, you were the one who was there for her yesterday,” Calum said, joining us at the edge of the pool. “And the less you and Mikki argue, the more obvious it is that you care about her. God, Luke, even the way you look at her is obvious.”

“Like he constantly wants to protect her,” Michael said, nodding his head in agreement. I furrowed my brow at what they were saying; surely they were over-thinking things, yes, I always wanted to make sure Mikki was happy and okay, but there’s no way that I could be obvious just by the way I looked at her, right? “More recently, I’ve actually been thinking that Mikki could feel the same way.”

“Don’t be so stupid,” I groaned, kicked off the wall and swimming across the pool to the other side. The boys had always asked me what I would do if Mikki felt the same way, and honestly, I’d grown so used to the thought of her hating me that I couldn’t even speculate. I rolled my eyes as they followed me, and sighed heavily, leaning against the pool wall. “Look, Mikki couldn’t ever feel the same way. She doesn’t and couldn’t ever.”

“I don’t know. Like, I reckon, the way you and Mikki have been acting around each other recently, there could definitely be feelings there. She lights up when she’s with you nowadays, Luke, like, she actually does the biggest smile.” “That’s just her being nice,” I protested, scrunching up my nose and swimming another length of the pool before I replied. “You know how Mikki is, she’s just a friendly girl. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“But Luke, if she did feel the same way, what would you do?”

“Well, firstly, I couldn’t do anything because I think we’re all forgetting the important factor that is her boyfriend,” I snapped, feeling my hands clench into fists at the very mention of Joe. “Plus, even if she didn’t have a boyfriend, loads of boys we know fancy Mikki. She could probably get another one in less than a day.”

“I don’t know how I feel about Joe,” Michael said, flipping himself so he was floating on his back and staring up at the ceiling. “Like, he seemed like a decent enough bloke when we were at school; he’s on the school team so he’s obviously a bit of a geek, like our Mikki. But I just get a bad feeling around the guy, I can’t really explain it, but no matter how amazing Mikki says he is, I can’t warm to him.”