Coast to Coast

Truth Spilling

I woke up with the worst throbbing headache, fortunately, I hadn't gotten drunk enough to forget the events of the previous night. I felt extremely warm and cuddly, but I wasn't ready to get up, so I snuggled back into the warmth of the mattress. As I started drifting back to sleep I heard squeals and "Shh! Rachel you airhead, if you're too loud, you'll wake them before we can get pictures!" I heard what my best friends must've thought was tiptoeing and then the clicking of a picture being taken. I slowly peeked my eyes open, and saw Rachel and Brandon standing above me. "Well, well, well! What happened after Rachel and I went to bed, you little seductress?!" Brandon teased, but in my sleepy state, I was a little confused as to what he was talking about.  That was until I heard a deep, scratchy yawn from beside my head, and what I thought was my pillow under my head start to shift. I immediately jumped up like I was on fire. And laying right next to where I was, was Luke wearing a lazy smile, his hair was messy but not in a 'first thing in the morning' type of way it was in a 'I meant for it to look this way' style. He managed to still look so handsome first thing in the morning, I had to force myself to look away so he didn't get cocky. Luke then sat up on the bed, looked me in the eyes and reached next to my head and started toying with my hair. "Hey, princess. Bob Ross called, he wants his hair back." He winked and jumped off the bed. 

We had just finished breakfast, and we were packing our bags into the car. I had on a sundress with sunflowers on it, and my hair was in a ponytail. Rachel had on an overall dress with a black and white striped shirt underneath and her hair was down as well. Everybody had about three duffel bags, the boys were in the middle of packing the car when Rachel grabbed my hand and dragged me upstairs into her room and locked the door. She just stared at me and put her hands on her hips. "Well?" She said, raising her eyebrows. I said "Uh..well, what?" Rachel got closer to me and whispered "Now that the boys are busy we can talk about what happened last night!" I sighed and stared at her, "Rachel, listen, nothing happened last night. I was drunk and we just slept on the same mattress, I promise that's all. " Rachel looked dissatisfied and grunted. She reached past me and unlocked her door. 

Rachel had been screaming "Hell yeah. Roadtrip!" For the last ten minutes, straight, but we were finally getting in the car. Brandon got in the drivers seat, Rachel next to him, me behind her and Luke behind Brandon. Luke got a Spotify roadtrip playlist pulled up and hooked to the bluetooth. I sat the open snack bag by my feet, and we were on our way! We had been driving for an hour when Brandon pulled up to a gas station and Rachel yelled that she and Brandon had to pee, and anyone else that did was welcome to join. Luke nor I moved. After about thirty seconds of sitting in silence, Luke turned and looked at me, I refused to meet his eyes for a few seconds until he was annoying me. I dragged my eyes up to meet his and groaned, "Ugh, what?! Why are you staring at me?!" He opened and closed his mouth a few times, trying to decide what to say. "I..well I guess....I... I've uh- I've missed you, ya know?" I just stared at him like I was bored. "You left our group, Luke, not the other way around." He scrunched up his eyebrows like he was confused "The others still hang out with me you know...almost every Saturday we go to lunch." I just blinked at him. I couldn't believe my friends had been hanging out with him behind my back. I don't care who they're friends with, heck, they can be friends with Luke all they want, but it hurt that they'd been hiding it from me. I guess Luke could tell I was upset because he widened his eyes and said, "You didn't know--shit. I thought you were choosing not to come." I turned to face my window and stayed quiet. "Hey, Nat, I'm sorry, c'mon don't be mad." I felt him put a hand on my shoulder that made butterflies erupt in my stomach and sparks on my skin. I shrugged him off "Don't touch me. I won't fall for that again, Luke. I won't let you hurt me again." I heard him suck in a slow breath. Rachel and Brandon hopped back in the car, laughing and smiling. "Howdy folks! Ready to get back to it?!" Rachel asked, neither of us responded. "Jeesh, tough crowd." Brandon muttered. 

"So, uh, when exactly were you two gonna tell me about your little lunch dates with our favorite Lukey, huh?" Rachel looked back at Luke with her eyes wide, and then saw me looking at her ad snapped forward. "Natalia, Luke didn't do Rachel and I wrong, we didn't want to totally drop him. And we'd known that he hurt you, so we decided to meet up once a week for lunch. Is that really so bad?" Brandon pleaded with me. "I'm not mad at you guys for being friends with him, I didn't expect you to drop him. I was just hurt you guys were hiding it from me." I knew I was being a bit sensitive about this, but Luke was a sore topic for me. Not only did he get with my bully, he led me on, and then left our group altogether. 

We had just gotten to the first hotel, and to our own rooms, it was 11 pm, so I wasn't too tired. Luke opened the door to our room wide, and we were not at all surprised to see, only one bed. I groaned in annoyance, and Luke wordlessly walked past me into the room. After about ten minutes of sitting silently, I looked up to see Luke sitting with his head in his hands. "Hey, are you um-- are you okay?" I asked. He slowly looked up at me, "I don't know what I did to make you hate me. I don't remember the moment you started hating me. I don't know what I did and I don't know what to do to make it better." I just stared at him like he'd grown two heads. "Well, jumping right to it, are we? I liked you Luke, I really, really did. And then there was that day you kissed my hand and held it all the way to walking me back home. And I thought, I really made the mistake of thinking, for just a second, that maybe, just maybe, you felt the same. And then, the next day when I built up the courage to finally tell you, there you were, with the girl who called me fat day after day after day. So, I closed you out. It was the only way to make myself feel better." Luke looked speechless. "I am so sorry."