alleviate || l.h

0.4

"PLEASE DON'T JUMP ME," I scream, squeezing my eyes shut and putting my arms over my face. There goes all those self defense YouTube videos I watched in 10th grade.

"Haley, you don't have anything with you. Why would I jump you?" The voice who I am recognizing more by the second asks with amusement in his voice.

"How do you even know my name is the real question here, mystery sir?" I ask, even though I already know who it is, just because I'm funny.

Suddenly, I feel Luke's hands cover my own and pull them away from my face, forcing me to look at his face.

I take in Luke's tall appearance. He's wearing the usual black skinny jeans with a tee shirt and his hair is styled to it's maximum quiffness, with a couple pieces hanging astray over his forehead. I wonder what it looks like flat. Flat-haired Luke. ( ;-P)

"So, what brings you around here?" Luke questions me, walking his long legs around me and sitting on the short bench.

"Well, I mean, I do live here," I say, motioning around me and sitting down on the bench next to him, leaving a comfortable foot of space between us.

"Wait...you...Oh my god. I had no idea. I'm so sorry, Haley. I didn't know..." Luke began to ramble, avoiding eye contact with me.

"Is there something wrong with living here?" I ask, furrowing my eyebrows and taking clear offense to his words.

"What? No! I mean, the street isn't the most ideal place to live, but whatever make you happy-"

"Luke!" I interrupt, as realization hits me. "I don't live on the actual street. I live in that house on this street," I continue, pointing at my own house a couple houses down from our current position.

"Oh thank goodness!" Luke exclaims, putting his hand over his chest in relief. "I mean, I'm not saying I'd judge you if you were homeless. Did you know 30% of America is homeless? Yeah, that's like half."

I pause for a moment, giving him a weird look, "Well, actually, it's...nevermind." There's no point in explaining his inaccurate math skills. He should be more concerned for his lack of knowledge in percentages than the homeless people of the United States.

Luke leaned back against the bench, putting his tree-branch arm on the back of it which somehow reached all the way to be resting behind my head. I looked at his arm, then at his face, then back at his arm.

"I'm sorry, is my arm offending you or something?" Luke broke the silence and looked at me concerned.

"No, it's just like, right there." I explain, pointing to how close it is to me.

Luke smiles at me and closes his eyes as we sit in silence (a/n bc somebody stole their car radio lmao bye (a/n a/n it's a song reference plz get it) ). Haley, please don't be weird, please don't let something dumb come out of your mouth, just sit and be quiet, just let it be silent- "So, which one of your grandparents would you say is your favorite, like if you had to pick one?" I ask before I can stop myself. Okay, honestly.

Luke immediately burst out laughing with his head thrown back and his eyes closed. It began to come out as a high-pitched laugh and he covered his hands with his mouth to try to contain it.

I, on the other hand, sat there astounded by my own idioticness. I just need to stop rambling with random stories when I'm nervous and asking random questions in silence. My mom should really get a refund on all those psychology appointments from when I was younger because 10/10 would not recommend. It clearly didn't help much and besides, the room always smelled like prepubescent boys who didn't know how to open up the deodorant their mom bought them in hopes of stopping their little sons from the public humiliation of being known as the kid nobody goes within 10 feet of without a gas mask. This never really added up to me, considering my psychologist (the one who always cried about her lame boyfriends, if it's slipped your mind) was a girl and kept a bottle of hand sanitizer big enough for a family of 8 in her desk, which also didn't add up considering she lived alone while her parents lived on the other side of the country so they could "expand their horizons across this vast country our founding fathers created for us" or so they say . We talked about her life a lot, okay. I'm rambling in my mind now, cool.