Rejects | | a.u

2.2

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

(November 24th, 2014)

132 days before

   Three days later and here we are standing in the middle of Luke’s messy bedroom in his apartment. Clothes flying everywhere and two empty suitcases open on the floor. 

  I sit on the edge of the bed as Luke rushes around his room looking for something. He was supposed to be packed last night but he gave up on that idea and now he’s stuck packing in a rush. 

  “Have you seen my jeans?”

  “Luke, I’m staring at a pile of five black pairs that are all ripped the same way.”

  “Where?” I point to the pile of jeans beside his desk. He sighs in relief. 

  “So, what’s the whole deal with your parents anyways?” I ask curiously. 

  “I told them I had a girlfriend who I’m spending Christmas with this year and since they offered to pay for the flight I asked them if we could just get it over with.”

  “Was it really that easy?”

  “Yeah, it took a little bit of convincing. But as soon as I emailed my mum a picture of you she was convinced.” He wiggles his eyebrows. 

  “What picture did you send her, you creep?” 

  “You’ll never know.” He drags on the ‘o’ in ‘know’ causing me to chuck a pillow at his head. 

  “Hey!” he yells, throwing it back.

   We’ve worked out the small details involving the fight we had the night of the dance. Yes, his words hurt but as far as I understood they didn’t mean anything. Luke still apologizes what seems to be every five minutes. I can’t help but laugh because it’s just weird hearing him say sorry so many times but I know he means it. 

  The thought of Luke leaving, even if it only is for three weeks, to fly to the other side of world kind of worries me. I mean, he’s going to be hanging out on the bottom half of the planet, practically underneath the world. It’s insane to think about but it won’t leave my mind. 

  He throws a couple shirts into his suitcase, one of them being a flannel. 

  “I’m keeping this, just saying.” He shakes his head laughing. 

  “Go for it.” He grins at me, watching me pull the flannel over my shoulders. The smell of his cologne sinks into my skin.

  A little voice in the back of my head keeps talking about Luke possibly cheating on me. My heart knows he didn’t cheat but my brain is thinking otherwise and it needs to stop. 

  It scares me that Luke could possibly meet someone better in Australia the three weeks he’s gone. Hell, anyone is better than me. I don’t even know why Luke bothered with me in the first place. I was just the quiet girl wearing the over sized cardigan with a short tempter. He didn’t even have to talk to me. 

  I play with the whole in the knee of my dark jeans. I pull out the small frayed threads and roll them around between my fingers and make a ball. Luke sits beside me, folding some t-shirts in his lap. 

  “What are you thinking about?” he asks, leaning his head on my shoulder. 

  “Nothing really.” I say. 

  “Well, that’s your thinking face so tell me.”

   “How do you know my thinking face?”