Coming Up For Air

5.2

"I remember the day you told me you were leaving
I remember the [teardrops] running down your face."
-5 Seconds of Summer, 'Amnesia'

⚑ Luke ⚐

Luke was holding Ashton later that night and feeling happy because he got to hold him for the immediate definition of forever.

It was raining.

(If it had been the day before, they would have rushed outside so they could kiss, but the bucket list was on the back burner because Ashton was staying.)

Luke's phone vibrated on the table next to him, and he shifted on the couch to grab it. Ashton groaned--he'd been halfway asleep--and pouted his bottom lip out.

"Come back..." He mumbled, trying to snuggle back into the curve of Luke's body and finding only empty air.

"Just a second, Ash. Someone texted me." Luke comforted him softly, laughing a little because Ashton had on neither his contacts nor his glasses so he was squinting around the room with unfocused, confused eyes that Luke found unbearably endearing.

The number was unknown, so of course Luke knew.

"It's my mum." He said flatly, hating the syllables because of what they meant. "Again."

Luke's mum has been texting him every night for the past week. They usually started out along the lines of "I miss you" and "I love you", and ended with her naming a time and place for him to go if he wanted to meet up.

This text was no different.

"Luke, I'm sorry. I know that'll never be enough, but it's all I have. I know you hate me, but I just...I'm so sorry. I want to see you, please. Just talk to me. Just...I'll be at the park on 5th and Oliver at 9 tomorrow morning, if you...you know. Want to see me. I miss you so much. I love you. I'm so sorry. Your brothers are speaking to me now. Why won't you?" Luke read aloud to Ashton, who wasn't looking quite as sleep-dazed anymore.

"Well..." Ashton said after a moment of silence. "What are you gonna do?"

Luke shook his head, bitter and betrayed tangled up in his chest. "Nothing. I don't know. I don't want her again. I don't want her back."

"You used to." Ashton ventured, careful precision in his tone. "Before she actually came back."

"Yeah." Luke said, rather emotionlessly. "Yeah, but I hadn't thought it over then. Then, I had this dream that she'd come back and I'd find out some incredibly good reason she had had to rip our family apart. I had this hope. I had this vision of everything going back to the way it had been before. And she..."

Luke trailed off and took a deep breath before he gathered the strength to finish. "And then she came back and I found out she left because she was unfaithful and pregnant, and she ruined that hope and nothing is the same at all. Nothing."

"I know." Ashton said, stepping over the cracks in Luke's emotions. "I know, but don't you miss her? I haven't seen my mum in less than a year and I--,"

"I do. I miss her. My mum. The woman who loved my father and who was there for me and who taught maths and who would never, ever do what...this woman...did." Luke said. "She's not my mum anymore. As far as I'm concerned, I'm never going to see my mum again. And once you get in your head that you're never going to see someone again, them walking back into you life hurts almost as much as them walking out."

Ashton was silent while Luke swallowed.

"And it doesn't erase the past. Coming back doesn't fix leaving."