Within the Castle - Luke Fic

Two

And then I managed to keep my distance from Luke for a while longer.

I put myself into a solid spinning routine that consisted of me avoiding him at all costs. In the afternoons, I ensured that I was going to be home before 5:00 so I would not end up in the same elevator up as him. At nights I didn’t leave. And in the morning, I spent as long as necessary, sometimes up to thirty minutes, holding my ear to my door and tenaciously waiting until I heard Luke go down to leave the building. Moreover, at every cost, I evaded the supermarket that he had spotted me in – tending to buy anything I required now at a shop further away.

It was impossible for me to pinpoint exactly why I was doing this to myself. Luke was a ray of sunlight; I struggled going an hour or two without my thoughts floating to him. Every limb in my body ached for a conversation with him. Just a short one in the lift or something. Only so I could obtain some comic relief, or so I could have someone speak to me like they cared.

But, like I am often reminded, bad people don’t get nice things. I am a bad person. Hence, I shouldn’t get the blessing of knowing Luke. On top of that, the concept that maybe he had heard something from my apartment one night scared me to ruins. The blue-eyed seraph had proved not to be the kind that pushes on a topic which makes the other person feel disconcerted, however, he did seem the type to easily become concerned for someone. Something told me that if he grasped the idea of what occurred in my flat, he would hardly hesitant to involve himself.

Knowledgably, I had depicted this future and every dawn, day and dusk, my lips had been sealed. The racket that my partner and I previously were had softened. Thanks to my ability to remain unspoken, and simply following all commands, the devil had not sparked a fight in me for days. I was blameless. There was not a single thing that I could be shunned for not doing or doing incorrect.

As a weekend rolled around, I was ploughed into a usual worry; Saturday nights are habitually the loudest, and most disastrous, time of the week. Already, I was buoyantly looking forward to Sunday. That’s when the newspapers arrive, and I would be sucked into the free world of reading.

Just like I had anticipated, the stages leading up to Sunday were long, never ending. Early Saturday, around noon, my behemoth commenced drinking. One o’clock and three empty bottlenecks were sitting in the corner of the lounge, resting until I would take them and place them into the bin. By two o’clock, another one joined the crew. Three o’clock, the pile expanded to six. Four o’clock, eleven. Five o’clock, I stopped counting. Six o’clock – “Hurry up, bitch, we’re leaving soon.”

Over the course of the day, his conduction had plat formed lower and lower. The first hours, he could actually make it to the bathroom himself, but, as the night rolled in, he started stumbling everywhere. Crashing into the wall, the couch, chairs. Every hit, I flinched and silently prayed that the sound was not strident enough to go through the building’s walls so Luke cold hear. 

I replaced my casual daywear for a pink and white checked dress, and quickly dashed to take my bag and slip my flat shoes on. An angry jeer was the first thing I perceived when leaving the bedroom and walking into his black eyes.

“Wear something sexier,” he sneered, his mouth pouting upward disapprovingly, “last week, it was embarrassing to walk around with an ugly girl.”