The Risk of Falling

Chapter Eighteen: Right Here, A World Away

A/N: Hey everyone! I know that this has been long overdue. I'm sorry for the delay. I had a crazy busy week followed by a physically and emotionally taxing one. Some things in life hit you hard when you least expect it and the only thing you can do is step back a little and take a breath. 

Anyway, this wasn't an easy chapter to write, I'll be honest. I had plotted the rest of the story but after that kiss, and all the things said between them, I wasn't sure where i'd find Max and Luke. The beauty about them though is that they have a certain bond that will stay resilient through everything the future has in store for them. 

I hope you enjoy this one. Suddenly, this thing between them isn't going to be solely up to them now. There are some old and new players coming that could either push them together or push them apart.

***

If this were a book, or a movie, or a TV drama, there would be this stage after The Kiss called The Awkward.

While I had never in my entire existence thought that my life would resemble any of the three aforementioned fictional types of entertainment, despite the strange phenomenon of Luke Hedenby literally hurtling his way straight into it, there was definitely The Awkward after The Kiss.

The Kiss, if I managed to forget what came before and after it, felt every bit like the kind of life-altering, toe-curling, heart-racing moment you’d find cliched to death in romantic fiction. 

It was perfect—hungry, desperate—exactly the way I felt about Luke and this maddening attraction I’d tried to name so many things but the truth. 

If this were a picture, I’d crop out everything else that made that perfect moment into what it actually was in reality—the perfect mistake.

Friends kiss, sure. After they do, maybe they’ll laugh about it. Or maybe they’ll find it all kinds of wrong like kissing your sibling. Or maybe they’ll find themselves turned inside out, never able to step back behind the line they should’ve never crossed.

The kiss with Luke, well, there was nothing funny about it. It definitely did not feel like kissing a brother even though I could only imagine how disgusting that would be. And I was definitely turned inside out, up and down, sideways and under, not just unable to step back behind the line but suddenly free-falling as if I’d stepped backed into nothing but the deep unknown. 

The only humor that could be found in this situation was the tragic sort because the only thing worse about not having what you wanted was having had it and wondering if it would ever be yours again. There was a certain sweet agony about wanting to turn the other direction and run but staying put instead and both pretending that you could will things back to the way they used to be.

I wouldn’t have minded some space but Luke had different ideas.

He called me bright and early on Monday to see if he could pick me up so we could grab coffee at Cleo’s together. I said ‘No, thank you’ and after a dragged out, very reluctant pause, he acquiesced. At lunchtime, he showed up at the cafeteria and sat with me and Jillian who happily and obliviously (maybe not so obliviously) chattered on about everything and nothing. Luke and I were both content to sit in polite silence. Later that afternoon, he showed up at my desk as I was getting ready to leave and tried to talk me into letting him drive me home. 

I was a little angry because I did not sign up for this kind of torture. I didn’t want to sit there, with him so close, remembering his lips, or feeling the scorching fire he’d started somewhere inside of me that still continued to burn. If I wanted that kind of pain, I would’ve hacked off my right hand. So I might have snapped at him about taking the bus home because it made me think—something I had to start doing again for myself.