the bucket list | lrh

11 - michael clifford

The following week was torturously slow in pace, and Valentine began to think it would never come to an end.

The morning after her awkward encounter with Luke, she woke up with a strange urgency inside of her that she couldn't quite explain. She thought maybe it was just that she had made a new friend, and wanted to continue getting to know him. Valentine is many things, but she is not as naive as Scout likes to think. She noticed the way her heart sped up whenever the name was mentioned, and she definitely saw the change in her daily behavior.

Scout noticed it too. He saw the girl begin to wake up earlier and earlier each morning. She'd even come out of her bedroom and greet the man, occasionally joining him for a casual conversation about what the two were planning for the day. He wanted to mention the blue eyed boy, but he didn't want to rain on the girls parade. To him, the baby steps were enough satisfaction.

Whatever Luke was doing, the man almost wanted him to keep doing it. He thought that up until the point where he'd be reminded that young men only pursue little girls like Valentine for sex, and then he was back to wanting to threaten the blonde with a shotgun that he didn't even own.

Mary was getting a little less surprised each day that she received a phone call from her friend, asking to hang out as if they had time travelled back to when Adeline was still alive. Soon enough, Mary was back to simply assuming that Valentine would be spending the night until the she was told otherwise.

And so they hung out, each and every single night for nearly a week. They rekindled their paused friendship from before, and things just seemed to resume. Life finally felt normal again, and even Valentine could sense the difference in her energy.

She felt rejuvenated, almost. Like everything was falling into place like a splash of cold water to the fact. It was an amazing feeling, and she wanted to bask in it forever.

Calum was still trying to make sense of what he had witnessed the night he'd gone over to help Valentine write a song. It didn't make much sense to him, because the rumors that spread around Elgin aren't usually true. It's a small enough town that word travels fast, and things were easily misconstrued.

So when he had seen the two hitting it off right in front of his own eyes, he was confused. Conflicted even, because he had no idea what was going on. He thought for sure it must've been the apocalypse, because he simply didn't understand how Luke Hemmings and Valentine Leonard would ever be caught up or running in the same circles. The only consistency between the two was Adeline, and it didn't make sense to the tanned boy how quickly that had changed. 

Luke was nearly obsessed with passing the time with his usual shenanigans, only amplified by the strange thoughts he was having. He didn't want to have any time to think about the way he felt, so he distracted himself until he was too incoherent to even know what he was thinking.

"Dude, are you sure? It's already so late, and you're already so drunk." Michael Clifford did this often. He was constantly looking out for the blonde when her was going ever so slightly off the rails. He had carried the obliterated boy home many times in their years of friendship, and he could always tell when something was up.

It had not slipped past him that Luke suddenly felt like going to a party, and that he'd had such a change in heart after the unspoken nights with Valentine. The boy saw it as well, in fact it seemed that everyone could see it.

Everyone in the town of Elgin noticed, because although rumors are not usually true there—this one sure looked to be beating the odds.

Luke had drunkenly admitted it to the jet black haired boy. Though he didn't remember it the next morning, Michael couldn't possibly forget about it. It was so outlandish for Luke to speak on such a vulnerable situation, and Michael could hardly ever let that escape his mind.