Luke stops his motorcycle in front of Bailey's, a popular diner in town. The aroma of spicy fried chicken and hamburgers and all manner of sweet foods seeping out of the door of the diner cloaks around my nose, teasing my senses."What are we doing here Luke?" I ask."We are here to talk about the project, and since I am hungry too, it is better to kill two birds with one stone. Are you hungry?""No I am not."Another crispy aroma of French fries and fried chicken wafts through my nostrils, and my stomach does a loud growl, betraying my lie."I think your stomach disagrees with you."I clutch my belly and bite down my lower lip. Luke coughs."Ladies first.""I didn't know you were such a gentleman." I taunt. I open the door of the diner and enter inside, with Luke following me behind.We get to a quiet spot at the left end of the diner. I settle down on the lounge chair. Luke sits down on the one opposite mine, and waves to a waiter standing by the bar.The waiter walks up to us, a ple
I twitch my eyes in confusion. My ears must have heard wrongly. I unfold my arms at once."Are you joking?" "No Alicia. I am not. Research studies have shown that women are excellent experts in depicting various mood swings, even better than men, especially when they are on their period."It takes everything in me not to scream out the next sentence."You are unbelievable Luke."He shrugs. "I have heard that compliment a lot."He tilts back his head, drumming his fingers on the table."You are the perfect muse for this project. You are beautiful, and you switch emotions so fast like a cheetah.""I don't." I blurt out."Yes you do. Remember Miss Oregon's Literature presentation class last term?"My hands fall limp at my sides. I sigh. I know where this conversation is heading to."I hope you are not trying to taunt me because I cried during the presentation class."Luke giggles. I swear the sound is so lovely."No Alicia. I am not trying to taunt you. If you can clearly remember all t
The blaring noise of my phone alarm and the chirping of the morning birds wake me up from sleep. I wipe the swollen sleep bags around the corners of my eye. I still feel very much tired and drowsy from my little lack of sleep last night.Luke was right. Knee pains are actually worse at night. When the effects of the painkillers started to wear off, the pain in my left knee had to force me to wake up at intervals to press down the ice pack on it. I rubbed a little more ointment on the area, which also helped.My alarm continues to ring. I gently toss to my side before gathering up the strength to sit up. I pick up my phone and swipe my finger on the screen, turning the alarm off.After a brief moment of resting the back of my head on the headboard of my bed and running my brain through the few tasks I have mapped out for today, I climb out of my bed. I dress my bed and arrange the little disorders spread across my room.I go through my usual morning ritual of brushing my teeth, taking
About twenty minutes later, we stop in front of a photography studio named Shutter Pictures on Abbey's Avenue. Luke turns off the car's engine and alights. I open my door and climb down too.Luke leads the way and I follow. When we enter the studio, I clutch my arms at the sudden cold that grasps at my skin. Luke notices this and pulls off his leather jacket."Don't worry Luke. I am—"Before I finish my protest, his jacket is already covering my shoulders down to my arms. "I may not be the perfect friend yet, but I guess friends don't allow their other friends to catch a cold."I can't help the smirk that I now know is curling up my eyebrows. I scoff."And also. . . . ."His hand moves swiftly to my hair, pulling off the hair band I used to hold up my curly hair in a messy bun."This looks better. You look more beautiful when your hair is let down."My mouth is gaped open in shock at his audacity. At his temerity. His fingers trail down my hair lightly as he adjusts the curls down my
We sneak out to the parking lot just the same way we sneaked into the back of the school's yard. After we enter the car, Luke straps his seatbelt over his chest and hatches it into the lock. He starts the car and drives out of the parking lot. I strap my seatbelt too over my chest and wind down my window a little bit more.The air blows into the car and topples my dress a little. I adjust the dress over my exposed thighs immediately. I think I heard Luke clear his throat. When I look up at him, I catch his eyes feigning focus on the road.Or maybe he is actually focused on the road.One of his hands continue to control the wheel of the car as his other hand pushes back his messy hair getting blown all over his face. To say he looks cute will be an understatement.He looks. . . . . . beautiful even.The silence in the car starts to feel alien, and just when my mind starts to contemplate on whether I should or should not initiate any conversation of some sort, Luke saves me the trouble b
"What's this date for?" I can't help but ask. I glance up and meet Luke's eyes glazing down on me. His eyes are darker, burning with deep blue embers that are now sending firecrackers throughout my entire brain. I catch the slight movement of his full lips as he presses them together.He doesn't say anything. Instead, he covers the tattooed area with his t-shirt and averts his eyes away from me."I might tell you if you decide to jump into the water with me."He points down to the roaring water below us."You are kidding right?"He shakes his head vehemently, at the same time smiling like some mischievous brat."There's no way I am getting into that water.""Come on Alicia. It's just going to be a quick swim. Just imagine the view of the cliffs when you get into the water, imagine how the water will feel on your skin—""I am not getting in there Luke. I might catch a cold." I protest."The sun is already out. The water won't be that cold. In fact, I bet it will be warm."He smirks. A
When we poke our heads up from underneath the water, I sharply suck in a deep breath. The sunlight warms my face, and true to Luke's words, the water is warm. I slide my fingers down my water-dripping hair. Luke's face is adorned with a wide grin as he rubs back his wet hair with his hands."I can't believe I allowed you to lure me into this." The disbelief in my voice is evident.Luke says nothing, but instead, starts swimming closer to me. He stops few breaths away from my face, and I can feel our legs touching together as we both try to keep our bodies in balance and afloat on the water. The twinkle in his blue eyes shift into something deeper, and I feel my breath fading away.I want to swim back a little, away from Luke's intense gaze, but the tension between us forces me to stay put where I am."Alicia, I want to show you something beneath the water surface. Can I?"I find myself nodding my head. Too paralyzed and tongue-tied to speak."Alright. Take my hand and hold your breath.
Luke and I swim a bend by his left, and we appear in front of a wide opening at the mouth of the rock. Large flat pebble stones form rocky stairs leading up to the rock's open surface above. Luke and I swim out of the water.The white wet sand underneath my feet feels coarse but smooth at the same time. My hands pull Luke's t-shirt down a bit. The water dripping from it makes it easier for the t-shirt to cling to the middle of my thighs, but the t-shirt is also clinging to my body curves, making it harder for Luke's eyes to stop raking all over my body.Luke manages to tear his eyes away from me and enters the rock opening first. I follow behind him. We begin to ascend the stairs.In silence.The pebble stairs is cold to the soles of my feet. Glittering green moss lines the roof of the rock above us, itching my hands to run my fingers over them.When Luke and I finally appear on the surface, we are greeted with warm sunlight on our skin and again, with the blue breathtaking view of th
What?!" I gasp.The breeze whips through Luke's hair, blowing it across his face. His hand pushes it back."Yeah. There is this lady called Sienna that I started seeing quite often with my dad since like three months ago. She is pretty, jovial, and I thought she was just one of my dad's friends. But this week Monday, my dad came out to me about his true relationship with her. I was paralyzed with shock to the point that I couldn't do anything that day." "You said you found out this week Monday?" I interrupt, my mind going through a puzzle."Yeah."The dots connect. Shit. "So that was why you weren't in school that day?" I blurt out, my realization hitting me with a bang.He nods. "The news fucked up my head so bad that I couldn't bring myself to come to school that day. I spent most of that day at Tyler's studio. I wasn't expecting to see you there later that day. I also wasn't in my right frame of mind." He sighs deeply. "I still feel a bit pissed at myself that I reacted so bad towa
This is cruel. This is so cruel. So cruel that I feel like dragging my fingers through my hair. So cruel that it reminds me of my own pain. So when Luke was grappling with his mum's death, I and Sarah were being whisked around from court to court to listen to my parents yell and throw curses at each other and to listen from judge to judge asking Sarah and I which parent we would want to stay with. Why do we have to suffer for the shitty things our parents did? We didn't force any of them to bring us into this world. The least they could have done for us was to try to be better for us."I passed the night at my uncle's place. I stayed in his house a couple more days, and then on the third day, in the morning, my dad showed up at my uncle's house, looking normal. He begged me to come back home with him. My uncle, who was his elder brother, beat him up so badly and had the police arrest him for trespassing his property. It was a tough, ugly scenerio to watch. During my mom's burial, my da
He goes super still and silent at my question for a while, but just when I begin to think that he may not answer me or do anything, his hands on my back and face leave my body. He steps back a bit from me and lifts his t-shirt up over his head, exposing his naked torso to me. My eyes go directly to the tattooed date on the left side of his abdomen.15. 05. 2012.I am not given enough time to ogle at it because Luke turns around in silence, his inked back facing me as he walks to a space on the clearing a little bit far from the motorcycle. I watch his hard muscles flex with each movement. They flex harder when he settles down on the mowed grass. He drops his t-shirt to his bosom, staring afar at the blue water crashing its waves to the rocks.I wonder what is going through his mind right now, but I know that whatever it is must definitely be related to my question earlier. His silence lures me to join him there, and I do. I walk over to him and settle down beside him on the grass. His
I stare back squarely at him, gulping hard. "Even if you wish you could take it back, the sad news is you can't, Luke, because I love you too."My somersaulting heart gradually stops thumping so hard, and I feel like a huge burden has just been uplifted from my chest. Luke blinks hard at my confession, the action making a single tear drop from his right eye down to his cheek. He wipes it away quickly as his eyes squint back at me, crease lines appearing on the top of his forehead. He takes a step back away from me, shaking his head. A sad chuckle escapes from his lips."You don't have to fucking lie to me that you love me just to make me feel better, Alicia. I do not want your pity. What I want is your complete honesty with me, at least I deserve that."My heart shreds. Why is everything crumbling so fast? I love him. Why can't he see that? I know exactly what I feel for him. It is crazy. Exhilarating, and I know for sure that I did not leave my fucking house just to come all this way
The wind whips through my hair roughly, wheezing past me in sharp gusts as Luke races down the road with a speed that steals every of my exhaling breaths away. I love the cool sharp feeling of the wind blasting my face, but what I love more is how the blowing wind carries Luke's scent to me.Gosh I love this. I love him. I still hate myself for having to deny the truth to myself for this long.We race past various cars and road signs, and I feel my eyes nearly popping out of their sockets when I catch the view of a set of hills outside town.The truth is that they are not just some ordinary set of hills that I have never seen before. They are the same set of hills that Luke and I visited the day he showed me his art studio for the first time. The blue water waves are splashing at the thick rocks beneath the tall cliffs, their crashing beauty reminding me of the awe I felt when I saw them for the very first time that day.I know Luke is taking us there. I can feel it deep in my guts.I
"Mr Douglas?" I croak out, still finding it very hard to believe my eyes.What the hell am I seeing right now?! What the freaking hell is going on here?!"Alicia what are you. . . . .what are you doing here?" He stutters back at me, his blue eyes bulging so wide that I can clearly see the shock and discomfort shimmering in them.Wait a minute.I turn my eyes away from Mr Douglas and place them right back at Luke, who is now staring at me like I just caught him gorging on a forbidden box of sweet milk candies. That is when I see it. Notice it. For the very, first, time.The resemblance is there. Fuck! It has always been there. In their identical deep blue eyes and perfectly sculpted jawlines. The rest of Luke's facial features look softer, feminine.And I figure out instantly that he may be sharing those softer features with his mom, who I am just finding out today, is dead.God. Why the fuck does no one in school know about them? Just how much don't I know about Luke Evans?The tensi
"Hey Alicia, how are you?"Tyler's voice is the first thing that greets me immediately I step out of the cab that drops me in front of his studio, which was of course the first place that popped into my mind to go search for Luke.I just hope he is here."I am cool." I reply, looking around the premises. My doubt begins to poke my insides when I don't see any sign of Luke's motorcycle parked around. "Have you seen Luke? Is he here?" I hurriedly rush out the questions.Tyler shakes his head. "No. He is not here." He corks his eyebrows at me, looking me over, two thin lines creasing at the top of his forehead. "What is going on Alicia? You look. . . . . .tensed."Tensed is an understatement. He should see how torn apart and messy I look inside."It is just. . . . ." I take in a short breath. "I have been searching and calling Luke, but he has not picked any of my calls.""Yo, what happened between you two?"I scratch the back of my neck in impatience. "It is a long story Tyler. Please, d
I climb out of the bathtub and wipe my wet body quickly with my towel. When I dash into my room, I glance at the clock.It is just 8:45am.Sarah must be very tired and probably asleep right now, so I will just drop her a note.I quickly go through my skincare routine of applying my body lotion and my facial cream and serum. Next, I throw on a black tank top and blue jeans shorts. The sun is surprisingly hot this early in the morning, and the last thing I need now is to feel sweaty in big clothes.I brush my hair and pull it up into a messy bun. After applying some powder and lip gloss with some perfume, I pick up a pen and tear out a sheet of paper from my rough book to scribble down a note to Sarah, to inform her that I will be leaving to go see Luke. Done, I grab my sling bag lying lazily on my bed and tuck in the note, my phone, my spare library key, and some cash from my drawer into the bag.I glance at the clock again. 9:02am.I look back at myself in the mirror and gulp in a bre
To my Dearest Readers, Thank you all so much for coming this far with me on this story. Your support and perseverance with this book gives me enough strength to continue this story, and for that, I am really thankful. Sadly, it is with great pain and helplessness that I write to you all today to inform you guys that I won't be able to update this story for some period of time. My school exams are choking me right now, and in order to keep giving you guys the best of this story, I have to clear my papers first so that my brain will be relieved and stable enough to keep on giving you guys the best. I am so sorry for whatever inconvenience this may cause any of you, but I promise to bounce back and smother you all with lots of delicious chapters. I love you all, and I also value your feedbacks, ratings and endless support. I am really glad to be on this ride with you all. You guys are the real MVPs. With so much love, Lora Ashley.