i hate you | l.h

thirteen

three days passed. six days passed. a week passed. and things were starting to look up. luke and i were becoming friends and calum and i were still going strong.

"i want to meet all of your friends," i said to calum who was intently watching a basketball game being shown on his television.

i had come over in attempts to cure my boredom, and now was laying beside him on his living room couch.

his gaze was still focused on the game, but his eyebrows lifted up in response to me.

"my friends?" he asked, his hand wrapping around mine, mindlessly rubbing over my thumb with his.

"yeah, we've been dating for a while and i mean, like, i've only met three of your closest friends. before we started dating, you were always with other people and it seemed like you were close with them. like a group of friends." i replied, not realizing how much i had to say until i had blurted it all out.

was it too much? we hadn't been together for that long and we were in our perfect bubble. our perfect bubble consisted of only spending time with each other and pushing other people away. i admit, i was extremely guilty of pushing away molly and her and we both knew it.

without having to talk to her, she understood what was going on and didn't make a big fuss about it which was just another reason to prove why she was my best friend. and which was why i wanted calum to be able to share his friends with me and me not being the reason he was drifting apart from them.

he didn't reply right away but instead turned around to face me. there was no discomfort in his expression, just genuine understanding. "of course you can meet my friends. you can meet all of them. it's just that we haven't hung out as much as we've used to because of the whole situation with luke. we wanted to give him some space and everybody's ended up giving each other space."

my ears perked up at the mention of luke. i had learned that whenever his mom had to be brought up into the conversation, you had to be careful.

calum seemed to always be cautious when discussing the topic of his mom, like treading lightly against fragile glass. make one wrong move or comment and it all would break. luke was getting better about opening up which made everybody more relieved but we didn't push him.

i nodded silently, not needing a further explanation to him, simply happy that we were letting each other into our lives. one step at a time.
-
calum kept his word. the very next day, he had managed to get the same exact group of friends that i had always seen him with together at lunch.

before we had started to date, i saw glimpses of him laughing with these people, walking in the hall with them. my stomach knotted in envy that he had such a great support system since my own friendship was falling apart.

"this is violet," calum pointed at a petite girl with bright blonde hair that was almost white. the first thing i noticed was that her pale fingers were stained with a dark blue ink. my eyes wandered to her open sketchbook which was clearly used and well-loved. her head jerked up at the mention of her name and she dropped the ballpoint pen in her hand to give me a small smile.

"hey, lydia. heard a lot about you, hope calum's not torturing you too much."

her voice was quiet which i had expected but what she said came out clear across the table. i laughed in response and she smiled even wider back at me.

calum rolled his eyes at her and she made a face back at him.

"that's will." he gestured at a tall and lean boy slouched back against his chair sat next to violet and michael. he lifted an arm to wave to me and we made eye contact for a brief second before he averted his attention back to what violet was drawing.