Camp Canoa // Luke Hemmings

The One With The Horror Of Slorr 2

Grace's POV

"Yeah we noticed." Is the first thing that Ashton says when we find them all sprawled into the tree outside, so that shows how much Luke knows, and I shoot him a scowl.

"So, uh," Nora says coolly, "Are you ever going to tell us when you started fucking – or are we just gonna sort of work backwards from now and figure it out ourselves?"

Luke splutters and I turn red.

"We're not – I mean," Luke attempts to rectify the situation, smiling brightly. "Okay. This is pretty bad. But we're not actually fucking, specifically."

Calum stares him down, sceptical. Ashton just looks like he's trying really hard not to laugh. Luke figured that that would have been enough. I winked at Michael who nudged me laughing.

"We're sort of a thing I guess?" I say, and Luke relaxes next to me, clearly previously reluctant to put a label on it, for fear of not clearing it up with me. He wraps an arm around my waist, and I see Nora smiling knowingly at me.

"Okay." Ashton says, lying back down onto Nora's lap.

"Well, now that's over, can I just say – thank fucking God, finally!" Michael said, leaning his elbows in the grass.

"Trueeee." Ashton said. "Jesus you've only been making sex-eyes at each other since you first got here! I was starting to consider just locking you two in a room until you fucked."

Luke and I share a frown as though to confirm whether this is true, but can't find any answers in each other. I shrug first and I drop lazily against his chest and he presses a kiss to my temple.

We tell stupid jokes and make up idiotic songs about the size of Alistar's ass as he saunters down the nearby pavement. With the curl of post-orgasmic contentment deep in our bellies and his arms wrapped around me, all I can think about is now.

***

[Day +25]

More than ever, it seems the hours are long and the days are short and the sun moves all too fast in slipping down through the blue, past the glittering wheels and spindles of fun-fair rides on the Alben pier, and then it's sunset and the promise of tomorrow being just as exhausting and finite as the day before.

We sit on the edge of the pier – arms looped through and around the metal bars holding us back from the eight-foot drop into the Gulf of Mexico, and Luke's hand is placed on my thigh. Our legs dangles freely in the air and we throw pebbles at fat, hovering seagulls nearby.

"If I died and was reincarnated as a seagull," Michael comments as one particularly nimble gull wheels away from the cascade of stones and soars upwards on a breeze, "I think I would just drown myself on principle."

I huff a short laugh and tip my head over to one side to lean on the railing. The corners of my eyes crinkle against the glare of the sunset on the water.

We haul ourselves up and make our way along the wooden-slatted pier, Luke's hand linked with mine, mirroring Danni and Calum. We walk to the sound of screaming children on the dodgems and a repetitive playlist of bad dubstep thumping over the funfair stereo.

Ashton buys a corndog, apparently too hungry to even make it to the café for our usual coke float, and Luke experimentally tries a blue slushie, sticking his blue tongue out at me. He slurps it down fast and then almost crumples onto the sidewalk when brain-freeze comes and takes him down like a metallic slap to both temples; he can do nothing but sit on the side of the road groaning that he is dying, and we can do nothing to help him for laughing so hard.