Fall.

Chapter 5.

Just like any other Saturday afternoon, Luke and I were sitting in my living room working on my math homework.

It's been two months since we started these tutoring sessions, and Luke and I were finally starting to become somewhat friends. I decided to just take Calum's advice and give Luke some time. He obviously had issues when it came to making friends, so I knew that I shouldn't try and push him into something that he clearly wasn't comfortable with. It really wasn't that bad, Luke was slowly warming up to me and I didn't really care how much time he took, I was just glad that he didn't act miserable all the time.

"No, Stel," Luke chuckled. He tapped his pencil down on the notebook held on my lap. "You have to multiply everything by 3."

"This is so stupid." I threw my notebook down on the floor. I was frustrated mainly by the fact that I took this class once before and I still didn't understand how to do any of the material.

"Pick it up." Luke groaned. He shifted his weight and brought his legs up on the couch, tucking them underneath him.

"Can we just take a break for now?" I slumped over and threw a pillow over my head.

"It's really not that hard." Luke laughed softly. "Sit up."

I took the pillow off my head and faced Luke. "It's not that hard for you, you're great at math!"

"Well, Stel, everyone has different natural skill levels and I just happen to be naturally good at math. You just happen to need a little extra help." Luke answered, probably sounding more intelligent than he meant to be. He moved his hand forward like he was going to touch me, but quickly brought it back to his side.

"Math is stupid. When am I ever going to use this in the real world?" I said, throwing my hands up in the air.

"Well, I use math all the time at work-" Luke offered, but I cut him off. I had meant for my question to be rhetorical. Kids in my Geometry class at school were always asking that question, and my teacher never wanted to answer them. I like to think it was becuase he didn't really have an answer for them, but I know that it's just because it's not a question that a math teacher wants to answer.

"I didn't mean for you to actually answer that." I laughed. Luke shrugged and rolled his eyes.

"What if you get a job where you need to use math every day?" Luke asked.

"I won't." I shrugged. I didn't quite know what I wanted to be when I was older yet, but I knew for sure that it wouldn't involve math.

A few minutes of silence passed before Luke spoke again. "Okay, fine. Let's take a break."

"Yay!" I cheered and began to grab for the TV remote, but Luke stopped me.

"No, come with me." He grabbed me by my wrist and dragged me off the couch. He lead me to the front door, where our coats and shoes were located.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Put your stuff on." Luke let go of me and started putting his own shoes on.

"Where are we going?" I sat down on the floor next to Luke and began to lace up my sneakers.

"Jesus, Stel. Stop asking so many questions." Luke shook his head. I could tell that Luke was easily annoyed by how many questions I usually asked, but it was nothing that I could control.

"Well sorry, I just don't feel 100% comfortable with you dragging me off to some unknown place!" I stood up and grabbed mine and Luke's jacket off the coat rack and threw Luke's at him.

"You can't just trust me?" Luke asked. He grabbed onto my hand and pulled himself off of the ground. I did my best to ignore the little spark I felt when he touched me, though it was clear that Luke and I had both felt something by the way we simultaniously brought our hands back to our sides.

"That isn't exactly what I said." I stressed the word "exactly". I wasn't entirely sure if I did trust Luke or not. The two of us were just starting to become more friendly with each other, and although I knew he definitely wasn't going to do anything to hurt me I didn't know if I for sure trusted him to take me wherever he wanted.

"Stel." Luke sighed. "Just, come on."

"Fine, but if I end up dead I except you to take all the blame." I pushed past Luke and let myself out the front door.

"Jesus, you really think I'm that bad of a guy?" Luke asked, hurrying to keep up with me as I briskly walked down the hallway.

"Well how should I know?" I slowed down my pace so Luke could keep up with me.

"I'm definitely not taking you anywhere where you can get murdered, okay? Just trust me." Luke rolled his eyes - as always.


~


"I think that under certain circumstances someone can get murdered in Central Park."

"Stel!" Luke threw his head back and groaned.

"Why are we here?" I asked. The whole way here Luke stayed almost completely silent, and wouldn't give me any clues to where we were going.

"You live like four blocks away, so why not?" Luke shrugged. He looked back and forth from me to a tree, and then ran off into the direction of the tree.

"What are you doing?" I ran after him.

"What does it look like I'm doing?" Luke jumped up, grabbing onto a low tree branch and beginning to climb up the tree.

"You're making a fool out of yourself?" I suggested.

"No." Luke continued to climb. I glanced around the park to try and see if anyone was watching us. I had come to Central Park a lot in my 17 years of living in the city, and people climbing trees was not exactly normal. The last thing I needed was Luke and I getting in trouble for disturbing the public with our tree-climbing.

"Luke, get down!" I begged. He had climbed far enough up that I had to tilt my head way back to see him. Finally, he stopped climbing. He stopped on a branch that was about 15 feet off the ground. It wasn't too high, but it was still high enough to the point where I was a little worried about him falling. He situated himself on the branch and sat down with his legs dangling off the edge.

"Why? Are you embarassed by me?" Luke asked. I could just barely make out a smirk on his lips.

"Please get down." I ordered, ignoring his question. I was embarassed a little by Luke, but I was mostly embarassed by the fact that I was standing in the middle of Central Park yelling at a boy in a tree.

"No!" Luke yelled, "You're not the boss of me!"

"Is this seriously your idea of fun?" I asked, though I knew Luke had told me before that he didn't really have fun in the first place.

"No, not really. But it is fun seeing you get all upset over this." Luke laughed. He kicked off one of his shoes and flung it in my direction.

"I'm not upset." I defended myself, crossing my arms over my chest. Luke kicked his other shoe at me.

"Come on up." Luke used one arm to try and coax me up. I flinched at the fact that he was now only holding onto the tree with one hand.

"Luke, you're going to fall!" I yelled up to him. There was no way that I was getting up in that tree. I didn't so much have a fear heights as I did of falling.

"So what?" Luke called down.

"So, if you fall you can hurt yourself!" I yelled. The wind blew and Luke let go to the tree with both hands to pull the hood of his sweatshirt over his head.

"Well, it's okay to fall sometimes, as long as there's someone there to catch you at the bottom." Luke shrugged.

"What if you fall and I can't catch you?" I asked. I brought a hand up over my eyes so I could see Luke through the sunlight that was peaking through the clouds. Then, Luke muttered something to himself that I couldn't quite understand and began climbing down from the tree.

He stopped when he was about halfway down and jumped, whiched caused me to jump back myself because of how close to me Luke ended up. Luke grabbed on to my wrist to keep me standing upright and even pulled me slightly closer to him. The wind blew again, causing some of my hair to fly into my eyes. Luke gave me a small smile, and very slowly raised his hand up to move the pieces of out of my eyes. I felt my breathing hitch. I had never been this close to Luke before, much less have him touch me like this. I stayed completely still as he did so, afraid that if I moved even a little he would turn around and shut me out again.

Our nice moment was ruined by me cell phone ringing in my back pocket. I hastily pulled it out of my pocket, checking the Caller ID before answering. I was Ashton.

"Hello?" I asked. Usually I tried to answer the phone with a much more interesting phrase, but when it came to Ashton I was too busy making sure I didn't choke on my own tongue to come up with something cute to say.

"Hi, Stella?" Ashton's voice sounded very muffled, like he might be covering up his mouth as he spoke.

"Yeah, it's me." I laughed. Luke took a step back from me. I wonder if he knows it's Ashton I'm talking to just by the way my face is heating up.

"Where are you? Me and Michael are at your door but it doesn't seem like anyone's home." Ashton asked. I could picture the confused look he must have had on his face. I always loved when Ashton did that, he looked so much more little-kiddish when he did.

"Um.. Central Park." I replied.

"Oh. Will you be there for long?" Ashton sounded impatient. I figured that him and Michael just needed to use the DVD play again, typical boys.

"I was just leaving." I said and grabed onto the sleeve of Luke's sweatshirt, already dragging him home. "Do you guys need the DVD player or something?"

"Well, actually.." Ashton paused and quickly muttered something to someone else, most likely Michael. "I wanted to know if you were interested in seeing a movie tonight and maybe getting something to eat."

"With Michael?" I asked hesitantly. I knew that Ashton liked me, and I was almost positive that he liked me too. I was getting sick of the two of us hanging out with Michael all the time.

"Uh, no, I thought maybe we could just go alone. I mean, unless you want him to come alone, then that's fine." Ashton stammered. I immediatly broke out into a huge smile.

"Yeah, sure. That sounds great." I said quickly. Luke shook himself free from me and walked ahead of me.

"Okay, I guess I'll just be at Michael's for a while. Come down when you're all ready." Ashton laughed softly.

"Alright, I'll see you later." I tried to contain myself from giggling right in Ashton's ear and hung up before I could say anything stupid.

I began to walk faster to catch up with Luke, even though he seemed like he wasn't in the mood to talk anymore. I couldn't wait to get home. I had liked Ashton since my Freshman year, and tonight I was finally going on a date with him. I was already coming up with various senarios of how the night could go in my head. I needed to get home, I just had to start getting ready.

I was glad that Ashton asked if we could go to a movie, that way we didn't have to talk a lot. Don't get me wrong, I really liked Ashton, it was just so hard for me to think of interesting things to say that he would be interesting in too. I got so nervous aorund him that I practically messed up every word that came out of my mouth. At least when we were in a dark movie theater we wouldn't need to do much talking.

I silently walked next to Luke, who still hadn't said anything to me since we were at the park. I didn't care that he wasn't talking, though. I was too happy about going out with Ashton to care.

And then I remembered.

"Luke?" I gently tapped on his shoulder.

"What?" Luke snapped, turning to face me.

"You're not working tonight, right?" I asked.

"No, why?" Luke tugged on my arm to pull me out of the way of a big family walking by on the sidewalk. I let out the big breath that I had been holding.

"I was... just wondering." I said slowly. I didn't really want Luke there tonight. I knew that he had something against Ashton, and if he was working at the theater tonight who knows what he would do.

"Are you going there with Ashton?" Luke asked, catching me off guard.

"U-uh, yes?" I said, almost as a question. Was it that easy to tell that I was talking to Ashton? "How did you know that?"

"Stel, I could tell." Luke sighed.

"Am I that obvious?" I laughed at myself, though Luke always did seem to have the ability to see right through me.

"Kind of." He shrugged.

"Oh." I looked down at the ground while I walked.

"I told you Ashton liked you." Luke muttered and kicked a rock across the street.



~



"You look great tonight, Stella." Ashton complimented me as he held opened the door to the movie theater.

I blushed. I'd tried not to get too dressed up for tonight, since we were just going to the moives. I had thrown on a cute black crewneck sweater and changed into a different pair of jeans than what I was wearing before, but kept the same worn out sneakers. "Thanks, you too."

"Psh, you don't need to tell me that." Ashton laughed. "I like when you wear your hair like that, out of your face."

I twirled the end of my ponytail between my fingers as I muttered another "thanks". I had been worried about Ashton and I not having enough to talk about, but so far things had gone pretty good. We'd ended up getting something to eat before we went to the movie instead of after. It just made more sense like that, and this way we wouldn't have to buy a ton of popcorn and candy while we were here.

We made our way to the cash registers, where a very familiar blonde head of hair came into view. Luke said he wasn't working tonight, so why was he here?

"Hey, Stella!" Calum greeted me. Luke sat behind him on a stool, just like I did only a couple weeks ago.

"Hi, Calum." I wave back to him, choosing to ignore Luke.

"Who's your friend?" Calum asked, eying Ashton. Calum was dressed in his work uniform, while Luke wasn't. He was still dressed in the black hoodie and skinny jeans that he wore earlier today.

"Oh, this is Ashton." I stepped slightly behind Ashton so Calum could see him clearly.

"Nice." Calum muttered to himself, nodding. "2 tickets?"

"Yeah." Ashton said. He began digging around in his pockets for money.

"I can pay for myself, if you want." I offered, even though I knew Ashton wasn't going to let me pay.

"No, I got it." Ashton shook his head a me and handed Calum a 20 dollar bill.

"$7.62." Luke finally spoke. "That's the change."

"I know." Calum looked behind him and rolled his eyes at Luke. I couldn't imagine how many times Luke probably did that to him.

"That's impressive." Ashton said, referring to how fast Luke was able to tell what the change was going to be.

"Yeah, I know." Luke stared back at Ashton with a blank expression on his face.

"Luke." I groaned. I understood that he didn't like Ashton but he didn't need to be so rude to him. He could just keep these things to himself.

"What, Stel?" Luke snapped, "You guys better go, you don't want to miss your movie."

"I think we'll be fine." Ashton laughed nervously.

"Yeah, it doesn't start for another 10 minutes." I agreed. I hated sitting through previews anyway, I wouldn't mind if we missed them all.

"Well, if you want to get to the right theater and then find a seat, and then maybe one of you will have to use the bathroom, Stel might want popcorn-"

"Luke, you're wasting their time by telling them that." Calum scoffed, turning around again to look at Luke.

"I'm trying to be helpful!" Luke protested.

"Just shut up." Calum laughed, slapping Luke on the arm.

"Luke, you said you weren't working tonight." I said uneasily. This was exactly what I didn't want to happen tonight.

"I said I wasn't working, I didn't say I wasn't going to be here." Luke said, chewing on the inside of his cheek again.

"Well, when I asked if you were working I thought that you would imply that I meant to ask if you were going to be here at all." I let my voice trail off, fearing that I wasn't even making any sense.

"Why does it matter, Stel? I'm not doing anything wrong, am I?" Luke asked innocently.

"I don't know, I mean, you are being pretty annoying right now." I shot back.

"Oh, am I? Sorry, I didn't mean to ruin your date with my attitude." Luke smirked.

"Can you just-"

"Do you want to get moving?" Ashton leaned in and whispered to me, stopping me from saying anything else to Luke. I nodded, taking the initiative to grab Ashton's hand and drag him away.

"See you guys later!" Calum called after us. Ashton turned around and gave him a small wave before turning back and continuing to walk.

"They make me sick." I heard Luke mutter under his breath as we walked away. Hopefully Ashton didn't hear that.

"Luke is...something." Ashton said, once we were far enough away from Luke and Calum.

"Yeah, I know." I sighed. "I can't stand him most of the time."

"I feel like he hates me." Ashton laughed. The corners of his eyes formed perfect looking crinkled as he smiled, making me feel almost weak in the knees.

"I don't see how anyone could hate you." I laughed along with him. I didn't feel as nervous around Ashton as I did just a little while ago. I was so scared about how different us being alone would be, when I really had nothing to worry about.

"Oh, stop." He waved my comment away with his hand.

"It's true!" I shrugged.

"Okay, whatever." Ashton let out a playful sigh. "Let's just forget about Luke for now."

"Gladly." I nodded.

"Let's just...focus on...us." Ashton said slowly. We stopped in front of the door to our theater.

"Okay." I smiled and bit my lip.

"Shall we go in?" Ashton asked, holding out his hand for me to take.

"We shall." I said, and I took Ashton's outstretched hand, letting him pull me into the dark movie theater.



btw in the story it's been a couple weeks since the last chapter okay anyway I hope you guys all like this because I did haha

and I got like 180 comments on my last chapter lol you guys all ship stukeeeee

Hopefully there's no typos in this, but if there is let me knoww okay bye and thanks for almost 30k reads