Fall.

Chapter 15.

Instead of being at Ashton's house like I usually was on a Saturday night, I was at the movie theater with Luke. Ashton had called earlier today and told me that something had suddenly come up and he needed to do something with his family tonight. I didn't really mind, because I was getting tired of "hanging out" with Ashton anyway.

Usually if Ashton cancelled on me I would go do something with Michael, but tonight I decided not to. He had been acting really strange lately, very distant. He seemed to be closer with Ashton than with anyone else.

So since I didn't want to spend the whole night alone with my brother and mom in our apartment, I decided to call Luke and see what he was doing. He was working, but of course he invited me to come sit with him while he did.

I was sitting on a stool, my back against the wall. Luke was on a stool next to me. He had his feet propped up on my stool, he had been working on trying to kick me off of it for the past 20 minutes. It was late, almost closing time. We had been sitting here for the longest time, and I was happy that we'd soon be leaving.

"Please, Stel. Just let me push you off the stool." Luke begged, holding back a laugh.

"Why?" I asked. I grabbed on to the seat of the stool to keep myself up.

"It'll be fun seeing you fall." Luke shrugged, continuing to kick at me. He licked his lips and concentrated hard on his feet.

"I don't want to fall." I shook my head, laughing.

"Yeah, I figured that out." Luke rolled his eyes. "That's exactly why I'm trying so hard."

"You're ridiculous." I laughed. I pushed his feet away from me, causing Luke to stumble over and fall to the ground.

"Only for you." He looked up at me as his lips formed into a huge grin. He brushed off his shirt and stood up again.

Luke cleared his throat. "So, um, how's Ashton?"

I stopped smiling at the mention of Ashton. I wanted to tell Luke that things were going great, but I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to. I had thought that Ashton and I were just in and awkward stage of our relationship and that's why he was always acting so odd, but I didn't think that's what was going on. I felt like Ashton had something going on with him, but I couldn't put a finger on it.

"Uh.." My eyes flicked between Luke and the floor multiple times before I answered. "He's good."

Luke chuckled softly. "You don't seem so sure."

"I don't know, Luke. I just..feel like he's - he's not who he says he is." I sighed, not fully believing the revelation I was coming too.

"Yeah," Luke scoffed. "He's not."

"What do you mean?" I asked, and Luke's eyes went wide. I knew he was hiding something now.

"I just mean," Luke coughed. "Uh, he's kind of a jerk to me, but not to you. He really likes you."

"He really likes me yet he doesn't know anything about me." I looked up at Luke. He was nervously biting his bottom lip and staring down at his feet. His lip and eye were looking much better now, it had been a week since him and Ashton got in that fight. You could barely tell he had gotten hurt.

"Well, I know this may be hard but maybe Ashton just isn't the right guy for you. I mean, maybe it took being his girlfriend for a little while for you to realize that he wasn't who you thought he was." Luke shrugged. He walked over to the counter and pulled out a towel to wipe it off.

"What did you guys get in that fight about?" I asked, realizing that I wasn't getting anywhere refusing to hear about it.

Luke turned around and stared at me for a long time before he slowly began to answer. "Um. Well, we were fighting about, uh, we were fighting about you."

"I sort of assumed that." I admitted. Even though I didn't know all of the details I was still about to figure out that I had played a part in why Ashton and Luke had been fighting.

"Well, yeah. We were fighting about you because Ashton was upset that I spend so much time with you and we both kind of lost our tempers." Luke raised his hand up and scratched the back of his neck.

"Really." I said, not fully convinced.

"Yes, really! You think I'd lie?" Luke asked.

"I'm not saying you're lying-" I sighed, flipping a piece of hair away from my eyes. Luke sucked in a big breath, making his cheeks puff up, then blew out.

"Stel, about Ashton.."

"Luke, can you please clean up theater 4?" Calum called as he walked up to the counter. I had almost forgotten that he was here, he had left a little while ago to go clean up some of the theaters while Luke stayed up front.

"I'm a little busy." Luke groaned.

"I just cleaned up all the other theaters and you've sat here playing footsie with Stella. Come on, Luke." Calum said, running a hand through his dark hair.

"Okay, we weren't even playing footsie, I was trying to make her fall over." Luke corrected him. "And I was in the middle of a conversation."

"Take Stella with you and finish it." Calum suggested. He threw a broom and a dustpan at Luke, who caught them without hesitating for even a second.

"Fine." Luke snapped. He turned to face me and got down on one knee, like he was proposing. He held up the broom that Calum had thrown to him and laughed before speaking. "Stel, would you like to come watch me clean up a dirty theater?"

I faked a gasp, pretending to be surprised. I grabbed onto the broom Luke was holding. "Lucas, are you proposing to me with a broom?"

"I didn't have enough time to go make a thing of popcorn." Luke shrugged.

"Well, I mean if that's the best you can do then I guess I'll come watch you clean." I agree, grabbing Luke's other hand and helped him off the floor.

"You guys are so weird." Calum shook his head at us as Luke stood up.

"We're still cooler than you are, Cal." Luke said, patting Calum on the back as he walked past him.

I followed Luke out from behind the counter and walked next to him down the hall to the theater. Luke kicked at the ground while we walked, something that he seemed to do a lot.

"What were you saying?" I asked, realizing that Luke never got to finish his sentence before Calum interrupted us.

"Oh, about Ashton?" Luke turned around and faced me.

I nodded.

"I was just going to say that, uh, you shouldn't let the little fight between me and him get in the way of your relationship." Luke said quickly before turning around again and continuing to walk.

We entered the theater, Luke dragging his broom and dustpan behind him. The theater didn't seem too messy, so I doubted that it would take very long for Luke to clean it up. There were just a few things of spilled popcorn or empty cups laying around on the floor.

"This will take, like, 5 minutes. Just stand over there." Luke said, pointing to a wall. I walked over to it and leaned against it, watching Luke go in and out of the rows of seats and cleaning things up.

Shortly after he started, Luke called out from the top of the theater. "Done! What's my time?"

"I didn't know I was supposed to be timing you!" I yelled back.

"Jesus, Stel. You can't do anything right." Luke laughed. He began to climb down on the chairs, using them instead of the actual stairs.

"Why are you doing that?" I asked once Luke was half way down.

"Doing what? Walking on the chairs? It's because I hate this movie theater so damn much that I do whatever I can to destroy it." Luke said, jumping on one of the chairs a couple of times for emphasis.

"Be careful. You're going to fall." I warned him, seeing how he wobbled around on top of the chairs.

"Oh, and we wouldn't want that." Luke said sarcastically.

"Don't you not like falling?" I asked, taking a few steps away from the wall and closer to Luke.

"Nope." Luke shook his head. It was then that I realized that his answer could be taken two different ways.

"Physically or mentally?" I asked.

"What?" Luke stopped walking and stood still on the chair.

"You said you don't like falling. Do you mean physically or mentally?" I clarified, noticing that I wasn't making much sense.

Luke shrugged. "Both, I guess."



-


"You know what I got?" Luke asked as we exited the movie theater.

"What?" I looked up at Luke. I pulled my hood over my head, shielding myself from the light snow blowing around.

"A space heater." Luke said, a smug look on his face.

"A what?" I laughed.

"A space heater, you know, one of those things that you plug in and it...gives off heat." Luke explained. He seemed so excited, and I couldn't figure out why. Space heaters weren't things that normal boys got excited about.

"Why would you need one of those?" I asked.

"For my treehouse!" Luke exclaimed. That explained why he was excited.

"You're such a dork. You're literally a 5 year old stuck in a 17 year old's body." I laughed, playfully hitting him on the shoulder.

"Well I sleep in there almost every night, I don't want to freeze." Luke shrugged.

"Luke!" I yelled, "Why do you do that? It's, like, 10 degrees outside."

"And that's why I bought the space heater!" Luke threw his hands up in the air. Like he was frustrated by the fact that I don't understand why he sleeps outside.

"But why do you sleep outside?" I sighed.

Luke stopped walking and stared at something down at the other end of the street. "What the hell?"

"What?" I asked, trying to see what Luke was looking at. He grabbed my arm and turned me around, quickly walking us in the other direction. "Luke, what are you doing?"

"Let's walk this way." Luke said shortly. He pulled me with him as he walked, looking behind him every few seconds.

"Why? The subway's that way, I need to go home." I said. I tried to turn around again, but Luke kept a tight grip on my arm.

"Why do you want to go home? Let's go to my house. Don't you want to see my space heater?" Luke asked.

"Not really.." I said quietly, doing my best to pull away from Luke.

"Come on, it'll be fun." Luke begged, jumping up and down, proving even further that he was a little kid trapped in a teenagers body.

"Do you see dead people or something? You always do this!" I groaned as I followed Luke down the street. I guess I was going to his house now.

"No. I see people that I want to be dead." Luke laughed, looking over his shoulder one last time.

"That made no sense."

"I'll explain it to you another time."

"Are you going to answer my question?" I asked.

"What question. You ask so many questions, Stel." Luke sighed.

"Why do you sleep in the treehouse?" I asked again, hoping that he would actually answer this time. Luke had proved to be able to avoid certain questions when he really wanted to.

"Outside is better. There's too much shit going on inside." Luke answered simply, and I wondered why he couldn't just tell me that before.

"I feel like you're speaking metaphorically." I chuckled.

"A little bit of both." Luke said, biting the inside of his cheek.

After walking for a little while longer we were finally in Luke's treehouse, and I was preparing myself to see this amazing space heater he bought. I stood in the middle of the room, waiting as Luke shuffled around with the heater.

"Stel, look! Heat!" Luke called, waving his arms around this amazing heater.

"Wow, that's a really cool space heater." I said, trying to hide my sarcasm.

"I bet you want one of your own now." Luke laughed. He walked over to me and rolled up the sleeves of his hoodie.

"Not really, because I actually sleep indoors." I replied, even though now that I was standing in the treehouse with the space heater going it didn't feel so cold.

"I've kind of unofficially moved out, so..." Luke's voice trailed off as he walked across the treehouse, seeming to be looking for something.

"Are things really that bad with your mom?" I asked.

"You have no idea. She's crazy. As soon as I turn 18 I'm leaving New York, I'll move to Kentucky or something." Luke said, looking down.

"Kentucky, really?" I laughed.

"I'll go anywhere as long as it's far away from here." Luke shrugged.

"Won't you miss the people you'll leave behind?" I asked, not even wanting to think about what my life may be like after Luke's gone. He was probably my closest friend, I couldn't just let him leave and never come back.

"You can come with me."

"Or you can just stay."

Luke walked over to me, only stopping when his face was a few inches away from mine. He slowly breathed in and out, and I watched as his blue eyes switched intensely between my own eyes and the floor. He raised up a hand and gently tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear. When his wrist passed by me, I noticed something that startled me: more bruises.

"Luke, what's that?" I grabbed his wrist in my hand, but not hard enough to hurt him anymore.

"Um, bruises. From that fight with Ashton last week." Luke said slowly.

But he was lying, these weren't from Ashton. I would have noticed them sooner. I would have noticed them last week when I was in Luke's bedroom and he was shirtless. I would remember, because I looked over every inch of his body multiple times. These weren't from Ashton.

"No they're not." I shook my head.

"Yeah, he grabbed onto my wrist really hard." Luke nodded, pulling away from me.

"But I didn't see these last week." I argued back. I wasn't trying to start a fight, I was genuinely worried, but even more worried that Luke wouldn't tell me what was really going on.

"They were there, you must have not looked hard enough." Luke shrugged. "Are you sleeping here tonight?"

"Luke, just tell me what's going on." I begged him, ignoring his question.

"There's nothing going on! If there was something that you needed to worry about I would tell you!" Luke yelled.

"I'm just trying to help!" I shouted back. It made me so angry that Luke didn't seem to trust me enough to tell me these things. I know that he already told me a lot about his life that no one else knew, but there were a few big things that he always refused to talk about, and I wished he would just open up.

"I don't need your help, Stel! I don't need your help, or your sympathy, or anything! I don't need anything from you." Luke screamed. He collapsed on the ground and put his head in his hands, letting out a big groan.

"Fine." I said. I crossed my arms over my chest and leaned up against a wall, sill deciding if I wanted to leave or not.

"Are you sleeping here or not?" Luke asked, sounding slightly annoyed.

"Fine." I repeated.

Luke and I didn't speak again until we were both all ready for bed, laying side by side on the mattress in the corner of the treehouse. It wasn't as cold as I thought it would be, even though I did have about four blankets on me and was wearing one of Luke's sweatshirts.

"I'm sorry." Luke whispered, his hand finding mine under the covers and lacing our fingers together.

"It's alright." I said, closing my eyes.

"I'm sorry." Luke said again.

"I said it's alright." I sighed.

"I don't really know why you continue to put up with me." Luke laughed lightly. "I'm so messed up."

"I like it, I like the way you're messed up." I replied quickly.

And with that I rolled over into Luke, letting his arms fold around me and my head rest on his chest. Sleeping outside wasn't too bad when you had someone holding you.





OKAY SO I UPDATED THREE DAYS IN A ROW BECAUSE IVE BEEN SICK SO IM REALLY BORED AND YEAH DONT EXPECT THIS TO HAPPEN ALL THE TIME. ANYWAY THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH FOR THE NICE COMMENTS AND EDITS AND TRAILERS AND ALL THAT I LOVE YOU ALL SO MUCH AND I HOPE YOU ENJOY THIS UPDATE :-)