daddy's girl ❥ luke hemmings ✔️

01. "okay then, little girl"

LUKE

Everyone falls in love with something at some point. Whether it be a little kid with aspirations of becoming a professional photographer getting to hold their first inexpensive Nikon lens, or an amateur artist in Paris experiencing the dense walls of the Louvre for the first time. We're all neutral until somebody or something comes along and makes us a little less neutral.

If the love we felt for materialistic things could be interpreted as the same love we felt for others, then I can safely say that my first time truly loving anything in my life was when I was fourteen.

She was seven, and though that makes me sound like a total creep, I'd just like to point out that my fourteen year old self didn't love her like you would a spouse. I loved her differently, but I didn't feel anything more than- for example- what a protective older brother would for his much younger baby sister.

I fell for a little girl with doe eyes and an innocent smile. I fell for her naive expressions and the questions that had me squirming in my seat because they weren't things you'd normally ask, yet she'd ask them anyway because if she wanted something then she'd go for it with all the determination in the world and the thing that she wanted was an answer. I fell for the way she'd listen to said answer. But I didn't fall in that way, no- I loved her with every fibre of my being but I didn't love her like that. She was just the little girl with a Dora the Explorer backpack; the little girl I looked forward to playing teacups and Barbie dolls with after a show just to see the light shine on her face, the little girl with an abundance of imaginary friends yet little to no real ones because she moved around a lot with her mother. But that's all she ever really was. A young girl I looked after as if she was my own.

I remember the first time we were introduced to her. Rachel, a single mother of twenty-five years at the time, pushed her forward, desperate to get our reactions out of the way so that we wouldn't be spending the rest of the tour wondering where on earth this child came from.

"Sophie," she cooed. The seven year old just stared at us, terrified for dear life after being abruptly shaken awake from a dreary two hour nap. "These are the boys I work with."

I grimaced at the use of 'boys' because I was fourteen and desperate to prove that I was a little more mature than the other guys my age. I crossed my arms and tried to keep up a rough image, even as little Sophie Hayes skirted anxiously around the three other lads I called my best friends, before she stopped and held her hand out to me. I shook it, hoping to keep a straight face. It didn't work. My expression softened and so did something in my chest as I saw her smile widen, and from then on I silently vowed never to let the corners of her lips fall.

I went through with that promise. Gradually, Sophie and I got closer, a lot closer, and she became like the little sister I never had but always wanted due to growing up with two older brothers. I found myself looking out for her and making sure that she was never upset or bored or lonely or annoyed with me. Whenever she was any of those things, I felt like I had to act fast. Fortunately, I always did.

Even after the tour was over, we kept in touch. I don't think the other guys cared enough to keep in contact with her but they'd be estatic whenever she was on the phone, or on her mother's Skype account to call me. They never went through the extra trouble, though. I understood why. Sophie had no real connection to us as a group, but we loved her all the same. I was just happy to be there for someone who cared for me just as much as I cared for them.

Then the strangest, most bizarre thing started happening. Sophie had never met her father, much less knew who he was- and because of that, it was somehow drilled into her mind that the closest thing to a Dad she'd ever get was someone she spent the most time with, someone of the opposite sex- and that person was me.