gone ✧*｡ luke a.u.

45: october 18 2011

LUKE

SATURDAY, 18TH OCTOBER, 2011

"Are you crazy? You just let her leave like that?"

"I don't know what else I was supposed to do," Luke responded, pacing back and forth across the floor of his bedroom with his phone to his ear. "It all just . . . happened."

"But she came to you last night crying out for help. She obviously wasn't okay," Calum pointed out. "You let her leave feeling—well, still not okay."

Luke let out a frustrated sigh and raked one hand through his hair, still wavy and messy from sleep. "Look, I get it, Cal. I'm an asshole—"

"True."

"—but I had every right to say how I felt. How I'm feeling," Luke finished.

"Of course you had a right. Everyone has a right. But from the sounds of it, you kind of just let loose on her."

"I did not."

"Well, it's not as if she would have left thinking, 'Oh, all this happened, but it's okay, Luke still cares about me and loves me so I'm not gonna feel despondent.'"

"I told her I still love her!"

"Right before you told her in more or less words that it was over! Look, Luke, girls are simple. Generally speaking, they like food, they like not being fucked around with, they like not being confused, they're usually smarter than you and appreciate when you acknowledge that, and—again, generally speaking—they like receiving hugs. I don't know what about this you think is complicated."

"I guess Ellie's more . . . enigmatic than most people," Luke muttered. "Anyway, aren't you supposed to be on my side? You know, as the best friend and all?" He had stopped pacing, and now lay on his bed staring at the ceiling, pasted with old glow-in-the-dark plastic stars that no longer glowed.

"Sure," Calum said equably, "but I feel for her. I mean, her life's pretty messed up—Mum, I'm on the phone." Luke heard the distant, tinny sound of someone speaking on the other end of the line, and then Calum said, "I know, Mum. I'll do it later." A door closed, and Calum's voice returned, more clearly, to address Luke. "Anyway," he said, "all I'm saying is that if I were you, I'd check how she was doing, at least."

"What? But according to you I just, like, crushed her heart, or whatever! Do you know how awkward it's gonna be to talk to her? Like, at all?"

"Jesus Christ, Luke. Do it tomorrow or the next day, then. Oh, and, uh, grow a pair of fucking balls while you're at it."

Luke let out a long, miserable groan and rubbed a hand over his face. He wanted to go back to sleep more than anything else right now, but knew it would be impossible to rest, plagued by thoughts of Ellie and the look on her face as he'd shut the front door behind her. He had cried earlier—briefly, tears borne out of an incomprehensible mixture of anger and guilt, frustration and pain and longing—and while he wasn't crying now, he still felt the red-eyed, aching bone-weariness that came with tears.

"What about you, though?" he said to Calum, more because he wanted the attention away from himself than because he was really interested. "Have you grown a pair and sorted out your own shit with Ashton yet?"

"No," Calum admitted. "I'm not really sure he's ever going to forgive me. You know how he is. Stubborn as all hell, and intimidating when he's mad."

"Bake him a cake or something," Luke suggested, rather unhelpfully. "Write on the top in icing: I AM SORRY FOR FEELING YOUR GIRLFRIEND'S TONGUE WITH MY TONGUE."