"All the pretty things I tried to say to you

But when I opened my mouth

No, nothing came out

Touch me like you know me

Baby when you're lonely

Kiss me on my open mouth"

✰

Although some of the tension had cleared between them, Arlo still wasn't quite sure how to act. Had Luke accepted her apology? Did he still feel the same? Was he upset? She couldn't tell.

But, Luke did have that familiar small cocky grin on his face as he flips through his notebook, making sure to hide the pages from her line of sight. There were some lines written down inside that he simply couldn't allow her to see- yet.

"I'm going to be honest, everything I write seems to be on the sad side." Luke admits, chewing nervously on his lip. Sharing his art this way was still extremely vulnerable for him, but Arlo made him feel safe enough to do so. "I know the boys want something more upbeat."

"I think they'll take anything at this point." Arlo points out, taking a sip from the coffee cup balanced on her knees. Luke can barely see her fingertips poking out from the sleeve of his jacket as she grips the mug.

He fights the urge to smile. She was just too fucking pretty.

"I really like you in my clothes, you know that?" Luke blurts before he can stop himself. He spent too long biting his tongue about his feelings and even though the last time he was open, he got burned he was willing to risk that pain again- for her.

Arlo's cheeks flush instantly as her eyes avert to the wood table in front of her in an attempt to escape his intense gaze. "I was planning on giving it back." She refers the to gray jacket covering her body. "I was going to earlier in the week but I've been sleeping in it so I had to wash-"

A smirk pulls at Luke's lips. "You were sleeping in my jacket all week?"

Instead of answering, Arlo merely takes a sip of her coffee before picking up a pen and her notebook, flipping it open to an empty page. "You know we really should start writing-"

"Answer me." Luke cuts her off swiftly, leaning his elbows on the table rather than sitting back in his chair so that they're much, much closer. "Were you sleeping in my jacket, sweetheart?"

Arlo's eyes go wide at his low tone, her breath catching in her throat. Her fingers tighten their grip on her pen as she tries desperately to get a grip. Luke was unfairly good at making her feel so... nervous. "I was." She nods.

That same smirk remains on Luke's lips as he begins flipping through his notebook nonchalantly like he hadn't just nearly given the girl a heart attack. "Keep it." He says simply.

The idea of her finding comfort in something that was his made Luke's stomach twist. He didn't know why, for whenever he hooked up with girls they always tried to slip on his discarded shirt after, to which he would decline.

But of course, Arlo was nothing in comparison to those girls. It only made sense that things feel completely different when she does them. In fact, even thinking about Arlo at the same time as his past hookups made Luke sick.

He shakes the thought quickly, forcing himself to focus on the page in front of him. As he flips through the notebook a messily scrawled title catches his attention.

Money

He pauses mid-flip of the page, an idea coming to mind. "I wrote this song about a girl originally, but I think we can turn it into something more to fit the band as a whole." Luke sneaks a glance at Arlo, finding her brows furrowed.

"You wrote it about a girl?" Arlo asks, mentally hoping that Luke can't hear the uneasiness in her tone. Of course he did, he's Luke Hemmings. She scolds herself.

"Mhm." Luke hums, feeding into a game of his own. He'd completely missed the edge in her tone, far too absorbed with sorting through the lyrics on the page. His handwriting always did get messy when he was high.

"I was at a party and I saw this girl." Luke begins, twirling his pen between his fingers as he leans back in his chair, parting his long legs to give him more room. "In the midst of this wild party, all I could think about was her... how I wanted to be anywhere else with her."

"What do you mean?" Arlo furrows her brows, trying to push her jealousy aside to focus on the task at hand. It would be selfish to put her own emotions over the boy's song.

"She just had this way about her." Luke shrugs, a small grin on his face as he reminisces. "There was an absolute rager going on downstairs but she managed to be the most exciting thing in the room and she wasn't even trying. We could have been in the middle of the busiest cities in the country, New York, LA, or Chicago and I still would only be able to look at her."

Arlo's lips part at the boy's words, in awe of how his mind worked. "She really made you feel that way?" The brunette girl asks, her stomach sinking.

"She gave me no choice." Luke confesses. "I was simply too enamored by her to focus on anything else."

He's talking to her, about her and the poor girl has no idea. For, the ideology that she'd never be good enough was still swimming in her mind even after their conversation at the party. If only she saw herself the way Luke saw her, she'd never think that way again.

"Who is she?" Arlo asks hesitantly, wracking her mind for any memory of Luke with a girl the two times she'd been to Calum's house for a party, only to come up empty.

Luke nearly lets a laugh slip until he realizes that she's being serious. Did the girl across from him seriously have no idea what she did to him? He didn't how it was possible she didn't

He decides that maybe, it's due to the fact that he'd never been good with words. Luke had trouble admitting his own emotions to himself, let alone someone else. Maybe, what the girl needed was a physical sign- that was something Luke would excel at.

So, the blonde stands from his chair, towering over the girl sitting across from him. Carefully, and very cautiously just in case she wanted to stop him, Luke takes a step towards the girl, bending down to hover over her.

Arlo looks up wide-eyed at the intimating blue-eyed boy. He was standing over her close enough that she could make out his slight stubble and the sun-kissed freckles on his cheeks and nose. Suddenly, she can't quite breathe.

Luke raises his hand, gently cupping the girl's cheek. He braces his other hand on the table, giving him the support to lean even closer to her- so close that he can smell the way the cologne lingering on his jacket mixes with her floral scent to create an intoxicating combination.

Arlo sucks in a breath as Luke's large hand comes into contact with her cheek, cradling her jaw. She can feel the slight calluses on his fingertips from where he'd been meticulously playing the guitar, the sensation causing a shiver to go down her spine.

Luke notices every minuscule reaction, from the way her chest has begun to rise and fall faster to the slight tremble of her small body as she sits wide-eyed in her chair below him practically waiting for him to do something.

Arlo's lips part as his eyes seem to take in every part of her face, the blue color of his iris suddenly far darker than usual. As her lips part, Luke suppresses a groan, allowing his thumb to circle the soft skin of her cheek before the pad of his fingertip makes contact with the supple skin of her lip.

The girl practically shakes under his touch as Luke allows his thumb to rest on her parted bottom lip for a moment, his eyes fixed on the sight like he was entranced by it. Not wanting to push it too far, Luke drags his thumb away, causing her bottom lip to bounce back into its resting place with a quiet "pop".

Luke clears his throat as he straightens to his full height, his jeans beginning to feel the slightest bit tighter. His girl looks no more composed than he is, as she practically pants from the slight contact, her cheeks as red as can be.

But, he doesn't acknowledge what had happened. Luke merely picks up their empty coffee cups. "The girl in the song is you, Arlo." And before she can collect her words, he disappears to the back room of the shop.

✰

Arlo had managed to drag Luke Hemmings to the small twenty-four-hour diner around the corner.

By the time they had finished the band's third and final song for the competition- Money- the sun had gone down. Luke lit a few candles in the shop and pulled the curtains in front of the large window shut, making the place feel warmer.

When Arlo told Luke she was hungry, she wasn't lying, but that wasn't her real motive either. The girl couldn't stop thinking about Luke living in that bookstore and came to the conclusion that with no kitchen, there was no way he was getting proper meals.

Arlo would have offered to bring him back to her house and cook her a meal in her own kitchen, but that sounded slightly suggestive and well, she couldn't cook if her life depended on it.

Arlo and Luke walk side by side, approaching the small diner less than a block away from the bookstore. The small restaurant was mostly a hangout for drunk college kids and those getting off of a night shift, but considering it was a weekday, the place was fairly empty.

Luke opens the door of the diner, allowing Arlo to walk inside. The girl shoots him a thankful smile before making her way to an empty booth, Luke in tow.

An older man sits at the bar top and a couple of women in scrubs occupy a booth in the back. The only sound other than the quiet chatter of the customers and the sizzle of cooking food coming from the kitchen comes from a jukebox in the corner, playing some song from the fifties.

Luke slides into the booth across from Arlo and slides the girl a menu, his eyes darting around the restaurant. He didn't know how he'd never been here before considering it was so close to the bookstore, but he found he liked it.

Arlo takes a moment to slide Luke's grey jacket off of her shoulders, revealing the outfit she had underneath. Luke swallows thickly as he takes in the sight of the v-neck cropped shirt that she'd matched with a pair of loose jeans with rips in the knees.

Fucking snap out of it. He curses himself, picking up his menu instead of eyeing her chest.

"What are you going to get?" Luke asks in an attempt to distract himself from all of the less than innocent thoughts running through his head.

In his defense, the boy hadn't so much as looked at another girl from the moment Arlo walked into his shop, which was over a month ago. Luke hadn't gone that long without sex since he was fifteen years old and lost his virginity to a girl four years older than him in the back of Calum's car.

"An Arnold Palmer." Arlo answers. "I ran out of lemonade at my house and I was craving one earlier. What about you?"

"Sounds' about like you to get something like that." Luke grins. "I'll probably just get a water." The boy had a nasty hangover from getting drunk in Calum's basement the night before and he had yet to recover fully.

"I used to come here all the time in high school." Arlo says, her body so short in the booth that the menu covers all of her face as she looks through it.

Luke misses the sight of her brown eyes, despite having looked into them all afternoon.

"Really?" He asks, a brow raised. It's now that he realizes that he'd never seen Arlo when he was in school- if he had he certainly would have remembered. "What high school did you go to?"

Arlo places her menu back down, a wince on her face. "The all-girls school on the other side of town." She explains, looking for any signs of judgment on Luke's face. Usually when she told people that they made fun of her or called her a prude. "My parents didn't want me getting distracted."

Luke's lips part in surprise. "You've never had a boyfriend then?"

Arlo chews on her lips nervously, her cheeks flushing. "No, I guess I never really had the chance." She shrugs, fiddling with the frayed edge of the plastic menu. "My entire life I've gone from school to home and then back to school the next day- I never really had time to meet anyone I guess."

Luke rests his elbow on the table, pinching his lip ring in between his pointer finger and thumb. "I guess that explains how we never managed to see each other even though I've been practically living at Calum's for years."

"That's probably for the best." Arlo rests her own elbows on the table, enjoying the subtle way Luke's eyes widen as she brings them closer. "I don't know if you would have liked me when I was younger."

Luke scoffs, disbelief crossing his face. "Bullshit."

Arlo's lips part in faux offense. "It is not... bullshit."

A genuine laugh leaves Luke's lips as she softens the last word, her eyes darting around as if she was waiting for someone to pop out from behind the booth and scold her for it.

"Where'd the dirty mouth come from, hm?" Luke hums tauntingly, his eyes narrowing playfully on the girl in front of him.

"You." Arlo rolls her eyes. She was beginning to enjoy the playful banter between herself and the boy across from her a bit too much. It made it really hard to not fall even harder for him.

"Just because I have a dirty mouth doesn't mean you should too, sweetheart." Luke says lowly, his tongue swiping over his bottom lip in a nature that unintentionally draws the girl's eyes right to his pink lips.

Just as Arlo opens her mouth to respond, their waiter approaches the table. He's around their age, probably just slightly older with shaggy brown hair and dull grey eyes. Tattoos peek out from the top of his uniform shirt and he looks to be bored out of his mind.

Until he sees Arlo.

"What can I get you to drink?" The man- whose name tag reads Cody- asks, his question only directed at Arlo. The prick doesn't even spare Luke a glance.

Luke clenches his jaw as he watches the grimy teenager take a peek at Arlo's chest, the way he's standing above her giving him the perfect opportunity to look down her shirt. Luke balls his first under the table, wishing more than anything that she still had his jacket on.

But, it wasn't her fault that the guy was a piece of shit- she shouldn't have to worry about the clothing she wears, especially not when Luke was there.

"An Arnold Palmer and a water." Luke says, his voice so low and stern that Arlo straightens in her seat, caught off guard by his tone. She hadn't even looked up at the guy yet, her eyes having been focused on her menu.

Cody scowls, looking to Luke as if he was the jerk in the situation. Luke merely cocks his brow, daring the other boy to do something. The idiotic waiter probably couldn't tell due to the way Luke was sitting, but if the blonde boy was standing he would easily tower over him.

"That all?" Cody asks sarcastically, shoving his notepad back into the apron wrapped around his waist.

"We'd like a new waiter too." Luke fakes a grin, practically daring the boy to argue. "Fuck off, will you?"

Cody doesn't bother arguing anymore, his cheeks flushing as Luke puts him in his place right in front of the pretty girl he was trying to impress. The boy merely counts his losses, murmuring curses under his breath as he walks back to the kitchen.

Luke watches him walk to the back with a clenched jaw and blue eyes burning with rage, completely unaware of the clueless girl watching him. Arlo had been so busy trying to decide between a grilled cheese and chicken tenders that the whole interaction had gone right over her head.

Once she looks up to see an angry expression plastered on Luke's face, she furrows her brows in concern. "What's wrong, Luke?"

Luke snaps himself out of it, shaking his head. "Nothing." Fuck it, he decides, allowing his protectiveness to win. "Come here, Lo." He says, leaving no room for argument as he gets up from the booth.

Although she's beyond confused, Arlo slides out from her side of the booth and takes a step towards Luke. Her breath is caught in her throat when the boy's hands find the bare skin of her waist where her cropped shirt doesn't quite meet her jeans, guiding her into his side of the booth.

As soon as Arlo is sitting safely in the booth, Luke slides in beside her and drapes his arm around the back of the booth, his fingertips grazing her bare shoulder.

With his body pressed fully against her own, Arlo can't quite figure out how to breathe. Considering the size of the booth, there was barely space in-between them, so little in fact that if she turned her head too quickly their lips might brush.

Sensing the confused look on the girl's face, Luke merely shrugs. "Just wanted to be closer to you." That was true, but he also wanted to keep her safe.

As a new waiter brings them their drinks, taking their food orders and Arlo begins rambling on about how excited she is to show Calum the new song, Luke does his best to calm himself down.

What had happened moments earlier pissed Luke off to no end, not only because Arlo was his girl, but because the mere thought of anyone being put in a situation like that made him livid

Luke was persuaded into doing things far too young by trying to fit in with an older crowd and he knew first hand what it felt like to be put in an uncomfortable situation. He hated the feeling himself- the mere thought of it made his skin crawl, but the last thing he wanted to do was deck somebody in the face in front of Arlo.

So, he settled with keeping the girl tucked under his arm and listening to her talk about her day. Her voice calmed him down and even though it made him sick to think about how she was completely unaware that some fucker had been looking down her shirt, he was almost glad she didn't know.

Luke didn't think he would be able to hold himself back if he saw Arlo get upset.

By the time that their food gets to the table, it's well into the night and the other customers have left. Arlo takes a bite out of her grilled cheese, a small smile on her face. Luke can feel her legs swinging gently under the table as she gazes out the window.

He smiles too. She was too cute not to smile at.

"Is it that good?" Luke asks, referring to the girl's food. He'd gotten chicken tenders for himself considering he wasn't all that hungry. He'd made himself a sandwich right before Arlo arrived earlier in the afternoon.

"Hm?" The girl snaps herself out of it, her eyes slightly dazed as she gazes up at Luke. "Oh, yeah the foods' good but that's not what I was thinking about." She shrugs.

"Oh, really? What is it then?" Luke raises a brow, sneakily grabbing the other half of her grilled cheese from her plate and taking a bite.

Arlo watches his sharp jaw work as he chews, mentally scolding herself. That should not be that attractive. "This is just nice, that's all." She says hesitantly, her cheeks heating as her eyes find the table.

Luke fights off a genuine smile, his teeth finding's bottom lip to hold back the expression. Luke curls his fingertips under the girls jaw, forcing her eyes to meet his own. "I like doin' this with you too." He admits. "We can do it more often. If you'll let me take you out a couple times a week."