12. meeting luke.

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"I'm... sorry?" there's no better thing to say so I stick with this. It's stupid, and it sounds so obviously fake, but it's all that I have right now.

"Sorry," Luke repeats over the line, and I hear a slow chuckle. He's probably shaking his head at my words, like he always does, because he never believes whatever lie I've managed to construct. "...Right."

"I panicked."

"I know,"

"I just didn't want to see you,"

"I know." his words are coming out somewhat pained as I twiddle my thumbs, not knowing what to apologise for next.

"It's not you," I tell Luke, as if that's enough to soften the blow. I feel like I'm breaking up with someone, and I feel like I should be even more sorry regardless of the fact that I'm not obligated to apologise for any choice that I make. "It's... me?"

I hear a sigh. I envision him shrugging. "It's okay."

I know it's not okay, because out of all of the times I've managed to avoid the topic of actually meeting him, this seems to put the icing on the cake. I had the oppurtunity to meet Luke, but I ran away. And the worst part is that he saw me.

Much like our past recent phone calls, this one ends quickly. I find myself waiting for Luke to say goodbye more often than I should. Sometimes I'm convinced that he wants to carry the conversation on, but then remembers that he's supposed to be angry at me and doesn't.

The next day, school is hectic and I have no idea why. I step through the double doors with the girls by my side, all of us immediately being bombarded by different groups of people.

Chloe and Bailey thankfully get to their classes in one piece, but unfortunately, I can't say the same for myself. Or Ashley, because I don't know where she's gone.

"Sophie, Sophie!" a voice yells.

"Hey, Hayes! Over here, a sec,"

"Sophie, can we talk to you?"

I dodge the group of freshmen that run past me, some of them looking me up and down before exchanging knowing looks between each other. I suddenly feel very self-conscious.

"Soph! Is it true?" I'm pulled to side, away from the busy crowd yet in an uncomfortably small corner.

"Is what true?" I furrow my eyebrows at Ellie Hicks, the girl in front who both saved and trapped me. My eyes bore deep into her hazel ones as she stares back at me in awe.

"That you and-"

"Sophie Eleanor! Over here," I'm ripped away like a piece of loose paper by someone else, a grey-haired girl who I have yet to name seeing as she's in the grade below us.

Nevertheless, she's much more known in the school than I am, and it's a wonder why she's suddenly so hellbent to talk to me. "Hi!" she says, chirpily.

Confused, I sling my bag further up my shoulder, seeing Ellie walk away with an eye roll behind us. "Uh, hi?"

"My name's Beth," the girl says, flicking a long lock of dyed silver back. "I'm in your photography class!"

I want to tell her that I don't do photography and have never held a camera in my life, aside from the one on my phone. But I'm genuinely curious as to what she wants so I keep quiet, nodding my head slowly to replace my words.

"Right."

"You don't remember me? We took pictures together in the seventh grade!" now, I don't remember a lot from the seventh grade, but I'm almost certain that never happened.

"Oh, no. I know you," I say, the easy lie sitting on my tongue like sugar.

"Oh, good!"

"Mhm-"

"Anyway, I was looking through my Twitter feed," she then begins, pulling her phone out and typing in the passcode. "And I saw some things!"

"That's... great?"

"Yeah, I saw some, retweeted a few more. Apparently you know someone that I know?"

What?

"I do?"

"You do," she smiles. It's fake; so evidently planned that it's hard for me to give her a real one back.

"Oh. Who would that-"

"Sophie," Ashley's the one to interrupt us, wading through the crowd with a firm look on her face.

She sends a slight frown the girl's way, before looking at me and placing a hand on my shoulder. "Come on. We'll be late,"

"Just a few seconds, Ashley. I want to talk to your friend," Beth says, politely, though the amount of mixed signals I've been getting from her makes me doubt that any of it is genuine.

"So do half of the school. You're not special," my best friend says back, her voice so monotone that I have a difficult time believing it's her. "Let's go." she says to me.

I nod my head slowly, letting my arm fall from Beth's grip. She just waves, keeping the same fake smile on her face.

It's not until we turn the corner that I turn back subtley, a shiver going down my spine as it turns into a smirk.

"What was that about?" I ask Ashley, rushing to keep up with her. About half of the school hall have their eyes trained on me; some bewildered, some disgusted, some even in awe, like Ellie.

I don't look back at any of them. I just keep my head down, unsure of how to act now that I've been given attention I don't want.

"Have you been on Twitter lately?" Ashley asks me, turning her head away from me as we come up to her locker.

A group of football players in our grade crowd right in front of it, making her scowl at them all. "Move, meatheads,"

"Woah, Fitzy. Chill," the one at the front scoffs, straightening his briad posture. He's holding a ball, and my eyes widen once Ashley doesn't hesitate to rip it out of his grasp; lobbing it down the hall with one quick throw.

"Go fetch." she says, in the most sarcastic tone I have ever heard from her.

They give her dirty looks, but they do what she says anyway. It's quite entertaining to see a bunch of hard-headed jocks sprinting down a hallway of people just to get a hollow ball made up of rubber.

"You're not in the best mood," I say, folding my arms as I lean against the locker next to Ashley's.

She opens her own, shaking her head. "I'm pissed off, that's why."

"Why?"

"Why?" she looks at me, as bewildered as the first few people we passed earlier on. "Jesus, Sophie, have you ditched the world of social media altogether?"

"I only have Instagram," I tell her honestly.

"And you're private on there?"

"Yes."

"Have you been looking at your feed lately? Have you opened your inbox?"

"No," I say. "I don't have anything to check."

"How do you talk to Luke?"

"He calls me, or texts me. The only times I ever actually open the app are when Bailey forces me to like her recent,"

"Fucksake," she breathes out, shutting her locker door, a bunch of books crowded in her arms.

"What's going on?"

"I think you made a mistake, Soph. I think we all did,"

"What?" I frown.

Her voice is a hushed whisper, and her glare goes towards anybody who passes us that might be listening in on the conversation. "Adding the guys to the chat, making you reply to Luke,"

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"You're on every single exposing account I've seen today," she tells me. At the slight mention of the word 'exposing', my heart skips a beat. "There are pictures of you on fucking groupie pages,"

"What?!"

"Some fans dug deep, I'm telling you. They looked at Luke's follows, his tweets and even his comments," Ashley explains. The bell rings, but she holds my arm to keep me in place. "It was alright for a bit, I knew you wouldn't care if I told you but some people are even following you now,"

"Like, what, on Instagram?"

"Oh, I wish. There are pictures of you in the fucking supermarket yesterday on this 5SOS debunking profile," she taps something on her phone. An image comes up, and I recognise me, Dylan and Chase immediately.

"Slow breaths, Ash. Tell me everything slowly-"

"It doesn't help that you live in LA. You know how far people here will go to get a rumour out of the way?" my statement is ignored, swapped for one that makes my heart pound.

"But- I- what?" I'm utterly speechless. "The most I've done with Luke is talk to him over the phone! Why am I on there?" I refer to the account, gesturing to the picture of me taken from the back. "Is it because we were at the same place at the same time? I didn't even know he was there until Ash-"

"It's not because of that," Ashley shakes her head at me. She then exits the first account and brings up another one. "It's because of this."

I shake my head, attempting to clear it of any jumbled up thoughts before I stare at the screen before me.

It's a set of pictures- kind of blurry, but still decipherable- of Luke. The first one is him stood next to Ashton in the check out line, squinting at something in the distance.

"Oka-"

"Hush. Keep looking."

The second one is of him beginning to walk away from the drummer, looking frantic with his phone clutched in his hand. Inside, I pray for it to be just a coincidence, a candid that has no purpose. But then I swipe to the third picture, and my heart drops.

In the glass window of the supermarket, a clear image of three people and a shopping cart approach a car parked right in front. Luke's in mid-run out of the store, hand paused in the action of raking it through his hair.

"Look at the last one," Ashley instructs. That's what I do, even though my fingers have completely frozen over now due to how anxious I am.

In the last picture, our car is out of sight. But Luke's still at the front of the store, this time an obvious figure in the sunlight, looking pissed and disappointed and even somewhat aggravated. The camera captures his facial expression perfectly. I could envision it all on the phone call just the night before.

My heart races as I lower the phone. I look back up at Ashley, and she takes it from me with a sigh.

"That's on every single fan account and web article I've read this morning," she tells me. My mouth goes numb.

"H-How did they-"

"I don't know. A fan must have seen Luke there and took a picture of him before they actually asked for one. Then they saw you, saw him, and took a lot more." she swipes back and forth between every shot, making my stomach churn in unease. "Even though, Soph. These pictures are all over the internet,"

"What- why would someone do that?" I ask, though I already know the answer. Luke Hemmings is Luke Hemmings and that title doesn't come without a price. "Oh, my god. What do I do?"

"What can you do?" someone shoves past us, completely accidental, yet Ashley pushes them back with a fierce look. "Watch it, fuckhead!"

"Hey, calm down," I say, a hand on her arm as I send an apologetic look to the person she nearly knocked over. "You seem way angrier about this than I do." I then tell her, jokingly.

Ashley sighs, before shaking her head. "What can I say?" she starts. "It's my job as your best friend to be angry enough for the both of us."

"I appreciate it," I tell her, wringing my arm through hers.

We begin to walk to class together, but we never make it. We're late enough already, so Ashley decides to make a spontaneous decision, and we end up spending the rest of the hour under the bleachers in the football field.

It's an hour well spent, even if it's all in silence. Ashley has some homework she needs to do, due next period, and I have a few fan accounts to go through myself.

A lot of them are just theories, all fan-based and untrue. One calls me Luke's secret girlfriend. Another calls me his groupie. I see one account that's determined to prove me as his long lost sister and I almost laugh; we look absolutely nothing alike, but okay.

"What are you going to do?" Ashley asks me, peering up from a page of the textbook she's been analysing for the past half an hour. I shrug, admitting defeat in a way.

"I don't know," I mumble.

"I know you don't want to," she begins, and that's how I know to brace myself for whatever she's about to say next. "But you need to clear things up."

"How am I supposed to do that?"

"Talk to Luke. Get him to unfollow you, or something, or make a Twitter and tweet that you've never met him before,"

"And what if that doesn't work?"

"In the most helpful way possible, they probably won't. The fans probably won't even listen to you," Ashley says. I frown. "You know it's true. We're fans too, and you know for a fact that we wouldn't listen even if Calum got married and told us that Cashton wasn't real."

"Okay, very true."

"I say meet up with him," Ashley then suggests. My head snaps in her direction.

"That's exactly what I shouldn't do," I say.

"Not in public, that would be a mistake," she says. "But in secret. Give him what he wants, which is probably just to meet you,"

"Right. But then what?" I ask her. "Meeting him won't do anything. Not much, at least,"

"It'll make him less determined to see you again if he's already seen you once. Then he won't try to chase after you and there'll be no pictures," Ashley explain, and I'm taken back to the day at the supermarket. "Then you give it some time, wait for some other girl to be seen with Luke, and it'll all be over before you know it."

"Can't I just call him?"

"No, you can't half-ass it. It might not be enough."

It's a smart plan, I'll give her that. But it's also not very practical; there's a problem with meeting Luke, trying to stay away from him afterwards, and pretending like everybody is the same and will conform to the idea that I'm just a blip on the fandom timeline. Not to mention the fact that there's a high possibility we'll be seen together.

Then again, I could talk to him. Explain why I can't meet him all the times after that, and why he needs to unfollow me, why he needs to delete his comments, why he needs to unlike my pictures and why he needs to detach himself from me altogether. I just don't like the attention, and that's all I'll ever get if I don't talk to Luke about it as soon as I can.

I could do it over text, or over call. But like Ashley said, that might not be enough. It might take a whole lot more than a single message to convince him.

Eventually, after a while of contemplating, I decide that enough is enough. I put Ashley's phone down, and pick up my own.

The line rings for a few seconds. The second school bell rings at the same time, and I accept the fact that we'll probably be missing our next period too due to how lazy and uneager we are to move.

"Hello?" after a few more rings, I hear a voice on the other line. I sit up instantly, putting it on loudspeaker for Ashley to hear.

Looking up from her book, she gazes at me, on high alert. "Sophie?" the person says. "You alright? You never call me this early,"

"Luke," I begin, clearing my throat. For a split second, Ashley's inner fangirl comes out and she jumps up, but it disappears and she sits back down once she remembers the main thing on my mind. "We need to talk,"

"Oh?" he sounds confused. I hear shuffling; probably the sound of him sitting up. "Uh, okay. Sure. Are you okay? What's up?"

"No, uhm, not like this," I say, swallowing the lump in my throat. Ashley's eyes widen.

"What are you doing?" she mouthes.

"Not like this?" Luke repeats, sounding even more puzzled. "What do you mean? Do you want me to FaceTime you, or something-"

"Are you busy today?" I interject. He pauses.

"Well," I wait for him, patiently. "I'm supposed to be at the studio-"

"Oh. That's fine, don't worry about-"

"But I can make some time." Luke's voice is quick and stern, as if he's afraid of saying one wrong thing and slipping up altogether.

"Oh, okay. Okay, good," I breathe out, suddenly nervous. I slowly find myself regretting this impulse call, but there's very little I can do to take it all back now.

"Can you... can you meet me, somewhere? After school?"

I hear a light laugh. "You're funny, Soph."

"I'm being serious,"

"Yeah, and I'm secretly Michael."

"No, Luke," I sigh, unable to put myself across as serious. "I'm not kidding. We need to talk, and we need to do it in person,"

"Alright." just when I think we're on the same page, Luke speaks again. "Where is Sophie and what have you done with her?"

"Luke!" I say, on a borderline shout. "I'm not joking, I swear. I'll even come to you myself if I have to,"

"What, for real?" Luke asks, surprised. There's also a hint of excitement to his voice as he brings the phone closer to him.

"Well, yeah," I say, exasperated now. Then I realise how rude I sound, so I fix my tone. "If that's alright with you."

"Of course that's alright with me!" he says quickly. "Oh, fuck, yeah, that's great. I'm not doing anything today anyway. That's cool," I almost smile at his attempt at being laidback. "What time do you finish?"

"Three. But I can leave earlier," I say. Ashley raises an eyebrow at me.

"Earlier?" she mouthes.

"Help me leave?" I mouthe back, referring to the school fence that you physically have to climb over when the gate's locked. She just nods.

"Earlier sounds good. Do you have a time?" it may just be me, but I can hear the jingling of his car keys already.

"I-I don't know. Twelve, maybe?"

"Yeah, yeah! That's great," Luke's smiling, and I can tell that he is by the way his voice goes up. "Fuck, okay, this is happening. Can you send me your school address? Wow, that sounds creepy, but you know what I mean-"

"Yeah, I can," I tell him, unable to control my own smile. "I'll text it to you."

"Okay-" Luke begins, but a distinct shouting in the background makes him pause his words.

There's some muffled talking over the line, before whatever is being held over the speaker is removed and I can hear his single voice once again.

"I have to go, doll, but I'll see you soon, okay? Keep your phone on, I want to be able to call you once I'm outside,"

"I will," I say, nervously fiddling with the zip on my bag. I have no idea what lone emotion to feel so I push it all to the back of my mind, excitement and fear being my main priorities right now.

I take a deep breath, gathering myself as I get ready to end the call. "I'll see you soon, Luke."

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