Chapter Seven. There's Always Something In The Way
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AN: I am very sorry for how long it's been since I updated. Life has again been keeping me and my beta both very busy – schoolwork is mean. Anyway, here is chapter seven. I hope you are still reading and like the chapter. Thanks for the reviews! This chapter's title is from 'You' by Switchfoot.
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The early morning light flowed into the kitchen as Lucas stood at the counter the following day, pouring coffee into a red mug. The coffee swirled as Lucas gave it a stir and then took a sip. He heard the squeak of feet on the wood floor behind him and turned around to see Brooke. Her hair was messy and she rubbed her eyes, she had clearly just woken up. She was dressed in very pink and very short shorts and a white tank top that she hadn't worn in a while. Lucas had noticed that since they had drifted apart, Brooke had been wearing more covering sleepwear.
"Good morning." He said.
"Morning." She replied, with a tone of sleepiness and slight confusion.
There was silence for a moment and Lucas took another sip of his coffee as Brooke sat down on a stool at the kitchen counter. He saw she was looking at him and looked down into his mug.
"Um.." he hesitated slightly. "You want some coffee?"
"I can get it.." she responded, not abruptly but nervously. She stood up but Lucas stopped her with his words and a raised hand.
"No, it's okay, I'll get it." He wanted to show her he was trying, and while it didn't seem like much, it had been forever since Lucas had offered something simple like getting her coffee.
"Okay.." Brooke sat back down as Lucas' back faced her while he poured her some coffee into a matching red mug. He picked the mug up by the handle and turned back around and handed it to her. She took it by the base.
"Thanks." She said as she gave him a closed-mouth smile just barely bringing out her dimples.
"Sure," he replied.
There was silence in the apartment once again as the two sipped their coffee, the only sound that could be heard was the slight noise of traffic on the street outside. Brooke subconsciously lightly tapped the fingers of her left hand on the countertop nervously as she began to speak.
"So did I tell you? I don't have college today because my lecturer had to cancel our class."
"Oh, no you didn't." he spoke quickly but not in any way that suggested he was upset, rather he was simply answering her question. "That's lucky for you. That he cancelled, I mean." He continued.
"Yeah." She paused before carrying on, "So I was thinking, do you have a long-ish break over lunch today, I was thinking maybe we could have lunch?" She looked up hesitantly.
Lucas subconsciously raised his eyebrows ever so slightly. "Yeah, that sounds good." He smiled lightly then continued. "My break's only 40 minutes, but we could have eat on campus?" he suggested.
"Okay. That'll be good." She nodded and smiled.
xxx
As they sat in a small café close to one of the main buildings on campus, Brooke took a bite of her toasted sandwich, and noticed Lucas was looking at her. She dabbed her face with her napkin, feeling slightly awkward. It was strange, but she had that feeling that the girl in the movies always felt on the first date with the brilliant dreamy guy. The feeling of nervousness and hesitance and the fear of doing or saying something stupid. She had only experienced that feeling a couple of times before, when she was befriending Lucas again at the end of their junior year, and slowly falling in love with him again.
"Nice?" Lucas asked, and it took Brooke a second to realise he was referring to her food.
"Mm.." she said and nodded, not wanting to speak with her mouth full. She swallowed. "How's your pasta?"
"It's good." Lucas replied as he forked some pasta. Brooke nodded and smiled. "You want to try some?" he asked.
"Uh okay, sure." Brooke looked down and picked up her fork but as she looked up she saw that Lucas had already forked some pasta onto his own fork and was offering it out to her. Slightly embarrassed, she put her fork down and took his fork from him. She bit the pasta off the fork and handed the fork back to Lucas as she chewed and then swallowed. "Mm, that is good," she said. Lucas smiled.
"How's college been lately?" Lucas asked after a moment of silence. He felt strange asking such a question, a question you would ask a friend you hadn't seen for a while, not your girlfriend whom you live with.
"It's been good." Brooke replied, the minute after she said it thinking how dumb it was that she couldn't think of anything better to say than that. So she continued, "actually it's been pretty busy. In a few weeks, there's this fashion show competition sort of thing, we all have to present our two items we've been working on and they give out awards."
"Oh cool, what are you making?" Lucas asked. Brooke tried not to let it bother her that he didn't know what she was making, after all she had been working on her dresses for months and he should have seen her working on them. Yet she reminded herself that she hadn't even told him about the competition so he could hardly be expected to know that's what the dresses were for.
"Evening dresses." She replied. Lucas nodded and gave her a smile.
"And so what do you get if you win?"
"Well there are three prizes, and they are all different amounts of cash to be put towards materials and things for your clothes."
"That would be useful."
"Yeah. But I'm not going to win, everyone's is so talented." She replied quickly, as she gave a light laugh and looked down at her plate.
"So are you." Lucas said, and Brooke looked up and met his gaze.
She gave him a small smile. "Thanks".
The brief moment was broken by someone appearing beside their table.
"Lucas, hey man," they said.
Brooke looked up. She vaguely recognised the guy, but she wasn't sure who he was. But Lucas obviously knew.
"Daniel, hey," Lucas replied. Daniel was an acquaintance of Lucas', the two were in some of the same classes at college. He turned to Brooke, who looked a little lost. "Brooke this is Daniel, we have some of the same classes," he explained. "Daniel, this is my…" he paused briefly, but then continued with an unexpected sincerity and pride in his words, "my girlfriend, Brooke'.
"Hey, yeah I think we might have met once ages ago," Daniel said cheerfully.
"Yeah, I think so," Brooke replied.
"I was just grabbing something to eat before class. We've got Camden's class at one o'clock right?"
"Yeah," Lucas confirmed with a nod. He looked across at Brooke, and then up at Daniel standing beside their table. Daniel was nice, but somewhat socially awkward. He made no sign of leaving and so Lucas reluctantly spoke. "Do you want to join us?"
"Really? That would be great. I'd feel dumb sitting by myself."
"Sure," Lucas smiled. Daniel took a chair from the next table and pulled it up beside them, while Lucas looked across at Brooke and mouthed a "sorry". Brooke smiled lightly and shook her head, shrugging it off. She truly didn't mind Daniel sitting with them. It somehow made her feel like Lucas and herself were momentarily back to normal, finding herself sitting there and casually hanging out with her boyfriend and his friend. She also could not deny the happiness she was feeling from having heard Lucas introduce her as his girlfriend, instead of just with her name.
"So Tommy's party the other night was pretty great, huh?"
"Yeah it was," Lucas replied casually.
"I was actually gonna ask you," Daniel began. "This is kind of lame but, do you know if that blonde girl you were talking to has a boyfriend? I'm kinda interested..." he trailed off. Lucas panicked, why did Daniel have to say that? This was not going to be good. He felt Brooke looking at him, or more probably, glaring at him. Brooke tried not to jump to any conclusions. So he spoke to a random girl, what did that matter?
"Oh, I don't know actually," Lucas responded, before trying to change the subject. "Did you do the reading for Camden's class?"
"Nah, do I ever?" Daniel laughed. "What was that blonde's name anyway? I wanted to talk to her but she left early."
Lucas didn't know what to do. Brooke was probably already a little concerned, but she didn't know who the blonde had been. If she did, she would surely go beyond a little concerned. They were making progress, he didn't want that to be compromised. But somehow, he wasn't sure there was any way out this situation that wouldn't upset Brooke, short of lying. But that was never a good idea; Lucas had learnt that from experience. He decided to follow the age-old saying that honesty was the best policy.
"Daniel, I'm really sorry. But do you think you could excuse us. I just really need to talk to Brooke," Lucas said, trying not to sound too rude.
"Oh, okay then," he stood up. "I guess I'll see you in class."
"Yeah, I'll see you in class. Thanks, Daniel," Lucas said. Daniel wandered off. It was hard to tell if he was upset or not.
Lucas turned to Brooke. Her expression was difficult to read, it was as if she was holding off emotion or judgement, waiting to hear what he was going to say.
"I went to Tommy's party a few nights ago. And when I was there, I ran into Peyton," he figured he should just say it. "I didn't know she was going to be there and it was the first time I had seen her since graduation. Apparently she's friends with Tommy's girlfriend."
Brooke didn't know what to say. She was angry, even if that wasn't justified, that was how she felt. She knew how she reacted would perhaps be an indication of how far they really were in working things out. Of how right Lucas had been when he had said Brooke always needed reassurance that he wasn't going to hurt her again, how she didn't truly trust him. But this - Peyton and her sudden reappearance in Lucas' life - it suddenly spun Brooke back to two years ago when Peyton and Lucas had hurt her more than she thought it was possible for her to hurt.
Suddenly, Brooke felt unsteady, physically as well as emotionally. She closed her eyes as she felt the sound of the quiet café become too much, as if every person in there was closing in on her, pointing and laughing that she become that girl again, that girl caught between two people obviously destined to be together, and her being too stupid to realise that she was the roadblock on their path to happiness.
"Brooke?" Lucas spoke, learning forward and catching her hand in his, obviously concerned when her eyes remained closed and her brow furrowed. Suddenly, feeling his hand on hers, Brooke's eyes sprang open. She looked at his hand cradling her own, and how perfect the joined hands looked made her want to scream. Why did everything about him, everything about them, have to constantly try to fool her into thinking they would be okay?! That they were meant to be! Her eyes glazed with anger and she jumped up out of her seat so suddenly that the woman at the table behind of them jumped in shock. Brooke picked up her bag and threw it roughly over her shoulder as she stormed out of the café.
She hurried away from the café and into a wide grassed area of the campus – where she and Lucas had once sat as she quizzed him for an exam – whilst Lucas chased after her. Brooke was walking so fast it could nearly be classified as running and Lucas, who had had to rummage around for some cash to leave on the table to pay for their meal, was a way behind her.
"Brooke!" he called out, as he dodged a group of giggling girls sitting on the ground.
Brooke made no attempt to stop, and was nearing the main campus building before Lucas finally was able to catch up to her somewhat.
"Brooke!" he tried again, and still she didn't stop. But then, he was right behind her, and he could have caught her arm in his if he had wanted to, but he didn't. He couldn't do that. It wasn't fair. Instead, he hopelessly brushed his fingers down the back of her left arm before he stopped and bent over a little, uttering a desperate "please.." as Brooke continued to move away. But then, she stopped. And when she turned around, Lucas thought he saw worry in her eyes.
"Your heart.." she began, looking at Lucas' chest as he bent over and appeared pained. "The HCM.. are you-" she continued, but Lucas cut her off. She couldn't be more wrong about how his heart was hurting.
"No, it's fine," he said and Brooke gave a sharp nod before the hurt returned to her eyes and she looked like she was about to turn back around. "Brooke, please don't walk away. I swear to you, nothing happened with Peyton."
Brooke's eyes misted up and her voice started to break. "You know what, Luke? For the past year and a half, it has brought me so much.." she struggled to find the right word before continuing, "..relief, that I didn't have to hear those words from you anymore."
Lucas stood up straight as he listened to what she was saying. He truly wanted to understand. Brooke continued speaking. "It felt so good that your assurance that you and Peyton were just friends, was not something I had to try and believe anymore. Because she was gone. Not in our lives, " she said.
"And I missed her, I did, Lucas. She was my best friend in the entire world, and I loved her. But all those days she was gone; I loved not having to worry about the two of you. About whatever world the two of you share that I can't pretend to understand. But this…" she raised her hands, defeated, "…the two of you… I can't deal with it anymore. I just can't. I thought it was over… but," she laughed, a bitter laugh, and the sound of it made Lucas quiver in sheer pain and fright. "I guess it will never be."