A/N: Another update? Oh, snap. Not gonna lie, this chapter was inspired by an actual conversation I had with my best friend about Charlie's lips, and some of the words used to describe them are actual ways we described them. Don't judge me.

Edit: so, I've been trying to post this chapter for the last few days, but it just would not. Here's to hoping that it posts. If you can see this, please just private message me saying that you can.

Chapter Song: Starving by Hailee Steinfeld, Grey, & Zedd

I Didn't Know That I Was Starving Til I Tasted You

They look so…plush.

Julie tensed at that train of thought. Her lips turned upside down as she frowned at the piano. She hated that she couldn't seem to go one second without her mind wandering to places it shouldn't be. This was not the time or place for this. Glancing up, she hoped Luke didn't notice her distracted behavior. Sighing inwardly, she was grateful to find that he hadn't. She tried to focus on what he was saying, but once again her mind drifted, along with her eyes. Her gaze slid to his lips and, not for the first time, she wondered if they were as soft as they looked.

"Earth to Julie."

"Huh?" Eyes finding him, she watched as he smirked.

"You still with me over there?"

"Y-Yeah," she answered. "Yeah, just got… distracted."

He chuckled. "I noticed." Rounding the piano, he took a seat beside her; straddling the bench as he brought his guitar in front of him. "So, I was thinking…" Julie heard nothing after that. Her mind had strayed again; her eyes lingering on his lips. She appreciated the way they formed words, how they seemed to pucker around his O's. Her thoughts dipped into the not-so-innocent territory as she imagined all of the things he could do with them. "Julie!" He waved his hand in front of her face and she snapped out of her head.

"S-Sorry." Her cheeks burned with her fantasy loitering at the edge of her mind.

"Are you sure you're okay?"

She nodded and stood. "I just remembered I have homework to do," she explained, avoiding looking at him. The look of confusion on his face would drag her back into a place she needed to stay away from. She couldn't count how many times she nearly fell flat on her face in her rush to vacate the studio. All she knew was that she needed to put as much distance as she could between herself and Luke.

"Wait, so you just left?" Flynn asks as they laid side by side on Julie's bed.

After her swift exit from the garage, Julie called Flynn for an emergency girl's night. Her best friend arrived with facial masks, ice cream, and a list of cheesy rom-coms to watch on Netflix and Amazon Prime. Julie tried not to mention her weird obsession with Luke's lips, but Flynn saw straight through her and demanded to know what was going on. So, Julie told her everything.

"I had to! If I didn't, I would've continued to make a fool out of myself. I just…" She moved so that she was lying on her side, propped up on her elbow, and picked at a random string on her bedspread, "I can't stop thinking about it. No matter how hard I try, whenever I'm around him, my eyes just go straight to his mouth." Her gaze met her best friend's. "Is that weird?"

Flynn shrugged. "A little bit, but it's understandable." She mirrored Julie's position. "I mean, he is cute. And, even though I've never been close enough to him to see the appeal of it, I will take your word for it that his lips are spectacular."

"Flynn!" she groaned, laughter bubbling in her throat as she flopped onto her back. "I don't know what to do."

"Simple. Kiss him." Julie gave her an incredulous look; unable to believe that Flynn would suggest it. "What? I'm serious. What better way to find out if Luke's lips are as soft as they look than by kissing him?"

"I can't."

"Why not?"

"Well, for one, I don't know if he would want to kiss me." It was Flynn's turn to give Julie a skeptical look.

"Anyone with eyes knows that boy wants to kiss you."

Julie rolled her eyes. "And there's also the fact that I've… Well, I've never kissed anyone before."

"Okay? So?"

"So? So, what if I'm horrible at it? What if he never wants to kiss me again because of it?"

"I doubt he would do that, and the only way to find out is to kiss him. Seriously Jules, stop overthinking it. You like him, he likes you. Just kiss him already and be done with it."

"I wish it were that simple."

"It is that simple. You're just scared when you don't have to be."

"Maybe you're right."

"You know I am."

Grinning, Julie stared at her. "I'm proud of you Flynn. You've gone from trying to convince me that crushing on Luke is a bad idea to trying to talk me into kissing him."

"Oh, I still think you and him are a bad idea that won't end well." She retook her position on her back, staring up at Julie's ceiling before turning her gaze to her best friend. "I don't want you to see you get hurt. But I'm your best friend and your happiness means everything to me. If he makes you happy, then who am I to stop you from wanting to make out with a dead guy."

Julie grabbed Flynn's hand. "Thank you."

Flynn squeezed her hand gently. "'Double Trouble' forever."

With a laugh, Julie leaned her head against Flynn's. She knew her best friend was right, that she needed to stop overthinking this. Her strange preoccupation with Luke's lips wasn't going to go away on its own. She had to do something or she was going to go insane.

The next day, Julie sought him out. She found him where he normally was, holed up in the garage strumming away to the song they'd been working on. She was grateful to see that Alex and Reggie were nowhere to be found, but she didn't know how long that would last and she needed to speak her truth before they came and distracted her from her objective. During the night, Julie had come up with a plan on what she wanted to say to him. She repeated each word on her walk over and was ready to say them. But, then, three things happened in succession.

First, to get his attention, she cleared her throat and his head shot up; his eyes meeting hers.

Second, those same eyes suddenly swept over her form from head to toe and back.

Third, he greeted her with a soft "Hey," and the lopsided grin she loved so much overtook his face.

And all of her preparations were thrown out the window.

"Hey," she responded, suddenly breathless.

Biting his lip as he stood, he set aside his guitar and made his way towards her. Once more, her attention was brought to his mouth. There was something different in the way he approached her, however, as if he knew something. Her warning signals should have gone off, but he was still biting his bottom lip and she couldn't focus on anything else.

"So, I have a question for you." She made a noise of acknowledgment, but her gaze never left his mouth. "Do you really think my lips are spectacular?"

Her eyes widened and found his, noting the twinkle of mischievousness in them. "How…? Boundaries!"

"I know! I know!" He held his hands up in defense. "I didn't mean to eavesdrop, it just happened. I went up to your room to see if you were okay and I overheard you and Flynn talking."

Her cheeks and ears burned in embarrassment and she questioned how much of that conversation he had accidentally overheard. "How… how much of it did you hear?"

"Not… not much else," he answered, scratching the back of his neck. He, at least, had the decency to look guilty about unintentionally listening in on Julie's conversation with her best friend. But she knew that he heard more than what he was confessing to. How else would he know that they were talking about him?

"I thought we promised not to lie to each other."

Green met brown as he hunched his back and shoved his hands in his pocket. If ghosts could blush, Luke would be bright red. "I'm sorry." He sighed. "I did hear what Flynn suggested, but that was it, I swear. I poofed out right after that." She nodded, believing that he was telling the truth.

Moving to take a seat on the couch, she leaned on her knees. She tried to ignore the way her heart hammered in her chest when he sat beside her; his thighs pressed against hers. As the silence stretched on, she watched from the corner of her eye as he twisted the ring on his index finger. Since the night they met, Julie knew that Luke was a ball of pent up energy. He could barely sit still for two seconds. Right now, he was fighting his baser instincts to move around.

"I'm not mad at you, Luke, I just…" She nibbled at her bottom lip, unsure of how to continue. "It's been a weird few days for me."

"I get it. Obsessing over someone's mouth is a bit weird." She rolled her eyes and shouldered him playfully, hearing the smirk in his voice. "Just so you know, though, I'm all for Flynn's suggestion."

Her gaze met his and she could see he was being serious about it. Eyes flickering to his lips, she quickly looked away. She felt her cheeks burning. Here he was, offering to end her misery, and she was too afraid of being inadequate to take him up on it. If Flynn were there, she would be screaming at her to just do it.

"Jules?" He cupped her cheek and shifted her head so that she would look at him. He didn't speak another word. Instead, he leaned in; intending on making good of his word. But she turned her head at the last minute and his lips met her cheek instead. "Sorry," he muttered, dropping his hand.

His apology gave her pause. What was he apologizing for? Looking at him, she realized that he was avoiding her eyes; preferring to keep his focused on his fingers which had gone back to twisting his ring.

"For what?"

He shrugged, still refusing to look at her. "For misreading signs, apparently. I thought…" He let the rest of his sentence fade. "I don't want you to think I'd ever push you to do something you didn't want to do." Julie was confused until she wasn't. Until a lightbulb went off in her head.

Oh. He thought… She laughed breathlessly and slipped her hand between his. It was then that he finally looked at her. "It's not that I don't want to, Luke, I just…" She bit the corner of her mouth, trying to gather her thoughts. "Can I be honest with you about something?"

"Always, Julie."

Her gaze dropped to their joined hands. "I… I've never kissed anyone before, and I didn't want you to think I was bad at it or something." He chuckled and she looked up, unbelieving that he was laughing at her in this situation when she was being so open with him. "I don't think this is funny. If you were just going to laugh at me, I would have kept it to my…" She was cut off by his lips meeting hers. His hands cupped her cheeks as hers grabbed the fabric of his shirt.

The kiss was over before she had a chance to savor it. He remained just a hairsbreadth away from her lips. If he still breathed, she was sure that she would have been able to feel it against her face. "I wasn't laughing at you," he whispered, brushing his nose against hers. "I was laughing at the fact that you think that you could be bad at something."

"I know for a fact that if you handed me your guitar, I would suck at it."

"Because you would need to practice." His thumbs caressed her cheeks and she could feel the callouses on them; their rough textures sending chills down her spine. "There's no such thing as a bad kisser, Jules, just an unpracticed one."

"So, are you saying that you'll help me practice?" she asked with a smirk.

He graced her with his own lopsided smile. "If that's what you want." She bit her lip to stop the Cheshire cat grin from taking over her face. With a deep chortle from the back of his throat, he kissed her again, this time moving his lips softly against hers. She copied his movements, hoping that she was doing it right. "Don't think about it, Jules." He pecked her lips. "Just feel." He tilted his head and pressed his mouth to hers.

Feel, she did. The softness of his lips against hers, the gentle caress of his thumbs on her cheekbones, the beat of her heart as it drummed out a rhythm in her chest, the heat that burned in her lower belly. It was unlike anything she'd ever felt before and she didn't want it to end.

"Hey guys!" came Reggie's voice as he and Alex appeared, causing them to break away. Luke turned towards their bandmates, while Julie buried her face into the crook of his neck. "Oops. I think we interrupted something, Alex."

"Ya think?"

"Do you mind? We were kind of in the middle of something."

"No, it's okay," Julie injected, pulling away from Luke. "We should get to rehearsing anyway." He looked confused, and a little bit hurt as she stood up.

"Julie." He stood and grabbed her hand. "I…"

She kissed him, cutting him off in the same way he had done to her. "We can continue this later," she whispered, staring into his eyes.

He smirked and nodded. She felt his gaze on her back as she took her place behind the keyboard. When she was seated, he moved his feet and went to grab his guitar. Her eyes found his during the song and she swore the normal energy between them had scaled up to an eleven. All because of a simple kiss.

Who was she kidding? That wasn't just a simple kiss. It was a culmination of everything she felt towards Luke – of everything they felt for each other – wrapped up into one intimate action.

When the week started, all Julie could think about was if Luke's lips were as soft as they looked. Now, all she could think about was the next time she would be able to feel them against her own. The look in his eyes told her that she wouldn't be waiting long.