Chapter 14 #2
I study him pensively. “We’ve still got a couple of hours to go. We’ll cross the bridge in a bit, but there aren’t many rest stops before we get to the camp. So, if you gotta go, now’s the time.”
“Okay.”
“Are you sure you’re all right?” I ask again. I can’t help it. It’s unusual seeing him so uptight, and the real fear in his eyes worries me.
Luke sighs and looks at me after a moment of silent contemplation. “I just had a nightmare. That’s all,” he says softly—embarrassed. “I’m okay. Really.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“I don’t,” Luke replies a little too quickly, and his eye twitches. But then he looks at me and smiles, small but genuine. “But thank you.”
I nod. I can tell he’s still shaken up, but he’s trying to brush it off and lighten the mood, so I let it go.
As we get out of the truck and head toward the building, Luke suddenly stops and stretches out his back in a positively feline way, with his arms up behind his head.
His shirt rises a bit over his waist with the motion, and my eyes dart down to those goddamn sparrows tattooed on his stomach the moment they’re on display, as if they’re calling to me like a siren song.
I silently curse myself for being too weak to look away.
This time, Luke 100% catches me staring, and he cocks his head to the side, arching a brow at me curiously. Oh, fuck.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asks, deadpan.
Fuck, shit, fuck. “Oh, you know,” I say quickly, thinking on my feet.
“Just contemplating how ridiculously unfair all of that is—” I gesture broadly to the front of him.
It’s not a lie, but if he questions it, it can easily be explained away as mere jealousy instead of salacious ogling, “—and how that highway is starting to look like a great place to take a nap.”
Luke stares at me blankly, like he’s buffering before he suddenly bursts out laughing and drops his jaw, gaping at me with awe and the unmistakable glint of satisfaction. “Did you just make a joke about unaliving yourself? Mr. ‘I’m too serious to joke about serious things?’”
My eyes widen in shock. “Shit. I think I did.”
“I’m rubbing off on you!” Luke crosses his hands over his heart with an exaggerated look of pride, like he’s watching his child walk for the first time.
“Shut up, dick.” I roll my eyes and shove him backward playfully as I turn and head toward the restrooms. He follows with a Cheshire grin plastered on his face.
I know Luke’s teasing me about the joke, but he’s not wrong.
Before I met him, no one would have caught me making jokes like that, especially given my history.
It shocked me how often he casually wished to take what he called a ‘forever nap’ when we started talking, and how unserious he was about it.
The dark sense of humor is part of his personality, and being chronically online seems to have made words like “unalive” and “delulu” become a permanent fixture in his vocabulary.
The first time Luke used the phrase “I’m going to lie down on the tracks,” it confused the shit out of me, making me feel incredibly old and out of touch.
He had shared a TikTok of two men in a long-term relationship spanning multiple decades since high school.
It posited whether their younger selves had any idea what kind of life they were beginning all those years ago, now that they were married, bought their dream house, and started a family—if they’d ever believed something as simple as that would have been possible for them all those years ago.
Then Luke sent that little phrase in the middle of a string of crying and heart emojis, and I eventually caught on that he meant it was just too cute for him to handle.
Watching this random internet couple live out their dream made him incredibly jealous and immensely happy for them, hence the intense desire to end it all, albeit unseriously.
I had never seen anyone act so blasé about death, but I saw similar sentiments throughout the comment section, and it finally clicked where Luke picked up the colorful phraseology.
As much as I found the video adorable, it made me realize something.
Luke may have felt those same things for himself growing up, wondering if a stable, happy home would ever be an option for someone like him.
I mean, when we were kids, same-sex marriage wasn’t legal yet, so I can only imagine it was a sore subject for him growing up, thinking he could never have that kind of security.
It also hit me how much I’d taken that concept for granted.
Still, while Luke claims to ‘joke’ about killing himself on a near-daily basis, I have to wonder if there’s any truth in it.
If he’s ever really gotten to the point of wanting to end it all.
I’ve been hesitant to tell him that I reached that point when I was younger, worried he might start looking at me differently because of it.
I don’t want to mess with how things are.
Not if it means Luke will start hiding this part of himself to avoid offending me.
After all, I’m getting used to it. So much so that I’ve apparently started joining in on the jokes. I wonder if that counts as growth.
We eventually reach the campground, the first in our group to arrive. As a result, we get to pick the best spot to put up our tent, closest to the beach with the best view—perks of punctuality.