Chapter Thirty-Four
Found Out
After leaving Marcus’s house, Luke and I go our separate ways for the first time in two days.
It feels weird separating from him after spending a solid forty-eight hours together, but he’s been wearing the same clothes the entire time and desperately needs a shower.
However, he seems reluctant to leave my side—drawing out our goodbye to the point that it’s almost comical.
And yet, once he’s gone, I feel the solid weight of his absence just as acutely.
Walking into my house alone feels strange, and a pang of loneliness spikes through me at its emptiness.
The rooms are suddenly too quiet, and the air feels stagnant…
It’s like walking into a crypt that hasn’t been disturbed in a millennium—not at all like a home should feel.
Has it always been this way, and I’ve simply never noticed?
I’m restless for the rest of the afternoon, aimlessly completing my regular Sunday chores.
I can’t help but imagine how much nicer it would be to have Luke here helping me, given how pleasant it was for us to clean the kitchen together the other night.
I vacillate back and forth with the idea of calling him so I can hear his voice while I work, only to feel stupid for it.
Jesus. Have I grown so dependent on Luke’s presence that I can’t even exist one afternoon without him?
I try not to analyze that too deeply, chalking it up to my fragile emotional state putting me in a more vulnerable position. I’m still a little raw and on edge, that's all. Nothing more.
Besides, our separation is only temporary since Luke and I agreed to meet the gang for dinner at Lucky’s. Having that to look forward to eases some of my anxiety.
Pulling into Lucky’s parking lot later that evening, I find Luke leaning against the door of his truck, waiting for me before going inside. Only then do I feel my whole body relax, and I breathe easier.
Luke doesn’t see me right away. His eyes are unfocused and distracted, staring at the ground.
There’s a pained furrow to his brow, and it’s clear he’s lost in thought.
I can feel my face drop into a frown as I observe him.
But as soon as I pull up next to his truck, and he finally sees me, his demeanor instantly changes, and he tosses me one of those killer smiles that always makes me weak in the knees.
I’d almost say I must have imagined the state of melancholy before with how effortlessly he lights up, but I know better after what I saw yesterday, and it worries me to think he’s still on the edge of despair.
However, Luke makes it difficult to ask him what’s wrong when he takes the opportunity while we’re alone and away from prying eyes to pin me against the door of my truck, planting the kind of kiss on my lips that has me seeing stars.
It’s got me tempted to just say fuck it and drag him into the backseat, but Luke has enough sense to pull away before it gets too heated, sighing remorsefully with the effort.
By the time he smiles again, all my previous thoughts evaporate.
We head inside and make our way to our normal table. The girls have come out tonight, too, so it’s a little more cramped than usual, but no one seems to care as we take up a significant portion of the bar. Even though it’s Sunday, Lucky’s is reasonably packed.
Chrissy is here, too. I’m not sure I’ve ever been here when she wasn’t, but it’s the first time I’ve been back since our quasi-breakup a couple of months ago.
Unexpectedly, I feel a little nervous as she comes to the table, greeting us all with her overly sweet self.
I’m not sure what to expect as she plants herself between Luke and me and puts her hand on my back in an openly friendly gesture.
I freeze, and I can almost feel the sidelong glance Luke gives her.
“Hey, stranger,” Chrissy says to me, and I turn and give her a shy smile.
“Haven’t seen you in a while. I sure hope you weren’t staying away on purpose.
” She winks, her expression teasing. I can’t help but grin at the delicate taunt, finding nothing more than sparkling goodwill. Okay, maybe this won’t be so bad.
But then, Ben suddenly interjects with, “You know, whatever happened with you two anyway?” and my face drops in horror. “Ethan never told us why it didn’t work out.”
I don’t dare to look at Luke, knowing that the moment I do, it will give everything away.
Instead, I keep my eyes glued straight ahead, but I can still see out of the corner of my eye how he purses his lips and covers his mouth with a hand as he tries to keep from laughing.
My face goes warm. If only it weren’t a social faux pas to slide under the table like a child and disappear to avoid the embarrassment of this conversation.
Thankfully, Chrissy is better prepared to answer the intrusion into our privacy more lightheartedly. She smirks.
“As much as he wanted us to work out, I decided we were better off as friends,” she says smoothly. “Honestly, we didn’t have enough in common. We wanted different things, you know? And he’s got some pretty weird taste in music. Did y’all know he plays the flute?”
She says it in such a way that it seems like this was what cinched it, which makes me chuckle, but then Luke unexpectedly loses it next to me.
After a beat, my brain picks up on the unintended euphemism that sent him over the edge, and my face is now scorching hot.
It gets worse when Luke has to completely turn his body away as he chokes out a laugh to the point of coughing.
Most of the table is baffled by his reaction, but then I notice that Marcus and Tiff seem to have found something amusing about this as well, the two of them struggling to keep it together.
“It wasn’t that funny,” Chrissy mumbles as she stares at Luke, bewildered.
He tries and fails to regain his composure, but it gets to the point where Chrissy leaves the table in a huff, clearly offended, and I have to nudge him to stop.
He apologizes to her when she comes back with drinks for everyone except him, and after a few placating words of contrition, she graciously brings him a beer.
Still, her attitude toward him remains decidedly frosty for the rest of the evening. It strikes me as odd for her usually sunny personality, but Luke doesn’t seem overly concerned. Almost like he’s not surprised by it. I can’t help but wonder if they have some history as well.
When Frank Owens and his crew walk through the door around eight o’clock, the happy mood turns sour. Frank makes direct eye contact with our group, sending a shiver down my spine with the contemptuous look on his face. It quickly goes downhill from there.
He makes it his mission to antagonize Luke all night.
Whenever Luke laughs or speaks even a little too loudly, Frank makes a snide comment or an overdramatic groan that everyone in the bar can hear, causing an awkward silence afterward.
He calls out little insults, then balls up straw wrappers and flicks them at the back of Luke’s head like it’s his own personal goalpost.
Luke, for his part, ignores all of it at first, dismissing the barbs aimed at him as if they’re nothing more than pesky mosquito bites. His temper remains in check with each physical assault, and he asks us to ignore it, too. He’s hoping Frank will give up if we don’t acknowledge him.
However, the more Frank seems to drink, the more persistent his verbal attacks become until everyone in the bar is uncomfortable with his rambling. The vulgarity increases, and he provokes Luke outright, wanting to start a fight.
I watch as Luke grows more reserved, his cheeks flushed with irritation, and I can tell it’s getting harder for him to drown it out.
There’s a raging inferno brewing in my chest, and I’m chomping at the bit, ready to jump up and throttle Frank after every remark.
If it weren’t for Luke’s hand on my arm to stop me, I would have done it twelve times already.
But Luke’s determined to keep the moral high ground here, and as much as it kills me to keep quiet, I begrudgingly follow his lead not to engage.
What frustrates me the most is that no one else is telling him to stop, either.
Not even Chrissy seems too concerned to do anything about it, even though he’s disrupting the whole bar.
It’s almost like they don’t see anything wrong with it.
As we survey the rest of the bar patrons and the way they sneer in our general direction, I realize it’s because, deep down, most of them believe the homophobic bullshit Frank is spewing, even if they’re too cowardly to spout it themselves.
After all, this is the infamous Luke Shaw, the man from small-town legend—a legend most of them have had some small part in perpetuating.
It reaches the tipping point when Frank stands up and moves to our table to get in Luke’s face.
That’s when Luke finally snaps and stands up from his chair.
He towers over Frank with all 6’7” of his intimidating height, and the look on his face is cold and lethal.
It would be enough to make most people back off, but somehow, it’s still not enough to deter Frank.
The bar goes unnaturally silent, all eyes turning to the scene.
“Oh, look, I’ve upset her,” Frank croaks out with a vicious sneer.
Only Nick and Henry have the guts to laugh with him. The rest of the bar is watching to see how this plays out. Tiff and I both attempt to drag Luke back down to his chair, but he brushes us off with a determined shrug of his shoulders, focusing solely on Frank.
“I’m only going to give you one opportunity to walk away,” he says, his voice dangerously low. “And you can’t say you weren’t warned.”