MR. PERFECTLY FINE ; LUKE HUGHES

07

˗ˏˋ꒰ 🍒 ꒱  but on a wednesday, in a cafe
i watched it begin again.
TAYLOR SWIFT ^

LORELEI

I WOULD call myself a high achieving person. I would always strive to get the best grades which led to my high honor roll throughout high school, and making the deans list freshman year of college.

My peers, frankly anyone that knew me, would say I could get worked up when things didn't go my way;in an academic sense. And when things got hard, my two favorite things formed an alliance. Coffee and studying, of course.

A partner project was my frailty. I was a neat freak if you wanted to call it something, everything had to be perfect. For an english major, I figured this was normal.

I studied the work of almost every poet and novelist that would appeal to a twenty year old college student who had never had a boyfriend. So, lonely, sad, and an extreme attention seeker. But not in the way you think.

I kept to myself, that's the way I've always been. I was never a people person or a sorority girl, I never fit in. It was no wonder people like Luke Hughes and I weren't in the same circle.

With my studies, I had fallen in a deep fascination with  the world of Jane Austen. She has a universal comic wit. I mean, have you seen Pride and Prejudice?

"And sometimes I have kept my feelings to myself, because I could find no language to describe them in."

"A man who had once been refused! How could I ever be foolish enough to expect a renewal of his love?"

I began to add them to our slide, bringing the mug to my lips as the sweet taste of caramel lingered on my tastebuds.

The bell behind me rang, signaling someone had come in. It was just past eight o'clock, I figured most people would be at Sigma Chi, or...some other bar downtown.

I could feel the jitters in my spine as he walked past me to find the counter. Are you fucking kidding?

He stood at the counter, tapping his credit card against it like he was growing impatient, his eyes darting between the cashier and the girl beside him, Chloe Walker.

The captain of the UMich dance team and the organizer of dance blue, it had been a match made in heaven. And this is the last place I figured I'd see the campus's most popular people hanging out. Especially at eight-thirty on a Wednesday.

I turned my head quickly back to my work, in hopes I'd be invisible to both of them. While Chloe had been spoiled since the day she was born, she was sweet. And I wondered why she'd be drawn to someone like Luke. I wondered what they'd have in common other than being captains and popular.

I could hear the chairs scratch against the wood flooring as they sat, sitting across from one another.

I shook my head, honing in on my computer in front of me. This project was due tomorrow and I was just about done. It felt like closing a chapter of my life, forever.

"If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more."

"When I fall in love, it will be forever."

"Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone forever."

I blew out a breath before adding all of our quotes onto a combined slide, opening the fresh doc that partnered with it.

"Oh, Hi, Lorelei." The mention of name had my head cocking up, only to see Chloe standing before me nodding.

I pinched my lips together in a flat line, acknowledging her presence as I didn't care enough to do the same for the boy trailing behind her. "Chloe."

I could feel his eyes burning into me as I retreated back to my, our, project.

"Chloe, I'll meet you by my car." Luke fiddled with his car keys before handing them to her. She just nodded before glancing between us, then, turning her back as she left the cafe.

I pinched the bridge of my nose, sensing him moving to sit at the table with me;very much uninvited.

"Did you finish the project?" He asked, pulling his bottom lip into his mouth.

I clicked my tongue, leaning back into the leather seat as I finally lifted my gaze to meet his. He seemed to be observing me in a sense, his eyes never settling on one part of my face.

"I'm working on it, Luke." My tone was scathing.

Luke chewed on his bottom lip with a hum in his throat as he nodded. "Hey, uh, thanks."

I cocked my brow at him, tilting my head to the side slightly with confusion. "What are you thanking me for?"

Luke brought his hand to smooth down his shaven chin, his curls seemingly in place tonight. "For taking over. For doing it by yourself, thanks. I appreciate it."

I raised my brows with amusement, feeling my lips curving into a sly smirk as I stared at him. "Seriously? Well, it's better than working with you. Guess we're even."

Luke swallowed with a quick shake of his head. "Guess we're even, Lorelei."

He stood, reminding me just how tall he was, he lingered for a moment like he had something to say but it never came.

"What?" I shifted under his stare. "Don't you've got a hot date waiting for you? You should probably go."

Luke parted his lips before nodding. "Yeah. See you."

I seemed to have always been ridiculed by him in a variety of ways. Some days he was hot and others he was cold. I didn't quite understand him, I knew nothing about him and yet every time he left, I wanted to know more.

But it was me who wouldn't let him get close. I was cruel to him and he reciprocated. It was shot after shot at one another and we waited to see who would be taken down first. But neither of us hit too hard where that would happen.

And maybe that's what Jane Austen had been getting out in her work. That love is just a feeling, a fiction story that people make up to feel better about themselves. Why is it called falling in love? Falling is painful.

It was fiction for a reason. There was no Mr.Darcy in this life or an Elizabeth Bennett who had to get over the expectations of herself in order to fall in love. To get over that initial hump, the sin, all of it.

Or maybe we're all just hypocrites. Or maybe Jane Austen was trying to get her point of souls being bound by sharing the same lust for one another. In all of her novels, it will not end well for those who are in love.

In simpler terms, there will always be someone that says, "I love you." And there will be the other that says, "I love you more." Can you guess which one gets the blunt end of it?

Finishing off my closing paragraph, I saved the doc and added it to our folder.

Jane Austen and her theory of love.
- Luke Hughes and Lorelei Sanders.

this chapter is just...