figure my heart out // muke

23

We had arrived at the motel pretty late and this motel was extremely run-down. It was the only motel that:

a) we could afford

and

b) had vacancies left

I will say that this motel definitely wasn't our first choice. We had tried 7 other motels, hotels and even a hostel before finding this one. Luke was outside having a smoke with Calum, the front door was left slightly open so they could 'keep an eye on me' (they joked).

As they were throwing banter back and forth with each other outside, laughing at their horrible comedy sketches, I was inside sitting on the end of the queen sized double contemplating my whole entire life. I had a big decision to make and was debating with myself if this was the right time to discuss this with Luke before we got back into our home town. I had assumed that after this whole roadtrip that we'd all just go back to our normal lives and forget this ever happened. I didn't even have Luke's number to keep in touch with him and I was honestly afraid to ask, would that be too awkward?

I was overthinking every single thing in our situationship, if you could even call it that. I kept on thinking about how unfair it was to Luke that if we had decided to go into a more committed relationship with each other that included romantic filled acts, then I couldn't fulfil my end of the bargain. I felt that I was betraying him. I couldn't feel that romantic attraction towards him like he had felt towards me. I didn't know if I could bring myself into something so one-sided out of pure guilt that all of this probably wasn't enough. That I wasn't enough for him.

With another giggle outburst came Luke stumbling back into the motel room and having to slam the motel door shut multiple times before it was secure. The lock on our door was faulty so we just had to pray no one would break in and try to murder us in the middle of the night. It also meant that if one, or both, of us were to oversleep on Calum's strict schedule then he'd come smacking us with pillows until we both woke up.

Luke walked over to me, standing in front of me as he cradled my head into his plain, grey t-shirt. "You look stressed," He spoke up, I wondered if my facial expressions really portrayed my messy inner-monologue. "Maybe you should of had a smoke." He joked.

I didn't laugh, I felt like crying. I felt like rocking back-and-forth and having a mental breakdown in front of him. I was stressed and I was overthinking. It felt like I was stuck in an emotional blender.

He stepped back a little and gently lifted up my chin with his hand, rubbing circles into my cheek with his thumb. My eyes never left his t-shirt, I couldn't bring myself to make solid eye contact with him. "Are you okay?" His voice broke, "Do you want to talk about it?"

This was it, I was now breaking in front of Luke. Everything was starting to crumbling as tears flowed out of my eye sockets and I let out a loud whimper. "Why do you even want to be with me?" I strangled out, "Why do you love me when you know I can't love you back?"

I expected him to completely pull away from me, to agree with me. But he did the opposite of my own intrusive expectations. He gently put his other hand on my chin and he mimicked the rubbing motion on my cheek with his thumb. I took a shaky breath as I continued, "You know that I can't reciprocate. I can't ever feel the same things you feel for me romantically. It's not fair on you Luke, it's not fucking fair."

I wanted him to say something to me, in response to what I had just said. I didn't care if he agreed or disagreed or even walked away from me, I just wanted some sort of reaction. I wanted something out of him that he wasn't going to cooperate with. He just stood there, comforting me. Letting my worries spill out of my mouth. Was this the right thing to even do?