before the pain | luke (JATP)

XI

The lunch bell rang and when Mila walked into the cafeteria, she almost smiled seeing Luke, Reggie, Alex, and Bobby sit by the table like the day before. Luke laughed at Bobby who had made a tower of potatoes calling it the tower of Alex. Alex, on the other hand, didn't laugh, yet looked around, seeing Mila he smiled and waved to her.

"Wait... Mila is gonna sit with us?" Bobby asked, faking a smile to whom he thought was a weirdo. "Yes, she is" Luke answered, looking with almost a death glare at his best friend. Mila placed herself beside Reggie, as he smiled at her. "Ready for English?" He asked, Mila shook her head as she opened her juice.

"Miss Bone wants my head on a stick," Mila said as she drank from her juice. Bobby shook his head. "It can't be that bad" Mila and Reggie looked at each other before answering at the same time "It's bad" Luke's laugh gently filled the table.

"Well your Miss Bone is my Mr. Davis, he just gave me detention once again" Luke sighed and shook his head as he took a bite of his chicken sandwich.

"Well, Daliah will be joining you" Bobby smirked, wiggling his eyebrows. Luke shook his head: "That doesn't make it better" He looked at Mila who looked a bit confused.

"Daliah and Luke ... aren't the best friends" Alex explained, Mila nodded slowly.

"She confessed she was deeply in love with him" Reggie continued, "and his answer destroyed her," Alex said looking at her as well.

"What did you answer?" Mila asked, looking at Luke's who's focused on his sandwich. Bobby laughed looking at Mila. "I believe his words were: "What's your name again?"

Mila's eyes widened, Luke's head just kept going down as the rest of the boys laughed. "Poor Daliah cried in the toilets and we didn't see her for a week... then she got together with that blonde girl" Mila sighed, shaking her head.

"I really didn't know who she was" Luke tried explaining, yet the table simply laughed. Bobby took a bite from his turkey sandwich, before speaking.

"You could have gotten to know her" Luke simply shook his head. "Anyway, I have the lyrics for the new song" The boys suddenly went quiet as everyone's focus was on Luke, he smiled slowly at Mila.

"Let's have the author say what she thinks?" He handed her slowly a broken down notebook, which scribbles everywhere you could see.

Mila looked at everyone, who waited for her to read and say what she thought. "The beat goes like this" He hummed a fast melody, which Mila nodded to, she liked the beat of it as she looked down reading the lyrics:

Don't look down
Cause we're still rising*
Up right now
And even if we
Hit the ground
We'll still fly
Keep dreaming like we'll live forever

Her eyebrows narrowed: "Is this the chorus?"  She asked looking over at Luke, whose hands were sweaty, he nodded slowly.

" You don't like it?" He asked, his eyes almost went like a poppy. "No... no I like it... but it stops kinda weird" Mila answered truthfully, he nodded slowly biting his lip.

"What would you add?" He asked, she whispered the song to the melody he had hummed, and made up as she sang: "But live it like it's now or never" the boys' eyes widened as Luke's smile grew.

"That's really good, can you write that down?" Luke asked, giving her a pencil, she wrote it in the black broken down notebook. Her handwriting standing out on the page.

As their conversation continued out of the corner of her eye, she saw Liam walking towards the table. "What do you want?" Bobby asked, a tension spreading between them, yet Liam ignored Bobby, which must have been the first time. He looked at Mila.