before the pain | luke (JATP)

XV

When Sunday came around, Mila looked somehow forward to going to school. Of course, She never was pleased with the idea of spending her Sundays in detention. Yet after last night's dinner, where Mila walked in on her mom and dad making out, coursing Mila to throw up and storm to her bedroom, locking herself in without dinner.

The idea of Sunday detention wasn't bad at all. She took an apple on her way out, ignoring her parents who were sitting and eating breakfast together. Mila hopped on her bike and biked to school, the cold autumn wind made her cheeks get red, well as cold as the autumn was in California.

As Mila opened the door for the basement, the door was already open and inside was Luke, in the middle of cleaning up. "Morning" He smiled gently seeing Mila walk down the stairs, Luke's guitar and backpack were placed by the stairs, Mila almost knocked it over, yet caught it before it fell.

"Good morning Luke" Mila whispered back as she put her curly hair in a ponytail. "What can I do?" She asked, walking over to him, in his hand was a big old dusty box filled with Christmas decorations.

"Could you bring to a shelf we believe will handle all the decorations?" He asked with a gentle smile, she nodded and took the box, walking to a random shelf where she saw other decorations. "It's so sad how we have all these decorations, yet last time this school held a good party was freshman year" Luke said laughing softly, this made Mila laugh as well, he was right. The school wasn't really known for the best parties, yet they did have good grades.

"Maybe when we have finished the basement, we could make the principal throw a winter party" Mila joked, yet Luke immediately dropped his dusty box. "That could be amazing! And Sunset Curve could perform?" Luke said, way too obsessed with the idea, that the more places the band played, the more known they would become. In Luke's head, there was only one focus, which was music. He would dream about it, think about it when he went to bed and woke up, the boy would marry music if he had the chance.

Mila didn't answer him, she didn't know what to say and simply began organizing all the decorations into different themes, Halloween, easter, valentines day, Christmas and winter wonderland. She took a pen and wrote on the boxes the names. Luke walked over and took a big moon that was crammed behind another shelf.

"What do you have against dances?" Luke asked, making Mila lookup confused by his sudden interest and question: "I don't have anything against them" She answered in a low voice as she put a star in the winter wonderland box. "I have never been to one" She continued, Luke widened his eyes, leaning up against the shelf.

"You have never been to a dance?" He asked like he hadn't heard the first time, this on the other hand made Mila almost a little mad, she took a deep breath and shook her head. "No? And? " Luke didn't answer the tiger and slowly backed away from the conversation. He couldn't believe she had never been to a dance, everyone had been to a dance.

They looked at each other both not knowing what to say, before Luke slowly walked over and took the letters from the box, they had found the week prior. He looked at them, the first letter was dated from November 28th, 1915 to January 7th, 1916. He bit his lip looking at them, wondering what secret they might hide.

"Are those the love letters?" Luke turned around looking at Mila, who was on the floor sitting in a pile of decorations, Luke nodded slowly to her question. "Who do you think wrote them?" His curiosity became bigger and bigger. Mila on the other hand felt a weird feeling in her stomach looking at him holding the old letters.

"I don't know... and I don't want to," She answered as she placed the decorations in the right boxes. Luke on the other hand couldn't help but spark curiosity, he slowly began opening the old letter. Mila looked up, she hurried over and snapped the letters out of his hand, before he could read the first sentence, she looked at him with narrowed eyebrows.

"Luke these are private, who knows who wrote them?" Mila said with a mad expression, he shook his head and grabbed the letters from her again with a small smile. "They're dead now Mila" Luke answered, trying to open them again, yet Mila grabbed them from him looking into his eyes.

"Dead or not, think if it was your notebook, would you want anyone to go through that?" She asked, he sighed and took the letters waving them gently, they didn't even notice how close they stood having taken the letters from each other.

"People can go through my notebook when I'm dead, that's my legacy Mila... my songs will be my legacy one day" Luke looked into her eyes as he spoke, she was too focused on his words, and he didn't even realize that as he looked at her, his eyes went from her eyes to her lips, just for a second... a simple small second. For a second he noticed the slight urge to kiss the beautiful girl, yet he slowly backed away and laughed.

"Therefore we must read these people's legacy," He said, forgetting quickly that urge had ever been there as he opened the letters.

Mila didn't say anything, she let him open the letters, yet before either of them could read a sentence, a noise of two laughing came from the stairs, where Reggie and Alex loudly were walking down. "We fought you guys might need some help?" Reggie said with a bright smile as he walked over to them, for some reason Luke gave the letters to Mila, who hid them behind her back.

They didn't know why, the first thought was to hide the letters, neither did they know why they both thought the same thought. As Luke hugged Reggie and Alex, was Mila hiding the letters under a box. Mila smiled brightly at the boys, who were too focused on looking around in the dirty dusty old basement to focus on Mila hiding the letters.

"two months here huh? That's rough buddy" Alex chuckled placing a hand on Luke's shoulder, Luke shrugged and laughed softly. "I have good company" Luke smiled as he looked at the curly-haired girl, who still hadn't spoken a word.

"Well, what can we help you guys with?" Reggie asked as he clapped his hands, smiling to Mila, who looked around. "Well... we thought about naming all the shelves and then organizing stuff for each shelf, you could help with that?" Mila asked, Alex nodded and walked to a shelf, looking at the other boys.

"I would say this one is named Tomas and that one is Sussi" All four of them laughed at Alex's bad joke, before getting work and doing the task. The boys helping made everything much faster and when the clock hit four, Luke and Mila had forgotten all about the letters as now a whole row of shelves had been organized and dusted off.

The four of them walked towards Reggie's car, Mila felt the feeling of her sweaty hands and her heartbeat not beating normally... she had never been this nervous. They sat all in the car, Alex having called shotgun. As the boys talked Mila looked out the window, she had only had one friend home her whole life... Aera... Her thoughts were interrupted by a hand taking hers, she looked confused at Luke who smiled gently to her, he leaned over and whispered in her ear as Alex and Reggie were blasting to the radio.

"Don't be nervous... we'll behave"