"So that's what's been bothering you," Luke said under his breath. "I figured that was it." He sighed. He didn't say another word as he simply ran a hand through his hair and sat on the table in front of me.

I stared at him while he kept looking down at his feet that wouldn't stay still. I narrowed my yes at him, "That's all you're going to say?" I asked, feeling a single tear spill from the corner of my eye. He had basically just confirmed it for me and it was the same as a stab to my chest, or even my back.

"I assumed there wouldn't be much to talk about." He replied, looking up at me with an emotionless face.

"There wouldn't be much to talk about?" I repeated, getting up off of the couch and standing in front of him. "There's more than enough to talk about." I told him, somehow offended at what he had to say. It was completely hypocritical of me since I had barely spoken to him for the past few days and I knew that, but now wasn't the exact time to be quiet.

He shrugged his shoulders, "You know what happened, there's no point in arguing about some stupid thing I did." It was evident he felt guilty, he never knew how to make himself not obvious.

I raised my eyebrows at him. "Luke, this 'stupid thing' that you did is a big deal." My jaw tightened as the words came out of my mouth. I watched as his grip on the table had slowly turned his knuckles white. I laughed, having it come out more as a scoff than anything else. "You realize that this makes you as much as a sleaze as the guy before you, right?"

He snapped his head up to look at me, his eyebrows creasing. "Those are two completely different things." He told me.

"The scenario might be different, but the outcome sure as hell isn't." I replied, walking away from him as my arms crossed over my chest. I stopped walking and spun back around to him to find him heading towards me. "You knew that there was a big chance of messing things up and I can't believe that you still went with it." I choked out, trying my best to keep my tears back.

"Autumn, I know you're not okay with it and that you had a bad experience with it, but-"

"If you knew then why did you do it?" I cut him off and he immediately stopped speaking. He sighed once again, trying to keep his calm and not get frustrated with me.

"I didn't think you'd react like this." He quietly said, now staring down at me. I felt a single tear roll down my cheek and seconds later there was a soft hand on my cheek. "Baby. Autumn. Don't-"

"You do realize you can't fix this, right?" I softly told him as I pulled back from his thumb that was wiping the water under my eye.

"I don't see why you're getting so upset. It was a one time thing. The only reason I kept it from you was because I didn't think it was something that was worthy of sharing with you. It was a dumb decision." He explained, tugging at his hair.

I shook my head at him, not even wanting to even have to deal with this at the moment. I could give myself a few hours and figure out what I wanted to do then, but as of right now I was clueless of what to do.

"Alright, well, I'm really not in the mood to hear the bullshit story you have prepared, so I'm just going to grab a bag and head down to Natalie's." I told him with a disgustingly sweet tone. I walked around him and towards my room and I figured he would follow.

"Wait, what?" He asked, catching up to my side as I neared my door. I glanced over my shoulder at him then grabbed my doorknob, swiftly letting myself into my room. I searched for a small bag as Luke watched from my doorway. "You don't need to leave." He said after a few moments, his confused expression carefully watching me as I crouched down and picked clothes from my bottom drawers.

I glared at him shortly, then went back to digging through my things. "I want to." I muttered.

It was hard at this point to tell if I really wanted to stay or leave. I knew I should leave and just clear my head and figure things out and be smart about this, and another part of me just wanted to forgive him. It was hard when he was the friend I wanted to run for comfort.

He dropped his head as I stood up from my crouched position, heading over towards my bed and shoving a few things into the small bag I had. He peered back up at me as I neared him to grab a few things off of my desk.

"All of this because you're upset with me getting high one time?" He quietly asked me, my head immediately shot up towards him. My eyes narrowed at him and soon met his pale blue ones.

"What?" I said, my harsh tone barely being heard.

He rubbed one of his eyes and gave me another small shrug. "I just think it's kind of unreasonable that you need to leave because of something harmless." He explained.

"What?" I repeated as I noticed my voice growing louder again.

He looked me up and down with an unreadable expression. "I just told you." He answered. I let the things in my hands rest back on the desk and I slowly made my way towards him, not breaking our eye contact.

"You're telling me that you got high instead of sleeping with some other girl?" I asked, my mood change becoming more evident. I had gone from sad to pissed to sad to pissed constantly in the past hour and it was starting to even give Luke whiplash.

"What?" His voice raised as if he was offended, which by the look on his face, it seemed like he was.

"You didn't cheat on me?"

He quickly shook his head at me, "What the hell are you-" I stopped him in the middle of his sentence by raising a single hand up. He got the hint and didn't even bother to go on. I glanced up at him at his wide eyes, to the floor, then back up to him.

"Tell Calum he's and idiot then please come back and tell me that I am too." I quietly said, lowering my hand and letting it run through my hair.

His expression still told me he was confused and just as I noticed it, it had fallen flat then quickly turned into narrowed eyes and a tense jaw.

"You're a fucking idiot." He grumbled, running his hands over his face once he had realized what I was upset about.

"No need to remind me." I sighed, turning my back to him and walking towards my bed with crossed arms. I sat down and leaned my head back and let myself drown in my own thoughts until Luke spoke up again.

"What did Calum say?" He asked, still keeping his spot as he leaned on my door frame.

I laid down at my back and stared up at my ceiling before speaking to him again. I sighed, "I was looking for you at the party and I asked him where you were. He said he saw you go upstairs and he thought I was with you." I looked over to him to find him rolling his eyes.

"I was with some girl Michael was talking to all night. I was showing her upstairs since that's where he had asked her to meet him." He said, not sounding too pleased. I figured it had to do more with Michael than Calum.

"I got upstairs and asked a girl in the bathroom if she'd seen you. She gave me description along the lines of 'tall and hot' and figured it was you. Then she said something about sex noises and it all really went downhill from there." I laughed a little as I propped myself up on my elbows. "I told the guys I was leaving because my head hurt." I added. Luke nodded at me as he heard my side of the story, which I assumed he understood why I had this whole situation mixed up.

We sat in silence, the only noise running through our apartment was the TV from the living room. Luke stepped towards me and stopped just a few feet in front of me as his hands slipped into his front pockets. "Why didn't you check out on the balcony?" He asked, gazing down at me.

I shrugged, seeing no real explanation as to why except for the obvious. "I didn't think you'd be smoking." I told him.

"Sor-"

"Don't apologize, please." I interrupted, not wanting to hear another apology come out of him.

It seemed for the past few weeks all we've been doing is apologizing to each other. I knew things weren't going to be exactly easy and things would change a little but I didn't expect it to be this stressful.

"I feel bad." He said, his bottom lip poking out the slightest amount.

I scooted over on my bed to give him room so he could sit down, "I'm going to punch you if you try to apologize. You did nothing wrong." I told him, finally getting a smile from him which he received in return.

"Neither did you, you were just upset and I can see why." He replied which had made me feel a little better about the whole situation.

I stared at my hands in my lap, not even sure how we came down to this conversation. It wasn't how I had planned it to go, but I'm more than happy that it did. "I feel like if I keep messing up you're going to end up hating me." I confessed. He reached out to grab my hand, holding it lightly after giving it a small squeeze.

"You aren't messing anything up. There has been no real damage." He assured me, trying to get me to look back up at him. "And I could never hate you." He reminded me as he always has. There was another pause in the conversation, followed by another one of Luke's sighs. "Why didn't you just tell me about this earlier when you had the chance?" He questioned.

"I think I just wanted to act like it never happened, but every time I looked at you I just keep thinking about you being happy with someone else." I mumbled the last part, hating to even have to bring up the idea of him with someone else. "That probably sounded so stupid." I quickly tried to cover up my thoughts, but Luke had already moved on from it.

"Autumn, when did I tell you I loved you? Like, the first time?" He asked as he changed the subject.

I thought back to the previous days, remembering our trip to the beach at 4am. "Six days ago." I softly responded, a gentle smile pulling at Luke's lips.

"And how many times have I told you I loved in a matter of six days?"

I laughed, "A lot."

"And how many more times do you think I'm going to tell you that?"

"A lot more." I answered, hoping that it was the one he was looking for. "Hopefully." I added, getting him to roll his eyes at me.

"Shut up." He nudged my shoulder, both of us filling the once empty space with laughter. "I love you and I want to make you happy but I can't do that if you're going to try and put up a wall. We don't need that and you certainly don't either." He gave me a concerned look at the second I saw his expression I had looked away.

"I hate you because you're always right." I muttered, trying cover up my laugh with my words.

"That I am." He replied. I could sense that he had that stupid half smile he always did and when I met his eyes once again I found out I was right. "And I'm also right when I say that you never have to worry about me going off to be with someone else, okay?"

He was trying his best to reassure me that I'd never have to go through any type of emotional distress I did just a few months ago. He was doing a good job of convincing me, but what really mattered was if he could keep his word. And telling by the past 12 years, I knew he could do just that.

I nodded, "Okay." I simply said before leaning into him and resting my head on his shoulder. We sat there for a few moments, just happy that there's no tension created by me from some unknown, now known, cause. I peered up at him, feeling his fingers run through the ends of my hair. My voice was soft yet easy to tell that I was joking around a little. "I'm so sorry, I feel like a horrible girlfriend." He snickered at my words, pulling me closer to him by my side.

"That's alright because I'm a horrible boyfriend." He replied, half of his sentence getting cut off by his lips pressing against the top of my head.

"Can you believe where we were last summer?" I suddenly asked him, a wave a realization of how much my life had changed.

"At a zoo?" He questioned, completely taking the seriousness away fro my question. I got up off of him, turning to face him.

"I took you there once." I whined, remembering how he nearly threw a fit since he didn't want to go but I dragged him there. "I think you hated me for a solid week." I teased, pushing on his leg with my knee.

"I told you I would've gone another day!" He laughed as he tried to defend himself.

"That's not the point." I giggled, trying to cover it up with my hand. "My point is that everything has changed." I told him, trying to get back on topic.

He held up a finger, "Not everything." He pointed out. I pushed his hand away and let it intertwine with mine.

"You don't wear hats, we live in Manhattan, and I enjoy kissing you. I think that's a lot." I said.

He tilted his head back just the slightest bit, his infamous cute laugh getting me to smile at him. "This whole conversation has taken way too many turns." He looked down at me, his smile still wide and a small part of his lip caught between his teeth. "Now I want you to do me a favor, okay?" He asked.

I nodded, "Alright, what is it?"

He pointed to my bag beside me as he let go of my hand and stood up. "I want you to unpack that bag, put on your sweatpants that are ten sizes too big, and come sit with me on the couch because I'm tired and need to nap on my girlfriend." He told me, holding out a hand for me to stand up.

"I hate you." I told him as he suddenly pulled me into a tight hug.

"No you don't," he replied, letting me go. "Now go and do what I said and we can pretend this never happened."

"You're so needy." I joked, pushing on his chest a little.

"Autumn." He whined, his bottom lip jutting out. I rolled my eyes and grabbed his wrist as I stood on my tiptoes, leaving a short kiss to his cheek.

"I still hate you." I whispered in his ear before tuning my back to him. I heard him walk out of my room, but not before calling out to me as he left.

"I love you too!"

-

i hate lautumn so much

only 4 more chapters left i

if u want to read another luke story i have one called 'outlines' and it's prty cool i just started it it's not too far in!!!

***IMPORTANT*** so if you don't know i started school and i've been extremely busy between senior year and clubs and practice and it's all gotten v crazy and i'll try to update as often as i can but i won't be putting it before school i hate how that sounds bc i love writing and updating, but at least until november (when we collide will be over waay before that) but that's when all of my applications will be turned in by and i'm applying to places like UCLA and stanford so i'm really trying to work on being my best!!!!

sorry that 'important' thing was really long wow congrats if you've made it down this fare on my author's note ok wow

i love you guys i hope u like this!!!