I nodded and grinned. “Telling me makes me feel good anyway.”
“Oh!” I exclaimed, my grin suddenly widening to obscene proportions. “If we’re both breaking up with Phoebe and my dad has moved house, then we can tell the police about our stalker.”
Luke blinked, taking a moment to take in what I’d said. “You’re right,” his own lips broadened. “You’re right.” Then his eyebrows quirked. “Surely it isn’t that simple? We can’t just, turn him after all this, can we?”
I beamed. “Yes, we can.”
Luke didn’t care about whether Phoebe was watching and embraced me in a tight hug. “I thought that might have been something that would break us in the end, if it persisted, but you’re right. We can just tell the police and they’ll get rid of him.” He let of a relieved breath. “You’re always good at cheering me up.”
When we pulled back, our faces hovered for just a second, but we didn’t give in and kiss. We didn’t need to, because in a few days we’d be able to kiss whenever we wanted.
“I really do have to go,” I remembered, grinning once more and leaving Luke’s car.
My own mood was lifted, too. Everything had fallen into place.
Chapter Thirteen
The knock on my door sent a small wave of panic through me. It was eleven o’clock in the evening and I was home alone. A true stalker would know I was here alone and Luke and I hadn’t been able to turn him in just yet. Phoebe hadn’t let up in her vow of silence for Luke to get a look in and so everything was still up in the air.
If he somehow knew Phoebe and Luke were going to break up then maybe he was making his final stand before the police could take him away.
Swallowing, I wished we had a peephole.
Upon opening the door, I was faced with a distraught looking Luke. I blinked, allowing him entry and feeling my own worry grow. “What’s wrong? Did you break up with her?”
“No,” he breathed, scrubbing at his eyes. I could see he’d been crying now he was in the light of my hallway and my heart dropped. Grabbing his hands, I encouraged him to tell me what on earth had happened. “I couldn’t. She’s… she’s pregnant. She rang me up to say she wanted to speak to me and that’s what she said.” His voice caught, sobs already working their way through his body, but I was too cold to do anything straight away. I just let him stand there and cry for a good few moments before tentatively wrapping my arms around his shaking body.
“I don’t believe it,” was all I could manage to mumble against his chest as tears gathered in my own eyes. “I don’t-” I couldn’t even finish the sentence. There was no point in saying anything. I just gripped Luke harder and revelled in what was quite clearly going to be the last contact between us.
Luke was a good guy and Luke definitely wouldn’t leave Phoebe when she was carrying his child.
Eventually my sobs stopped. I sniffled pathetically, unballing the fists that had been wrapped in the back of Luke’s shirt and looking up at his face. He hastily wiped his eyes, but we were both too wretched to be embarrassed about and crying. “Come on, we should go and sit down,” I began walking into the living room, hastily turning off the romcom I’d been watching. “Do you want a glass of water or anything?”
Luke nodded and I disappeared into the kitchen, trying desperately to gather myself. Phoebe was pregnant. My best friend was going to have a baby. My best friend, who I’d betrayed, was going to have a baby with Luke, the guy I was head over heels for.
I couldn’t deal with that.
I got myself a glass of water and lamented my lack of vodka.
On the sofa, Luke stared at the TV with unseeing eyes and a forlorn expression. I sat beside him, so close that the sides of our bodies pressed against each other, and handed him his drink. “What are you going to do?” I didn’t want to know exactly what Phoebe had said to him. I could already picture her smiling face as she revealed the news.
Phoebe had always wanted kids. Not now, necessarily, but being a family was her ultimate goal. It might have been a shock and it might mess up a few of her plans, but I knew she’d be over the moon. There was no chance of her having an abortion, that was for certain.
“What can I do? I’m going to stay with her, of course. I’ll make up for lost time and be the best partner and dad I can be. That’s what I have to do.”
I nodded. It was what I’d expected. Still, I was selfish enough to argue against it. “You don’t have to do that at all. You can still be a good dad without being with her.”
Luke shook his head in a singular motion, his tone and face having lost all emotion. “We both know that having divorced parents hasn’t been good.”
“We both know that having parents who didn’t like each other hasn’t been good. If they’d never been together then a divorce wouldn’t have happened.”
“I don’t even want kids,” Luke muttered, gaze lowered to his lap. “I’ve never wanted kids.”
I blinked back tears again and rested my head on Luke’s shoulder, discarding my glass of water onto the floor. “I’m so sorry.”
Luke put down his own glass and embraced me properly. I pulled down the blanket from the back of the sofa and wrapped us up, me practically on his laps and our arms entangled. If it was going to be the last night, we could afford to accept some mutual comfort from each other.
“What are we going to do about our stalker?” I suddenly remembered. Our plans to turn him into the police were suddenly rendered useless.
Luke tightened his grip on me. “I don’t know. I guess… I guess you should just go to the police and risk him showing Phoebe the picture. It’s not fair that you get to live in fear because of something stupid I did.”
I shook my head, knowing that wasn’t going to be the way things went. “No, we’ll just wait it out and see what he wants. He’ll get bought and give us the ultimatum eventually.”
Luke nodded, the stalker already being put to the back of our minds. He hadn’t been harassing us lately, whereas Phoebe’s pregnancy was happening right now and all my attention was focused on it.
After fifteen minutes of us just hugging in silence, ruminating on the misery of our new situation, Luke brought his hand to the bottom of my chin and directed my face upwards.
His lips were desperate; hard and insistent on mine as he dragged my body, if possible, closer to him. We didn’t want to wait around and enjoy each other’s bodies, we wanted the instant gratification of being with each other so intensely that everything else was forgotten.
My hands gripped his hair so tight it must have hurt and his nails were painful as they held my hips. The pain and the pleasure mixing together didn’t leave any room to think about Phoebe. There was just us. Luke and I. Together. Like we’d thought it was meant to be.
In my bedroom, afterwards, Luke held me close and pressed soft kisses to my face. “I’m so sorry this didn’t work out.”
I turned and met his lips, holding onto his face tightly and never wanting to let go. “Me too.”
Chapter Fourteen
“Did you not go home last night?” Phoebe accused when Luke sauntered across the car park towards us the next morning. The stain he’d gotten on his uniform yesterday was still there. We’d woken up late and Luke had been forced to awkwardly sit at the breakfast table with me and my mother when I’d failed to sneak him out effectively.
I knew I’d be getting a stern talking to when I got home tonight, but when I explained Phoebe’s pregnancy she’d understand. I’d thought I’d be having the conversation where I explained that Luke and I were together and she wouldn’t be seeing Phoebe anymore, but everything had taken a very sharp turn for the worse.
As it stood, Phoebe hadn’t mentioned her condition yet and we’d been stood chatting for a solid ten minutes. After she’d told me she could move past the issue with Luke’s dad, she’d launched into mindless conversation about drama from the party I didn’t care about. Apparently plenty of people had hooked up that she hadn’t been expecting to
.
“My washing machine is broken,” Luke explained with a shrug. “Got to keep wearing the dirty blouse for the rest of the week.
“Oh, you can come round and use mine if you want! I’m sure my parents won’t mind.” Phoebe had gone to take her place beside Luke immediately with a wide smile, taking his hand in hers and lacing their fingers together. “Anyway, Carmen, we’re all skipping first period because there’s something I, we, need to tell you.”
I really hadn’t expected it to be that quick, but I supposed there was no need to wait around to tell me. So, just like Luke and I had the day after our first kiss, we traipsed over to the café opposite the school car park.
I went for a chocolate milkshake and Luke ordered a coffee. I noted with a quirked eyebrow that the elderly lady had jotted down our orders before we’d spoken. Phoebe went for a hot chocolate, having to be in the middle like always.
Phoebe took Luke’s hand in hers the moment we’d sat down and didn’t let go. Her smile didn’t let up, either, and Luke was really struggling to keep his lips curved upwards. His eyes looked dead. Telling me about this again was probably the last thing he wanted to happen.
I’d already made the decision that when it came to leaving for uni I wouldn’t be talking to Phoebe ever again. I couldn’t be around Luke without caring for him and I couldn’t be around Phoebe without feeling horribly guilty.
It was only a few months until summer came.
Phoebe waited until the drinks came before she let me know what all this was about. She forced Luke to meet her gaze and obviously saw what she thought was a supportive look shining back at her. “Carmen,” she took a deep breath and cursed when her fingertips touched the hot clay of the mug. After a short laugh, she blurted it out. “I’m pregnant!”
I did my best attempt at a shocked reaction. I’d been expecting to have longer to practise not knowing about her pregnancy before I was supposed to be surprised by it. My eyebrows shot up and I forced a smile. “Congratulations!”
“You knew,” she accused immediately, turning her accusatory case onto Luke. “You told her.”
Luke shrugged and tried to keep his gaze on Phoebe. “I had to tell someone. It was big news, I wasn’t ready for it.”
“And you told Carmen?”
I was the one to shrug this time. “You were the one who said you wanted us to be friends.”
Phoebe chuckled. “True, that. I am glad you’re closer, even if I did want to be the one to tell you about this. I know it’s unexpected and I know it’s going to be difficult, but it’s a good thing. I know it is.”
Luke smiled and nodded, his movements robotic. “I know. I just… I just need time to get my head around it.”
“I know. So do I,” Phoebe assured him. I felt wrong observing this conversation. I desperately didn’t want anything to do with this entire thing. I wanted to run for the hills and try and forget Luke. He was officially out of bounds forever and I was scared I’d never get over him. “But we can work things out. It will all be fantastic.”
I sucked on the straw in my milkshake and desperately avoided looking at Luke. I didn’t want to set him off. I knew that meeting his gaze now would send my own misery sky-rocketing and I didn’t have half as many things to be sad about as he did.
“Oh!” Phoebe exclaimed, reaching into her bag and almost knocking the hot chocolate over. “And I have your tickets for the Scarborough performance. They came through yesterday. It’ll probably be the last show I do, considering, so I’m so glad you’re both going to be there.”
I forced out a smile and accepted the ticket she passed me. “That’s cool. Have you sorted out hotel rooms yet?”
Phoebe, if possible, smiled wider. Her cheeks were going to be very painful by the end of this meeting. “My parents are paying for all of the rooms,” she told us both with stern looks. “We’re staying at a nice hotel, and my brother is coming!”
Phoebe’s brother Robert was working in America, slowly climbing the corporate ladder, and so she didn’t get to see him that often. That he was coming back to see her performance was a huge deal for her. “That’s great,” I kept my gaze on the shiny design letting me know the ticket was real, moving it side to side and watching the hologram move. “But I can’t let you pay for my hotel room. I’ll give you half, at least.”
“No, no, my mum has insisted. You and Luke are my best friends and I want you to be there in all the luxury. It’s going to be a big weekend. We’re going to have lots of fun.”
I acquiesced, knowing that her parents had more than enough money to pay for us to do this. The guilt weighed on me. When summer came, I’d never see her or her parents again.
I’d never see Luke again.
We went back to more normal conversation after that, sipping on our drinks and trying desperately not to think too hard. I wished I could care about the mindless gossip Phoebe spewed out. Normally I loved this kind of thing, but my heart wasn’t in it. I just wanted to take everything back.
***
The shift had been a long one. Luke and I had had spurts of conversation that left us in fits of giggles, but they’d always been followed my long stretches of depressed silence. I didn’t know whether it was better to talk about our issues or to just leave them alone. Talking wasn’t going to help anything.
Nothing was going to improve the situation.
When we finished our shift, we walked wrapped in our own jumpers and braced the cold wind. It was going to be getting warmer soon and I knew I’d miss these late night walks to and from the chippy. Jumping into the car and turning the heater up to full blast, driving just on the speed limit to reach Luke’s cosy house as quickly as possible. Angela would have put something in the oven for us and the kettle would be time perfectly for when we got in.
Today, we kept our gazes solidly on the pavement and made sure that our arms didn’t brush against each other’s as we walked. Our pace was slow. There was no rush for either of us to get home anymore.
“I’m going to see Phoebe when we get back into Sheffield,” Luke declared, scuffing his shoe against the concrete. “How long do you think it’ll take me to like her again? Will I ever like her again?”
I didn’t know what to say to that. “Phoebe’s a good person,” was all I could manage.
“She keeps trying to sleep with me. I don’t think I can do it.”
I knew there’d have been a tinge of pink on his cheeks if I’d lifted my gaze. “Then don’t.”
“She’ll know something’s wrong.”
“She just threw your life up in the air by announcing she’s pregnant. I’m sure she can understand that horniness isn’t your dominant emotion right now.” Sad, sarcastic bitterness had become my default the past couple of days. I was perfecting the art of alienating everyone.
“I know. I just, I want to like her. I want to be happy with her, but it’s just not there.”
“You were happy once. Maybe it’ll get better when I’m out of the picture,” my voice was strained as pictures of a smiling Luke and Phoebe with a new baby haunted my mind for the thousandth time that day.
I felt Luke’s eyes on me. “Are you going to be out of the picture?”
“When university comes and I’ve got an excuse, yes. I can’t keep doing this, I’m sorry,” I hung my head lower, burying my chin in the fur of my coat. “I’m not… I’m not trying to abandon you or anything. I just…” I paused and sighed. “I don’t know if I can deal with this if I see you every day and I’m so guilty about Phoebe I just…” I trailed off once more. “I don’t know. I don’t know what to do.”
“It’s okay. I understand. I’d be the same in your position.”
“I’m sure it’ll work itself out.”
“I’m sure it will for you.”
I met his gaze for the first time and blinked back tears. “I’m so sorry, Luke. I don’t know what to say. I wish I could make it go away. I’ll stop talking about it from now on, if that’s better.”
“Nothing is better, Carmen. My life is ruined. Nothing is going to make anything better.”
I fell silent. I was too hopeless to know what to respond to that with. I’d never had to deal with cheering people up properly before and it turned out I sucked at it.
Luke sighed. “I just want to move somewhere far away where there’s no Phoebe’s and no babies and no debt and there’s just me and you. It would just be nice. There’d be no drama. I’d just be happy.”
We’d never have that. I’d been under the illusion it was possible a week ago, but now it was a hopeless daydream that I’d never get to live out. “I really wish that could happen,” I said with a crushed voice, balling my hands into fists to try and hold back the sobs. I was approaching my record for consecutive days spent crying.
Off Limits Page 13