The first time Luke saw you, he was stupidly in love with a girl from the sixth floor. They had smiled to each other once or twice at their mailboxes, and he specifically remembered her winking when he held the door open for her. His feelings dove head first into uncharted territory, and in order to fulfill his fantasies, he strategized a plan. On the day he met you, you soiled that plan.
Truth be told, it wasn’t much of a plan. The cliché, “do you have any sugar” had been a clever device in his mind, yet you chatted up a storm with him while his future wife scuttled off down the hall. In your hands were two large pans of half-eaten lasagna. You said you had hosted a small party, and you wanted to ask if he would like the leftovers. But he quite rudely refused, hopeful to never speak to you again as he shut the door on your nose and called it a night.
The next morning, you had leftover pancakes.
The third time he saw you, a routine had kicked off. After that, anytime you cooked or baked too much food, you carried it over to Luke’s, and vice versa on his part. Although he would never admit it, he never truly detested you in the first place. Because once your visitations became more frequent, Luke had forgotten about the girl from the sixth floor. He had gotten a taste of your cookies, and perhaps food was the secret to one’s heart, because he was dying for it.
He saw you every day. In the hallway, in his dreams... He saw you even when you thought he couldn’t. There was something oddly mesmerizing about everything you spoke for and every expression in your features. He found himself watching the way your lips formed words or how your eyes crinkled shut when you smiled so wide. He saw the sway of your hips when you fixed up another batch of brownies just because you “felt like it”. He noticed the tear that slipped down your cheek while you watched that Bing Bong scene from Inside Out. (You know the one). Luke thought that he had seen every little piece of you, and he decided that he liked all of it. He liked you because...
...and only three months after knowing you, he came to realize that he also loved you despite.
Everything from the way you laughed to the way you cried when you cut your thumb on a mac and cheese box—he loved it all. He loved hearing your familiar knock on his front door even when he left it unlocked just for you. He loved seeing the toothbrush he bought for you because of the night you fell asleep and he was too head over heels to wake you up. He loved the feeling of your fingertips dancing along his shoulder every time you approached him from behind. He especially loved imagining that delicate touch during the times when he was alone.
And, throughout all of this, Luke had never admitted it to you. Not even when the comfortable silence settled in and your smile was so delightful, that the perfect moment was just sitting there in the palm of his hands, and he was too scared to even move his gaze toward you. Not even when your laugh filled the room and his heart filled his chest because of the glorious sound. Instead, he came at the moment you least needed to hear those words—when the person you had been seeing for a year broke your heart, and Luke thought his confession would seal it right back up.
You stared at him, tears drying on your puffy cheeks while the tension overwhelmed him. He gulped down the rest of his words and waited for a change in atmosphere. Whatever was in the air, it wasn’t good.
“What?” you whispered to him, voice almost nonexistent as the white noise trickled in.
It pained him to hear you so defeated and quiet. But Luke knew you had heard him, so he couldn’t hide the truth. Instead, he only stretched it further. “I-I’m in love with you,” he said, folding his arms awkwardly across his chest. “In love with your smile, your eyes... the way your laugh gets so high sometimes that only dogs could hear it. I’m—I’m in love with how you always put butterscotch in your cookies because it makes them different and sweet. I love how you send a picture of us to your mum any time she texts you when I’m around. I-I just love it. All of it. All of you.”
You, undoubtedly, were speechless, but the tears had begun to fall again. He wasn’t sure if he was now the one breaking your heart.
“Lu, you can’t—you can’t expect me to—“
“I don’t,” he said. “I don’t expect you to have anything to say, or to even love me in return. If you wanna never speak to me again, that’s fine. I’m just sorry it came out like this. You’re in pain, a-and I just made things worse, and I’m so sorry.”
You glanced down at your feet, hopeful that your tears would cloud your vision and keep you from seeing his sorry eyes. “I should go home,” you whispered. “I’m gonna go home. Goodnight, Luke.”
Before he could get a nod in, you walked toward the front door.
“Goodnight, love.”
The next time Luke saw you, you had frantically been banging on his front door at eleven o’clock in the morning. Three whole days passed since his confession—since he last saw you, even. Three whole days of absolute agony despite thinking the confession would ease his pain. Truly, it did not. As it turned out, he was even more miserable.
Now, you were the hot sputtering mess before him, a spew of “I’m sorry”’s and “I’ve been thinking about it, and maybe I love you, too”. Luke was too in shock to register a single word you said.
You sighed and closed your eyes. “I’ve been thinking and thinking—just constantly thinking about everything you said, and I fucked up. I really, really love you. I have for weeks, and I never wanted to admit it because, fuck, I had someone else. But by that point, I didn’t know how to end it because it had been a year, and that’s not fair to them, so I wasn’t gonna say anything. But then you got all confessy when I was crying, and it threw me off, so I didn’t even get the chance to—”
Luke wrapped his arms around your waist and tugged you in, lips meeting yours with a smile before your hands found his chest. The amount of happiness fluttering through him sent sparks down his nerves, and it was everything the books and movies said it would be, at least for the moment. It was how it was supposed to feel. Safe, warm, comforting, like the last kiss you’ll ever want to have.
When he pulled away, Luke couldn’t help but dive right back in.
