alumni ? luke hemmings [DISCONTINUED]

LUKE HEMMINGS

There's a five star restaurant not too far from Rockefeller, on the way to Upper Manhattan, a place almost always left deserted due to ridiculous prices that soar high above the roof. When I was younger, my folks used to take me there all the time. Of course, I never once picked up on it's extravagance, but the older I got, the more my appreciation for the establishment grew. It's a rarity that I'm not there.

I ask the girl in my passenger seat whether or not she wants to go, to check the place out just in case she's hungry. She says no. I ask why, she says she doesn't have her wallet.

I almost laugh. It's funny to me how she thinks I'd let her pay for herself.

I was also taught never to hang on to money as a child. That was an object, something of my posession that would always be my possession, so I didn't have to worry. My Mum would tell me to save it, but if an opportunity came along to splurge it on someone, then splurge it I shall. My father didn't care. As long as I knew the status that money gave me he didn't give much of a damn.

Though something tells me that the girl next to me won't give in so easily, won't even agree to order until I give my bank details for her to transfer money into later. If she decides to be as stubborn as I know she is, then she might do just that- anything but refuse to have late lunch with me. We've already come this far.

Nevertheless, I park my car at a diner, one of the four stops I'd initially had in mind. Sophie follows suit, from the car all the way to the booth, sitting right opposite me with a doll-like, doe-eyed simplicity that I've never seen before. She's shy but she's not. The contrast astounds me.

It's odd to see her here, to hear her voice up close again, to see the depth of her brown eyes past a cluster of long, black eyelashes. I'm used to seeing her face covered by fallen strands of hair with her head tilted, eyes fixated on a laptop screen. She almost doesn't look like Sophie. Or at least, the Sophie I'm used to.

I begin to wonder why we're here, why I've brought her here and why she isn't plaguing me with an endless array of questions. She must be confused. I mean, so am I, but there's a difference in our bafflements; she has every right to be, I have zero.

Telling her that I don't mind her company sounds too strained. Telling her that I wanted to see her sounds too desperate. And telling her that I don't know, well, it's too weak of an answer to give.

So I don't say anything. I just watch as her eyes scan the menu, bottom lip jutting out. She's silently agreed to letting me pay, then. Obviously I'm relieved. I need to make it up to her somehow- I did force her off of a planned train roadtrip, after all.

When I order a hot chocolate (with extra whipped cream, just in case) and a black coffee, I see Sophie's shoulders relax a little in relief. She'll never admit it, not outright, but there's a sense of anxiousness behind everything that she does. It's why her words are so quiet and why her opinions sound forced. She doesn't open up like a book but she can be easily read as one.

She catches me staring and I look away. But instead of doing the same just to avoid an awkward moment, she puts her menu down, places her wrung together hands on top of it, and stares at me square in the face.

Fucking typical.

"What?" I ask, irritated, already beginning to wish that I had hung up the second she said she was at Rockefeller. She doesn't move. "What do you want?"

"Cake."

"What?"

"Chocolate cake, and a cup of whipped cream," she points at two seperate things on the menu, and I soon realise that she'd managed to dodge my interrogative pretty swiftly. My eyebrow raises as she sends me a sickly sweet smile, "Please."