Stereos

At her kitchen table she sat, between her Grandmother and younger sister Joy. Beside her Grandmother was Luke, who looked more comfortable than any of her friends had that had visited her yesterday.

He wasn’t a blood relative, she knew, but after awkwardly shaking his hand in greeting, something told her they weren’t friends either. As it stood, her and Luke were in limbo.

She didn’t feel like she was violating his personal space by staring at him, since her defense was that there was something eerily familiar about him. And there was.

“Peyton, are you hungry, love?” Peyton turned her attention to Nancy, who was posed over the kitchen sink and ready for action. She wasn’t feeling particularly hungry, but eating was probably good for her.

“I’ll eat whatever you’re making,” she responded politely. Grandma Sandra clucked genuinely from Peyton’s side.

“You’ve always been so polite, Peyton. Your mother will be happy to make whatever your heart desires.” Even still, Peyton didn’t feel it would be polite to demand Nancy make her anything.

“Why don’t I take Peyton out for dinner.”

Peyton heard the finality in Luke’s voice and turned to look at him. He just offered her a kind smile and looked at Joy. “Would you like to come as well?”

The fourteen year old nearly fainted in her seat. “That would be so cool, Luke! Thanks!”

Nancy sighed and affectionately swatted the air by Luke’s shoulder with the tea towel she was holding. “Oh Luke, you’re such a sweetheart, but I’m sure you have better things to spend your millions on.”

Luke’s head dropped to his chest in humility. “It isn’t millions yet, Nancy.”

Grandma Sandra put her two cents in as well. “Nancy, quit your appreciative sighs. He’s Peyton’s –”

Peyton had watched the exchange with furrowed eyebrows, wondering who Luke was in relation to her family. They all seemed to like him enough. But then they all went silent and looked at her.

“ –Friend,” her Grandmother continued smoothly after only a little blip in the sentence, “and you’re making him blush.”

Nancy twittered away. “Well, Peyton, you’d better go get ready then.”
---
Joy knew better than to tag around like a kid, so she skipped ahead to the little café that the three of them had chosen. Peyton walked quietly beside Luke, not sure of what would be appropriate to ask him. She had known him previously, which she understood, so she should feel so awkward around him.

“So where are you from?” She decided to take it back to the bare basics.

Peyton’s parents’ house wasn’t far from the café, so they decided to walk to it. It was good for Peyton to walk.

“Saskatoon, Saskatchewan,” he answered easily.

Peyton couldn’t keep herself from smiling over at him. “I can hear it in your voice,” she noted, biting her lip.

Luke nodded. “You always used to tease me about it.”

Peyton pouted. “Sorry.”

His dimples appeared. “Don’t be.”

They fell silent again, as Peyton looked up at the fading colours in the sky. There was so much she didn’t remember about herself, and there were so many questions she needed answers to. “Tell me about myself,” she asked quietly.

Luke studied her quietly for a moment as he considered her request. He could have taken it to heart and somehow felt guilty about what she had asked of him, but he just smiled quietly. Her eyes were drawn to the dimples that appeared on his smooth, round cheeks. “You like peanut butter, but not peanuts.”

Peyton waited for him to say more, but was slightly embarrassed to find that it was all he was going to say. It didn’t escape her that he referred to her in the present, not in the past. “You know, maybe I like peanuts and not peanut butter now.”

He grinned at her. “Not possible. You like peanut butter more than anyone else I know.”

Peyton couldn’t help but feel bad for Luke; she probably wasn’t the same person he was remembering.
---
He watched her walk silently beside him. At one point his hand brushed against hers, and as hard as she tried not to move away, he noticed the way her hand involuntarily flinched. Before the accident Peyton wouldn’t have flinched away.

The Toronto street lights illuminated her face in profile, from the soft ski-slope button nose and her attractively shaped lips. “You also had a crush on one of my teammates.”

“Peyton, I’m hungry!”

He looked up, along with Peyton, at Joy. Joy, like her sister, had auburn hair and emerald green eyes. While Joy had an impatient quality she would soon grow out of with age, Peyton had a quiet serenity about her that just completely calmed Luke down whenever he was around her. It wasn’t that he was an angry person by nature – Luke never got really angry at anything. But he knew if he did one day have some kind of emotional let down, Peyton would be his Ritalin.

A look crossed Peyton’s face, which reminded him a lot of the old her so it coincidentally made his heart lurch painfully. But as quickly as it crossed her face, it vanished. Then he realized she was looking at him. Her petite stature, standing just under the 5’ mark (in her mind she was 5’ on the dot it was so close), made her easy to lose in a large group of people. She probably weighed as much as his right leg, not that he’d tell her that, but she carried herself with such a quiet confidence (even now) that it was hard to ignore her.

He wanted to reach out and touch her, to make sure that she was still with him; it was still his Peyton. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t, because he hadn’t missed the way she’d been awkwardly moved when he got close enough to her.

When she suddenly bumped into him, she gasped and enunciated an apology. That was his Peyton; making sure no one ever felt uncomfortable or left with hurt feelings. But, as diplomatically as he could, he straightened her out with a soft touch. He could feel her anxiety slipping through his fingers, so he tried to lighten the situation. “You’ve also kind of been at war with gravity for a while now,” he informed her softly.

“Peyton!” Joy interrupted with a loud exasperated sigh.

“We’re coming!” Peyton called politely to her sister, and then turning to Luke, she said, “Has she always been like this?”

He bit back a laugh. “Don’t worry; once you confided in me how much you really care about her.”

Peyton nodded, mulling the information over. “So, you and I were close then? I mean, for me to confide in you?”

He nodded, and held a door open for her. “And I know it doesn’t mean much now, but you still can.”

As she looked over her shoulder and up at him, she gave him a fleeting smile. It was a smile exactly like the one she gave him the first time they met. And, he supposed, they were technically just meeting again.

And since they were just meeting again, he wasn’t going to repeat to her what he had told her on the phone the night she got in the car accident.
---
When she had accidentally bumped into him, his hand had gone around her arm and straightened her. She could feel the heat of his hand through her light jacket, and not only did a tingle shoot up her spine to the back of her brain, it also separated and went down to her toes.

And she suddenly had another little daydream flash before her eyes. But this one wasn’t as clear as before. The one before had been like a home movie, where Peyton could very easily make out everything. In this one, all she could distinguish were the lips touching hot kisses to a neck rich with goose bumps.

And in that exact moment, Peyton felt the same exhilaration the girl in her daydream felt. It was why she had to get as far away from Luke’s grasp as possible. It was a confusing feeling, and confusing wasn’t something she needed right now.