Luke's POV

Calum and I planned to actually hangout today. He's been coming over every few days since my mom has been home for the past two weeks, but we haven't really had any time to just hangout and do normal teenage guy things. Not that I really even know what that is, since I'm not exactly a normal teenage guy. 

Calum rings the doorbell and walks right in, like he usually does. I'm not sure why he even bothers ringing the bell. 

Calum walks over to the couch where I'm sitting and sits beside me. 

"Ready to go?" he asks, tossing his car keys up and catching them.

"Yeah, just a sec," I tell him, walking to my mom's room. 

She's watching something on the TV, barely paying any attention.

"Mom, are you sure you don't need anything? Everything is okay?" I ask for the hundredth time. My dad is home, I just always worry.

She smiles. "I'm fine, don't worry."

"Okay, I'll see you later then."

Calum is still sitting on the couch, scrolling through his phone, when I get back.

"All set," I tell him.

He jumps up from the couch and smiles. He walks outside and I follow behind him, getting into the car. 

"So what are we doing?" I ask him as he starts his car.

"Well, I figured we could go get some lunch by the beach and just walk around or something. Does that sound okay?"

I nod. "That's fine with me."

Calum drives down familiar streets until we get to the beach, which isn't extremely far from my house. There's a beachside restaurant right across from the ocean that we're going to eat at. He pulls into a parking space and looks over at me.

"Remember the last time we were here?" he asks.

I shake my head. "No, should I?"

"It was your seventeenth birthday."

"Oh, right." 

That was only a few months after Delia passed away. I didn't want to do anything for my birthday, but Calum came to my house and basically forced me to come here with him. He always knew I wouldn't want to do anything, but he was still willing to try. He always managed to get me out of the house every once and awhile. My seventeenth birthday would've been pretty bad if he hadn't brought me here. At least I was out doing something.

We sit at a table near the windows, kind of away from everyone. 

"Do you know what you're getting?" Calum asks me, opening up the menu.

I laugh. "You think I even remember half the stuff that's here?"

Calum shrugs and smiles.

We order and I get a cheeseburger and Calum gets a sandwich. The waitress brings over our drinks shortly after we order. 

"So, how is everything?" Calum asks, taking a sip of his soda.

I shrug. "I mean, it's not fantastic, but it's not bad," I tell him. "I'm seeing a new therapist every three weeks. I see him again next week. I got kinda mad and annoyed with him at first, but that's just because I was nervous. But I think it'll work out."

"I thought you were better though? Doesn't that mean you don't need a therapist anymore?"

I sigh. "Well, just because I'm better doesn't mean I should stop seeing a therapist. There's always the lingering chance that something could happen and I could get really depressed again, it's still a part of me. Like, a lot of people stop but then things start getting bad again. I don't want that to happen to me. I'm just not seeing one as much as I used to. Just a little checking in every once in a while is all I need right now."

I'm afraid that if I don't have some sort of therapy, I'll fall back to what I was. There's so many stories of that happening to people, but some people are totally fine. But then there's people that go to therapy for years. I'm okay with that. I'd rather know I'm staying where I am and getting better than always being worried that I might get sucked back to how I once was. I don't think it can ever get that bad again, because now I have Calum and Delilah and Michael and Ashton and Lucy... There's a lot of people supporting me that I don't want to push away. I have myself now too. A few months ago, I betrayed myself and punished my own self for Delia's death. Now I know it's not my fault anymore.

Calum nods. "That makes sense. I never really thought about it that way. I'm happy for you though. It seems like you're a lot better. Have you talked to Delilah lately?"

"A few days ago. It's just hard since she's always in school or asleep when I can call her. We always end up calling each other really late or really early."

"At least she'll be here in, what? Almost two months?"

"Yep. The start of July. She's-"

"Hey, Luke," I hear a familiar voice say. I turn and see Amber, Delia's best friend. We haven't spoken in a long time. After Delia passed, I didn't really want to talk to her because she was connected to Delia. We used to hangout a lot too, then it just stopped. She almost had a thing with Calum too, but that ended too.

"Calum," she says, nodding to him. He waves. "So, uh, how is everything?" she asks, looking at me.

I shrug. "It's alright."

A smile spreads across her face. "It's nice to see you talking again."

I feel my cheeks redden. "Uh, yeah."

We both just look at each other, not sure what to say. I'm just staring at her, not looking into her eyes and kind of just looking everywhere else. She's staring down at the ground, rocking back on her heels.

"Uh, you wanna sit or something?" I ask her, moving over on the bench.

"No, no, it's okay, I just wanted to say hi. My friends are waiting over there," she says, pointing over her shoulder. "I didn't know you were back."

"Yeah, I've been back for about a month now."

"That's awesome! Well, maybe I'll see you around."

I nod. "Yeah." I look over at Calum. "Maybe sometime we could hangout like we used to?" I say it more like a question. I'm not really sure what I'm saying.

She smiles. "Yeah, that'd be nice. See you later. Bye, guys."

"Bye," Calum and I say in unison.

"Maybe we could hangout like we used to?" Calum asks, mocking me once Amber walks away. He rolls his eyes and laughs.

"I didn't know what to say! I was flustered!" 

It used to always be Delia, Amber, Calum and me. Everywhere we went. Then once Delia passed, we kind of separated from Amber. She was sad, I was even more sad. We tried hanging out again, but it just wasn't the same. We knew Delia was missing. There was a missing piece. Without Delia, it just didn't work out. It felt weird and almost wrong. Like without her, we shouldn't all hangout. We lost touch after that. I lost touch with a lot of people after that...

"I sometimes see Amber in school and it's so awkward. We, like, avoid each other," Calum says. 

"Well you were almost a thing."

He nods. "Key word being almost."

Our food comes out and it's even better than I remember it. I used to love coming here and looking out at the beach. The food is really great, too. I forgot how much I missed it here.

Once we're done, we head out to the beach. We walk along the shore for a little, not saying much.

Calum picks up a rock and tries to skip it on the ocean. It skips three times.

"That wasn't a good one," he says, laughing and continuing to walk.

It's weird to be on the beach and it's not freezing. It's also weird to be on a beach without Delilah. When I think about it, a lot has happened on beaches in the past few months. I mouthed my first words on a beach and that's also where Delilah and I had our first kiss. But this is a different beach with different memories. And no Delilah.

But in a few months, I'll be on this beach. Delilah will be here with me, walking beside me. And we'll be ready to make some new memories.

I hope you all had a nice Christmas (or whatever you celebrate!) and have a good New Year!!

I have a twitter just for RTF related things, it's RTFbook if you'd like to follow it. My regular twitter is still singsongash. My website is also ashleyroyer.com if you'd like to check it out! :)

thanks for continuing to read this even though I'm so bad at updating. I promise I'll try to get better. :)

-ashley