Just a Little Sequel Read Online Free PDF

out, and Luke put his hand on the door knob leading into the master bedroom.
    “Again, I wasn’t planning to bring you here until Sunday evening, so I’m sorry for the mess,” he said, and then he opened the door and flipped on the light.
    I took a step into the bedroom and caught a breath in my throat.
    “Luke?”
    The clothes he’d worn to the house earlier were strewn about the tidily made bed— Luke’s bed—and there were boxes, mostly unpacked, stacked in every corner.
    “Have you been staying here?”
    “Yeah,” he nodded, “I haven’t had much free time lately, and I just had trouble going between here and the apartment, so I moved out...six weeks ago.”
    “You’ve had this house for almost two months, and you’re just now telling me?”
    “Ah,” he rubbed the back of his neck, “I’ve had this house for about five months, actually.”
    “Five?”
    “It needed some work,” he said, half-laughing. “Believe me when I tell you it didn’t look half this nice when I bought it. It was quite a fixer-upper, but I got it for a hell of a price. The kitchen was a disaster—”
    “Wait a minute,” I held my hand in the air. “Time out.”
    “What?”
    “You bought this house in….”
    “May,” he spared me the mental math.
    “And you remodeled the kitchen?”
    “The kitchen, the bathrooms, the whole place.”
    “And you’ve been living here since—”
    “Your second week of the semester.”
    “And you didn’t tell me because…?”
    “I wanted to surprise you,” he said, and then I remembered that he’d already told me that once before on the front lawn.
    “But… I hate surprises.”
    “Do you hate this surprise?” he asked, looking around the room. “I mean, minus the crap thrown everywhere.”
    I smiled. The mess was very unlike him, but I kinda liked that. It was unpredictable stuff that made Luke so intriguing to me; I never knew what to expect with him.
    “No,” I shook my head. “I don’t hate this surprise at all.”
    Luke’s chest fell as he let a long, slow breath pass between his lips.
    “Luke, it’s a really sweet gesture, and I don’t want you to think I’m not grateful, but why did you bring me here? If you wanted it to be a surprise, why didn’t you just wait? I mean, Sunday’s only a few days away, and you said yourself you weren’t planning on bringing me here tonight for the big reveal. What changed your mind? You’ve already waited five months; why not wait a couple more days?”
    He closed his eyes as if he needed to make sure he couldn’t see my face when he said, “Charlie.”
    “Charlie?”
    “Julie,” he said, and he finally opened his eyes. His mouth hung open for a few long seconds, and then he dropped his head. “I think we need to talk about—”
    And then his phone rang.
    Lifting a finger, he pulled it from his back pocket and checked the screen.
    With an annoyed sigh, he answered.
    “What?”
    He only listened for two seconds before he interrupted the person on the other line.
    “Okay, okay, okay,” he said hurriedly, and his eyes got wider. With a giant smile he ended the call with, “We’re coming. We’re leaving now. We’ll be there in five minutes.”
    Luke turned back to me and he couldn’t force his smile away no matter how hard he tried.
    “Rebecca’s in labor. She’s on her way to the hospital right now—”
    “She’s having the baby?” I shook my head. “ Now? ”
    “Right now,” he said. “That was Dad. He said the contractions started just as Bruno picked up the microphone for his encore performance.”
    “ Then why are we still standing here ?” I took his hand. I tried to pull him out of the room, but he kept himself planted right in place. “Stop dragging your feet, Luke! Let’s go! ”
    “Julie,” he pulled me back to him. Our chests brushed for just a second, and then he took a step back. “We were right in the middle of—”
    “Luke,” I said, nearly jumping up and down, “it can wait,