Bruises - JATP Fanfic (Luke x OC)

Chapter 17

"Marching on proud

Turn it up loud

'Cause now we know what we're worth" The band plays, while Brielle taps and listens to them, composing another song of her own. Listening to music would be any normal person's way of getting completely distracted, but for Brielle, she used the music streaming through her ears to inspire her own songs. Conveniently, now's when Luke decides to come back to the studio, shocked to see Julie is playing with his bandmates.

"Woah, Julie." Luke instantly sees her and Brielle is a bit upset because she is never noticed.

"Grab your guitar. We got work to do." Julie grins, and Luke grabs it.

"Oh, and by the way, Happy Birthday." Julie adds, before they continue to work on the song. Brielle just stays silent, listening to them as she continues to write her own song. Being an introvert isn't all it cracks up to be. People may think that finding ways to entertain yourself is a great thing, but lots of people never notice you're around most of the time.

"Alright, I need to go do my homework. I'll see you guys tonight." Julie heads inside, unaware that her dad and tía knows she skipped school that day and is about to get chewed out by the two of them and grounded. Sorry, girl.

"So, what's Brielle writing in her infamous songbook?" Luke sits next to Brielle on the couch, leaning in to see her scribbling away on the page in her perfect cursive he recognizes from her handwritten essay a few weeks earlier.

"Nothing I'm letting the world see." She finishes the word she's writing and snaps the book shut.

"Oh, come on. Please?" Luke leans into her and forgets for a moment that they can't touch, but he still tries, and falls onto the couch. "That feels weird."

"Like I said, you can't look. And I know at least one of you three looked at my songbook while I was gone." Brielle stands up and looks at the three ghosts. "I'm not an idiot. It wasn't put back in the right spot."

"B-but, I put it back where I found it!" Alex, as the narrator of this story, I might actually slap you for that comment.

"That didn't take long. And, I'm going to guess Reggie has also looked at it, and maybe even Luke." Brielle just stares at the three of them, annoyed and feeling violated that they read everything in the tear stained book.

"We were just worried about you, okay?" Luke walks in front of her, and she can feel the nonexistent touches that trickle down her arm, and she reaches out for his hands. Except, as Flynn likes to remind her and Julie, they're made of air. And they will always be made of air. Brielle feels as if her heart belongs to someone who doesn't exist anymore. Someone whose real body is six feet underground.

"I'll be okay." She whispers, before turning and somehow forgetting that her prosthetic foot exists for one tiny moment and it doesn't like when she swivels on that foot. It likes to either disconnect from the strap that connects it to her body or the strap shifts so that it's facing the wrong way. The latter, of course, doesn't hurt, but it doesn't make it any easier to walk. This time, it decides to disconnect from the strap and the moment she takes a step, her body collides with the floor. "Ow."

"Brielle, are you okay?" Conveniently, the points that hit the ground first were the places with some pretty bad bruises and all she wants is a real person who can reassure her that her life isn't going to be like the trash her parents continuously compare her to.

"I'm fine." She sits up, although still in quite a bit of pain, and reattaches her prosthetic. "I need to go home and change for your guys' performance. I'll see you in an hour." Brielle walks home, noticing a lighter presence and deep down, she is so happy her parents have gone to that god awful club already, and just enjoys the near silence outside of the occasional cuss word from Oliver while he's playing his games. Sneaking out of the house, she takes the old bike she rarely rides anymore all four miles to the club, where she hears a song she hasn't heard since her childhood. It was one of her favorite songs that Aliyah used to sing before her parents turned into the mean old grumps they are today.