Chapter 4: Pair

Luke came home at the end of the night with a weighty, fatigued body. He'd stood around for a couple of hours, but as soon as business slowed down some, Miss R put him to work cleaning the place up. He plugged his nose and cleaned mystery splashes off the walls and floor of the bathroom and scrubbed the sink until he realized it was actually supposed to be white, not the beige he'd assumed walking in. He'd wiped dust off every doorframe and, when he thought he was finished, Miss R offhandedly mentioned that the windows up front needed washing, too.

He heaved himself up the stairs to his second-floor apartment and opened the front door as quietly as possible, wincing as the old hinges creaked. He navigated to the kitchen in the dark, shuffling so as not to bump his shins on any furniture. He got a glass of water, and, as he tipped his head back to drink it, the world went wavy around him and his balance faltered.

Luke leaned against the sink to drink the rest of the glass, more tired than he'd been in years from staying up past three in the morning cleaning a grimy bar.

The glass slid out of his hand and clattered into the sink basin, and Luke's entire body tensed.

"I'm trying to sleep, dude, Jesus!"

The shout was what he'd dreaded. Luke considered apologizing, but figured that silence would be the best remedy.

Luke knew he needed to tell Rob that he would be coming home late after work, but he didn't know if he should tell him why. Of everyone that went out of their ways to ostracize him, Rob was the number-one person who never let Luke live down the favoritism from the elders. It'd always felt like an underhanded punishment for Luke's rebellious nature that they were paired to live together when they left the group home when they were eighteen.

Undoubtedly, he'd have something negative to say about Luke getting an assignment directly from the Herald. Just thinking about it worsened Luke's pounding headache.

Luke's eyes cemented shut as he got ready for bed, and he fell into a sleep as heavy as his body.

***

Luke woke up the next morning to the sound of his phone beeping beside him, and he unwillingly squinted his eyes open. Realization hit when he saw the contact name, "Whitney" on the screen.

"Hey, sorry," he said, his voice hoarse and uncomfortable out of his own throat. "I forgot to tell you I was working late last night, so I can't make it to breakfast today."

"Oh," Whitney said on the other line, and then took a long pause.

Luke nearly drifted back to sleep.

"Okay, should we just meet up later?" she asked.

He wiped across his face with his free hand. "Yeah, do you want lunch or something?"

"Sure, I'll call you again after service, okay?"

Luke could hear the smile in her voice, and it made him feel a little worse about forgetting their plans for the morning. "Yeah, sounds good. See you later," he said, eyes sliding shut.

"Bye," she said, and Luke was out again before the call even ended.

Thankfully, he was awake by the time Whitney called him back, and they adjusted their plans to get lunch at a nearby restaurant that she promised had great soups and sandwiches. He got ready, and listened at his door to make sure that Rob wasn't in the living room or kitchen before he escaped his room.

The biggest point of contention between him and Rob was Whitney.

In the year they turned sixteen, every member of The Faith got assigned a "Pair" by the elders. Members were unable to refute or break their Pair as long as they lived; the Pairing served as a silent oath of commitment until they were old enough to legally marry.

Whitney was Luke's Pair. The daughter of a wealthy Doyen, she held as much prestige as Luke was supposed to have inherited from his father. Luke didn't need Rob's constant scathing remarks to know that he didn't live up to Whitney's family name, didn't deserve having her as his Pair—and Rob didn't even know her as closely as Luke did, to know that aside from her lineage, she was the most caring and sweet person he'd ever known.

Luke didn't deserve her, and he knew it. Still, he put in the effort to act as a proper Pair, meeting with her the proper number of times and spending the proper amount of time with her to save face with the elders.

Still, he never dreaded spending time with Whitney. It was just that after growing up with her his entire life, seeing her with her light blonde hair and blue eyes that matched his own, he'd always felt like she could be his sister and not—one day—his wife.

Whitney walked into the restaurant a couple of minutes after Luke sat down, and she was as beautiful as ever in her sweater and long dress, her hair braided over her shoulder. She smiled at him, and he waved back.

"So, you got a new job, huh?" she asked when she sat down across from him, her chin in her hand.

"I don't know if I'm supposed to talk about it," Luke said, eyes wandering over her shoulder, though he saw her expression grow more curious in her peripheral vision after he said so. "Just—don't tell anyone, okay?"

"Promise," she said with a sage nod.

Luke told her about meeting with the Herald and later going to work at the bar.

"A bar?" Whitney said, brows jumping up her forehead.

"Yeah, it's weird, right?" he said, thankful for her reaction that made his own seem less severe.

"Yeah, aren't we, like, not supposed to—" she cleared her throat and stuck her nose in the air, "'partake in any impurities of the body or mind'?"

Whitney's scathing impression of the Doyens never failed to make Luke laugh. She was the only other person he knew that would dare challenge The Faith, even as a joke, and hearing her do so always comforted Luke. "Right, yeah, that's what I'm saying."

Luke told her about the rest of the night, including Rob yelling at him, but left out meeting Abel. He didn't know what compelled him to keep that part of the night from her, the memory existing as a nebulous area in his mind that he had to keep to himself at all costs—even from Whitney.

He relaxed a bit after telling her about the strange day, and they sat and ate their sandwiches. They chatted more about the service that morning, and the fact that several people had asked her where he was, just like always, and their plans for the evening—she suggested coming to visit him at work, and it only took one description of the bathroom to nix that plan.

When Luke thought about going to work, his mind wandered to a figure in a hoodie with a buzzed head and dimples, and he wondered when he would see him again.

Luke blinked away those thoughts and focused instead on his Pair across from him.