Bottoms Up – Melissa Elizabeth

It has good reviews, with a social media presence nearly as active as Luke’s, and even I have to admit, the pictures of their food are enough to make me drool. The restaurant’s décor is hip and stylish, nothing short of my expectations now that I understand Luke’s taste in the finer things. The menu is just as remarkable, with so many delicious options that I have difficulty deciding what to order. But then, something catches my eye, and I’m instantly a goner.

Avocado toast. Lord knows I’m a sucker for it, and their version sounds more intriguing than anything I could make at home. Luke sips on a mimosa, and I enjoy the house-made bloody mary, not even caring that it’s before noon. So many things on this date have fallen outside my regular routines that nothing surprises me anymore. I sit in our booth by the window and watch every time Luke’s smile blooms when he gets a new notification from Instagram. When he turns the phone to me, I see that my photo has surpassed a couple thousand likes in the few hours it’s been up, with comments in the hundreds.

“See! People love your art,” Luke says, staring at the photo before turning the screen off and putting the phone face down on the table, bringing him fully into the present. “The picture’s okay.” I reach for his hand, tracing his delicate wrist, the soft skin beneath my fingers bringing up a rush of memory from last night. I can’t help but smile. “But I think what they really love is you. You’re the art.” Luke’s bright blue eyes sparkle behind his glasses as his lips curl into that adorable half-smile, and a twinge of pink flushes across his cheeks as he turns to look at the street outside.

We sit together in comfortable silence when I’m suddenly hit with a strange feeling of déjà vu, like I’ve been here before. The sensation is enough to make me release a whole body shiver as I take in every detail in front of me, from the way Luke’s profile glows in the sunlight to the smallest nick in the table. It’s like I’m remembering this instead of living it for the first time. Intellectually, I know it’s simply the brain doing weird things with storing memory when this feeling comes up.

But I’ve always secretly wondered if that was only our current understanding of the phenomenon or if it was a sign of something more. I would never admit this out loud and sound like an idiot, but when I was a kid, I had this idea that experiencing déjà vu was like hitting a checkpoint in time. Like, in a world of possibilities and probable outcomes, it was a threshold crossed, firmly dictating the trajectory down a specific path, closing down the branches of the paths before it.

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Book Cover by Kenzie Alyse First edition 2026 1kitap1.com/en Contents Prologue Honestly? Fuck Luke Shaw 1. Chapter One Look Who’s Back 2. Chapter Two The Road to Oblivion 3. Chapter Three Intrusive Thoughts 4. Chapter Four Dinner Dates 5. Chapter Five To the Rescue 6. Chapter Six Inflection Point 7. Chapter Seven The Veil is Thin 8. Chapter Eight The Date 9. Chapter Nine So, That Just Happened 10. Chapter Ten Well, This Is Awkward 11. Chapter Eleven Coming Out 12.

Chapter Twelve Reflections and Respite 13. Chapter Thirteen All That Glitters 14. Chapter Fourteen The Camping Trip 15. Chapter Fifteen Dreams VS Reality 16. Chapter Sixteen In the Afterglow 17. Chapter Seventeen Mixed Messages 18. Chapter Eighteen Consequences 19. Chapter Nineteen Crossed Wires 20. Chapter Twenty Cloud Nine 21. Chapter Twenty-One Dark Spots 22. Chapter Twenty-Two Marble and Brass 23.

Chapter Twenty-Three Playing with Fire 24. Chapter Twenty-Four A Night to Remember 25. Chapter Twenty-Five Pictures Worth a Thousand Words 26. Chapter Twenty-Six Secrets and Lies 27. Chapter Twenty-Seven Showdown 28. Chapter Twenty-Eight Gravity 29. Chapter Twenty-Nine Level Up 30. Chapter Thirty A Light in the Dark 31. Chapter Thirty-One Close Call 32. Chapter Thirty-Two Sweet Sixteen 33. Chapter Thirty-Three Resolutions 34. Chapter Thirty-Four Found Out 35. Chapter Thirty-Five Rivals and Despair 36. Chapter Thirty-Six New York Bound 37. Chapter Thirty-Seven So, This Is Love 38. Chapter Thirty-Eight A New Dream 39.

Chapter Thirty-Nine Take Me Home, Country Roads 40. Chapter Forty Broken 41. Chapter Forty-One Damages 42. Chapter Forty-Two The Closet Is Made of Glass 43. Chapter Forty-Three Confessions 44. Chapter Forty-Four Please Don’t Go 45. Chapter Forty-Five Untethered 46. Chapter Forty-Six Closure Epilogue For the Love of Luke Shaw Acknowledgements 1kitap1.com/en Content Warnings This story contains content that may be sensitive for some readers. While not an exhaustive list, these are a few of the elements you can expect to find within these pages.

Please review them carefully, and always make sure to prioritize your mental health. This story deals with bigotry surrounding homophobia, and includes themes of bullying, violence, emotional abuse, mentions of sexual assault, trauma, PTSD, and mild use of homophobic slurs. Additionally, there are many themes involving mental health issues, including brief descriptions of past suicide attempts, eating disorders, death of a parent, grief, depression, and panic attacks.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 60f71bdaeb646ae2
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 7,168,672 bytes (6.837 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 497
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 968.97 minutes
• Total Words: 193,794
• Total Characters: 1,040,289
• Average Words per Page: 389.93
• Average Characters per Page: 2093.14

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