Daisies in the Night

Why am I like this ?

"You'll be fine." Joshua tries to convince himself as he lets out a deep sigh and checks his phone for any texts, "It was just 11 months. You can get over it. Easy." He puts the phone in his pocket.

He puts on his jacket and dusts the rain stains from his ride back home yesterday. Carries his bag and picks up the keys to his bike as he leaves his room.

As he closes the door, he hears a bold feminine voice "and where are you headed?" Joshua flinches and looks up the stairs, It's his mom. He smiles and says "to Paul's? "

"... are you not sure?" "To Paul's." Joshua confirmed. His mom looked uneasy "Be back in time and where is your raincoat the forecast said it'll be raining a lot today?" Joshua points at his bag as he waves her bye.

He rushes to the shoe rack and slips his sneakers in. His dad looks at his mom from his table and she checks if Joshua left the house and says "He rarely stays home these days" Dad chimes in "and even when he stays at home he's just in his room." His mom shrugs as she enters his room and sees the raincoat on his bed, she lets out a deep sigh.

Joshua wipes the rain stains from his bike and shortens the strap of his empty bag before opening the gates. He looks at the bike and thinks "well. I hope it rains today". He puts on his helmet and rides off after closing the gate behind him.

As he staggered his way trying to avoid the puddles, he nearly slipped in a turn but keeps going. As the bumpy road ends and the pavement leads to the Highway Joshua raises the gear and speeds up slowly overtaking the cars and trucks ahead of him. He takes a different road than usual. Riding past cars, bikes and people he crosses an intersection and as he zooms away his eyes gravitate to a building that looked familiar, that made him anxious and his heart started beating faster. Time slowed down and the air felt colder. His eyes wander off the road, his feet start to shake and -

HONK

A car pressed the horn behind him, he was startled and twisted the accelerator harder and zoomed forward. A couple meters ahead he pressed the brake and stopped on the side of the road. As he caught his breath, sweat dripped from the side of his forehead and it got difficult to swallow. After pacing himself a little Joshua thought to himself,

"Why am I like this?"

A month has passed since the breakup and when you find so many ways to go back to her you just feel pathetic. Every day you just do something to distract yourself, so you don't think about her. Life is all about highs and lows but it sucks a lot when what you feel is only the lows. You need that high to function, to find a reason to believe that everything was not a waste of time.

Joshua gets a call, he picks it up without looking at it.

"hello" a familiar voice calls out, it was Eric, "where are you?"

"Anyways" he cuts in before Joshua can respond, "can you make it to our church right now? We need a guitarist."

Joshua says, "Did you ask Andrew?"

"He can't make it." Eric replies quickly "you coming? I don't have other options so say yes, you even know the group it'll be fun. Come on~"

"Okay, okay" Joshua replies " Give me like 10 minutes, I'm out right now."

"Okay then, I'll tell them you're coming. Be quick" Eric hangs up.

Joshua looks back to that intersection from his mirror and starts the engine. He makes a dangerous turn startling a scooter coming from behind him. He speeds off nodding apologetically to the guy on the scooter.

As he was headed to Eric's church, God answered Joshua's wish. It started to rain. The drops started to fog his glasses and he slid the helmet's visor down but that didn't help much. He started to curse the rain as he sped up to get there before the rain got heavier but then he smiled.

He reached the Church and parked his bike close to the main building. As he got off and took off his helmet he saw the choir team sitting next to the parking lot under a roof. They were talking and laughing. Eric looks at him and tells the girl next to him something.

As Joshua was shaking off the water from his backpack a small towel appeared from his back. He turns back and sees a girl holding out the cloth for him. She says " You should wipe that water off, you wouldn't want to catch a cold." with a very bright smile. Joshua smiles weirdly and takes the towel and wipes his face.

As Eric was walking to them Joshua spoke up, "It's Sarah, right?" The girl looks at him and nods, "Yup that's me, J-O-S-H-U-A right?" She said playfully, pronouncing every letter. Joshua smiled, " Yup, couldn't do it better than that." They both laugh.

Eric gets closer to them he says, " What took you so long?" Joshua looks at him with a "we're not doing this" face and says," let's go up or are we waiting for anyone else?"

Eric looks disappointed not being able to make any jokes and then proceeds to call the choir team to head to the church hall for practice.

Joshua asks Eric what the program is even about. Eric explains it is a small church youth event and they needed to form a last-minute team and the guitarist couldn't make it.

One of the singers asked Joshua, " Why did you agree without any information though? I wouldn't trust Eric like that." Everyone laughed.

This was the second time Joshua played with this group. The week Joshua broke up Eric had asked him to help them with bass. Joshua said yes without any actual bass experience just to get out of the house. During those two days of practice and the event Joshua had so much fun. He forgot the scars the breakup had left on him, he just felt happy praising God and when Eric called him again he didn't want to say no.

Joshua had to confirm the chords with Sarah the keyboardist a decent amount of times, she was a great sport. Eric was shouting at the singers a lot from the drum booth. The practice was going well and the songs were coming along well. They were taking a few minutes to rest and Eric asked Joshua,

" How are you?"

Joshua smiled and looked around. The noise was covering his pain, it was nice. While looking around he saw it again... Sarah's smile.

He remembered the last time he played with them, her smile was so pretty he forgot all of his worries for a while. It was a fresh break and Joshua thought getting involved with Eric's church would be a onetime thing so having a fling didn't hurt.

... and as he stood there with a guitar looking at her, he realized he messed up. It hurt a lot...

he wanted someone else to be there.