Nights Like This One { a joel miller fanfiction }

X.

A.N. hi party people. sorry this chapter took so long. the fic stealing bullshit put a damper on my motivation and most of my friends are either cancers or leos so i've had about ten birthday parties in the last few weeks. hope you're all doing well, and please please let me know how you like this chapter and the story so far. mama (me) needs some praise rn. ily <3

"Something in the way she moves, attracts me like no other lover."

— The Beatles, Something

______________________

June 6, 2003

Fate doesn't always feel like a tidal wave. Sometimes it feels like a tug, a thread tied around your sternum, beckoning you toward something, someone, someplace. Other times it's like a slap in the face, brutal and adamant. Every time, though, it's impossible to ignore, and if you try, fate won't let you. It'll push you toward that place, that thing, that person, with relentless urgency, an aching in your gut you can't ignore or cast out, a need so pressing it feels fatal to continue trying to ignore it.

Eventually you will be forced to give in, and when you do, it'll feel like falling into a pool of calm, a peace you never could have imagined during the fight.

Fate had been tugging at Lily since that day in early February— when that brooding contractor had shown up on her mother's front porch— and she didn't know how much longer she could reject it. Each day that she did felt like a step closer to her damnation.

She had her head nestled on Joel's arm, the bulk of his body turned toward her, his thick fingers running absently through her hair in a motion that made her feel like she might fall asleep.

"What're you doin' this weekend?" his low baritone rumbled, causing her eyes to flutter open to find him already staring at her, warm, brown eyes so soft it hurt to look at them sometimes.

She shrugged— a small, slow motion— even though she knew exactly what she was doing, which was nothing, as usual.

"Go on a date with me," he hummed, brown eyes twinkling with a glimmer of hope that made her belly cramp up and ache, his words causing a bolt of terror to rush down her spine.

Date.

This isn't going to hurt, this isn't going to hurt, I won't let this hurt.

But it already hurt, it hurt each and every day— the moment that he left— it hurt every weekend that she forced herself to stay in the confines of this suffocating house instead of racing over to his, it hurt each time she rejected that tugging which was getting more and more brutal with every passing day.

"Joel..." she said his name in warning as she blinked up at him, her hand now twitching from where it rested on her belly.

"Don't have to call it a date if you don't want to, just let me take you out, buy you somethin' to eat."

"That's kind of exactly what a date is."

Her heart pinched, throbbing in her chest as she watched that hope in his eyes blink out, the color in them shifting to a darker shade while his hand reached up to pass over his mouth, calluses scraping against his stubble.

"Alright," he said, almost too low in volume to be heard, then he was carefully moving her, the giant bulk of him maneuvering out of the bed. She felt another wave of panic— far more potent than that first bolt— rush through her core.