"We could come down and help you look," Evan offers, sitting up straight in his chair, and rubbing one hand over his mouth, thinking.
But Luke refuses instantly. "No. No.. you guys don't even know what he looks like." With an added, "I appreciate the gesture though, thanks." Nodding across the chat at the various faces watching him.
"Well, if you let us see a picture of him we'd know," is Brian's sharply-worded counter argument.
"I can't." Luke bites out, reluctantly. "That's not something he wants."
Tyler presses. "I don't think what he wants is the issue we have right now. Remember? He was the one who ran away." His eyes narrowing.
Luke just sighs and shakes his head. Lets a, "I'll keep you guys updated," be his parting words and disconnects from the chat.
"Geeze," Tyler grumbles to himself. "How hard can it be to find one guy?"
"Apparently pretty difficult," Evan mumbles back.
-
The hot shower felt nice running down Luke's back, and soothed a few of the aches lingering in his body still. The stiffness of poor sleeping spaces dulls to a pale soreness that he can live with, and he rubs his face with soap under the stream of water. More alert now than he's ever been at any one point in these last few days.
He knew something was wrong. Him and Jonathan were friends for years and years and it feels like forever and why the hell did he listen to Jon? Why'd he just take him at his word?
'Because he's your friend and you trust him', comes unbidden into his thoughts and he scowls at the truth.
Gets out of the shower, dries himself off with a towel. Stares at the reflection in the mirror, wondering, just where did he go wrong?
Why didn't Jon trust him back? He pretended everything was fine. Why'd he lie? Why'd he feel like he had to run away?
Luke promised to come back. And he always kept his promises. Why couldn't Jon have just waited a few days for him to come home?
-
It's peaceful, driving. The steady thump thrump of tires rolling over pavement. Thrump-a-dump over the metal seams on bridges. Trees and scenery flying past.
Jonathan has always felt more at peace on the road.
Whether it's the sensation of movement in a trapped world, where he is suffocating from the inside out. Or if it's the wind dancing through the trees alongside him, he doesn't know.
But the feeling of serenity takes him over and quiets the desperate craving for things he will no longer have. The heady feeling of depression and anxiety which has been drowning him. The feeling of loss and abandonment he's been drowning in.
There are worms in his belly..
Driving used to relax him, soothe all the worries and thoughts running rampant through his head. And at first it starts to. He feels a little calmer getting in the car, after driving for ten miles, twenty..
But it doesn't last.
There are worms in his belly. Darkness in his thoughts. Coiling up from deep beneath, twisting and ripping through the very heart of him.
Scrambling him into incomprehensible bits.
Anger and frustration. Loss and hunger. Pain that tightens his fist on the steering wheel and presses his foot even firmer against the gas pedal.
He is a bottle, a mess.
He is a container for his own depression, a thing which even now he refuses to admit even exists inside of him. But it is there and it will not wait for his acknowledgment to roar through the very edges of his soul. A sea of aching and longing crashing against the core of him.
And he is driving down I77 East when his eyes start to fog up again with unshed tears, unlet thoughts.
He doesn't want to stop, not now, not ever. So he rubs his eyes with the back of his hand, the other clenching tight to the steering wheel.
But it isn't enough.
Pressing harder again and again when the tears only become loosened and freed by the gesture.
They run down both cheeks, both sides of his face, and the road becomes a watery mess.
He can't see. It's impossible.
He can't drive. He can't .. keep going..
There is an exit approaching quickly, and Jon pulls over to it so fast that he cuts off a white minivan that was trying to pass him on that side.
He over-corrects, and the tires thrum over gravel, rumbling over it and throwing it to the side as he rolls of the side of the road.
The car leans, and falls in-between two trees. Perfectly snugged there as if he had parked it that way on purpose.
Jon puts his head down on the top of the steering wheel, covers his head with his arms, and cries. His face pressed into the darkness of his own making. His head buried in his own thoughts.
Sobs racking his body.
-
And he's sitting in the kitchen, nursing a cup of coffee even though it's almost one in the morning and there's only another long day in store for him, but Luke just can't calm down the thoughts running through his head.
It's useless to try to sleep like this.
Luke stares at the plain white walls of his kitchen, wishing again that he had painted them, or put some kind of wallpaper on them. Because all he can see right now in the white are the nightmares that haunted him while he slept in his car.
Jon's empty house.
Jon's car upside down on the side of the road, fire spewing from the windows and screams coming from inside.
Jon sitting in the shade of a bridge, graffiti on the walls beside him, eyes lost and vacant.
Jon dead.
The mangled mess of his mother's car, with Jon's body added to the inside of it.
Luke closes his eyes and rubs at his face. Trying to press the thoughts away and outside of him. Trying to force them away of his body where they won't consume him anymore.
The worry is eating him up from inside.
He should go to sleep. He should put the cup in the sink and stop drinking fucking coffee. He should go back out there and keep looking until he falls asleep in his car again.
He gets up and heads back to the computer.
Takes another long drink from his mug and finishes off the last of the coffee, and sets it on the table beside him.
Reboots his computer. Listens to the humming of the fans starting up, and pulls out a notepad from the drawer next to him.
Makes a list, a checklist of things to do.
Bank.
Power company.
Jon's stuff.
Crosses off places in town he's already been too, places he's already searched for his friend.
Puts his head in his hands at stares at the wallpaper on his screen as the computer finishes loading.
There's so much to do, so much swelling up inside of him, that it presses the all-consuming worry and fret to the back of his mind. A place that leaves him better able to think.
The more focused he stays, the easier it is to breathe freely.
