THE BLIND GLASS RAGE

26

a/n: this is unedited yay me

***

When Josh and Noah made their grand, obnoxious reappearance in the middle of the nearly desolate parking lot, there was no way of knowing whether I was supposed to feel annoyed or relieved, and which one I actually was.

The night itself seemed to be relieved enough, finally allowing itself to fade away from its dark, ominous state of worry, and turn over to a something that looked lighter, but wasn't. It must've sensed their presence, because they returned just around seven during said morning, and that was when the dark was just pulling itself back in. The morning was constructed, fingers made of light fog and the scent of coffee. Coffee and stress and wispy blues and lazy yellows and pain, and the feeling of wishing you were in the clouds, and knowing you weren't. Illusions were rude. Fog was rude.

All of the voices rose upwards, though, scraping up at the sky above us as soon as the sounding of the shutting door to the van traveled up. Hand in hand, all the noise seemed to move like a tsunami up to all of us. And it was audible, the tones the both of them held, and the venom standing their respective ground locked inside of the words, and the possibilities that could be lead directly to, whenever an argument between Josh and Noah ensued, made my stomach feel like someone had grabbed it with cold, rough hands, nails made of stone, and twisted it into tight fists. "For fuck's sake, Josh." Chest strung with barbed wire, really. There was no mistaking the light pokes of pain that skipped through me with every time I moved. I'd been woken from a restless sleep, and I already felt enough pain for everyone in the world. "No, come here. You're so moody." Heart made undeniably of previously shattered glass. There should've been bubble wrap pulled around it, but there was just more and more wire. "Get your ass over here."

If Josh was still responding to the verbal frustration being handed to him, I couldn't hear any of it. I wasn't sure whether or not I wanted to. Just like I wasn't sure about most things taking place through the time I spent awake. With my eyes open and chest torn apart. Why were walls so thin, in places you didn't need them to be?

"You're mad for no reason." Noah again. A voice I made sure not to mistake as something familiar, because there was no way it could ever be. "Just cal-"

At that point, the fog in my head decided it was going to give itself a rest. Something was blocked off in my lungs, though, like half of the both of them were stuffed with cotton balls. I imagined them coming up from my throat, stained with words I wasn't supposed to announce. Things I shouldn't have felt. It didn't help when I opened our door, without thought and without hesitance. My hand felt sticky with curiosity and fear, and my fingers shook with trepidation as I let everything rush in past me. Let the air of that day sit on my bed and stand still over the microwave and embed itself in my clothes, and my hair and my chest and even my lungs. Past all the cotton balls. But, as soon as I opened that door, made that dutiful step into the situation I had no business being in, everything ran through me, without a piece of my consent.

"You're acting like a girl right now." Everything seemed much clearer when I didn't feel locked away. But, why did I care about anything the two of them did, anyway? Josh was not my boyfriend, and I did not want him to be. I wanted things to rewind back over to high school. When we would go the same destroyed, old, caked in dirt building, and sit in the same spot and his red wine would splash like waves that lay trapped and rushing, throwing themselves up against the glass. Nothing but small drops of a red ocean. His eyes were like the ocean. Bottomless wells, filled to the brim with things he could forever use to kill me.

"We had fun last night." The voice moved closer, until I could feel it walking up to me. Parker stirred, my back to his sleeping figure, and said something that I couldn't understand if I tried. But, he laughed and the sound bounced out of the door before I could reach to catch it. "What's wrong with you?"