THE BLIND GLASS RAGE

27

a/n: ill have you know good things come after bad things (-: also, not to sound like a cocky shit, but im prouder of this story than ive ever been of anything else ive ever fucking done in my entire life. also, there's gonna be a lot of smut these next few chapters eat me alive !!

unedited

***

The thing was, another week passed by all of us in the exact same manner as the last one, and at that point, I wasn't sure if I wanted to believe in the idea of Josh and I becoming something of friends again.

Which, even if that stood alone and silent by itself, was a dangerous thing to simply think. Even if had been a month. Even if it had been a fucking year, or a lifetime, or an eternity. Everyone, including Josh and I, figured nothing would ever posses the sheer amount of strength it would take to separate the two of us. Unfortunately, one thing did. And it happened to be none other than us.

Josh's mother called me the day after I decided to wash away her son, right when I was sitting down to work on something I had no will to start, let alone give any form of finish. She expressed some of her worry, letting me know that Josh called her and didn't speak. Just cried a bit, and tried to smother it by saying he was a bit homesick. She told me she'd believed him, but that they haven't really spoken since then.

"If anyone knows what's wrong with him, it would be you. I mean, I'd think."

I wanted to tell her thousands of things. Wanted to offer her the light and the truth and the pain right where it lay, so soft and gentle and deceitful in the palm of my hand. Wanted to tell her that Parker offered me a cigarette and I tried to smoke it but it felt like a blowtorch being flicked on right over my lungs, and that I gave it right back. Wanted to tell her it'd been a month with no real communication between her son and I. My best friend. Wanted to ask her why she didn't hand him over to college, to adulthood, to me, with some kind of a fucking warning.

But, instead, I offered her a casual he seems fine to me, and gathered the self control to let it all be.

***

"I don't think it was fair of me to act so," I paused right where my words sat, hands stuffed in their pocket prisons, mind wanting to cave in on itself. My body wanted nothing further than to seep down into the tile of this hallway. To become a useless puddle of nothing anyone would ever want to clean up. "Weird towards you? I guess."

"I don't know what you're saying, Tyler." Joe's voice was still soft. She'd dyed her hair a light brown, and I tried to find some solace in the way that her lips moved when she spoke to me. There was no way to, as sad as that was. But it was even worse knowing that I was going to push myself into trying to find some amount of safety. It didn't matter where. As long as it wasn't in Josh.

I coughed a little, and worked to remember how to take deep breaths. "I wanna try again."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

The words felt like poison when they rose up my throat, sat on my tongue in a bundle of nerves and self-hatred, and it felt like there was going to be an earthquake when I managed to spit them out. There was a window close to us, and it looked like it was going to pour rain. As if I couldn't say everything I wanted to say, and the sky and clouds and world knew so, and agreed to spill it all for me. I thanked it all very silently, let the cold of this building seep into my bare arms.

"Let me take you on a date."

She snorted without any hesitance in her stance, and went to walk away from me. When her back turned I tried to adore the pale of her skin. Not nearly as tempting as Josh's seemed to be, but beggars could never be choosers. Or they would end up with less than what they assumed they were going to have, which is not the desired circumstance at all.