Bring Me Home

Chapter Five

Writing in the cramped space of her Ford Flex was debatably worse than sitting in the coffee shop with her broken pride. Josephine was sure that she would be driven to insanity if she had to spend any more time editing her book or sitting hunched over on top of the blankets piled in the back of the car.

A drizzly rain tapped at the window, piercing the soft sound of Denis screaming on her phone. It was running out of battery life, but she really wanted to listen to music while she edited. The night before she had been plaugued by insomnia, so she had taken it upon herself to do a quick wikipedia search about him.

He had apparently just joined the band for their newest album when the previous vocalist had jumped ship. That had made her frown. If she had been in a successful band surrounded by people that loved her, she wouldn't have abandoned them.

However, it made it easier to listen to the other albums.

So far, her top three albums were in the following order. The Black, Reckless and Relentless, and From Death to Destiny. She couldn't help but like them, and it was infuriating.

She shut her laptop and fished around in one of the cardboard boxes she had on the bottom of the car. It held all of her writing notebooks, which were all running out of space at this point. She managed to find one that had a good amount of pages left and grabbed her phone, charger, and a pencil.

Hopefully, Denis wouldn't be at the coffee shop.

She shivered as rain pounded down on her, drenching her short, messy hair and soaking her oversized black shirt through to her skin. She needed a shower, but she was currently unable to figure out how to get one. There was a possibility that the church down the street let the homeless in to take showers, but she wasn't completely sure. Her pride kept her from asking.

A little bell chimed when she pushed the door. Denis looked up from their usual spot. Her face went red and she turned away. Stupid, stupid.

One coffee. Find an outlet. Plug in her phone. Asking Alexandria. Denis screaming in her ear again. Pencil scraping on paper. Words pouring from her broken heart. Send me home.

She didn't even notice that a tear rolled down her cheek until it landed on the paper. She scoffed and wiped it away before returning to her writing. She needed to get her emotions under control.

Her eyes drifted up to Denis from where she was sitting on the floor. The tiles were cold under her butt, and she wished that she could have an apartment again. And some nicer clothes. Denis had his back to her, his hand moving ever so slightly as he wrote. He wasn't wearing a beanie, instead his hair was let down, flowing across his forehead perfectly.

She sighed and looked back down, realizing that she was writing about her hometown. He glanced back over at her, his dark eyes looking guilty. She must have looked like a kicked puppy sitting back there alone with her legs brought up to her chest and her notebook balanced on her thighs.

Josephine didn't care. She wasn't going to break and crawl back to him and his beautiful face and his perfect voice. Anger welled up in her chest. He wasn't being fair to her, making her think that he was just a nice person being interested in her.

'The old singer was better,' a horrible voice in her mind snarled. It really wasn't true, they were both decidedly talented. She shut her eyes and hit her head against the wall. Once. Twice. She stopped so that she didn't look crazy.

Her hand tightened around her pencil, the tattoo of her favorite band member's signature on her right wrist. It was the first of many tattoos, but the only one that anyone could see at the moment. Her mother had told her that she was narrowing her list of boys by getting a tattoo.

Take that mom, I met a really hot singer with tattoos.

Then she remembered that he couldn't have actually been interested in her.

Her phone buzzed beside her, pulling her out of her thoughts. It was her mother. She answered, pressing the cold phone to her ear.

"Hey mom," she said. Even though she was keeping her voice down, she saw Denis's head twitch.

"Hey, sweetie. I wanted to ask what the name of your publishing company was."

Josephine let out a short laugh. "What?" Why would she have asked that? Her mother wasn't at all interested in her writing.

"Please just tell me, honey."

Her brows pressed together in worry. Her mother's voice seemed uncharacteristically serious. She usually joked around with her when it came to her writing career. She told her mom the name of the company.

Her mother didn't say anything for a long while. Josephine could feel anxiety building in her chest. "Mom, what is it?"

"It's...it's a scam, sweetie. You can look it up, I saw it in an article about young authors getting pulled into these publishing scams..."

Josephine wasn't listening anymore.

It's a scam. That thing that you're building your entire livelihood on? It's a scam.

"I have to go," she said. She hung up before her mother could protest. She called her again within seconds, but Josephine ignored it. Where she normally would have cried, she couldn't. It was as if she was all out of stress and tears over this.

Send me home...

The world seemed to crawl to a stop around her. She was all alone here, her parents were miles upon miles away. She was living in her car. She hadn't eaten in two days. It was for her dream. And she had fucked up her own dream.

So send me home, I have lost my way...

With a shaky breath she stood up, dropping her notebook on the floor and ripping her phone cord out of the wall. She stalked out of the coffee shop, the stares of the people searing into her back as she pushed out of the doors.

Her notebook sat on the floor, abandoned. She didn't want it anymore.

It didn't even matter anymore.