Save The Girl

Unlisted Pain

~Demi~

            "Stop looking back." Joe instructed, his jaw still clenched tight. My head was whirling from the previous realization. My house had been bugged and not the insect kind either. I began to feel this sense of panic wash over me, my mind clouding. Joe had been a few paces ahead, his heavy footsteps crushing grass as we made it onto a trail behind my home. We were going downhill, and fast.

            "You're right." I stumbled as I spoke. If the man in front of me wanted to ask what I was even talking about, he hadn't. So instead I finished my statement for him. "You're right about me ignoring my training and placing myself in danger."

            "And what makes you say all of this now?" Joe stopped, his eyes searching the neighboring houses on the bottom slope.

            "My emotions are starting to control me." My voice hummed in the air as we pressed on. "The voices in my head won't stop. The thoughts I guess. Truth is, I forgot how to protect myself. I forget how to block out all of this piercing aching."

            "You can't forget, you just choose to ignore your better judgment."

            "Maybe so. Either way it ends the same." As we glanced up at my house one last time, Joe's eyes finding mine. "I feel as if I'm suffocating." I tell him.

            "Suffocating?"           

            "I don't know." I shrugged. "I don't trust what I'm feeling anymore. One minute I'm in control of everything and the next minute I'm not. One second I know I want revenge on the people who've set a target on my back. The next second, I just want to run and never look back. I want to protect what little happiness I have left, but this life always comes crashing back into my reality." The road ahead was long and empty. No cars passed by. No people were crazy enough to walk miles into nothingness. Well, no one besides us two.

            "So that's how you're suffocating? You can't control the situations you've caused to happen to yourself?"

            "Don't be an ass." I sighed, pushing my hair out of my face as the wind began to swirl through the air.

            "I'm suffocating too." He spoke up, still glancing ahead. "The first day I allowed you to leave without me by your side, I knew you were distancing yourself."

            "Not from you."

            "Maybe it wasn't like that at first. But you seeked more out of life than me or the agency could give you. I knew that in some way, no matter what, you'd be the person standing at my side causing me the most....agony?" He questioned his last word.

            "Pain?"

            "Pain sounds about right. I knew every since we were kids how I felt towards you. It was forbidden yet it excited me." Joe glanced out into the horizon, looking away. "You excited me. You still do, although you're stubborn and hard headed. I'm suffocating too. Always knowing that you're going to need my help, no matter how much you tell me you don't. And I can't get rid of that pain seeing you search for something that you may never find. Seeing you give up your entire being for her. Seeing you change into a person I never knew. But I've also seen how much more Selena was able to bring out in you. She made you lower barriers I never knew still existed between us." Something in the distance caught both of our eyes. We studied the vehicle coming into view, but it wasn't moving. Although I heard Joe's every word, I distanced myself from his pain. I always found a way to do so. I never knew it was wrong until my heart decided to drum in my ears. I never knew his words cut him deep until I began falling for her.