The Storms Of August

Chapter Eighteen: If You Don't Love Me Pretend

With one final sniffle and a cough, her demeanor changed from behind me. "Who are you and why are you in my house?"

I stood up and wiped my face on my jacket sleeve. Realizing it was Joe's, I immediately took it off and tossed it into a crumpled ball on the floor. I couldn't think about him right now. Bringing him to this house was like bringing a child to a gunfight. Slowly, I popped my head from around the doorframe like a cat checking for dogs and walked into the entrance. Demi's eyebrows furrowed and she put down her guitar on her bed with a thud. The small but daunting girl was looking at me with her fists clenched and her shoulder muscles stretched. Smoke billowed from her ears and she had fire in her eyes with enough heat to scorch the wold. However, she could not hide the blotchiness of her cheeks, and it's always what someone can't hide that says the most about them. She could stand, shoulders broad in a leather jacket with harmful in her fingernails and her big boots to 'Fe Fi Fo Fum' her way over my beating heart all she wanted, but I was sticking right here in ripped jeans and my humanity on my sleeve. "What the fuck are you doing here?" She yelled in shock as she grabbed her bottle of bourbon from the side table. "Get out before I call the cops."

"You're not calling the cops." I said calmly, surprising myself with my level of composure. Considering all that has turned, her place in her heart for me could have changed as well, as much as it hurt to consider.

Demi stood and took a swig, glaring at me as she did so. Her eyes never left mine, she was trying to growl and howl without actually doing so, but I refused to budge. "Who says I won't?" she questioned, tilting her head just slightly.

"Me. I'm standing next to your cell phone and you don't have the nerve to do it anyway." We both looked at the cell phone, sitting on the small table beside me while it charged and back to each other. We were both quite aware she wouldn't even consider lunging for it, she still cared about me, despite the disconnection we've had. "I came to talk to you," I said, my head falling to the floor as the strength in my voice plummeted, "I miss you, Dems."

She wasn't as enraged as she was making out to be, she was trying to scare me, or at least threaten me. She was fighting. Every bone in her body shook with an emotion that has no definition, it's just there, creeping and crawling on the walls of her skull. Demi exhaled through her nose loudly and looked to the floor. She bit her bottom lip and shook her head in defeat as she brushed back her locks. Her muscles had relaxed and her glare had lifted to a variety of contemplation. Soft brown orbs held her world gently on its axis as they spun around the room in search of something to break our silence. I had too much to say then, I couldn't fumble with time in truth while trying to put it all together for her because it wasn't together for me either. All I had was a bundle of sticks and feelings. You must build your own house before you build one for others, and right now, I was homeless. Until she had the key I was southbound on a midnight train, alone in the light with my head against the window pain, hoping for sleep to override my racing thoughts.

When she looked back to me after a minute of wandering, I could have sworn I felt a thud when my heart hit my stomach. Desperation and pain mingled in her eyes like ferocious lovers as a light layer of gloss coated them in sadness. The intensity they had was even worse, you can't act the agony in her face, or the grip of desperation like the last finger on the edge of a cliff. She meant everything, all of it, every word, every breath. "Please don't do this to me, August. I'm barely standing as it is."

The plead in her voice was so unsettling that the foundation of the house quaked. The weakness in her shallow breathes following slammed the door shut and locked us in this space. I felt our lives collide like asteroids and set the course for disaster, but I was too close to my drug to change anything. I just looked at her and gave into the eyes that made black holes of themselves, sucking me in with their undeniable gravity and beauty of the unknown. "I can't do this without you," I said, feeling the lump in my throat that I thought I banished to the porch.