The Storms Of August

Chapter Twenty Five: Burn Me Down (Nothin' But Memories)

It was our last night in Bora Bora. The last two days have been spent with the three of us dodging the clouds of awkward as we drank under the sun and into the moonlight. We were supposed to be having fun. We were having fun. But "we" is a relative term. When there is we it is always a complex situation. We are all different shoe sizes and wear different caps, like how we all have our own two eyes, yet we group the experience in a uniform care package with only one term. Joe was having a blast. He wore a shirt maybe twice the whole time and was nearly always by my side or in my hands. He smiled like a youth half his age. White and bright and as naive as he's ever been. Call me peculiar but I found it to be part of his charm. The boyish part of him was hairless as a whole and brought the livelihood of his state wherever his Nike's wanted him to. Whether it be down by the shore or a single drag of his finger down my spine he was electric, but even the little shocks can hurt. 

His brother was different. He was a cautious kind of reckless. He would get tipsy, usually after a few beers or a few shots of hard liquor. Sometimes I'd find him with a cigarette between his lips as he fixated his gaze on the constellations above our heads. His kind of fun was superstitious. He could run along the beach streets with a smile on his face, but he always jumped over the cracks. He always held our words on a rope to pull heavy syllables away from the camels back. Most of all though, he made sure none of us brought a knife to a gunfight. Joe and Demi quarreled if left unguided. Mostly Demi. Joe kept up an "you don't fuck with me, I don't fuck with you" mentality at his belt. But Demi is not Joe, so she slides needles to inject poison into his bloodstream when he's too high to feel the pinch. I wonder when the last limitless havoc he wreaked was. I wonder who was the last one to cause a toothy smile to crawl onto his lips. I knew who. He missed her. I missed her too. 

She was having the most self- destructive ball she'd had in a while. Demi's face would be hazy in it's movement as it latched from bottle to bottle, chugging like a Choo Choo train on downhill tracks. There was a hailstorm in her head making for a slippery slope, but she didn't give a damn. She'd look me directly in the eyes, the glint in her gaze so foggy it rolled backwards as she went bottoms up. There's no more blissful feeling than drowning your emotions while rotting what you hate most in the world, I guess. Demi would say something to herself and laugh for excessively long stretches of time before dropping every high and sinking into a period of silence with eyes infinitely empty. 

I didn't know how dangerous it was at the time. I'd heard plenty of blackout stories in the hallways at school since moving to Petersburg, I thought it was normal. All I saw was the intense fire around her and the scorched honey on her lips. I only felt the fire in my belly as I drank with her and cut slices of off-brand happiness off of her jawline.  I didn't see what I see now. I couldn't visualize all the signals in the moment, not until they were dampened by the knowledge of countless mistakes and blind eyes. We were two blind mice, left in the dark of lost love letters and thoughts left without action. Then, she was mine three times removed. First to the bottle, then to whoever she filled her desires with, third to whatever I didn't know about. I couldn't see the sky in her freckles. I assumed I was too drunk to connect stars. While I drank myself into the ocean, I watched her hands. They were soft. I missed them in mine. The ones I hold in a loose dream are too big for me to grip when I need them. Maybe that's why I fell so hard. I had nothing to hold onto. 

I'd watch her as much as I could without letting my unfaithfulness in thoughts become actions. I didn't keep tabs on my emotions. I just tracked the hands I wished away from my hips while I lost my vision. Sometimes I'd get caught staring at her, watching the clock tick by as her love ran out like the sand in an hourglass. She wouldn't see me, no, only Nick was sober enough to hold in my sorrows. She could feel me though. Demi would glance my way with a smack against the hardwood we sat on beside the fire pit and stop just for me to look away. Her shoulders would roll back as she looked at the sea. Her increasingly hollow cheeks would stand with ghosts of tears. I felt it in my marrow. Common pain connected us in more ways than one.