The Storms Of August

Chapter Twenty Six: Tell Me You Love Me

I woke up early in the morning. The sun was yet to rise but everything else was awake. The water roared on the bay and a very recognizable voice was screaming past the muffler of a wooden door. I could hear the vigorous jiggles of the doorknob and heavy feet pounding to the source of the noise, yelling angrily at the stranger. I tried not to listen, but the remaining silence of one voice got me up and rushing to the living room. 

"Fuck you!" Demi screamed through the bathroom door, where Nick stood on the other side, clearly ready to punch a wall. He had one hand on the doorframe beside his head as he leaded against it. His eyes remained downcast at the knob as he spoke. He listened but not intently. He felt the same as I did. He just wanted this to be over. 

"Sober up, Dems. We have a flight in twelve hours and I will glue your mouth shut if it keeps your sorry ass quiet," Nick said gruffly. Demi kept going at him, but I didn't hear what she said. 

Joe was awake when I came with my collection of amateur first aid supplies. I could see immediately that his forehead bandage needed replacing. His face was still incredibly swollen, but considering that he could open both eyes to look at me, it was a godsend. I knelt beside him and cut the bandage loose, gingerly putting it on the ground. Now that most of the alcohol was out of my system, the sight of blood made me extremely nauseous. I wanted to run away from it. I was close enough to smell it and my head was spinning. But he needed me. And if this fucked up cluster of misfits taught me anything it's that you have to get over what holds you back to get anywhere and under no condition should there be a man left behind. That said, I did vomit. Twice actually. I went outside and projected the last few hours into the sea. The hangover made everything worse. Dizziness, headache, the works pounded at my overtired temples. But I kept at tending to Joe until all I could do was complete. Then I sat on the floor next to him and scratched his head calmingly, pressing a wet towel to cool his face.

He watched me the whole time. Small slits weakly held open by will fought through the exhaustion and the pain to track my every move. He was hard to read at the moment. His brown eyes were swirled with conflicting emotions. He was thinking but the feelings he had were concealed by the fact that Joe was not truly present. My boyfriend was just my friend. Every piece of the boy I had feelings towards was removed from himself. He was stripped of his pride and his dignity. He was too weak to make sly remarks even in the quietest of voices. The only word I felt coming was help, but what was still conscious would never put that into the stale air around us. There was nothing to listen to but disembodied voices yelling back and forth until hard footfalls stomped away from the scene.

"I'm sorry," Joe said weakly, dimly looking me in the eyes. I felt awful, sick to the stomach that he was the one to regret enough to own up to it. What he said was only a stretch of the truth. He was more aware when he was intoxicated. Joe didn't know about the kiss, but I did, and I was too ashamed to keep looking at him. I was too pitiful over the death in the closet to regret it, either. "I shouldn't have said those things about you. They aren't true. I was angry and wasted enough to act on it. And what I did wasn't right either. I regret all of it and-"

I halted his rambling. "It's okay. I get it, Joe."

"I don't think you do-"

"It wasn't about me." Joe got quiet. I didn't need to say it was Demi who was dropping him to her level. He might not be apologizing for what he said about her, but I was not going to ask. I wouldn't blame him either. He hadn't known Demetria like I did, not even like Nick could have. "I'm sorry too. I should have tried harder to stop it."

"No," he whispered soothingly, gently rubbing my chin as he held it in his balmy hand, "Nobody could have predicted that. Demi's gone, August, and that isn't on you. Me and her needed to hash things out, I just thought it would have gone differently. We used to be friends, even if it was rocky we were always there for each other. She came at me like I was nothing to her." Joe's voice faded into itself, like his own hand was covering his mouth be had no control over it. The hurt was well beyond physical cuts and bruises. We all knew what we were looking at here: addiction. But we refused to stretching our vocabulary that far. Knowing what it was meant doing something about it. We were kids. We were afraid. As Demi once said, if we don't acknowledge it, then it isn't real, and our nightmares stay our own. We shouldn't have followed her lead.