Never, Forever (Joshler)

1. White out

I flicked the cherry of the cigarette off, watching the glowing speck in my mirror as it faded with the rest of the road in the dim evening light. I think I'm somewhere in Arizona but I could easily be in Nevada, Utah or any of the other dead state near the west coast. I'm not sure how long it's been since I've slept, maybe a day or two? Doesn't matter, it's nothing some coffee and a cigarette can't fix.

I drive for another fifty miles before finally finding a gas station. One of the things I've learned while traveling through these barren states is that gas stations come seldom so its good to stock up while you're there. I figured the lady behind the counter would have known this too but instead she just glared at me for asking for asking for two cartons of cigs, fucking bitch. As I'm paying for my gas, coffee and cigarettes I notice a display of postcards to my right that let me know that I am in fact in Arizona. I scroll through the notifications on my phone as I wait for my gas, missed call, missed call, text, same old shit. I throw the phone back down on the passenger seat, disinterested in all the same old shit. After I get my gas I pull back onto the empty road and continue driving till I get to wherever the fuck I'm going.

I zone out for hours at a time with nothing to think about but the warm Arizona air that blows through the open windows and the asphalt beneath my tires. Every once and a while my thoughts will slip into the negative space of my brain so I just turn the music up a little louder to distract myself from everything I left behind. The night gets darker, the music gets louder, my eyelids grow heavier. It's about four in the morning when I finally decide to pull over so I can take a piss and a nap. It's not like there's many cars on this road that would be bothered to see some guy napping in his car for a few hours.

I'm not sure what time it is when I wake up. The rising sun barley peeks over the top of the mountain so I know I couldn't have slept that long but at this point any sleep feels like a miracle. It's times like this, when my whole body aches, my head hurts and the feeling of loneliness just seeps through my skin that I think about calling her or turning around and ending this stupid trip. But I won't call her, I won't turn around, I'll just keep driving and let the nothingness consume me.

I drive for a couple of hours before even seeing the slightest bit of evidence that people actually inhabit this god-forsaken desert. It's only a few houses but there has to be a town or something nearby. It's another twenty minutes of sparsely spread houses before I find myself in a decent sized town, well decent considering this is the middle of no where. I pull into the closest diner I can find which just so happens to be packed but I don't really care at this point. I take a secluded seat at the end of the bar after being greeted by the overly energetic hostess, note to self: the people of who-the-fuck-knows-where Arizona are annoying. I order some breakfast and decide to pass the waiting time by sipping my coffee and people watching. The diner is full of happy families and couples. A lot of the people are definitely over dressed for some shitty diner. That's when it hits me that these people came from church. It's Sunday already? Shit I've been gone for two weeks and I didn't even realize.

I must not have realized how hungry I was either because I scarfed down my full plate of food in less than five minutes. How long had it been since I'd eaten? I really need to start keeping track of this shit. I go up to the front counter to pay where the waitress proceeds to try making small talk with me. "So where are you going? You look like you've been traveling for a while." she asks while printing my receipt. She seems genuinely interested but I don't have the energy to humor her with some made up answer that doesn't make me seem like a disinterested asshole.

"I'm not sure." I shrug before thanking her and leaving. I wasn't surprised to see her number written at the bottom of the receipt, she had spent most of our interactions flirting and wasn't even put off by the fact that I just look like some drifter. I crumpled up the receipt and put it with the rest of the useless receipts in my car door. She was cute and nice but I knew I'd never call her. I'm not sure where I want to go now so I get back on the main road and follow it out of town. I take a few turns until I'm on a highway again and I let myself slip back into the nothingness. Nothing but the nicotine, asphalt and I.

~~~~~~

So I decided to start a new story, I'm trying to make more time for myself so I can get back into writing and I really hope I can update this story regularly. This was a sort of short intro chapter but I'm trying to push myself and write longer chapters for the rest so we'll see how that goes. A lot of my inspiration for this story and the characters is from the never,forever EP so I'll be featuring a lot of those songs as well as some others that go with the chapter. I've also still been thinking about editing Falling Too because I really don't like the way I wrote it but It's been getting a lot of attention so I'm not really sure what to do with it yet.

Thanks for reading! Comment, vote and all that Jazz if you liked it.