"I take back what I said the first time we met. I never could have been more wrong."
"Oh, and what would that be?"
"Every thing about you - every thing you do, or say, or even when you scrunch your nose when you don't really like something - just ma...
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"JOSIE," JAKE STATED FOR THE tenth time since we'd gotten in the car. I had refused to say a word to anyone since it happened. I didn't want to explain it, since I didn't know how to.
"I already told you, Jake. I'm not talking about it."
"You can't not talk about it!" He shouts angrily, twisting to look at me.
"Look at the goddamn road when you're driving," I snap back, pushing his head back in the direction of the road.
"Josie, you stuck your hands into fire, and you didn't-" I cut him off by turning on the stereo and cranking the volume up loud. Jake just lets out a heaving sigh, and continues to drive back to the reservation.
I wordlessly grab my bag and jog into the house, greeting Billy with a big hug. "What's wrong, Josie?" Billy asks, immediately seeing the creases furrowing into my forehead.
"No-uh-nothing, Billy," I say unsurely. "Don't sweat it, yeah?" Billy just chuckles, pushing some hair behind my shoulder affectionately; some of it had fallen out of my braid in my rush today.
"Oh, Josephine, don't you know? I'm always worried." A faint smile graces my face, and I can't help myself from going in for another hug.
"Hey, Jacob, help Josie out with her suitcase, will you?"
"Yeah," Jake chokes out, grabbing hold of the duffle bag before I can even so much as move towards it.
"You'll be staying in Rachel's old room, hope you don't mind," Billy notes.
"Not at all," I respond, grinning back down at him. There's something in his eyes that screams to me that he knows. He understands. There's something in Billy's eyes that screams honesty, that he wants to help me. He just doesn't know how.
<>
"Talk to me Josie. Please, just tell me what's going on," Jake begs, rolling out from under the car briefly, while he waits for me to hand him a wrench. Letting out a deep breath, I finally look to him with wide, scared eyes.
"I-I can't Jake... Cause, I just... I just don't know."
"You don't know?"
"NO, JAKE, I DON'T KNOW WHAT'S HAPPENING TO ME, OKAY?" I shout, my voice ringing loudly and angrily around the garage, and probably outdoors as well. I let out a humpf and sat down on the ground, letting my body weight lead me. "I don't know what's happening to me." The two of us worked in silence after that, only asking one another for particular tools and listening to Modest Mouse on the radio. "I need to take a walk," I muttered finally, after maybe an hour of silence and trotting around the issue weighing on both of our chests.
Surprisingly, Billy was outside talking with Harry. It seemed like Harry was just on his way out as I walked out. Harry gave me a brief wave, and I reciprocated with a small smile and a wave of my own. I turned the other way, though, and made my way into the woods. I didn't make it quite to the outlook before I collapsed into a pile and began to cry.
Anxiety began to crawl up my back, somewhat like a spider creeping its way up. With each slow prick, chills erupted and wrapped their way around the rest of my body. I couldn't move from that spot, shaking erradically. Rain began to patter on my back, and wind blew lighly against my exposed skin. The sobs I let out only made me sghake more violently.
I felt out of control. I felt like a ticking time bomb, ready to explode. It was almost as if this thing inside me was stalling until it could do the most damage possible. It was something I couldn't control; the only time I had seen it come up was when I was feeling an emotion to the extreme.
Sadness: the day I learned that Johnny had been cheating on me. It poured and poured with raindrops the size of golf balls.
Frustration: after working on my car for 45 minutes to no avail. I had slammed my hands onto the rim of my hood, and the engine caught fire.
Anger: I felt this one a lot. Most days, I was angry about something. Like this morning, when I had been so furious with Isabella, and my desk had caught fire right behind me.
But I'd always had issues with shit like that. When I got angry, I lot all sense of rationality. I knew what I was feeling; it wasn't like I didn't understand. But it was impossible for me to calm down. Breathing it out seemed idiotic and uneffective. My emotions have a firm hold over me, making it impossible for me to act much of my own free will and listen to reason. I was floating high above everyone I knew and cared about, but none of them could pull me back down. None of them tied me to the ground.
Well, there was one. But it didn't make any sense. We were fuck buddies—booty calls. We were there for each other when we needed a good time. We were there when we needed to let go: of stress, of worry, of obligation. It was just sex. But it was so much more at the same time.
He eased my worries. He took the stress off my shoulders. He somehow made me forget the crrushing sadness on my shoulders the first day I met him. He just eased every fiber of my body. I was calm, and I was confident.
But again, this was Paul Lahote we were talking about. He was a resident bad boy and notoriously known for his anger, and for the way he treated girls. But could I really blame him too much if I used him in the same way? How was I any better, using him as a distraction to take me away from this fire-fueled hatred that could be set off at any time.
The answer was, I wasn't.
I wasn't any better. I was equally as fucked. Equally as angry. Equally as manipulative and cunning of how to get what I wanted out of someone. I just maintained a low cover.
But as I sat in the woods, curled in a ball, he was all I wanted. I needed him, craved him, for more reasons than I could explain. And as I felt flowers and grass begin to grow around me, I let out another cry. This one was, however, out of anger. And the angrier I got, the quicker and the bigger the flowers grew until I was surrounded in a protective covering.
Exhausted, I let out a deep breath and curled into the space provided by my little gift. Grass softened the hard dirt below, and I quickly found myself drifting off to sleep.
<><><><><>
Ayeeeeee. So I've been writing a lot down in short spans of time, but I'm trying to get back to the once a week schedule. I probably won't be doing any extra shit until I can get everything all sorted with myself. But I love you all and I hope the beginning of your year is going amazingly.
By the way, I just wanted to thank y'all so much for actually reading this. I know it sounds corny and whatever other shit, but I appreciate it more than you could know. A few years ago I started writing a little here on Wattpad, but I got disheartened very easily when no one was really reading anything that I was writing. So I deleted my old account, and I'm ecstatic that I made a new one. Y'all are really making this worth it. You're all amazing and wonderful and beautiful and deserve only the most amazing aspects of life. And I'm just honored to be part of it.
