Pushin' Me Away • {Joe Jonas}

00. b e g i n n i n g

tw: this chapter has mentions of rape!!

"Joe?! Joe, where are you? Fuck. Joe?!"

Lex's calls were immediately lost over the sound of the club music thumping around her. Bodies pressed against her and she tried to get between them, to push them off of herself, but no one even really seemed to notice that she wasn't just dancing right alongside them. Anxiety rose heavy in her chest and sat there like an anchor as she got more and more desperate to see her boyfriend's face.

Finally, arms encircled her from behind and pulled her close. She turned, expecting to see Joe's face but instead looked straight into the eyes of a stranger. She yelped in surprise, pushing hard against his chest to get him to loosen his grip a little.

"You're Lex Simon, aren't you?" he slurred, shaking her slightly. "You're... you're famous or somethin', right?" he asked, and she shook her head.

"No, I'm not. I don't know what you're talking about."

She'd learned years before that the best thing to do when engaging with drunk people was to just deny, deny, deny, and try your best to get the hell away from them.

"No, you are! You're the girl from Disney! The one that's always hanging around the Jonas Brothers, right?"

"Look, dude, I don't know what you're talking about and I'd really appreciate it if you just let me go," she told him, her panic levels flying through the roof. She already hadn't wanted to be in the stupid club in the first place; at only nineteen she and Joe were too young anyway, and then he'd had the gall to leave her to go try and score some drinks when he knew she didn't want to be alone.

Despite all that and even though she was pissed at Joe in the present moment, she would've killed to see his face. The guy holding her's grip was only tightening and with her petite frame and complete lack of any real upper body strength, she was no match for him.

"Please just let me go," she whined, tears rising in her eyes and quickly slipping down her cheeks. The guy shook his head, and suddenly he was pulling her towards the bathrooms. She screamed at the top of her lungs for help, trying everything she could to get someone's attention, but it was no use. The music was too loud and she was pretty sure the vast majority of the people in the club were either just as drunk as the guy holding her or even more drunk and high too.

Twenty minutes later, Lex was in a sobbing heap on the bathroom floor. She couldn't move, couldn't even really comprehend what had just happened to her. Her cell phone vibrated in her pocket and she pulled it out to see that it was Joe. She sent it to voicemail and took a handful of deep breaths before heaving herself into a standing position and numbly stepping out of the bathroom.

She spotted Joe at once, standing nearby with a group of people that she vaguely recognized as friends of his. He came to her, immediately serious at the state of her.

"What happened? Are you okay?" he asked her, and she couldn't quite manage to make eye contact with him.

"I want to go home right now, Joe," she yelled into his ear and he nodded, reaching for her hand. She didn't give it to him, instead just taking off through the crowd in front of them.

She stepped out into the cool air of the night long before he did and spotted he and his brothers' driver across the street. She slipped into the car, immediately raising the partition between the front and back. Joe followed her in a few moments later, reaching for her as she slid to the far side as far away from him as she could get.

"Lexy, come on. What happened? Talk to me," he said quietly, reaching for her again. She dodged his hand, flinching slightly and shaking her head and staring out the window beside her.

"Don't touch me. Don't talk to me. I just want to go home, Joe," she told him tearfully, shaking her head again.