Pushin' Me Away • {Joe Jonas}

01. t e n . y e a r s . l a t e r

"Alexandria! Wake up!"

"Damn it Lex, if you don't wake up we're going to be late!"

"Alexandria!"

Lex Simon's eyes slid open slowly, a headache immediately overtaking her.

"Fuck," she mumbled, rifling around on the nightstand beside her bed until she landed on something shaped like something she could drink.

"Nope!" her best friend and assistant Meghan said immediately, grabbing the bottle out of her hand.

"What?" Lex asked, opening her eyes wide enough and focusing on the bottle in Meghan's hand. It was a water bottle filled with a brown liquid that Lex couldn't quite remember but assumed was some sort of liquor.

"Here," Meghan said, handing her a bottle full of actual water. Lex took it thankfully and took a long swig.

"It's early," Lex observed dumbly, looking around her bedroom. Meghan had opened all of the blinds and sunlight streamed in the windows and highlighted all the clothes and other belongings that were strewn about the floor.

"Yeah, it is. You seem to have had a good night last night," Meghan responded, rolling her eyes as she sunk into an armchair in the corner of the room.

"Mm, I guess. I think I went to a club? I don't actually remember much to be honest," Lex told her, and Meghan nodded.

"Shocking."

"You're salty this morning, Megs," Lex observed, and Meghan scoffed.

"Oh really? Well, see, I spent most of the morning on the phone with your lovely ex Joseph. He wanted to know if you were coming to the Disney reunion charity thing today, which I'm sure you don't even remember is happening. You are going, by the way. You committed a month ago and can't back out so last minute."

"He wanted to have a no-arguing pact between the two of you since it's televised and he has the new album with Kev and Nick coming out soon and doesn't need the bad press of you giving him attitude on TV. I told him I couldn't promise that because you'd probably still be half-drunk from last night, which -surprise- you are," Meghan told her and she closed her eyes tightly, shaking her head.

"I'm not drunk and I didn't forget the thing," Lex tried to defend, but she knew Meghan saw right through her.

"Sure, babe. Just go take a shower and try to keep things smooth with him, please. You don't exactly need the press of bitching back and forth with him on TV either," Meghan told her, and she nodded. She got out of bed, immediately dizzy with the force of the headache that was engulfing her more and more by the second. Doing her best to keep herself steady, she made her way to the bathroom to shower.

Lex and Joe's relationship had lasted about a year after that night at the club, but it hadn't been good. She'd never told him what happened - in fact, she'd never told anyone. She'd developed a pretty bad drinking problem to help herself cope and that mixed with the misplaced contempt she still felt for him for not being by her side that night made for a toxic end to an otherwise really good relationship.

It had ended with them fighting a lot - more than they ever had in their previous three years together, and they'd sort of ended up being that couple that everyone loved to keep track of their drama. Still, almost ten years later, people talked about their relationship and speculated about what went wrong with it. Hell, Joe himself didn't even really know what had gone wrong with it.

As she clambered into the shower, nervousness started quickly overtaking her. She hadn't seen Joe in almost a year, and any time in recent history that she had seen him before that hadn't been a good experience for either of them. Deep down, she knew that both of them knew she'd sabotaged their relationship, and she knew it had been at least partially on purpose. It was just... after that night at the club, nothing was the same.

She loved him, probably even still, but she hadn't been able to be with him the same as she had before. Even ten years later, she hadn't had a proper relationship since. She didn't particularly like to be touched and was always wary around strangers. She missed him; she'd never stopped missing him, but she was convinced it was too late to even try and tell him the truth, if she would've even been able to.

"Lex, we've gotta be there in an hour!" Meghan called from outside the bathroom, snapping her out of her thoughts. She finished up and got ready, stepping out of the bathroom a little while later and following Meghan out to the car service that was driving them.

"Are you excited to see him?" Meghan asked her a few minutes later, seemingly a little more chill now that she officially had Lex on her way. Lex shrugged.

"Honestly, I'd like to take a shot but I assume you'd probably be opposed to that?" she questioned, and Meghan immediately nodded.

"Correct. No shots."

"I'm fucking terrified to see him, Megs."

Meghan reached across the back of the car and took Lex's hand in hers, squeezing.

"It's going to be fine. You'll just have to banter with the three of them a little, and sing one of the old songs. You can spend most of that time with Nick and Kevin. Then there's a Q&A, which won't require the two of you to talk to each other at all," Meghan told her, shrugging. "It's no big deal. You can do it."

They pulled up to the event a while later, and Lex saw Joe right away. He and his brothers were almost directly outside their car standing on the red carpet getting photographed. Lex took a deep breath and stepped out, her eyes meeting Joe's almost at once.