Looking For Space // Josh Kiszka

XII

This chapter may be a tad unexciting but I think there's value in introspection, even in fanfiction. This is also very short so the next chapter will probably be posted a little sooner. You know...to accommodate. 

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Being completely aware of my missteps, being aware that I was only making things worse and being unable to stop myself from fucking up even more was an agonizing mental reality. I was pulling away, putting empty space between Josh and I because I would rather leave than he leave me--yet I knew he wasn't going to. At least, I figured, not until I really pulled away. I was removing myself unnecessarily and sabotaging everything.

The dilapidated barn looked the same. The whole field looked the same, except that it wasn't so lush and green, with autumn threatening to wash over our world--the leaves were falling off even as I walked through the grass, curled and dry and dull. The entire plot of land looked like its saturation had been turned down, like a haze of grey had been cast over it. It was another overcast night although some patches of the Prussian blue sky still shone through, tiny silver stars peeking through when the clouds moved.

I didn't go to the middle of the field--I went to the barn, sitting myself against the back of it, inspecting for spiders and millipedes and whatever else before I did, my shins resting against the long, scratchy grass. I hadn't been back to the abandoned farm since Josh and I celebrated our success together months prior and the memory made me sad, though it was one of my favorites. I remembered feeling so sure of myself that night, so sure of how much he meant to be me, of how I wanted to be with him and he wanted to be with me. I had been relieved to have gotten over my own stifled emotions, able to let him take my hand, literally, and show me not to be so afraid.

I sighed against the barn and dropped my head back, looking at the sky again. The moon was coming out from behind a puffy grey cloud, a shining white crescent cutting through the background.

Josh was right--I was scared. Scared all the time. The fear had dissipated little by little during our time together, with him beside me, always helping me to see there was hardly ever any need for fear. I knew I could never be free like him. Josh wasn't always unafraid--he had his own anxieties and worries about the world and the future--but it never stopped him from living life. It never held him back. He didn't expect me to be like him but I knew I had let him down by not even being able to say I loved him--something I knew was true and I thought he knew too, a simple and factual declaration.

As Jake had told me once before, it was up to me to tell Josh. Having him try to read my mind and accept silence simply wasn't fair, and I knew that.

In the morning, after another restless night, I set myself up in the public library. I even borrowed one of the study rooms there, which sent me into a brief reminiscent moment about Josh and I, holed up in a study room on campus, working on our poem. I remembered the first time our knees brushed one another's and the spark a felt, like a quick surge of rippling anxiety that made my heart race. I had mistook it for pure disdain at the time--how wrong I had been. With us being apart, I wanted nothing more than to touch him for even a second.

I couldn't focus at home and I really wanted to finish writing the poem I had started writing for him. It was a poem I'd actually started a while ago, but now seemed like the most opportune time to finish it, to really show him that I loved him, and that I loved him long before I ever had to say it out loud.

I stared at the document on the screen, fidgeting my leg, shifting my chin from right hand to left with my elbow on the desk. The words were somewhere floating around but they were a blur, and I couldn't grab onto any of them. I eventually forced myself to write anything at all, clacking words that didn't quite fit into the poem, deleting and then typing something new.