A/N: Sorry for the long delay. Some stuff came up and forgot about uploading this here. Will be uploading the rest of the "book" over the next few days.
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Joanna remained silent after I told her Nathan's feelings, and I suppose I hadn't really been surprised by it either. The moment Grace told me that she was and had been in love with me was almost like trying to teach an elementary school kid how to do calculus. It felt like I had taken forever to process my own thoughts, and even then, I don't think I actually sorted every last one of them out. What made it worse was that I was the one who had to tell her, but what other choice did I have? Let their lifelong friendship fall apart over a comment he hadn't really meant?
Things always had the possibility of breaking, but not like this. I wasn't going to be the cause of breaking what they had into pieces. Maybe my reasoning was selfish, but I wasn't going to allow myself to be the cause.
My existence in the both of their lives might have only served to further separate them. In some sense, I took both of their lives and flipped them upside down. If Nathan hadn't ever met me in the hospital, he never would've had to suffer through everything with me. If he hadn't taken me to that party, she may have never felt the need to do drugs, and even if she had, Nathan would have stopped her.
Nathan hadn't been there to stop her, and the people she had around her definitely weren't going to. He hadn't been there because he was with me, because I had felt the need to drag him everywhere with me while I took advantage and wrung his kindness dry. I was completely dependent on him because I felt that I had no one else, that I had nothing else to cling to when nightmares claimed my every thought.
The moonlight reflected off of her falling tear. "Was that before or after you fucked him?"
"If that's you're way of asking if I had sex with him or not, I really didn't. I tried to few times, but those were just my desperate attempts for affection and he saw right though them, I guess." my eyes went back to the sky, where a jet was visibly flying over. "You probably want to hit me like you hit him, but I don't think you'll ever understand what it's like to be alone or lose the only person who made you feel like you weren't by yourself. He's probably the only reason I'm alive right now."
"And I don't think you'll know what it's like to do everything in your power to make someone notice you, only to have him stolen away by someone else." her head's slight turn revealed a sliver of a glare. "The day I realized I loved him was the day that I realized I never had a chance with him unless I changed. I was fat and ugly, yet he still talked to me even though he was popular, even though I wasn't good enough.
I lost count of how many times I skipped meals and passed out along the way, but I lost all that weight and I looked at what other girls did with their makeup. I knew missing meals wasn't healthy, but I figured that and exercise would have only made it faster. By the time we started high school, plenty of others guys looked at me and asked me out, but they weren't who I wanted. They weren't anything close to him. Nathan just. . .refused to look at me as a woman."
I knew firsthand that being in love made people do things they wouldn't normally do for regular people. Whether that was looking better or talking differently changed for everyone, but nobody was immune to it. Joanna was no different, she forced herself to lose weight for Nathan, she forced herself to look different for Nathan. Even if her reason and the way she went about doing those things were unhealthy, those were small problems to her. She had one focus, and she would've done anything to get the attention of it.
It was something else we had in common. The same way she felt for Nathan was the same way I had felt about Grace. Everything I did and put myself through seemed small when I compared what I was doing to who I was doing them for. I hadn't really cared if it came off as desperate to other people or not, but I would've done anything to see her happy. If that meant killing, then I would have asked how. If that meant leaving with her, I would have asked where. Perhaps Joanna felt the same way about Nathan, or maybe she hadn't, but I knew what she felt had been real. I knew what he felt was always real.
As the breeze threw my bangs over my eye, I could only whisper. "I don't really know what to say other than I'm sorry, but I'm not going to apologize for accepting his help."
I wasn't exactly a hundred-percent sure, but Joanna had made it pretty clear that she had developed quite the distaste for me at some point. Well, it was that or she never really liked me in the first place, which could've also been possible. What I wasn't sure of is if she had realized it herself, that she likely hated me for several reasons and that I was likely the cause of her being in this place at all. She had every right to feel anger and hatred towards me, nobody would have blamed her.
"I've always hurt the things I loved or touched." I grabbed my arm, watching Joanna shake her head. "I guess I just got so used to Nathan being around me that I took him for granted. After what Devin did, Nathan was there and I needed someone to hold and cry on. He never turned me away or said no, and in that way, I think I fell in love with the security his presence gave me."
"But you couldn't realize that he was in love with you?"
Joanna stood and turned, revealing a pair of swollen, red eyes. She gave me the slightest touch of a glare before she pulled me up by my shirt and remained silent for what felt like an eternity. That eternity was only actually a few seconds, a few seconds of prolonged tension that only confirmed what I had thought before. She, at the very least, was angry with me and likely held blame towards me for how she ended up here. Even if I knew that much, to say that I was completely at fault was also wrong.
She wasn't a kid. She was almost an adult who made her own choices, and some of them happened to be bad ones. As much as I wanted to blame Devin for everything wrong with me, this past day had made me realize that I was to blame for not confiding in the people I cared about and choosing drugs instead. It wasn't Devin or Grace that put the needle in my arm, it wasn't either of them that made me swallow pills or smoke a bowl. I buried my head in the sand and chose to disappear when I had people who wanted to help me help myself. That much was something I needed to be held responsible for, even if the cause wasn't anywhere near my fault.
"I kissed Jay earlier." I took a step back, leaning over as I pulled a dandelion from the grass beneath me. "It just confirmed that I can't love anyone else. I was attracted to his looks, but I didn't feel anything. I didn't feel my skin tingle like it did with her, it didn't leave me without words. It was just. . .I don't know, a kiss?"
"What's your point?" she brushed bangs away, still glaring. "That you're a slut?"
"My point is that I never felt anything for Nathan when I kissed him or slept next to him in his bed." I returned a stare as I spoke to her. "I really do love him as a friend, but I'd be lying to you if I said that I couldn't have done it without him, and that isn't something I want to do anymore."
A loud clapping sound and stinging sensation ran through my skull as I watched Joanna's hands fall back to her waist, curling back into a pair of fists. It was when the stinging in my cheek refused to fade that I had known she was pissed, and this time, it was clearly aimed at me. Whether she had realized it before or now was irrelevant, that smack was likely only a smidge of what she actually wanted to do to me. I mean, could I have blamed her for what she had just done? No. I stole someone she loved and just told her that it would've been the same with any other guy or girl I wanted to trust.
"So, you're saying he was just another body to you?" Joanna pushed me. "He was just an object to make you feel safe and wanted? Is that all he was to you?"
"I don't know." I looked to my right. "If I didn't feel anything for him, then couldn't it have been anyone? As long as they breathed, it probably could've been anyone and it wouldn't have turned out any different."
The next thing I knew, I found myself on my back with a sharp thudding in my left eye. Above me, Joanna stood as her face had become blackened with her own hair. It only took a moment to realize how I had ended up the way I did, on my back and looking up at her angered expression. She had punched me out of nowhere with no sign of holding anything back, not her fist and not her feelings. That swing was a kitchen sink.
"You're horrible." Joanna held her fist. "He gave you all of his time and did everything you ever asked, but all you can say is that it wouldn't have turned out differently with some other dick-waving jerk? If that was how you felt, then why did you drag him down with you?"
"I know what I am." I began to grit my teeth as my fingers dug into the grass. "It was the opposite, I never tried to drag him down with me. I tried to push him away over and over again, but he just wouldn't leave. You don't know anything about what he went through because of me, so stop acting like you do just because you're in love with him."
I sat myself up as my hair began to bury my eyesight in darkness. Joanna hadn't known anything about what Nathan had done with me and for me. She didn't have any idea about how or what he felt for anything, and that was only becoming clearer. I never wanted Nathan to stick around me like he did, I never wanted him to see me in the ways he saw me. I never wanted to be the girl that stayed in his room or slept right next to him in his bed, that wasn't my place in his world.
"I don't know anything? How ca-"
"Do you think I wanted to someone to see me lying naked on that cold fucking concrete, screaming my lungs out? Do you think that I wanted someone to wrap me up after I buried a blade into my arms? Do you really think I wanted someone, especially him, to see me get high?" the side of my fist met the ground as I felt the same shakiness that arrived whenever I talked about that night. "What I wanted him to do was leave me alone, but he didn't."
The problem was that Nathan had always been there when I was falling apart. When I left myself in the cold, he gave me his jacket. When I wanted to cry, he gave me his shirt. When I wanted to sleep, he gave me his bed. He always gave me a place to be and a world to exist in when I wanted to disappear. Nathan became the person I went to when I needed something, when I needed someone to keep me from unraveling. That wasn't what I wanted for someone like him.
He tried to take on my burdens and fight my demons for me in the best ways he could, but he was just too nice. Something I learned about Nathan was that he cared way too much about other people's well-being, and not enough about his own. It was the damaged goods like me that inadvertently took advantage of people like Nathan, the people who were too kind for their own good.
"Hate me if you want, but it doesn't change anything. It could've been any guy, but he chose to stay." I spoke into my hair, strands blowing forward with every word. "I never held him down or promised Nathan anything. It was his choice."
Silence passed as the breeze hissed through what had turned into a muddy night sky. The black in the sky reflected the exact mood between Joanna and I, tense. Perhaps I was that storm that destroyed everything in its path, without discrimination or care for how the survivors would suffer. The lives and homes could be fixed, but the scars of losing everything they understood would always remain.
Her mouth clicked with the sound of disapproval.
"You really are blind."628Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡuxOoiSQgeP
