SOBER FEELINGS - Joonas Porko

7 - unforgiving

The walk back to my apartment felt like literal eternity. People out on the streets kept throwing weird looks in my direction and honestly I couldn't blame them. I was carrying my shoes in my hands, stumbling along the side of the road while the tears kept running down my face.

I felt relieved in a sense once my shaky hands finally managed to unlock the front door to my apartment. Rushing inside like I was being chased, I dropped all my belongings on the floor and ran straight to the bathroom.

Finally I was alone, shielded from the outside world and their disapproving looks.

But when the mirror reflected what seemed to be my miserable self, I realized that I was not upset because of the unpleasant attention from strangers that saw an awful looking girl stumbling home while tears were running down her face, I was upset because Joonas' words were by now deeply engraved in my brain.

"Who is she?"

The empty stare in his tired eyes was probably the hardest pill to swallow, the fact that all the memories of last night had been wiped from his brain completely, leaving him with absolutely nothing about me to remember.

As I kept drowning in my misery while watching the destroyed sight of my own reflection in the mirror, I realized the shirt I was wearing was not mine.

"No, no, no." I mumbled and downright ripped the black piece of fabric from my body to throw it into the washing machine. In all this turbulence and an overflow of emotion I had totally forgotten that I was still wearing Niko's shirt while leaving the two boys behind.

What seemed to be a common beginner's mistake could surely get me into a lot of trouble.

If I didn't want to act like a total asshole I would have to give the shirt back to Niko at some point.

Don't get me wrong, I know he wouldn't be mad, he was the purest and nicest soul I had come across in a really long time but in my mind the man with the long brown hair was immediately linked to Joonas and that meant whenever I would look at him part of me would feel the pain of being deleted from his friend's memory forever.

I tried to distract myself from those frightening thoughts by getting into the shower. In hope of getting rid of the haunting images, I was rubbing the remains of last night off my skin, so virigously like I was posessed.

The temperature of the water was so cold when it hit my skin that it left me shivering, goosebumps appearing on my pale skin.

Somehow I hoped the coldness of the water would wake me up, bring me back to reality, like this past night had been nothing but a bad dream. Yet no cold water and no scrubbing could erase from my mind what happened.

After a few minutes I just stood there, letting the rain of cold drops cover my skin. I was sinking more and more into a deep hole and all of that because of a man I barely even knew.

I really didn't know why this whole situation affected me so much. Maybe I was being so overly sensitive because of the hangover or the unbearable headache but maybe it was because Joonas awakened something in me that I didn't know I was able to feel until he put his lips on mine.

"Out of all people, why a borderline alcoholic that makes you want to run for the hills Lyra?" I said out loud and turned off the cold water.

The shower made me feel a little better, at least physically and after I had slipped into a big hoodie and some shorts I already felt a hundred times more comfortable in my skin.

While I was walking through my apartment, collecting the stuff that I had previously thrown to the ground I suddenly remembered that I totally forgot to tell Amelia about the events of last night.