SOBER FEELINGS - Joonas Porko

26 - nothing in this world

The past few days hadn't been exactly easy. Joel stopped by almost every day after he had spent time with the boys at the studio or their rehearsal place. I always greeted the blonde vocalist with the same unenthusiastic "Hey." followed by a half-hearted hug, hoping that he would somehow eventually get tired of me and my unresponsive, unacknowledging ways.

It wasn't like I didn't enjoy his kind words or his comforting presence. It was just that every time Joel brought up Joonas or Niko there was this sick feeling that arose in my stomach again. A pool of guilt, hurt, anger and other mixed emotions that I couldn't or rather didn't even really want to put a name on.

Every single time I had to confront myself with the unraveled mess that connected me to the two men, it was like I was reliving everything that had happened the past few weeks in just a split of a second. It felt like torture. My mind was uncontrollably jumping from one awful memory to another, eventually leaving me restless for hours.

Joel knew me too well, apparently.

He knew that if he hadn't made sure to check up on me whenever he could in his free time, it would have ended up with me isolating myself and cutting everyone off. A part of me thought it would be the best for everyone if I did so. Sure, Joel and the others would probably wonder what was going on, maybe they would even be a little concerned but eventually they would slowly but surely forget about my existence while I blocked them from my memories. Eventually we would become strangers again. Nothing would have ever happened between us.

"Lyra, are you there?" Joel frantically waved his hand infront of my eyes and my unfocused vision slowly found an object to fixate on again. I couldn't recall how long the blonde man had held his monologue for in that overly excited tone of voice of his. I just knew that my mind had decided that it was too long for me to listen in closely. Maybe he mentioned something about the technical improvements of the band's set up or he once again bombarded me with statistics I didn't understand. I truly didn't know.

"Mh? Yeah I'm here. Sorry I must have zoned out." I looked at him a little apologetic and formed my lips to a friendly smile. There was something so extremely calming about his presence.

"Hey I was just about to let you in on the hottest news. You need to listen to me if you want to keep up with everything that's going on, okay?" Joel nudged me teasingly and smiled. I rolled my eyes at his actions but the chuckle that left my lips gave a away that I was nowhere near annoyed by the vocalist.

"Okay, okay I am listening. Hit me. Come on." I  corrected my posture and sat up straight, my eyes daringly looking into his. If he was making me curious like that the man had to deliver.

"Well it seems like Joonas and Niko are getting along pretty well again. They have been fooling around with each other all day at the studio. They're constantly chasing each other around or pulling at the other one's hair, all that stuff that they usually do, you know? I mean I am kind of glad that everything's back to normal but man I kind of miss the time where they wouldn't dare to talk to each other because the studio was so quiet. It was like heaven. Now everyone is just loud and annoying again." Joel let out a heavy breath, one could clearly see the exhaustion in his eyes. This day apparently had been truly nerve-wrecking for him.

"So what you're saying is that Joonas and Niko just made up with each other out of nowhere?" I tried to dig deeper and raised a brow, still looking at my opposite with intrigued eyes.

"Yeah. I guess so. But that's how it has always been. They go days and weeks without talking even one word to one another and then suddenly everything's back to normal again. Like nothing ever happened. Don't ask me how their friendship works, It's complicated." Joel raised his hands and shrugged his shoulders, not exactly knowing what was going on in his friends minds either.