Fix Me

Josh faltered for a moment as it all sunk in. His drug abusing friend group was at his house, sitting on his mom’s car and getting all kinds of high. Not to mention they were being extremely loud. If the cops were to drive around the corner…Josh didn’t even want to think about it.
“Xavier?” he asked in a whisper. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Getting high,” Xavier shrugged carelessly. “Where you been?”
Josh picked up his keys and stomped over to them. “On a date-thing,” he replied shortly. “Why are you at my house? My parents are in there, dude! Not cool!”
“We came to surprise you. You weren’t answering our calls and stuff, so we came to you. Hey, you got $120? I can sell you some ’preme goods.” Xavier grinned at Josh.
“No I don’t have…Look, you need to leave. All of you, right now.”
“What do you mean, Joshua?” Bree asked, leaning across the roof of the car to pull on his tie. “We came to party with you, baby.”
Josh pulled his tie from her fingers and ignored her. He was pissed at her for speaking to Kali. “Xavier, I’m serious…”
“C’mon, man! Just invite us in! You always come to us. Let’s get stoned in your house for once.” Xavier laughed drunkenly.
“No way, bro,” Josh sighed as he heaved Xavier up by the collar, “you f*cked my life up once, I can’t let you screw it up again. Just get the f*ck out, I don’t need you here—”
Xavier slammed something heavy against Josh’s ribs and dug the jagged edges into his skin. They collided with a smash and Josh screamed out in pain, toppling to the ground with thud. His side had erupted into small, individual stabs of pain that were continuous. When his vision cleared, he pieced together what had happened in a daze. Xavier was standing above him, holding a now broken vodka bottle in his hand. Had he really just hit Josh with that?
Josh’s hand pulled away from his stinging side and he wasn’t surprised to see it was covered in shining blood. At least it wasn’t my face… Josh thought.
“Don’t talk to me like that,” Xavier snapped, “and don’t you dare f*cking try to force me out.”
Josh pushed himself backwards on the ground, away from Xavier. His side burned with each movement but he had to get away.
“C’mon, Xavier,” Jeremy said calmly as he slowly moved Xavier away, “clearly he doesn’t want us here like we thought he would.”
“Yeah, let’s just leave,” Bree agreed, slipping off the car and walking towards everyone else.
Xavier pulled out of Jeremy’s hold and walked back to Josh, holding the broken bottle up to his face threateningly. “One more thing, Ramsay. Watch your step, because one more wrong turn and I’ll go for your little girlfriend. I think she’d look nice with a little blood on her body.” He backed away and disappeared down the dark street with everyone else.
Josh’s heart pounded in his chest and he felt himself about to be sick. Not only had he just been cut, but Xavier had threatened Kali’s life. Everything was spiralling down faster and faster. Josh had thought he’d had friends when really he’d had dirty, crazy addicts. To make matters worse, he was one of them.
Slowly, Josh picked himself up off the ground. His side throbbed, and he had to bite his knuckles to avoid screaming out in pain. I’ll go downstairs and pick out the glass pieces, clean it and bandage it and it’ll be good as new… he thought.
He opened his front door and crossed the threshold. Once he’d shut the door behind him, he leaned against it. Every movement hurt and he was holding his side to try and stop the bleeding. How much glass is in there?
The light flickered on over his head and his mother appeared from the hallway in her robe. When she saw her son leaning against the door with blood soaking his shirt, she gasped and burst into tears.
“Joshua?” she asked, running to him. “Josh, what happened to you?”
Lie. “I was walking…someone smashed a bottle on me and cut me with it…” he groaned.
His mother inspected his side and sobbed. “Oh god, we need to get you to the hospital.” She ran back down the hallway as fast as she could. “Miles! Miles, wake up! It’s Josh, he’s been hurt. We need to go now.”
Now Josh was positive this night couldn’t get worse. When is this going to stop hurting? He asked himself. I just want things to go back to normal…that’s all I want…go back to before I decided to break it…