what you can't have (b.e.)

bad religion

A/N: okay this might be ending soon actually i don't know but maybe also sorry in advance :')

inspo: bad religion, frank ocean

~

Taxi driver, be my shrink for the hour, leave the meter running...

Billie's POV:

"I just wanna keep driving," I whisper, loud enough to be heard over the sounds of the engine thrumming. The driver nods, not asking questions, but part of me wants him to. I need a backseat therapy session, to know for once I can say anything to a stranger and never see them again. I need someone I don't know who doesn't know me to admit all the bad I've done.

It's getting harder and harder to convince myself I'm a good person. I'm on the edge, standing on the line between good and evil. I'm scared if I admit I'm no good, I'll cross over the line. I'll keep walking on and on, until the line is so far behind me I could never go back.

"Is there a driver-passenger confidentiality where I can tell you anything and you won't repeat it to anyone?" I ask, leaning my head against the foggy glass. We lock eyes through the mirror, a little tree air freshener hanging from it labeled 'black ice.'

"What did you do?" he sighs, flicking on the blinker, changing lanes while the sky grows dark, another sign that I'm running out of time to go back.

"The person I love needs help, they're in the hospital. They're really hurt. I don't want to believe it's my fault but deep down, I know they would be much better off if I was gone. I stole my brother's money and now I'm here, sitting in the back of a fucking taxi. We're just circling the same five mile block around our apartment. I'm scared of what I'll do. Because if I get out of here, go back into our place, that's where the trouble started. I can't be there alone. But even more than that, I can't go all the way back to the hospital. I can't face what I did to them," I rant, taking a breath, turning to look out the back window.

"I can't go back, but I can't move forward either. I'm just stuck here, on this line. And if I keep waiting for too long, there will be nothing to go back to, and nowhere to move on to."

He taps his fingers against the wheel, oddly calm. I pretend that maybe I'm not the strangest passenger he's had.

"You can't have hurt him that bad, you're probably blowing it up in your head. We always think what we did is worse than what it really was. You can always go back, he probably wants to see you," he nods, smiling. I just shake my head.

"She's already been through so much, she needs someone that doesn't attract bad things. She needs someone really bad right now, someone stronger than me, who can actually help. If I go back, she'll look at me with these eyes, expecting me to save her. I can't save anyone when I can't even save myself," I get closer and closer to making up my mind as I speak.

It's rush hour, so take the streets if you wanna, just outrun the demons, could you?

"She? The person you love is a girl?" he repeats, confused. I nod my head and he shakes his had back at me. I suck in a breath and prepare myself, hanging my head.

"Who you really need is god, I always turn to him when I'm stuck. I'm sure if you prayed enough, he could forgive you. Maybe it's better if you walk away now, you find a nice man, you forget all about her," he suggests.

I could tell him that out of all the things I wanna change about myself, loving women is the one thing I don't want to ever change. But I know by now it just takes too much of my waning energy to convince someone who already has their mind made up about who I am. I just shug.

"Maybe," I breathe out, and then the car feels like it's underwater, the air slowly draining away. It's what it takes to get me to finally get out.

He drops me off outside our apartment. I walk up the stairs, every step feels like another mountain I've climbed. I get outside the door, cracked open. I push it open, step over dried blood, look at pans thrown over the place. Half unpacked boxes that only serve as a reminder of when I was on the good side of things, when I was chasing a better life. Maybe this was all a sign that that life will never exist for me.

I lay on the mattress on the floor, sunset bleeding through the open balcony door. A little rainbow of colors, but rainbows never made me feel safe or proud. Rainbows come after the rain, but they taunt me with their non-existent ends. They float there in the air until they fade away as quickly as they were created, and then comes more and more rain. It never stops raining.

I know exactly what I should do. I should change, shower, grab my phone, my wallet, find my car keys, drive to the hospital. I should be there through the hard spots, and then things could get easier, Mila will get better. We'll come back here and maybe we could try moving again, give ourselves a second chance with this miracle-rainbow plan. We'll have our three seconds of fame, then people will forget all about us, we can move to our stupid Texas ranch with our stupid cows or whatever, drink iced tea on our porch, and be thankful we stuck together through it all.

But I can't see it. I can't see myself making it to 18. I can't see myself as a grown woman. I can't see myself as anything. I look in the mirror and see absolutely nothing looking back at me.

I get up and start putting things back in boxes. I move them towards the door. I look back when it's finished. It's too late now. This is how it feels, you make one bad decision, one that feels far too bad to fix, so you make one more bad move, and another, until it all builds up like building blocks and I can't see past the tower I've created.

I move the boxes outside the door, and carry them one by one down the steps.

It's a bad religion..This unrequieted love, to me it's nothing but a one-man cult, and cyanide in my styrofoam cup...

~

Mila's POV:

It's a slow waking up. Like each sense comes one at a time back to me.

First, it's touch. And I feel it everywhere, like little needles stabbing every inch of my body, and if I tried to move, they dig deeper.

Then it's smell, it smells like a mess you've poured bleach all over. Like cleaning supplies, desperately attempting to scrub away the stench of sickness and blood.

Taste. Except I taste nothing, that's gone.

I hear a million sounds at once. Voices over loudspeakers, then the beeping. I can hear my own heart beating, and if I focus on it, it makes me anxious, until my heart beats faster and faster.

And I open my eyes. Back to the white walls, the white room I never wanted to ever go back to. I know it's a different room, but that's what's more terrifying. You could be anywhere but all the hospital rooms are the same. They smell the same and look the same and sound the same.

I can't move with the brace around my neck, can barely breathe. The beeping gets faster and faster. I don't turn my head, but my eyes roll from one side to the other, darting back and forth from the empty chair on my left to the empty chair on my right.

"Billie--," I try to get the word out but I choke on the tubes coming out of me everywhere.

I hear nothing in response, I don't see her blue eyes, it's all white, and it's all beeping. I raise a finger, throbbing from the oximeter attached around it. Nobody comes in. I thought I knew loneliness.

But, no, I was wrong, this is the loneliest feeling in the world.

I feel a single tear slip from my eye and down my cheek, but I can't move to wipe it away, so I just feel it slip further and further down.

And I just cry.

It's a bad religion, to be in love with someone who could never love you...