I own nothing.

Entire story inspired by Copeland's acoustic version of their eminent song, No One Really Wins.

Chapter Three.

Contrary to belief, Joe was doing just fine -- even after the injustice of watching his brother's chest being ripped apart by a bullet and dying without saying so much of a goodbye.

He had, however, lost faith in what his parents had told him. But at least he could offer some realism to the unholy, unbound optimism Stella infinitely harbored for him, or to the onset state of depression the rest of his ruined family had submerged themselves into. And at least he dealt with the death, rather than push the perpetual loss toward the loneliest of corners in back of his mind.

Everyone else just seemed to do the opposite.

This led him to wonder when his family would finally wake in the dawn of realization. To the unsettling, pure fact that Kevin Lucas had died too young and too unfairly for them to thank God for 'taking him to heaven with bigger ideas for him in mind'.

Joe may have been harsh, but he was right.

And, contrary to belief, he was doing just fine -- living in this ruthless reality of his.

"I'm here for at least another two months and three weeks," he informed the shadow of Nick which lingered near the living room of the house when Joe arrived home later that night, still wearing Stella's sweet smell that had tangled itself in the knots of his hair and the crevices of his skin.

Nick's back was still turned to Joe, however, the younger of the two had come to an abrupt halt. He stood in a rigid stance and his clothes hung off him in awkward manner, like they once had fit properly but now only clung to what was left of him.

"Your point?"

"Just sending you a friendly reminder that I'm not dead like Kevin, nor will I die anytime soon, so you can't forget me like you did with him. No matter how much you want to. At least, you won't be able to as easily."

Nick lacked a biting response, and so Joe pressed on.

"And since when did you become so dependent on a girl like Macy? Don't be selfish Nick, because I know you're not. Don't let her waste her summer on you when she could be doing other things, like hanging out with her friends, going to parties --"

"Except she wouldn't be doing any of those things even if she didn't know me," growled the younger Lucas brother, reeling sharply around. "And don't bring her up when you don't know a thing about her!"

"You're right," Joe muttered darkly, "I don't know a thing about her, but what I do know is that you're sucking her into this depression crap you've been building yourself up on for the past year. Life sure as hell doesn't become any easier, Nick, but that doesn't give you the right to make someone else's just as horrible as yours."

Nick paused momentarily and glared at his brother, falling stiffly on the living room's unused armchair with his arms crossed and his body fixed. "What time is it, Joe? Eleven-twenty? Where have you been? Out with Stella, of course. But doing what, exactly?"

The elder looked mildly flustered, admittedly unsure on how to respond to the sudden shift of subject.

"Going off to college, getting drunk and stoned and sleeping with your best friend isn't a healthy way to cope either, Joe," continued Nick, not missing a beat. "I always thought Stell was too smart for you; probably still is, but somehow you managed to get her. Gonna break her heart like every other girl, Joe?"

Joe blinked, flicking a piece of hair away from his eyes. "How'd you know about me and Stella?"

"I could always tell it was going to happen like everyone else, I just noticed when it actually did."

"We're not together, it's… We won't be, ever."

"Does Stella know that?"

"Yeah," he said, although he wasn't too convinced himself. He licked his lips and the low rumble of the air conditioner held the silence. "She does."

Shadows danced across the pale grays of the walls and pictures and other hanging objects blurred with the dark. But all Joe could see through the darkening room was Nick. Nick and his stone-cold face. Nick and his frozen body. Nick and his calculating, condemning eyes.

"Then try not to break her heart. She's the only thing you've got left."

"Nick, I really need to go home," rang a pitched voice and the two brothers, startled by the feminine sound piercing through the blackness of the room, immediately looked to the staircase.

Macy had flopped promptly down the last of the stairs, wearing a thin tank top and running shorts with her hair pulled in a messy ponytail. Her eyes widened when they fell upon Joe and he could see pink adorn the apples of her cheeks, her full glossed-over lips forming an 'o' out of surprise and humiliation.

He noticed she wasn't wearing her hoodie from earlier and her clothes were wrinkled and crumpled. Suddenly, he had the itching need to deem Nick as possibly the biggest hypocrite he knew.

He felt oddly ill at the thought too; blaming the stirring sickness at the realization that Nick wasn't so small and naive anymore and that Macy wasn't the pure personification of innocence like he initially perceived. He wiped his nose with his sleeve and Nick blinked slowly.

"I'll get my dad's keys--"

"No you won't," decided Joe and Nick stood, eyes flashing. He grinned. "It's way past your curfew, kiddo."

"It's summer. I have no curfew."

"Certainly dad set a curfew for girls staying over."

"You were out with Stella the entire night."

"But I'm twenty." He leaned forward on the balls of his feet with triumph dancing mockingly across his face. "And you wouldn't want dad to discuss the importance of safe sex with you, now would you?"

Nick struggled in his place, his muscles stiffening in balled up frustration. "So what're you going to do now? Take Macy home? You don't even know where she lives!"

"Good thing she does," Joe replied, tapping his head before glancing at her. "Hope you give good directions."

"Joe, no--"

"It's fine, Nick, honestly." Macy smiled bravely, but by the way she crossed her arms awkwardly and stiffly across her chest he knew she felt otherwise. Regardless, Joe just nodded in response. She bounced from one foot to the other, anxious. "So, um, should we go now?"

"Sure," he breathed, snatching his father's keys lying unceremoniously on the room's tiny yellow coffee table.

He twirled the silver keys around his finger, his eyes never leaving Nick's as if testing the younger of the two by figuratively stepping foot on territory that wasn't his.

"Ready?" he asked.

The petite brunette nodded vigorously and followed him toward the house's unlocked entrance.

Nick didn't move.

The door closed behind Joe and he opened his father's car door afterward. Macy agilely took a seat on the passenger side, strapping on her seatbelt and politely waited for him to turn the engine on before instructing softly, "take a left on Jonas Street onto Champions Avenue. I live kinda far away, so I'll give you the directions as they come -- if you don't mind, that is."

He appeared disinterested. "No, it's fine."

She kept her distance during the drive, preferring to sit on the edge of her seat near the window opposed to the armrest between them while she gave him directions. The quiet hum of the engine stirred the still air about, and when his eyes strayed upwards, Joe couldn't count the boundless amount of stars nestled in the dark blanket of the sky. He felt groggy from earlier; the alcohol numbed his stress and Stella's whiskey kisses sent permanent chills up and down his spine. He noticed his nerves were beginning to tingle and he gripped the steering wheel tighter.

Macy took a glance at him. "We…" she hesitated, faintly clearing her voice before she attempted to speak to him again, more loudly, "we weren't doing… what you thought we were."

"I know," he deadpanned and she looked on with surprise. "Truthfully, that's what I first thought when you came downstairs. Then I figured if you two had, you'd probably being doing the walk of shame, and, trust me, I know what the walk of shame looks like, and you weren't about to do it."

She leaned stiffly into her seat, her face masked. "Oh." She bit her lip. "It wasn't like we got carried away or anything today and I tossed it somewhere--" he assumed it referred to a her hoodie, "--and I, um, wasn't supposed to stay this late anyway. I… spilt some food on the hoodie after you left, and took it off, and it's in your washing machine now drying so I…"

"Yeah, I get it. But listen, Macy, I know I sorta seem like this huge jackass to Nick and all, but I'm not. Not really." He went on, squinting at the hovering darkness. "He's just become this completely different person ever since Kevin passed away. I know I don't know you, and you definitely don't know me, but believe me, the way I treat Nick is on purpose."

"Do you want to break him?" she questioned quietly and he watched her from the corner of his eye. "You think by pushing his limits, he'll be any better than he was before?"

She appeared slightly miffed at his intentions and he raised an eyebrow in curiosity.

She inhaled sharply. "He really hasn't said anything about you. Just the basics: you're twenty, going to college; that you used to be the funniest person he's ever known, and you witnessed your brother's death."

"Used to?" he repeated and she swallowed, hard.

"You think your family's the only ones that have changed," she prodded cautiously, keeping a steady but flawed smile on her face. She held it there like it was going to lessen the sharpness of her words. "But Nick thinks you have too. He thinks you're this cynical, bitter person he doesn't know anymore; that you've lost or let go of all the things you used to believe in."

"You sound like Stella," he chuckled harshly. She flinched slightly.

"And Stella. He says that he thinks she could be in love with you, and that you're doing nothing about it." Macy's eyes suddenly fell from the side of his face to her hands folded over one another resting on her lap. "She's so… beautiful. I… I don't see why you wouldn't be in love with her too."

He couldn't breathe and his head felt dizzy and light.

Didn't he always have these stupid little conversations with himself about Stella? On why he should be in love with her, but wasn't?--wouldn't ever be?

"I'm s-sorry," apologized the young girl sitting beside him. "I… I don't know what I'm saying. That was--that was way rude of me. My mom would kill me for saying something like that to a complete stranger or anyone, in fact. I guess I just don't understand why anyone wouldn't like her is all."

"It's a matter of the heart, I guess," he answered thoughtfully and she looked startled that he had responded to her pensive wondering. "You don't choose who you fall in love with, or even when you do -- it just happens."

"Did you stop believing in love?"

Joe shook his head. "Not love, just God."

She frowned at that; strangely pressing in a polite, contradicting way, "but Nick says you used to be so religious. I know that… that death isn't fair and all but…"

"He's supposed to be this completely selfless, forgiving being," he insisted nonchalantly, "so why would He be greedy enough to take someone back? Like it was a mistake on His part for putting a person on earth, and takes them back without so much of a warning."

Macy sighed, forlorn. "Sometimes, I-I think we forget the value of a single person's life. We need to be reminded of it, even if it seems like it's through a cruel, hurtful way."

Joe couldn't take anymore glances of her, his eyes set straight on the road. She abruptly spoke out, saying that this upcoming house was hers, and he slowed the vehicle into a stall; letting her hop out. He could envision the small curve of her back, her pale pink cotton tank top stretching against her tan skin. He suddenly felt more ill than before, so he forced himself to look at the building she called home instead.

This wasn't her house, he was sure of it.

Her real one was probably farther down the road and she just couldn't take talking to him anymore, but he politely allowed her to assume he believed her little lie. It was unfortunate that Macy didn't know Joe had become on true expert on lying, and that he could easily decipher one in the blink of an eye.

And so he drove off when she waved weakly at him, and he continued to drive and drive until the pounding in his heart reduced to a steady pulse.

Then he found an empty parking lot, pulling his dad's car into a stall, and pressed his face against the steering wheel momentarily.

He brought the palm of his hand to his forehead eventually, wiping the formed perspiration away and he inhaled in blurry confusion.

Joe was all the things Nick described to Macy.

He was twenty, in college, a lot less funnier than what Nick remembered, and he watched his very own brother die. And, god, there was so much blood, and pain, and memories so vague and far away, he couldn't remember them in a clear, fresh fashion anymore.

Stella was probably in love with him, like she drunkenly told him so many times, and he probably should love her like that back. Because he was so lucky that she was so beautiful and sweet and just downright perfect.

And he had stopped believing in God the minute the heart monitor strapped to Kevin had. Just because it was a lot easier blaming something that couldn't fight back in defense than blaming something that could; that could quickly turn the fault on him for not protecting his brother like he should have, like he promised he'd always do.

Still, Joe was doing just fine, despite all the terrible ordeals that had happened to him.

He only wanted someone to defy him, tell him that he didn't have to be fine or strong or that the person he had become wasn't the person he was supposed to be.

Macy Misa might be that someone.

Definitely not my favorite chapter, but an update from me has been quite overdue. This has got to be my favorite story I've written to date so I'm definitely not giving up on this, my time has just been stretched even more now that I've fiiiiinally gotten back into the dating world which, apparently, isn't synonymous to drunkenly hooking up with a cute guy. Go figure. Anyway, not the point! I just wanted to say thank you to those who reviewed last chapter and an advanced thanks and appreciation to those who will (hopefully) review this chapter! :)