Worry Rock

Billie Joe Armstrong watched over me as if I was a new born, or something incredibly fragile.

Part of me believed I was.

Either incredibly fragile or just scarily crazy.

He would watch me as I called room service, or as I got ready for bed that night. I found myself feelings his eyes on me almost 24/7. When walking in the streets of New York City with Sydney he would hold onto my hand tightly and through the side of his sunglasses I could see him glance at me every now and then.

I wasn’t crazy, nor becoming crazy. I was just…pathetic.

And though I wanted Billie Joe to stop putting me on suicide watch, I couldn’t do anything. Because to do something, I’d most likely have to tell him the truth. And well, god forbid I do such a thing.

Billie Joe hadn’t said anything to Sydney about Chris, in which I was more than thankful for. He kept quiet, although every time Sydney received a text message his body would tense. His first and only daughter had a boyfriend.

I had just gotten out of the shower in the hotel bathroom, wrapping a towel that I had packed with us because hotel ones were never large enough. They were always small and skimpy, despite the fact that they were being served in a first class hotel. I pulled open the door and stepped into the bedroom to see Billie Joe laying face down on my side. He was fully clothed, and looked to be awake. “What’s up with you?” I asked the guitarist.

Billie Joe lifted his head slowly. He looked up at me and smiled. I walked over to the bed, still clutching the towel around my body as I sat down next to my husband. He sat up next to me and automatically lent in for a kiss. “I was just waiting for you,” he murmured.

I sighed softly while he smiled meekly. I smiled back at him. “Where’s Sydney?” I asked.

Billie Joe scowled and turned away from me. “She’s on the phone with,” his nose wrinkled in disgust, “Chris.”

I giggled and wrapped one wet arm around my husbands’ neck while keeping the other on my towel. Billie Joe’s eyes traveled down my face and neck to my freshly showered body. He grinned widely. I rolled my eyes and pulled the towel closer around my body. “Off limits for now, darling.”

Billie Joe gasped mockingly. “What?”

“My ass and my breasts are off limits to you at the moment,” I said, a smirk playing on my lips.

My husband scoffed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. You think I was looking at your ass? I’ve never heard of such a thing.” I rolled my eyes playfully as I pulled a t-shirt over my head quickly, wrapping the towel around my waist. “However,” he continued softly, “I would not object if you were to drop that towel suddenly.”

I laughed as he grinned and wriggled his eyebrows suggestively. “I bet you wouldn’t.”

I went over and sat on the bed with still the towel wrapped around my waist. Billie Joe looked at me from the side of his eyes and grinned mischievously. I cocked an eyebrow and watched my husband until I found myself on my back, Billie Joe straddling me. I started to laugh as he grinned wider. "What are you doing?" I asked, eyeing my husband as he shifted slightly while on top of me.

“What does it look like?” Billie Joe asked.

I wrapped my arm around his neck and pulled his body down so that he lay flat on top of me. His lips pressed themselves against my own as we both lay there on the bed. Billie Joe’s hand moved from just underneath my chest, in-between us, to my leg. He slid a finger underneath the towel and tried to start to lift it off of me. “Mmmph – Billie -- no.”

I pushed him off of me and he scowled. “What is it with the word no and you?” Billie Joe asked as he fell onto the mattress next to me.

“What is it with you and trying to have sex 24/7?”

The room’s atmosphere became slightly tense. I hadn’t meant that as an insult, more as a joke. Billie Joe shifted next to me while gently rubbing the top of his leg. “Joe, can I ask you something?”

“Don’t,” I answered quickly.

Billie Joe cocked an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

“Please,” I begged, “don’t ask anything about how I’ve been acting.”

“You’re so protective over that,” he murmured, leaning closer to my body, “yet you say you’ve got no idea what’s going on.”

I squirmed underneath my husbands gaze. Billie Joe sighed next to me and leant forward to rest his head in his hands. We both sat in silence for a while until I got up and slowly found a pair of shorts to wear for the day and undergarments. I hesitated, watching my husband as he continued to sit on the edge of the bed with his elbows resting on his knees and his head in his hands. His breathing was normal, but he looked like he was ready to launch into a panic attack any second. “Billie?” I cooed softly, my hand wrapped around the door handle to the bathroom.

Billie Joe simply moved his head to one hand and used the other to wave at me, as if to tell me not to bother. I had upset him now. “I’m sorry if I upset you,” I tried.

My husband snorted dryly and then just continued to sit with his head buried into his hands. I pushed open the door to the bathroom and stepped in it, quietly shutting the door behind me. I slid on the pair of shorts quickly, and had begun to take out my hairdryer out when I felt the need to sit down.

I pushed my back against the closed door and felt myself slowly slide down so that I was sitting on the cold tiled floor. I hadn’t had anything to eat that morning, but that couldn’t have been it. There had been days on tour with Billie Joe that we wouldn’t eat until the evening due to the fact that we were in the middle of nowhere and I hadn’t been bothered.

It’s probably because you’ve been treating yourself like shit lately.

I shook my head, placing it in my hands just like my husband had.

What? You don’t see it? You cry at least every day. You’ve probably lost ten pounds in the last two weeks from nothing but stress. You are and have been the world’s worst liar, yet you’re hiding something big enough to ruin your marriage from your husband. What do you have to show for yourself? You are a sick, disgusting and becoming depressed thirty year old. Congratulations, bitch.

I pressed my head into my knees that had been brought up to my chest, the burning sensation that had become so familiar starting in my eyes.

And I was sobbing again.

In what seemed almost no time at all I was sobbing into my hands that had curled into fists and were pushed against my mouth to try to subdue them. I hated myself. I hated everything I had become, everything I stood for and everything I would be.

On the other side of the door, Billie Joe was already standing up and staring at the bathroom door in curiosity. He stepped closer to the door and gently tapped on it. “Joe?” He whispered.

My eyes widened and I bolted up to lock the door before I fell back onto the ground. “What?” I croaked, wiping my eyes pathetically.

“You’re crying again.”

I wasn’t sure if that was a question or a statement, but either way I fully intended to object to it. “No.”

“God damnit, Joe,” Billie Joe hissed, “you fucking liar. You’re crying again.”

The door handle juggled as Billie Joe tried to open it, but he only found that it was locked. It juggled a few more times out of what I guessed was sheer frustration and then it stopped. “You locked me out?”

He didn’t sound mad or frustrated anymore.

And that would have made me feel better, had he not sounded so hurt.

For the second time in ten minutes I had hurt my husbands feelings.

“No,” I lied, “I was just coming in to ch—change and I locked it.”

“Then unlock it now, Joe.”

I sat in the same position for a few minutes, not making any move to let my husband inside. Billie Joe sighed angrily and I could almost see him rubbing his temples. “Don’t make me go downstairs and tell someone that works here that my wife is sobbing on the bathroom floor and won’t let me inside. That’d embarrass you and me, but don’t you think that I wouldn’t do it.”

I sat there for a few more moments until I heard Billie Joe scowl loudly. “Fine,” he huffed. “I’ll be back. Thanks for this, Joe. It’s exactly what I fucking needed.”

I pulled my body up and quickly unlocked the door. The click of the lock caught Billie Joe’s attention. He hesitated and then tried to open the door again, this time being successful. Billie Joe pushed the door open and stepped inside, not bothering to look for me at first as he shut the door behind him.

The older man let out a breath of slight relief as he saw me sitting on the counter, tear stains down my cheeks. He walked over and stood before me, lifting a hand to gently stroke my tear and wipe away a few tears. “Oh Joe,” he murmured softly.

His hands traveled around my back and he brought me into a long hug, one that reminded me a lot of the one that we had shared when I was starting to forgive him for lying to me.

Billie Joe Armstrong had lied to me and I had made a huge deal about it. I was lying to Billie Joe, and I was making a big deal out of this.

I was disgusting.

I sobbed lightly into my husbands’ chest, grabbing hold of his t-shirt and taking in his smell. He smelt strongly of cigarettes, in which I’m sure he had just come back from smoking when he had heard me sobbing. Billie Joe placed his chin on the top of my head and then pulled it away, only to press his lips against my forehead.

“What’s going on, Joe?”

I sobbed lightly into his chest. “I don’t know,” I whimpered.

For what seemed the hundredth time that day, a silence came over the two of us. I could feel his body tense slightly every now and then as he stood in front of me, his arms still wrapped tightly around my pathetic and shaking body. “I think you do know,” he murmured.

“I don’t,” I lied, “I don’t know.”

“I don’t believe you.”

That was the final blow. Billie Joe Armstrong had said it with no emotion at all, but it killed me. I didn’t deserve his trust, because I was lying to him, but the fact that he no longer believed me hurt. I tore myself away from him and glared at him through tear filled eyes. “Thank you,” I whispered.

I slid off the counter and stumbled through the doorway into the bedroom, Billie Joe following closely. I fell onto the bed roughly and buried my head into a pillow. “Do you need sleep?”

I didn’t answer.

“Because I’ll let you sleep if you want. I’ll take Sydney downstairs to get something to eat and get you something, too, if you’re hungry and you can just sleep. I think that’d be best for now, Joe.”

“I don’t care,” I admitted into the pillow.

The bed sunk next to me as my husband sat down. “Don’t be like this. You’ve been shutting me out of your life lately, Joe. I just want to know what’s wrong. You cry every day. You’re depressed. We’ve been married for thirteen years and you’ve never been depressed or cried this much. I know you know what’s wrong, but you refuse to tell me.”

“I’m a terrible wife.”

“No,” he murmured, placing a hand on my back and gently rubbing circles on it. “But I think this vacation would be so much better if you told me what was wrong.. I wouldn’t be mad.”

No, of course not. You’d just hate me and want a divorce.

I sobbed lightly into the pillow at his words and the thought of a divorce.

I sobbed because I had honestly, scarily gone crazy.

My husband lay down next to me and pressed his face against my own, kissing my temple. “Come on baby, just tell me.”

He thought he was close to finding out. Billie Joe Armstrong knew me like a book that he’d read hundreds of times, and he knew that when I was crying I told everything.

“I’m crazy.”

Billie Joe laughed, taking his face away from my cheek. “What?”

I sat up slowly, clearing my eyes with the back of my hands. “What would you do if I was crazy, Billie?”

He chuckled again while also sitting up. “You’re not crazy, baby.”

“I’m a liar, though.”

A smile danced on Billie Joe’s lips. “I don’t think so.”

I closed my eyes slowly, my mind buzzing with thoughts. “Why not?”

A pair of lips caressed my own, fingers brushing my own and entwining themselves as I felt my hand being taken. Billie Joe’s free hand slid around the back of my neck, rubbing it gently. “Because you’re an amazing person. You’re much better moraled than I.” There was hesitation, and then he smiled widely, his voice and tone soft. “I would never marry a liar.”