‹ Prequel: In the End
Status: Hiatus.

Worry Rock

Signed Away Privacy

“You’re what?”

“Pregnant,” I repeated.

“Jesus Christ,” Adam hissed, “Are you fucking kidding me? You’ve only been with him for a little while--,”

“Two years,” I interrupted.

My brother continued to scowl over the phone. “How far along are you?”

I hesitated. “Four months.”

“And you didn’t tell me?” He cried out. “I’m your brother! We’ve always told each other everything growing up, and now you live up there and get knocked up by your pedophilic rock star boyfriend and you can’t tell me anything anymore?”

“Adam, I’ve been busy lately.”

“Busy while pregnant? Oh well that’s healthy.”

I had called Adam to tell him that Billie Joe and I wouldn’t be flying out to his home during the summer or winter that year, due to the fact that the small human being that was in my stomach was growing.

Billie Joe was perched on a stool at the island in the kitchen next to me, eating a bowl of cereal while I had called up my brother. He filled his mouth with a spoonful as he watched me closely, his eyes crawling from my face to my stomach and back and forth. I sighed softly into the phone, closing my eyes slowly. I had become so much more tired recently, even when I had done almost nothing. Billie Joe slid off the stool next to me and stood up. He slid a hand around my larger waist and rested his hand idly on my large stomach as he placed his head right next to my own, an ear close to the phone. “I don’t mean busy, I just mean we haven’t been home a lot. We just got back from Florida for the VMA’s--,”

“In which I didn’t see you at. Don’t think I didn’t look. I saw your boyfriend but not you--,”

“I let Joe stay back at the hotel,” Billie Joe cut in, “I don’t want her when she’s pregnant like she is around all that shit.”

My eyes caught Billie Joe’s as we shared silent words for a moment. Yes, I had stayed at the hotel; however that had to due with the fact that we weren’t a “couple”. “Oh please, I know you’re a smoker,” Adam spat.

“I don’t smoke around your sister much even when she’s not pregnant. I don’t smoke in my home to begin with, I step outside. And now that Joe’s pregnant, I make damn sure that she’s inside or at a whole other part of town or yard before I have a cigarette.”

Adam scowled. “I put my little sister in your arms, Armstrong, and this is how you repay me.”

Billie Joe chuckled without humor. “Adam, I love your sister. I adore your sister, and always will.”

“Oh please. You’re a fucking rock star,” Adam scoffed, “You’ll have dumped her as soon as this child is born and find some other poor girl to knock up. For all I know, you could have fifty kids.”

My fiancé’s eyes went wide. “Oh god I hope not. If I do, my ex wife has a lot to tell me.”

Adam snorted. “Your ex wife. That’s right. You’ve been married before. So tell me, what about my sister? Do you plan to have this kid out of wedlock?”

Billie Joe and I both looked down at the rock sitting on my ring finger. I felt his hand gently take my own and he rubbed my stomach lightly. He was leaving this up to me. “Adam,” I murmured.

“What?” He spat.

“We’re engaged.”


Adam was three years older than I. Not much, but still enough for him to call me his baby sister. The one thing I hated about living in Berkeley, was the fact that my brother and I now lived across the country from each other. Growing up, though I had listened and always said that Billie Joe Armstrong had been my hero, I had always leant back and always looked to my brother.

A lot of the time I wondered if he knew more about me than I did.

When Billie Joe and I had gotten married the fall after I had had Sydney, Adam was the one to walk me down the isle and give me to Billie Joe to wed.

Because of the distance, I got to see my brother a total of two times a year when Billie Joe wasn’t traveling to the city or I wasn’t able to go. And even that wasn’t fixed.

Most of the time it was during the Christmas holidays that we would fly out there. The first time we had flown out and stayed with Adam, Billie Joe stayed up for the first night freezing because it had dropped down to the thirties. I had heard him throughout the night calling Adam and I a bunch of polar bears for living in that weather for a majority of our life before he finally curled up underneath about ten blankets while smothering me for body heat.

My brother had liked Billie Joe after a while, though I’m not sure he ever forgave either of us for having a child so quickly without being married. I don’t think it was the circumstances that made him angry, it was the fact that I was married to and having the child of a rock star that bothered him, especially when Billie Joe was over ten years older than I and he wouldn’t be able to stand it if Billie Joe had hurt me mentally or physically.

Billie Joe had called my brother the next morning after I had woken up sobbing from a nightmare and asked if we could come over. Of course, Adam obliged without any thought. Billie Joe had told my brother what had been happening and how he honestly had no idea what to do, and how, honestly, it was scaring him. For the first time in fifteen years of knowing and loving me, he didn’t know what to do.

And if Adam couldn’t find out what was going on, where was he going to turn to?

Travis?

He wasn’t about to go that low.

…Not yet, at least.

Billie Joe and Sydney stayed behind with Adam’s wife and son while Adam and I went to a café. I was ecstatic to see my brother, as he was to see me. I hadn’t been eating much lately, but because I had seen the look on my brothers face I had ordered something small, I ordered a few side orders.

Adam watched me eat from the corner of his eye. I cocked an eyebrow. “What?” I asked, “I know you missed me, and I’ve missed you too, but you don’t have to watch me eat.”

Adam laughed. “I was just thinking, sorry,” he apologized. I smiled lightly and nodded while continuing to eat. Adam hesitated for a few moments and then put his fork down. “How have you been?”

“…Good?” I said slowly.

My brother chuckled nervously. “That’s good. Everything is alright?”

I scowled to myself while also placing my fork down. “You’ve been talking to Billie Joe previous to today, haven’t you?” I accused.

“Well yeah, he called to tell me he wanted to come--,”

“I mean about me. About how I’m a bit psychotic lately.”

“Psychotic? We never said that.”

“So you have!” I cried out, immediately regretting it from the looks I earned from a few people around us. I hushed my voice as Adam clenched his teeth. “You have been talking about me. Oh well that’s lovely.”

Adam sighed. “Mand, darling, he’s worried about you.”

“Who isn’t these days? Maybe we should all just form one huge intervention on how to make me better. Maybe then we can figure out just what the fuck is wrong with me, because there must be something.”

Adam watched me with a look of shock on his face. “You’re--,”

“What?” I hissed, “Crazy?”

“Taking this all wrong. Your husband asked me to talk to you because I understand you – and even I don’t understand. Why have you been so emotional lately?”

“Oh please, Billie Joe isn’t a fucking angel, Adam. He knows I hate New York, but we’ve come here anyway.”

“So that’s why you’re having nightmares and sobbing randomly all the time?” I sat back in my chair while threading a french fry through my fingers. “Your husband’s been saying that you’ve both been barely getting any sleep at night.”

I continued to look down at the friend potato in my hand. “I don’t choose to wake him up.”

“That’s beside the point. Why have you been waking up?”

“I just don’t like sleeping in the city.”

My brother sighed once again. “The reason you went away so early in the summer this year is because Billie Joe was worried with you at home. He thought you two should get away.”

“Oh Jesus Christ,” I snarled, “Did my husband give you the pleasure of telling you our whole fucking autobiography?”

Adam ignored my sarcastic remark. “He’s worried, Mandy. And from what he tells me, he’s got every right to be.”

“You know,” I muttered bitterly, “I’m not exactly five years old anymore. I can handle stuff by myself without everyone flipping out over it.”

“You look terrible.”

I stared at my brother in shock for a second. “Thanks,” I snapped, “I love you too, Adam.”

He sighed again. “I don’t mean it like that. You’ve lost weight, Mand. You’ve got circles under your eyes. Tell me, honestly, how much sleep have you gotten in the past week? Give me an estimate.”

“No,” I mumbled.

“Wouldn’t you feel better telling someone?”

“You and Billie Joe are just the same,” I hissed. “You’re both smothering me because you’re so worried. I am perfectly fine.”

“Oh that’s a lie and you know it,” Adam interrupted me. “If you’re trying to protect your husband over something bad he did, tell me. I won’t do anything.”

“I honestly don’t give a fuck as to what you’d do. It’s what he’d do that bothers me--,” Adam opened his mouth to speak but I cut him off, “And don’t you dare tell me you wouldn’t tell him, because that is a lie.”

“You are my sister, he is my brother-in-law,” Adam told me softly, “You are both my family, but if you needed to tell me something that you didn’t want him to know, I would never betray you like that. I just want to help you.”

“Just like everyone else.”

A long silence overcame us. I hesitated, keeping my head bowed. I loved Adam as he loved me. I had trusted him with every bit of my life for eighteen years. When my boyfriend had cheated on me back in high school, he was the first person I had run to when I had had no idea what to do.

Adam knew just about everything about my past life, and I trusted him with it.

I took a deep breath, feeling Adam’s eyes on me. “Billie Joe wants to have a baby,” I whispered.

Adam nodded. He looked slightly surprised, but not so much. “Is that all?”

I shook my head. “He wants a baby cause I brought the idea up to him. We have been trying for a baby for the past five months.”

“You don’t want a baby anymore, do you?” He asked softly.

“No,” I denied, “I do want a baby, but,” I sighed softly and leant forward. I placed my head in my hands as I stared down at my plate. “But Billie Joe is back in the studio. Do you understand how hard that is? It’s…terrible. He fights with Mike and Tre constantly. He drinks a lot, three out of four nights he comes home at one or three in the morning. He lies to me, or well, he did--,”

“About what?”

I sighed. “He always told me he was out with Mike and Tre, and of course he’d come home trashed late at night. The night before my birthday I learnt from Mike that he never went out with them, it was always him by himself. Adam, once I found that out I couldn’t. After I had forgiven him for that, he still wanted to make a baby. And I can’t, Adam.”

I sobbed lightly into my hands. I heard Adam jump up from his seat across from me and pull it over to where I sat. He wrapped his strong arms around my body as I sobbed into his chest. “I’m on birth control. I have been for three months – and he doesn’t know. He thinks there’s just something wrong with our bodies.”

Adam shushed me as I sat with him, usually the way Billie Joe did.

It was terribly disturbing how great it felt to tell my brother. To tell somebody. “Please don’t tell him,” I sobbed into his shoulder.

“I won’t,” Adam promised. “This isn’t my place to interfere.”

“I’m a terrible wife.”

“No,” Adam argued softly, “not at all. I can understand why you wouldn’t want to rush into having another child – but sweetie, you’ve got to tell him or stop taking the pills. This can’t go on. Do you understand how worried this man is for you? He feels like a terrible husband because he can’t stop you from crying. I know men suck, but you’ve got to let us in once in a while.”

I kept my head buried into my brothers’ shoulder, both of us ignoring the people glancing at us. I could only pray to god there were no paparazzi around. “If I tell him, Adam, it’ll kill us. He’ll hate me.”

“No, I don’t think that’s true. How did you find out about his drinking?”

“He told me.”

Reality was, though, Mike told me, pretty much. Or well, Mike helped me come to terms, but when it came down to it, Billie Joe had told me everything about.

“And do you hate him?” Adam asked.

“No,” I whimpered, “I’m just screwing him over.”

Adam chuckled softly. “The point is he told you, and you forgave him. You know he’ll be upset, but he’s going to find out some day, hon. Whether it be from finding birth control on the counter or some way – he’s going to find out. You live in a world full of publicity and cameras. You are a celebrity. You see Star magazine and People. Nothing is private anymore.”

“How would they find out, Adam? You’re the only person I’ve told.”

“How do you think they find out anything? They’ve got these bastards undercover and hiding and everything. When you married Billie Joe Armstrong, when you said I do you signed all of your privacy away.”

Billie Joe and I had never had a real problem with press. Yes, there were articles about us and pictures of us, but for the most part we stayed out of the lime light.

My brother tilted my head upward. He kissed my cheek lightly. “I love you, Mandy. I hate to see you hurt. You’re my little sister.” He sighed once again as he wiped my tears away. “Tell your husband.”

“I don’t know how.”

“It doesn’t matter how,” Adam murmured. “All it matters is that you tell him. You. Not the people of America.”