It Wasn't

By the time Alice got back from her walk, it was late. Everyone was sleeping all over the house. Mike was on a sofa, Billie on the floor, Tre in Robyn's room, and the only person awake was Robyn. Alice found her cleaning the mess in the kitchen.

"Hey," she tapped her older sister softly on the shoulder, "Need some help?"
"I'd love some help" Robyn handed her a garbage bag. As they stuffed the pizza boxes into the bags, Alice hesitantly began to strike up the topic. What would she ask? She had classes tomorrow. How would she know where Billie was? How would she get him alone to talk? She yawned and began to talk, unsure of what she was saying.
"So," she started, "Are you going to be with Tre all day tomorrow?" Robyn turned around to look at her, wearing a look somewhere between surprise and concern.

"Why?" she asked Alice, going back to stuffing her bag with trash.
"Well," Alice mumbled nonchalantly, "I was just wondering if, we could go somewhere after I get out of class." Robyn smiled.
"Class?"
"Yes class. Remember. I go to college. Which requires that I attend classes." Alice rolled her eyes. Robyn continued smiling, looking like she was holding back a laugh.
"Allie, today's Friday. You don't have class on Saturdays." She chuckled. Alice laughed with her and for a moment, her tension was forgotten. "But," Robyn continued, "We can't have a girly day tomorrow. Tre wants me to spend some time with him and the insanity parade. He calls it bonding. I call it... Well, there's really nothing I can call it." Seeing the crestfallen look on Alice's face, Robyn took her hand. "Come with us. Rescue me. I might go as insane as they are if I'm left alone with them." Alice giggled and nodded. But inside, her heart was beating a violent tattoo against her ribs. She would definitely be seeing Billie tomorrow. But when would she get him alone? Gossiping and joking, they finished picking up the rest of the junk and took it outside. Alice turned to Robyn.

"I'm going to go get some sleep. What time is it?" she yawned. Her sister answered after catching Alice's contagious yawn.
"I think it's almost twelve. Good night annoying little sister." She smiled.
"Good night pretentious older sister." Alice replied. They went inside. Robyn went to her room and cuddled next to Tre and Alice went to the guest room and tried not to think of last night's horrific dream.

She kissed him. It was a beautiful kiss, full of desire and passion. She kissed him with all the love she had in her body, but received none. He kissed her back with only physical longing, his hands moving down her body. They heard the door open and broke away. A tall man looked shocked and faded. Two women came in. The first one started weeping. He looked at her with a gleam in his eye, a telltale look that showed that he would give anything to see this crying woman smile. She faded as well. The remaining woman stood quietly, her expression disappointed and hard. She too faded. A voice called. "Allie, come on." Who on earth was Allie? Was she Allie? It didn't matter. The man she would give her life for looked at her coldly and cruelly. He started to fade as well. She tried to grab onto his hand and keep him with her, but he continued to disappear. "Don't even try," he whispered. Then he was gone. She screamed.

Alice woke up with a startling scream, short and high pitched with fear mixed with a tug of guilt. Robyn ran in from the next room, relieved to see that Alice wasn't screaming anymore. She hugged her little sister and was lightly pushed away.

"Robyn," Alice mumbled sleepily, "I'm not five. How badly do you want children?" Robyn choked a laugh at this question.
"Enough to rape Tre until I'm pregnant with his kid," she joked in reply. Unfortunately, Tre was just about to walk into the room when he heard this little tidbit of conversation. He turned on his heels to escape. Robyn saw him and called after him. "Tre, come on. I was joking." She went after him to reassure him, leaving Alice very amused. Shaking her head, she got up to join everyone else for a breakfast of leftovers. As they ate, they laid out the plan for the day. Billie and Mike would each be going home in their separate cars. Tre would drop Alice off since his house was the closest to her dorm. At ten o clock, Mike and Tre would meet here and go with Robyn to pick up Alice and then to Billie Joe's house.

"Wait," Robyn interjected, "Doesn't Billie have a car?"
"It needs to be serviced and I won't get it back until tomorrow," he yawned. A smirk twitched on the corners of his lips and in reply to everyone's curious glances, he laughed, "This is like when we were teenagers going to the movies or something. Who's meeting who where and who's getting a ride from who else to get home." The others couldn't deny this and they laughed with him. After breakfast, Alice packed her bag and got into Tre's car. Stench hit her like a brick wall. She sniffed the air for a moment trying to identify the smell.
"Tre," she asked, "Did something die in your car?" Tre looked shocked for a moment. After inhaling for a moment he reached down and pulled out an old juice box and a bag of chips. Almost laughing at Alice's expression he threw them away and got into the car.

Alice's dorm was not more then twenty minutes away. As the car pulled over, Tre turned to face her. "You have one hour. If we have to wait for more than ten minutes, we're leaving without you." He stated with a strange twinkle in his eye. Alice immediately became suspicious. She looked at him and analyzed for a few moments before inquiring.
"Where the hell are we going, Tre?" she narrowed her eyes in need of defense. Tre cocked his head to one side, raised an eyebrow and cheekily, he replied, "That for us men to know and you cute little girls to find out." Alice rolled her eyes, picked up her bag, and got out of the car. She heard the engine zoom off as she was entering the building.

Roughly an hour later, Alice was walking down the stairs of the dormitory building. It didn't really help that the elevator was broken and that her dorm was on the seventh floor. Swearing and lightly sweating, she pushed the main door open just in time to see Tre pulling up next to the building in the driver's seat of Robyn's minivan. As she got in,
Alice looked at her sister in mild surprise.

"Robbie!" she nearly yelled, "You're letting someone else drive your car while you're still sober! This is amazing!" She turned to Tre, "How did you do it? Teach me!" Tre chuckled. Mike, who was sitting next to Alice, did the same

"Its not something I can teach, White Rabbit," He grinned, "Its an art. And a little," he wiggled his signature eyebrows, "persuasion." He laughed when he saw Alice's face. "What's wrong White Rabbit?"
"Too much info dude, " she responded, looking completely repulsed. As the four of them settled into conversation, Alice noticed how again and again, Tre had addressed her as White Rabbit. Mike occasionally called her Allie, as did Robyn, but Tre called her by almost no other name than White Rabbit. White Rabbit. That was what he called her when it happened. She became disgusted with herself as she once again thought of the burning tree.

"Hey, Alice!" Mike shook her shoulder, "Where are you?" She came out of her thoughts and grinned at him.
"I was just wondering where your sanity went." She retorted. Mike leaned back into his seat and shrugged his shoulders.
"You can't lose something you never had," he quipped. The conversation was cut short when they parked on Billie Joe's driveway and all ambled out of the car to get him.

After they rang the doorbell ten times with no answer, Mike bent down, took the spare key out from under the welcome mat, and opened the door. The whole group went inside and made themselves comfortable in Billie Joe's living room. Well, except for Alice. Alice sat almost on the edge of her seat, trying not to look as tense as she felt. She imagined him, Billie Joe Armstrong here on this couch. She imagined his wife next to him. The kind woman who spoke to her at the after-concert party was Billie Joe's only love, Billie Joe's life. How could she just step into the picture like that? How could she set destructive flames into his marriage?
"Alice?" Robyn tapped her lightly on the shoulder, "Alice, what's wrong? You look strange." Alice hurriedly searched her mind for an excuse other than 'I was thinking about how I made a rock star cheat on his wife with me. '

Glancing up at her older sister, Alice smiled and said, "Robbie, I have to pee." Robyn, Mike, and Tre all laughed. Sometimes, it paid to be inconsistent. Mike pointed her to the bathroom upstairs. "Isn't there one downstairs?" she asked.

"There is" Mike replied, "But I'm not sure if Billie had it fixed yet, and I don't think anyone would want to take a chance in a situation like that." A chuckle ran through them again. She started towards the steps when Mike called to her. "Oh, and tell Billie to get his ass down here. We've been waiting for ten minutes."

Upstairs, Alice was finding it hard not to marvel at the size of the second floor of the house. Remembering Mike's directions, she opened the bathroom door and bit back a small yelp. Billie was coming out at that precise moment.

"Sorry," she said. Billie was about to walk away and Alice was about to walk into the bathroom when a sudden thought made her turn around. She grabbed him by the shoulder. "Wait," she breathed, as quietly as possible, but audible to Billie Joe. "I need to talk to you." He looked surprised.
"What?"
"I need to talk to you," she gulped down her qualms. Billie continued to look perplexed.
"About what happened," she clarified. "You can't."
"Can't what?"
"You can't tell your wife."
"Why not?" he asked, blanching. "I'm going to tell her Alice. I have to."
"Bil—" She was cut off
"No, listen to me, Alice James! I did something wrong. I shouldn't have done it. I should have stopped. But I didn't. I let go of responsibility for one night and I have to pay for it. Adrienne... Adrienne means the world to me, and she deserves to know. I have to tell her. I have to." He finished in a deadly whisper. Alice's eyes narrowed in defense and she walked toward him, possessed, until he was back up against a wall.

"Now you listen to me Billie Joe Armstrong. I did something wrong too. I could have stopped myself, but I didn't. I didn't have to kiss you, but I did. You didn't have to kiss back but you did, and now we're both paying. I am destroying myself with guilt. I am sorry to have come into middle of your marriage, but you came into the middle of my life and neither of us can stop it! I don't want to meet my sister's disappointed face or have to know that you and your wife are having problems. So let's keep it that way." She hissed in one breath. Billie was shocked. He stood there, staring at her, thinking, gaping, gasping, and lost in thought.

She looked at him. His lips. The lips of sin and the lips of joy. Those lips bore music. No, she couldn't. She closed her eyes and a tear fell down her cheek. There were consequences. There was pain. She opened her eyes. There was misery but oh, there was longing. She saw the look in his eyes, mirrored in her own. She wanted him. She wanted him like she'd wanted no one else. She was half in love with him. It was almost amusing. She barely met him a month ago, but she knew of him all her life.
He looked her. He wanted her; he felt a physical stirring inside his body. He loved Adrienne; he needed his wife, but he wanted Alice. It wasn't the familiar feeling that jolted through him when he saw his wife, but something went through him. And he knew that something very similar was going through Alice. In a simultaneous movement, they both closed the space between them, lips together. And again, in another simultaneous movement, they broke apart. It seemed like a century had passed since Alice came upstairs, but a glance at her watch told her that it had only been a few minutes. Putting her finger to her lips with pleading eyes, she ran down the stairs and told Mike, Tre, and Robyn that Billie would be coming down in a minute.

"We're here!" announced Tre. Everyone in the car stopped their chattering, slumping, or staring, to get out of the minivan. Robyn stepped out, took a good look at the building, and then turned to Tre with a very intimidating look on her face.

"Tre." She said. Just one word, but that one word was enough to scare Tre out of his mind. "Tre, you told me you wanted to take me out with the guys. You said you wanted everyone to bond. You said that you didn't want a repeat fiasco of your last girlfriend. Okay, fine. I could have gone somewhere with just Alice, but I came with you instead, because I love you. But you made a huge deal out of taking me to the mall with your friends?" Robyn spoke quite calmly, but both Alice and Tre knew that one false move would send her into overdrive.

"Um, it seemed like a good idea... " Tre mumbled, "I mean, everything's at the mall." His voice became a little stronger, "I thought it was a good place to spend the day." Robyn softened a little when she saw that he wasn't playing a joke on her.

"Fine." She said. "We'll waste our day at the mall." She kissed him and they led everyone inside.