Another Sentimental Argument

"Table seven is all yours, Carson," I tell him while patting him on the shoulder with a smug smirk on my face.

His blue eyes roll instantly and he gives me a gentle shove. "You're getting closer and closer to being number one on my shit list—you know that?" His tough words mean nothing as he says them through a smile.

"You say that everyday, doll." I remind him while I edge my way to the back for a break.

His eyes lighten up. "Doll, huh?" I respond only with a shrug. He winks and before I know it, he is already sliding through the double doors toward the dining area.

I leave the kitchen as well through the doors at the opposite end to catch a bit of air before I work the last half of my shift. The weather is calm for a change. Lately it has been wildly windy. But tonight is still and I rest my back against the building.

Of course when I am alone, I allow myself to think about Billie. I say allow, because of course he is always on my mind. Whenever I'm brushing my teeth, he's on my mind. Whenever someone is talking to me about the news, he is on my mind. Whenever I am doing four things at once, he is on my mind. Always in the back of my mind. So when I am alone, I kind of forget the rules that I set for myself and let my mind wander. It's the least I can do.

My fingers are tracing the grooves in between the bricks while I remember the lines that Billie gets around his eyes when he really smiles. I start to think why people worry about wrinkles so much because I think they are something to be really proud of. Maybe they're like a certificate of authenticity. I think that idea is a little far fetched, but a little accurate as well.

"As it would turn out, Logan, table seven is all yours."

I look up and get blinded for a second by the light behind Carson's head. I try to find his eyes and only reach that goal when I stand fully up and when I get the daydreams of Billie out of my eyes.

"What are you talking about?"

Carson's eyes are glaring right past my head when he speaks again. "Armstrong." I bite my lip. "Don't know if you remember, but the last time we were together I got beat up. So." Carson's eyes return to me bitterly and I want to roll my eyes at him for being such a drama queen. Not to mention the fact that I'm ignoring the slight jab at my seventeen-year-old self he just took: don't know if you remember, ("since you were so goddamn drunk", he might as well have said.)

"Fine." And when I tell him 'fine', I really mean: "I would rather have my body pushed to its absolute limits with nerves by simply being in the same four walls as Billie Joe than deal with your petty bullshit over something that was mostly your fault, Carson. An incident you're lucky that I decided to forgive and forget about."

He huffs a little as I'm leaving to enter the building and I curse under my breath because I want so badly to slam the door but it's one of those heavy ones that shut slowly on its own time. And as I'm walking blindly through the kitchen, I think there's nothing worse than wanting to slam a door and not having a door to slam.

I think that thought the whole time until I actually leave the kitchen and my body does exactly what I expected it to. And then some.

I'm not exactly sure how nerves and heartbeats and blood flow work, but I do know that I can literally feel all of it going on inside of me to the point where I think I'm going to be sick. My nerves are piercing through my skin, desperate for an escape. My heartbeat is so heavy that I can feel it throb in my head. And my blood's hot and all I want to do is take Billie's order in the freezer because even though he'd still be in my sight, my body would at least have to calm down. Or go into hypothermia. Which might not be all that bad, all things considered.

"Can I get you anything?" I'm surprised I am able to form words without choking or sweating too profusely and in between my dull question and his response, I silently congratulate myself for not melting immediately. If I'm lucky, hopefully my self destruction fueled by some weird and intense kind of infatuation will be a slow process. That way I'll be able to at least take Billie in consciously for a little while. That way I'll be able to get my fix of him.

"I'm not here to eat." He states flatly. For effect, he pushes the full glass of water away from him.

This is a restaurant. And I am a waitress. And you are a customer. And you tell me you're not here to eat. "Oh." That's all I can say.

"What time do you get off?"

He doesn't look at me when he asks. He just looks down at his folded hands in his lap. I follow his gaze for a brief moment and frown when I notice he is wearing long sleeves and I can't see all of his foreign tattoos that in a sickly desperate way I want to get to know.

"Two hours."

He winces a little. I don't know why. "Alright." His voice is smaller and huskier and I forget about all the tension between him and I and just focus on what his voice sounds like and it makes my heart flutter carelessly. "I'll be back around then."

I don't have time to process anything in my mind to say to him before he pushes his chair back and is making his way toward the front door. I watch on clueless and I am fascinated. And even though he was sullen and I was stiff, I feel a smile sneak onto my lips because he is going to be back in two hours and then maybe we are going to talk and even if we don't talk, I at least get to look at him. And maybe he will look back at me.

Whenever I return out back to finish my break, Carson is glaring at me as if I were the sun in the middle of a July afternoon and when I asked him kind of sort of rudely what he was looking at, he mutterers, "Did Armstrong find everything to his liking?" And the way he said it made me want to turn into a flying superhero so not only I could punch him, but I could punch him from a flying angle because that would ultimately look cooler and have more impact, but I just slide my back against the brick wall, turn my head upward to look at the stars and simply reply with: "Yup."

I had never had a problem with Carson after my seventeen-year-old drunken incident. It was almost as if it never happened. (Which, to be fair, it kind of didn't because I only remember snippets and whenever I think about that incident, it turns out I don't even think of Carson. I think of waking up in Billie's truck in the middle of a field and wiping the blood off his skin that he earned because of me. And that was one of the most beautiful moments of my life so I was never concerned with the fact that it took a slime ball drunk guy to get me there.) And anyway, the next time I saw Carson after that incident I just brushed it off. Because there was no way a he could ever begin to even dream of stealing my thoughts away from Billie. But in times like this when he was getting on my nerves, it didn't hurt that I had something to pull out for blackmail, if need be.

The remaining time until Billie said he would be back was up in an instant and suddenly I was watching one of the other workers switch off the neon 'Open' sign. I sighed and went out back to wait for Billie.

As it would turn out, however, I didn't have to do any waiting at all because he was already there with an unlit cigarette in between his lips. He looked a little happier than before, but that didn't say much.

"Hello," he says so coolly as he flicks the lighter under the coverage of his cupped hand while the spark ignites the features on his face for a brief moment until it goes dark again. My mind goes haywire with mushy thoughts and I try my best to hide it.

"Hey," I say with so much uncool that I almost grimace at myself.

He doesn't seem to notice. "Was wondering if you wanted to hang out tonight. Talk a little." I watch intently as he takes a long drag of his cigarette.

Talk, talk, talk. I would love to talk to you until my voice goes dry. "Back to my place, then?"

He nods and tells me that he'll just follow me in his car. I frown slightly because I wish there was a way we could walk there together or ride there together, but I just can't leave my car here until the morning and neither can he. I want to curse the universe for a moment, but then I remember that I shouldn't be so selfish because after all, the universe was kind enough to have Billie Joe exist.

I park in my normal spot and Billie parks a few spaces down. I get out of my car and walk over toward him. He has his hood up and I feel really girlish and think to myself how cute it is.

He must have felt boyish too in a way, because he says to me: "You look pretty." As soon as he says it, a mental image of my current state flashes in front of my eyes and I feel sort of embarrassed and amazing at the same time. Because I feel like I look like a mess but he says I look pretty and when someone says you look pretty when you think you look like a mess is a much better compliment than when someone tells you that you look pretty when you tried to be pretty.

I thank him shyly and wait until he is parallel beside me before we walk across the lot into the building.

As we are walking, I hear a car engine start up but I hardly pay it any mind because I have Billie casually telling me the events that occurred in his day and I feel so lucky to be hearing about mundane things because coming from certain people's mouths, they have the power to captivate you in a weird, comfortable, exciting way.

He has reached the point where he is saying that he was talking to Mike at the coffee shop earlier and that's how he had found me at work and I am smiling to myself thinking of Billie asking Mike about me in a coffee shop when he curses abruptly. "Oh my god, don't look, Logan!"

His hands grab my ribs and twist me in the opposite direction. I have no time to feel giddy over his touch and I almost feel angry. "What the hell, Billie? What is it!?" I fight against him as he keeps muttering 'shit shit shit' under his breath and before I turn around completely, I look up into his eyes with his arms still wrapped around me. He is looking away from me so I follow his gaze.

I see headlights first and then a silhouette of a creature just before the car passes over it suddenly, leaving nothing but a flattened matter of fur on the pavement. I yelp sharply and unexpectedly.

"Goddammit, Logan! I told you not to look! Shit." I can't see anything anymore because my eyes are welling up with tears. My heart aches and I feel like a child.

I am not sure if the cat had belonged to anyone or if it was a stray, but none of that matters because I have never seen something get run over before with my own eyes and I don't think that anyone should ever become desensitized to seeing death.

Billie's constant string of curses has ceased and I feel his arms wrap around my shoulder tighter. He rests his chin on my head for a moment. It is a little awkward because my eyes are still glued to what I just saw so I don't exactly lean my head into him as I should have. He waits for a moment, just breathing into my hair.

"Should we go see if its still—"

Before he can finish the question, I am already tugging him toward the scene. I don't want to see it but if there's anything that I can do to help, I have to. We approach it slowly and as we get closer, I shut my eyes and let Billie's body guide me.

He stops and that's when I know that we are in front of the helpless cat. I battle internally whether or not to open my eyes although I agreed to check on it. However, I find the strength and I open them. If only I had waited a split second longer, though, and Billie's pained sigh would have advised me to do otherwise.

I look down at the poor cat and it is lifeless. I immediately want to run into my apartment and cry. I think Billie can read my mind. His hand falls from my shoulder and into my hand and we stand there with our heads bowed, under the streetlight, over the cat's body for a moment before he tugs me away.

I hold my tears in for a record amount of time. We have reached my apartment door and he holds his hand out for me to hand him the key. I hand it over generously because my hands are shaking way too much to be able to open it. He must have noticed on the way up.

He goes ahead and switches on the living room light and still doesn't let go of my hand. I idle in the doorway just because my head is spinning and I feel that the tears in my eyes are bound to spill over and having Billie next to me in just a casual way is enough to make me go crazy, so the craziness I feel now is almost unbearable.

All too soon, he lets go of my hand and for a second I almost feel like I will topple over right there. I lift my eyes slightly to see him walk over toward the couch that faces the TV and the window behind it. He falls into it and looks at me.

I am still standing in the doorway and by now the tears are sliding down my cheeks. My hands are hanging loosely by my sides and my head is jerking slightly with my sobs. As much as I want to look away from him, I can't. So I just stand there and cry for a moment with his eyes on me, seeing every single part of me I have tried my whole life to cover up. There is no wall between us. There is nothing he cannot see.

He stretches his arms toward me and mutters "c'mere." I do as he says and fall into him.

I curl up against him and he makes his body comfortable for me. I rest my head against his chest and continue my crying into his hoodie. For a few minutes, he just holds me close to him while I sob. In the moments of silence, I admit to myself that I am crying for a lot more reasons now than the poor cat. I am crying because of all the time I have wasted away from Billie Joe, all the words I wanted to say, all of the time I spent alone on this couch when it could have and should have been spent with Billie.

I am crying harder.

His hand strokes the back of my hair now and all he says to me is, "I know, baby." I sob again. "I know."