You're Still the One

It was raining. Cool drops were running in my eyes as I closed my car door with a slam. “You piece of shit.” I huffed under my breath as I kicked at the tire of my now dead 1991 Audi. This car had put the last nail in my already welded shut coffin. Thunder rolled above me as if a warning sign, I sighed and picked up my bag, swung it over my shoulder and strode towards the bus. I was silently thanking God that school was done for the year and that I had made it through. The past few months had been very tough on me, school just made it worse. Just as I was about to step onto the bus, I heard someone shouting my name.

“Julie!” I turned to see my friend Sid mere inches from my face. “Did you hear!?” He all but screamed at me. I rolled my eyes.

“Hear what, Sid?”His eyes went wide and I instantly regretted asking.

“You didn't hear? He asked, bewildered. I sighed and leaned against the bus.

“What are you babbling about?” I sighed. Sid's face blanched and he withdrew a pace nearer to me and talked gently, like he trying to cushion the shock. Nothing in this world could have prepared me for the words that came out of his mouth. “Billie's back.”Those two words rang in my mind like a haunting chant. I felt numb. My brain darted back to what I had been trying for the past eight months to draw a blank. I could see Billie's face and raven hair, his arms wrapped tightly around me as we danced in the middle of my bedroom. “Unchained Melody” rang in my ears and I felt like I was slowly drifting back in time. I was quickly brought out of my reverie by Sid waving his hand in front of my face.

“Hello? Earth to Jules.” I blinked and Billie's face was gone, I was still in front of the bus and the music had stopped. The one person that caused me pain and brought so much joy to me was back. I turned back to Sid.

“Are you sure?” He nodded.

“I saw him and Mike this morning at the gas station. His hair is blue.” A smile crept to my face. Billie dying his hair was not news to me. I was one of the few people that knew his hair was not naturally black. I even did it for him. Sid looked down at my boot clad feet. “He asked about you.” He whispered.

“What did you tell him?" I asked. He looked up and smirked.

“That you were still a pain in the ass and that you're doing okay.” I pushed his shoulder and tried not to laugh. Sid had been there for me when my whole world fell apart. Billie broke up with me right before he left with his band for their first real tour. He told me we'd never be able to work with that much distance between us. I told him I'd drop out and go with him, but he insisted that I finished high school. When he left a part of me did too. We had been through so much together in the last seven years. I would never understand how he could just leave me.

~ *** ~

Home. The last place I wanted to be was home. Billie has lived next to me since we were in the 5th grade. We've been friends since the day he moved in. The Armstrong family moved in next to me just as the summer of 1980 began. I was the only kid on the street until Billie moved in, so naturally I was excited. I didn't have a lot of friends to begin with, I was a shy kid, so a lot of kids my age left me alone. Not Billie. That same day he saw me in my front yard and asked me if I wanted to play his new Pacman. I couldn't have said no if I tried. Pacman was very new at the time and had been in stores, maybe a month, so of course I said yes. We had been friends ever since. When school started back, we sat together at lunch, copied each others homework even when we knew the answers were wrong, and rode the bus home together every day. I smiled to myself as I remembered the time we stayed up late watching the then new, “Nightmare on Elm Street.” We had begged our mothers the entire week to let us watch it, they finally gave in when we promised not to wake either one of them up. Easy. We figured the movie wasn't what everybody said it was and that we'd end up laughing at how stupid it was. We were wrong. Very wrong. Billie started out lounging on the couch, and I was sitting Indian style on the floor with my back to him. We had decided to watch it at my house since I'm the one that rented the movie. My dad had surprised us with candy and told us if either one of us threw up, the candy was not his idea. Typical dad, always covering his ass with mom. The candy was gone before the first scene had ended. Which, in hindsight was probably a good thing considering what we were about to see. Sometime during the movie Billie moved to the floor next to me, and towards the end, we were clinging to each other, silently confessing in our minds that our mothers were right. We even had to walk each other to the bathroom in the fear that Freddy was waiting for us around every corner. Billie stayed over the whole night, he told me it was to make sure I was okay, but I know it was because he didn't want to walk alone in the dark. I never told him how much it meant to me that he stayed.

Then puberty kicked in, and fast. Suddenly Billie wasn't just my friend next door, he was a boy. Not only that a cute boy. Billie made me nervous, which was weird because I had never been nervous around him before. Things changed in high school when Billie started dating a girl he met while in detention. I never liked Amanda. It wasn't because she was with Billie, it was because I always knew Billie was too good for her. She treated him like shit, which he didn't ever deserve. They broke up after only a few months of dating. I was relieved because I had what was more than a crush on Billie, and during our junior year we began dating. We became even more inseparable, my mom started to think we were joined at the hip. Billie was my world. My first taste of love and I couldn't get enough of him.

~ *** ~

Rage. To feel or express violent, uncontrollable anger. That's just what I felt the minute I set eyes on him. I had secretly hoped that Sid was playing a sick joke on me, but there he was, vibrant blue hair and all. He had on his old Cheap Trick T-shirt, one of which I had slept in numerous times and black jeans. He looked good, even with his blue hair. I was about to close my kitchen curtain when something else caught my eye. It was a girl. I felt a twinge of pain looking at her. She looked a little bit older than him, with tan skin and black dreadlocks. I caught myself looking down at my own hair, wondering if dreads were what he was into now. I watched as they walked hand in hand to his front door. He looked happy. Truthfully, I didn't want him to be. I wanted him to suffer like I did, to have a little fucking remorse. He broke my heart when he left and had obviously moved on. My blood boiled at this point. It took me all the eight months to not get weepy just looking over at his house and he comes home with a girl? I growled in anger as I made my way to my bedroom ready to banish any memory he and I had ever made.