She Manages My Heart

Alison's P.O.V

The next few days went by with a blur. It was nearly the same routine everyday; I would wake up, get dressed, met the guys with Alex most morning since she would rather hang with us then go to her ‘job’, spend the day with them, come home, listen to Alex bitch about how much she disliked Tre, do some work, call Billie and ask him when I was getting my blue folder with all my merchandise sketches, eat dinner, watch a movie, play my guitar and then go to bed getting some much needed sleep that was required for the day ahead.

I was awoken by the sound of my alarm going off. I groaned in annoyance and pulled the duvet further over my head. As much as I tried to ignore the irritating beeping noise I just couldn’t be bothered to lift the covers over my head to only press the stop button of the cursed machine. After five minutes the loud beeping noise stopped and I sighed in satisfactory as I rolled over and tried to get back to sleep, but before I could manage to do so that radio automatically came on and the room was coincidently filled with the noise of ‘American Idiot’. I growled in frustration, throwing the covers from off my body I slowly dragged myself out of bed. I turned to walk towards my bathroom that was luckily located at the far end of my room. Before I stepped on the cold bathroom tiles I turned and looked towards my new shorn enemy; my alarm clock. “I hate you! I hate you so much! You wreck everything!” I yelled at it, clearly not happy at being waken this time in the morning. If a guy had seen me screaming at my alarm clock like I was that second he would of thought I had a few screws lose, but if a girl had seen me screaming at my alarm clock they would agree with me, because really I was saying what every girl thought every single morning. I giggled at my own stupidity before walking into the cold bathroom to have a needed shower.

After taking a shower I pulled on my ‘The Clash’ t-shirt and my jeans. I applied a thin layer of eyeliner and a bit of mascara to my eyes and pulled my long, wavy hair into a lose ponytail, my long fringe framing my face nicely. I pulled on my black and white chucks before having one last look at myself in the mirror before walking out into the hallway and down into the kitchen.

“Hey Alison” Billie said looking up from the newspaper he help in his hands while taking another sip from his coffee.

“Hey Billie, guys” I said, noticing that Mike was on the phone and Alex and Tre where watching television; both of the sitting on opposite sides of the couch. “What are you guys doing here so early?” I questioned, pulling out a box of cereal from a near by cupboard and resting it on the island in the kitchen, right next to Billie.

“Ok well for starters it’s not exactly morning anymore” Billie said, pointing towards the digital clock located on the wall that read 2:30. “Anyway we weren’t sure what we were going to do today so we came over.” He said, returning back to his newspaper.

“Wow its 2:30 already?” I said, double taking when I saw the clock.

“Sure is. We had a big night last night, remember?” Tre smirked at me.

I groaned and clutched my head as flash from the pervious night came flooding back to me. I couldn’t remember much, but I did no that there was a bar, music, dancing, laughter and a hell of a lot of alcohol. “Oh, so that’s why I have a killer headache this morning” I said, grabbing for an aspirin in a near by cupboard.

“Oh, can I have some too?” Billie pleaded, I could tell from the look on his face at that moment that he was is about as much pain as I was. “Guys, you want one too?” Billie said softy, trying to phase out his headache.

“No man, where fine?” Mike said, putting away is phone before slumping of the couch next to Alex who was staring contently at the television.

Billie nodded and then looked at me. Graciously taking the small pill and glass of water from me when I handed it to him. After taking the aspirin I then sat next to Billie and ate my breakfast. I was eating my boring breakfast when I felt his gaze on me, I turned to look at him but he had already turned away. I was once again chewing on my cereal when I felt his gaze on me again. “Ok Billie, why do you keep looking at me?” I said, turning towards him, pushing away my empty cereal bowl and spoon.

“I….I was..I was just thinking.” I stuttered, looking down at the newspaper in his hands, clearly trying to avoid my gaze.

“At what?”

“You just look nice today that’s all” he muttered, still not reaching my gaze.

“Oh, thanks.” I said with a small blush. ‘You look pretty damn fine yourself’ I thought to myself. If I told myself that I was not attracted to Billie, then I would just be lying. I sighed, wishing that either of us would say something to rid the tension between us.

“I wanted to talk to you about something” he said, sounding more serious. “In-fact, we all did” he said a little louder, as if tell Mike and Tre to come over; it clearly worked because before I knew it all three of them we standing in front of me. I saw that this had drew Alex’s attention away from the television, as she was now looking at us all, as if listening in on our conversation.

“We know that this will be hard for you to hear but we just wanted to ask and tell you what your options are” Billie warned, the other guys nodding in agreement. “We want you to come and work with us.”

“What?” I said, shocked.

“I had a more proper look at your sketches and I really think they are great. But if you did come to work with us you wouldn’t just be designing merchandise. I called Paul earlier on in the week and asked him what fields of work you are able to help us with. So really you would be doing a whole variety of things.” He said to me.

“You would not only be designing merchandise; you would be selling merchandise, helping the crew out at concerts, designing our live sets, helping us with video clips, doing photo shoots and a whole heap of other shit” Mike said, counting the things he listed on his hand.

At that moment I felt as if I was about to pass out. So I started to back away, I reached the island in the kitchen and grabbed onto it as if I was about to fall.

“We know that we are asking a lot from you on this Alison. We are asking you to leave your friends your family; your home, only to come work for us. But you wouldn’t lose you job; I called Paul and made sure that he would see this situation as a leave of absence for work and nothing other, so that when you return home you can go back to doing your job. If you said yes you wouldn’t have to be on your with us the whole time if you didn’t want to; you could come home for a few weeks and meet up with us later on in the tour. We can come up with a plan to make sure that you are comfortable” Billie said, trying to reassure me.

“The bottom line is that if you don’t agree then we will have to get someone else, and all three of us would rather have you come along on tour with us. Anyway, if you change your mind after a few months, we’ll just give you your pay and you can go back home.” Billie added.

The room went silent as all eyes where fixed upon me. I felt dizzy; as if someone had just dropped a brick on my head and ran off. My grip on the island became stronger as everyone waited in anticipation. “Give me a minute to think” I said, nearly chocking on my own words. They nodded in reply.

I leaned my back against the island so I could stand properly, as I had gone weak at the knees thinking about the life changing experience that was just shoved in my face. Once I gained my balance I turned to look at them once more before walking past them and out the door to only sit in the stairwell to think.

After a long fifteen minutes of thinking by myself I heard the door open. I didn’t turn around to see who it was because I already knew it was Alex. “Hey, how you doing?” she asked me, resting a hand of my shoulder before sitting right next to me.

“Fine”

There was an awkward silence as no one dared to say I word. I looked at Alex to only see her open her mouth as if to say something, but then to only close it again. I returned to looking back at the floor. “Why don’t you just go?” she whispered.

“It’s just all too complicated Alex” I replied, still not looking at her.

“What is complicated?”

“This whole situation. I have everything here, my whole life is here is Australia and they are asking me to come on a tour with them for a whole year and a bit, maybe even longer” I said, emphasize the word ‘year’.

“Alison, this is the opportunity of a lifetime! Have you even listened to ‘American Idiot’, this tour is going to be AMAZING!” she practically yelled at me. “Think about how much you are going to regret this in the future if you don’t do this.”

“I can’t just leave; I have so much here to worry about”

“I’ll look after the apartment; I’ll pay all your bills if you give me the money to do it” she said mumbling the last part. “You have been though so much over the years, this is the chance for a new start. You have changed so much; I miss the Alison who would try to get out of work to come hang with me, even if I was only sitting at home, watching television and having a few beers, I miss the Alison who would always go and visit her family no matter how much she didn’t want to. I miss the Alison that was crazy and would do anything nuts at the drop of a hat. You’re not like that anymore; because of what has happened to you in the past, you surrounded yourself in work and became a lonely, workaholic, bitch.” She said to me, staring directly at me. “If this is what it takes to get the old Alison back then I don’t care what I have to do.”

It tore my gaze away from her. “Ok, I’ll do it”

“Thank god” she said, before pulling me into a friendly hug. “You’re going on tour with Green Day!” she squealed. “I hate you. Well at least I won’t have to spend all my time with Tre” she said with a smirk.

I just giggled and stood up. I extended a hand to her, she grabbed it and I pulled her up. I then walked back into the apartment where the guys where. They all turned there gaze away from what they where doing to look at me as I entered. “I’ll go”