I Can't Believe This

**RECAP**

I looked at Billie’s face. It was off somehow. He always looked so happy and calm when he was performing, but not here. He looked stiff and dazed. I grabbed the remote and changed the channel. “Let’s just watch The Ring,” I suggested, grabbing the DVD and popping it into the machine.

“Are you okay?” she asked, looking over at me.

“Of course, I’m fine. Why wouldn't I be?” I kept my eyes on the screen as the opening credits began.

“You’re sure? Because with the way you jumped up and switched to the movie, I’d say you aren’t.”

I sighed. “No, I’m not, okay? I’m not fine. But I have to be. I just…” I trailed off.

She nodded. “Yeah, I get it.”

**END RECAP**

***

Almost two hours and three bags of popcorn later, Emilie and I were sitting on the couch, staring at the now black screen. My stomach felt like there was a lead weight inside of it. Maybe the handful after handful of popcorn, the three sodas, and the bag of Twizzlers had been a bad idea. I’d be lucky if I could even manage to haul my lazy ass off to bed. Oh well, the couch was extremely comfortable.

“That movie scares the shit out of me,” Emilie said, breaking the silence.

“Mm.” I nodded my head in agreement.

“Seriously, who the fuck comes up with this shit? I mean, God, you need to be ridiculously demented, right?”

“Most likely.” I propped my feet up on the table and laid my head back. “Jesus. I ate so much.”

“Yeah, same here.”

It was quiet again for a moment, then Emilie started laughing.

“What?” I asked, laughing along with her. “Why are we laughing?”

“We…we eat like…like men!” She snorted once and laughed harder. “I’m surprised people aren’t repulsed by us.”

My sides began to ache from laughing. “Oh, they are. They’re probably…just too polite…polite to say anything.”

All she could do was nod her head. Our laughter finally died and the apartment was quiet once more. “I’m going to bed. That is, if I can pick up the extra seventy-five pounds of girth that I’ve gained tonight.”

Emilie grunted. “Yeah, like you could ever gain weight from eating. Hell will freeze over first.”

I rolled my eyes, murmured a tired goodnight, and went to my room. Collapsing on the bed, the image of Billie Joe drifted into my mind again. He’d looked so upset during their show. I sighed and rolled onto my side. It’s his fault, I reminded myself. If he hadn’t kissed Adrienne, we’d still be together and our relationship would be just fine. I closed my eyes, trying to let my drowsiness take over and lead my brain into a deep slumber.

My eyes popped open again. It felt like a minute had gone by, but when I looked at the clock on my nightstand, it told me that it had actually been four hours. I lay there for a second, hoping sleep would come again. It didn’t. I sat up, quietly pulled my bedroom door open, and crept into the hallway. The rest of the apartment was dark. Well no duh it was dark. It was only three in the morning, I chided myself.

I walked into the kitchen and turned on the light that was over the stove, not wanting to wake Emilie up. Grabbing a cup of coffee I sat down on one of the stools at the counter. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a bright white light flashing. My cell phone. I pulled it over to me and looked at the screen. Five missed calls and three new texts. Great. Who the hell calls someone in the middle of the night?

I checked the texts first. All of them were from Tré, and all of them said ‘hey honey, how you doing?’ or variations of that anyway. I smiled. “Always looking out for me,” I whispered to the darkness.

Next, I checked the first missed call.

“Ha ha. Um, hey…Lisha. It’s uh, what’s my name again? Oh, right! Ha! It’s Billie. Me. Yeah. Lishen, do yous think you could, um, picks me up? Ha ha. I’m, erm, kinda drunk an’ they want me out. But I can’t drive. Thanksh.”

I groaned internally. Pick him up? I didn’t know if I could do that. Oh god, what am I talking about? Of course I’m going to do it. Nice of him to leave the location though. Jeez. I check to see what time he had left the message. An hour ago. I sighed. He’s probably already walking.

I looked at the number on the rest of the missed calls. They were all from the same place. And the last one had been left about seven minutes ago. I clicked on the next message and listened.

“Hiya. It’sh me again. Erm, I forgot to tellsh you where I ams. It’s called the, uh, sir, what does thats shign say? Thank you. It’s the Lucky Sheven Bar and Grill on 4th and Division. Bye-bye.”

I grabbed my car keys and headed for the door. Figures. He gets drunk and calls me. Why didn’t he call Tré or Mike? Or Jason for that matter? Why me?

On the way to the bar I listened to the last three messages he’d left. They all said the same thing, except for the last one. It made my heart break all over again.

“I knows that you hate meh. I don’t blame you ats all. Please come an’ getsh me though, Lisa. Please?”

The truth was, I didn’t hate him at all. If I did, I wouldn’t care that he’d kissed Adrienne, but he was drunk so he probably didn’t think of that. The truth? I love him just as much as I did before he kissed Adrienne. I’ll always love him.

Fifteen minutes later I pulled into a free space in front of Lucky Seven. God, what a dive. I pulled open the door and was met by loud, drunken voices and foul cigarette smoke wafting up my nose. Lovely.

Finally, I pushed my way though the crowd and up to the bar counter. “Have you seen a drunk, black haired male?” I asked the bartender. “He’s about 5’8” or 9”, answers to the name of Billie?” The bartender didn’t speak, just pointed to a guy lying on the floor over by an empty table. “Thanks,” I muttered.

Yep. That’s him, I thought. He was curled in on himself, completely asleep from looks of it. Waking him up was going to be a bitch. “Billie?” I kneeled down and poked him in the shoulder. “Billie?” I sighed. “BILLIE!” I yelled, shoving his shoulder roughly. “WAKE UP!”

His eyes flew open and looked around frantically for a moment, before finally settling on mine. “Lisha?” he slurred, trying to focus his bleary eyes on me.

I smiled. “Yeah, it’s me, Lisha. Come on, lets get you up.” I wrapped my arms around his torso and pulled him up slowly. He leaned all of his weight on me as we walked toward the exit.

“Hey!”

I turned, almost losing the grip I had on Billie’s waste. “What?” I said to the bartender.

“He hasn’t paid yet.” He glared at Billie Joe.

“Jesus Christ,” I hissed under my breath. I grabbed a ten from my purse and slapped it down on the counter. “Will that cover it?”

“Oughta do it.” He smiled at me. “Poor guy. Broken up real bad about something’. All he was doing was shot after shot of tequila and mumbling about some chick named Lisa or some shit.”

Pain stabbed at my heart. I glanced at the dead weight that was Billie. “Yeah. Poor guy,” I whispered. “All right, come on Billie Joe, lets go. Can you walk at all?”

He grunted and tightened the arm that was around my shoulders.

We got through the door and I leaned him up against my car so I could unlock the passenger side door.

“Lisa. Lisha,” he slurred.

“Hang on.” I grabbed him around the waste again and pushed him into the car. “There you go. No, keep your head in the car Billie. That’s it.” I slammed the door, then winced as Billie covered his ears. If that hurt him now, he was going to have one hell of a hangover tomorrow.

I backed out of the parking lot ten minutes later. It had taken me forever to fasten his seatbelt. He’d kept clawing at it, saying it was itching his neck. And I said that if he didn’t want to shoot through the windshield if we got in a crash, then he just leave it alone. He did.

He was asleep again by the time I pulled up to his house. I hauled him out of the car and up to the door, propping him against the door while I searched his pockets for his keys. “Billie, where are your keys?”

“Huh?”

“Where are your keys? You know, to your house?”

“Oh, um…shirt. Shirt pocket,” he replied after a moment of hesitation.

I fished them out and unlocked the door. His hand must have been on the door knob--probably keeping himself steady--because when I unlocked the door, it opened and he tumbled backwards, taking me with him. We crashed on the hard floor, my body landing on his.

The breath whooshed out of Billie. “Ow,” he groaned. His eyes fixed on me as I tried to climb off of him, and his arms formed a tight circle around my waist. “Thanksh. For, bringing me home, ya know.”

“It’s no problem, but we should probably get you off the floor and into bed, you look like you’re going to pass out any minute.”

“’K.”

I lifted him up and managed to get him upstairs. I gently let his body fall back onto the bed, then I pulled off his shoes. Nobody wants to sleep with shoes on. I paused at the door, looking back at him. He looked about five years older than the last time I’d seen him. My eyes roamed the bedroom, taking in all the detail they could. It looked exactly the same. Except for the extra clothing that had been skewed around the room not just two weeks ago. But now all of that clothing was in my dresser. At my apartment. A tear escaped my right eye, silently sliding down my cheek. Wiping it away, I turned around and began to leave.

“Lisa,” Billie whispered so faintly I could hardly hear him at all. “Lisa,” he whispered once more.

I crept back over to the bed. “Yes?” I whispered, just as quietly.

“I’m sorry.” A strange noise, like a whimper, came from him. Then he sniffed and I could see his hand move in the darkness, rubbing across his face. “I’m sorry.”

I kneeled by the bed and grabbed his hand, more tears spilling from my eyes. “I know,” I whispered back. “I know you are, Billie.” I brushed a kiss onto his cheek and left as quickly as I could. I couldn’t take hearing his remorseful voice any longer. Sure, dragging his drunk ass home, that I could do. But apologies? Nope.

I got back home at 4:30 A.M. and flopped onto the couch. I knew there was no way I was going to get back to sleep now. Especially with Billie’s voice repeating in my mind, “I’m sorry.”

***

Emilie finally awoke at 8:30 A.M. She came out of her room and stopped at the sight of me. “What the hell?”

“Hi,” I greeted her, drinking the rest of my orange juice. I finished it off and walked into the kitchen.

“Why are you dressed already? Hell, forget that. Why are you even awake? You’re never up before noon most of the time.”

“I know, but I couldn’t sleep and I had things to do, so I got up.” I rinsed my mug and set it in the dish drainer, then walked past her again and went back into the living room.

“Okay,” she started, eyeing me suspiciously. “What the hell is up with you? You’re being weird.”

“I’m always weird, remember?”

She shook her head. “No, I mean weirder than usual. A different weird.”

I just shrugged. I really didn’t want to talk about my three in the morning run-in with a drunken Billie Joe. But somehow I knew she was going to end up prying it out of me. She was just that kind of person. She may not do it right away either. I told her once that I didn’t want to talk about what I had been doing with my new boyfriend back in my senior year of high school, so she said that she would leave it alone. Then she brought it up a month later, taking me completely by surprise, and I ended up telling her everything.

“Come on,” she persuaded. “Tell me.”

“Nothing is going on with me. I just couldn’t sleep last night.”

“Obviously. Don’t think I didn’t hear you creeping around the house last night, then getting in your car and driving away.” She grinned at me. “Now, where did you go? That’s the sixty-four-thousand dollar question.”

I rolled my eyes at her. “Nothing ever gets past you, does it?”

“Nope. Not even when I’m drunk.” She grinned again. “So…?” she prompted.

“All right. I couldn’t sleep last night, so I got up and went into the kitchen. Well my cell was lying on the counter and the light was on, so I checked it. There was a message from Billie Joe. He was drunk and needed a ride home. So I picked him up and dropped him off at his house.”

“Oh, honey.” The look on her face resembled pity, but not quite.

“It was fine. Although he’s really heavy when he’s drunk.”

She smiled at my aversion. “Yeah, drunk people seem to gain at least fifty pounds.”

“That they do.” I grabbed my sweater off the couch and headed for the door. “I’m gonna go out for awhile. Get something to eat, since we never have anything here. See you later.”

I closed the door behind me and leaned against it for a few seconds. I’m glad she hadn’t pressed me about last night too much. If she had, I know that I wouldn’t have been able to lie to her. I would have told her how I’d felt confused and angry and sad last night after Billie had said he was sorry. How I’d had the overwhelming urge to crawl in bed beside him and curl myself into his warm body. The urge to kiss him over and over and tell him that everything was okay now, that we were okay now.

She probably would have looked at me with pity clearly written in her eyes. And I wouldn’t want that. It just makes me angrier when people feel pity for me.

I pushed off from the door and pushed the button on the elevator. It finally dinged and the doors opened. No one else was inside, which was a relief for me. No need to feign a smile or act friendly. The elevator lurched to a stop on the ground floor and the doors opened.

“Billie!” I gasped. “What, what are you doing here?” My eyes flicked nervously around the lobby, then landed on his face again..

“I just wanted to tell you thanks for last night. And tell you that I’m also sorry for last night, I shouldn’t have called you like that.”

My heart squeezed with pain. “It’s fine.”

The corner of his lips lifted a bit at the corners. “Always understanding. Even when you shouldn’t be.” He muttered the last part.

“I was just leaving actually, so…” I clamped my mouth shut. I sounded like a bitch. Like I was trying to make him go away. “But thank you. For, uh, coming by, I mean.”

“Yeah, well after last night, I owe you.”

I shook my head in disagreement. “You owe me nothing.”

“Yes, I do.” He sighed and ran his hands through his thick hair. “I should go, I’m taking up your time.”

I wanted to wrap my arms around him so badly that my arms actually ached. I clasped them behind my back so I wouldn’t do something moronic like fling myself into his arms.

“I’ll see you la…I mean, bye.” He lips lifted in what was probably supposed to be a smile, but it looked more like a grimace. Then he turned around and strode through the lobby doors, disappearing from my sight quickly.

“Bye,” I whispered dumbly after he was gone.

I waited for another ten minutes before leaving the lobby, then I walked out into the warm sun and headed for the Subway across the street.

***

Okay, so many thanks to all of you who read my story and comment. =] It means so much to me.
And I just wanted to let everyone know that I'll probably be able to update more often now since my school gets out for the summer in about 7 days. :D
<333 Lisa