Time Spent, chapter 9
I awoke to the sound of my 'American Idiot' ring tone coming from somewhere down towards the end of the bed. I crawled under the covers and fished it out.
"Hello?"
"Do you know this pillow still smells like you?"
I laughed.
"Billie Joe, you're pathetic!"
"I miss you though!"
I rolled over on my back and stretched.
"Come see me then."
"You really want me to?"
"Sure. But it's only nine thirty... what are you doing up?"
"I told you, I missed you."
"Oh, right. Ok come over then, but I'm going back to sleep. My parents are awake, they'll let you in. I told them last night."
"Ok, see ya in a few."
"Bye."
I flipped the phone closed. Wouldn't Amy be surprised when she came in to bug me about her date last night and find Billie Joe lying beside me? Ha, I couldn't wait.
***
I guess I had drifted back to sleep by the time Billie Joe got there. He had attempted to sneak into the room however he didn't know about the squeaky floorboard. He stepped right on it.
"Shh!" he whispered to the floor.
I laughed.
"Sorry, I was trying to be quiet."
"That's ok. What time is it?"
"Almost ten."
"Ugh, I'm going back to sleep."
"Oh good, I'll join you."
He walked over to my bed and crawled over me. He pulled me close against him so that my back was pressed up against his front. He buried his head into my hair and sighed.
I smiled to myself and glanced up at the poster of him over the closet. He hadn't noticed it yet. I couldn't help but wonder what he would say when he did as I slowly drifted back to sleep.
***
The door to my room slammed open causing Billie Joe to jump.
"God it's almost noon! Get up already; I have so much to tell you!"
Amy barged into the room and went over to the window, dodging piles of clothes and god knows what else, and pulled up the blinds, flooding the room in light.
Billie Joe groaned and buried his head deeper into my hair.
"They let you have a GUY in your ROOM! This so totally unfair! I can't even have boys come within ten feet of the stairs! I hate this!"
"Amy shut up!" I yelled, throwing a pillow at her.
"But this is bullshit and you know it! We should be treated equally! MOM! DAD!"
She marched out of the room in search of our parents.
"Who was that? Your sister?"
"Yeah, she's real good at first impressions."
He laughed.
I could hear her chewing out my parents downstairs and I listened amusedly. When she finally stopped yelling to take a breath, I could hear my mother say something. There was silence followed by stomping on the stairs.
Amy burst into the room again shoved a stack of papers of a chair to sit. She sat there fuming and giving me murderous looks.
"What'd they say?" I asked.
"I'm not old enough."
"Well, you made a really good first impression."
She glanced at Billie Joe lying beside me. She still didn't realize who he was.
"Are you gonna introduce us then?"
"Yeah, ok," I said, nudging Billie Joe.
"What?!" he asked annoyed.
"Get, up and meet my sister!"
"Ok, ok."
He sat up and rubbed his eyes, seriously smudging his eyeliner. He then held his hand out towards Amy and shook hers.
"Billie Joe."
"Amy," she replied back.
Billie Joe was now becoming a little more awake and looked around the room.
"Damn, what a mess. How did I not kill myself trying to get in here in the dark?"
Amy and I giggled.
He then glanced up at the poster above the closet and looked at me with his eyebrows raised.
"You have a poster of me? Come on, you don't need that when you have the real thing!" he teased.
Amy got a confused look on her face and slowly turned her head to look at it. Then she slowly turned her head back to look at Billie Joe. Realization finally showed on her face. She gasped and blushed.
"You're... you're... THE Billie Joe?!"
"Uh... last time I checked," he answered with an amused look on his face.
"THIS in your mystery man?! And you wouldn't even tell me?! Bitch!"
I laughed and asked, "So how was your date last night?"
***
After Amy finally stopped giving me the cold shoulder for not telling her she told me all about her new boyfriend.
We had gone downstairs and were watching TV when Amy's cell phone rang.
She squealed in delight and ran out of the room. Billie Joe looked at each other and laughed.
She came back in a few minutes later still talking loudly on her cell phone.
"Ok, hold on I'll ask them," she spoke into the phone.
She put her hand over it and turned to me.
"You wanna go to the carnival? It's supposed to be really fun; it has like games, rides, animal shows, cars, stuff like that. It could be like a double date and you can meet Jordan! Oh please come Chris!" she begged.
I turned to Billie Joe who shrugged his shoulders.
"Up to you," he told me.
"Alright, if you really want me to go."
"Yay! Hey Jordan? Ok they're coming... "
She walked back out of the room.
"I'm gonna take a shower and get ready. Help yourself to anything in the kitchen," I told him, motioning in that direction.
***
We decided to take my car because Billie Joe didn't want his to get dirty. I drove a 1992 Mazda Miata; it was a convertible with a ragtop and sat only two people but it was old and I didn't mind a little dust touching it.
We followed Jordan's jacked up F-150 out to the carnival. I had no idea why they wanted to go so bad but it didn't really matter. Billie Joe was there to keep me sane.
The carnival spanned ten acres and would take days to walk the whole thing. We weaved in through the many booths following Amy and Jordan. They finally stopped in front of a shooting range.
"Oh, play this one. You go hunting with your dad so you should be good at this one!" Amy told him.
Jordan forked out some money and took aim. He hit seven out of the ten moving targets which I thought was pretty good. Jordan looked pleased with himself.
Billie Joe rolled his eyes, which Jordan happened to see.
"You think you could do better?" Jordan asked him, paying for another round.
"No idea," he told him, walking up to the booth and shelling out a couple of bucks.
I rolled my eyes. Why was everything a competition to guys?
Billie Joe and Jordan prepared to fire and I went over to stand next to Amy.
"Who do you think will win?" she asked me quietly.
"No idea. I don't know if Billie Joe has ever even touched a gun before."
They began firing and ended up both hitting the same number of targets. Jordan looked slightly pissed off about it and Billie Joe looked pleased with himself.
We walked through some more booths together before deciding to branch off and go separate ways. After agreeing to meet them at four, Billie Joe and I went off in the opposite direction they were going.
We walked along hand in hand laughing at all the pathetic things people both bought and sold at the booths.
Soon, the booths started to thin out and we found ourselves at the car section. People hauled their old, new, pimped and suped up cars to sell or just show off. We walked along the rows admiring all the different ones.
We came upon one that caught my eye. I walked over to it and nearly drooled on the chipped finish. Billie Joe came up behind me and put his arms around me.
It was an old Corvette. The bright orange paint was chipped, the seats were peeling apart, the dashboard was cracked and it appeared to have several missing parts from the engine.
"She's a nice car, isn't she?" said a man looking to be in his mid fifties in a thick Texas twang.
"It's gorgeous," I replied.
"Not in very good shape though," Billie Joe threw in.
"She needs some work. That's why I'm sellin'r. Don't got the time or the money to spend."
"What year is it?"
"It's a seventy-two. Man I bought it from didn't take very good care of it. I figured I'd fix 'er up real nice, but it turns out it was worse off than I thought t'was.
"How much you selling it for?" Billie Joe asked.
"I'd let it go for a couple thousand seein as how it's in such bad shape."
My heart sank. I couldn't afford to spend that much on a car at the moment, I was already saving up for an apartment so I could move out of my parent's house.
"Well, thanks anyways," I told him sadly.
We walked away; Billie Joe was practically pulling me away from it. He walked me over to a food booth and bought two lemonades. We sat down at a picnic table and he reached for my hand across the table.
"You really wanted that car, huh?"
"It's my dream car, minus a paintjob. A Corvette Stingray- a six speed with a black paintjob and black interior... "
He smiled at me reassuringly.
"You'll have one someday I bet."
"Maybe."
He got up mumbling 'bathroom' and walked off, leaving me sitting there absorbed in day dreams of that Corvette. I snapped back into reality as Amy and Jordan sat down across from me.
"Where's Billie Joe?" she asked.
"Bathroom," I answered.
"Having fun? We are. He won this for me!" she told me waving an enormous, tacky stuffed bear with a heart on its stomach.
"Incredible." I answered.
"I totally think we should come again tomorrow!"
Jordan shook his head violently and I laughed.
"Yeah, maybe not."
She looked at Jordan to see what I was laughing at. He looked innocently down at her and smiled. She laughed kissed him.
"Get a room you two! Damn!"
"What's wrong with you?" she asked me.
"She found her dream car but can't have it," Billie Joe said, appearing out of thin air and sitting beside me.
"Let me guess, a Corvette right?" she said mockingly.
"Yeah... " I said sadly.
She rolled her eyes before turning to Jordan and asking him to buy her a drink.
***
It was now nearing the end August and Amy was back in school. I could hardly believe how fast that summer had gone by. Well, I had been working on the album ceaselessly all summer, but still.
I was over at Pete's house; we were in his room looking at apartments on the internet. We had decided it would be easier just to share so that we could split the rent. We were poor until the album came out and we figured we would wait to actually rent one until then. It was still two whole months away but it was still fun to look.
We soon became bored with that and tried to decide on something to do. Billie Joe and the guys were out of town doing an interview, Travis was out with his girlfriend, and Brandon sick and couldn't do anything but sleep.
We decided to go play pool for a while. We walked into the building; it was mid afternoon so there were plenty of tables open. We picked one in a back corner and played a couple of games of nine ball.
After a while, the place started to fill up. A large group of guys settled at the table next to ours. They made me uncomfortable because they kept staring over at me.
They got louder and more boisterous with each new round of beers they ordered. A couple of times, one of their pool balls would go shooting off the side of their table and roll over to us. They got mad at us for it instead of blaming themselves.
One guy in particular kept looking over at us. It was really starting to really creep me out. Eventually, he came over to us.
"Have we ever met before?" he asked us.
"I don't believe so," Pete said, confused by the suddenness in which the man had come over.
"Are you sure? I know I've seen you before... you come here often?"
"No, barely ever," I answered.
He thought for a moment, stroking his chin and leaving blue smudges on his face from the end of the pool cue.
"I got it! I saw you on the Internet! Um... something about time... anyways, you're the band Reprise Records signed, right?"
I looked amazed at Pete. I didn't think anybody knew about us yet.
"Time Spent," Pete told him.
"Time Spent! That's right! I knew I had seen you before!" he yelled, looking pleased with himself.
"Yo Jimmy, what the hell ya yelling about over here?" a large man came over asking.
"These two are famous!" 'Jimmy' told his friend.
"Who are they?" he asked.
"Time Spent," Jimmy answered.
"Well I've never heard of them," he said, giving us both doubtful looks.
"Our first album isn't even out yet. It comes out in October," I told him.
"Then they aren't famous yet dummy. Now get back over here, it's your turn."
They walked back over to their table leaving Pete and me alone. I turned to look at him, a smile on my face. We had just been publicly recognized for the first time ever.
"Hello?"
"Do you know this pillow still smells like you?"
I laughed.
"Billie Joe, you're pathetic!"
"I miss you though!"
I rolled over on my back and stretched.
"Come see me then."
"You really want me to?"
"Sure. But it's only nine thirty... what are you doing up?"
"I told you, I missed you."
"Oh, right. Ok come over then, but I'm going back to sleep. My parents are awake, they'll let you in. I told them last night."
"Ok, see ya in a few."
"Bye."
I flipped the phone closed. Wouldn't Amy be surprised when she came in to bug me about her date last night and find Billie Joe lying beside me? Ha, I couldn't wait.
***
I guess I had drifted back to sleep by the time Billie Joe got there. He had attempted to sneak into the room however he didn't know about the squeaky floorboard. He stepped right on it.
"Shh!" he whispered to the floor.
I laughed.
"Sorry, I was trying to be quiet."
"That's ok. What time is it?"
"Almost ten."
"Ugh, I'm going back to sleep."
"Oh good, I'll join you."
He walked over to my bed and crawled over me. He pulled me close against him so that my back was pressed up against his front. He buried his head into my hair and sighed.
I smiled to myself and glanced up at the poster of him over the closet. He hadn't noticed it yet. I couldn't help but wonder what he would say when he did as I slowly drifted back to sleep.
***
The door to my room slammed open causing Billie Joe to jump.
"God it's almost noon! Get up already; I have so much to tell you!"
Amy barged into the room and went over to the window, dodging piles of clothes and god knows what else, and pulled up the blinds, flooding the room in light.
Billie Joe groaned and buried his head deeper into my hair.
"They let you have a GUY in your ROOM! This so totally unfair! I can't even have boys come within ten feet of the stairs! I hate this!"
"Amy shut up!" I yelled, throwing a pillow at her.
"But this is bullshit and you know it! We should be treated equally! MOM! DAD!"
She marched out of the room in search of our parents.
"Who was that? Your sister?"
"Yeah, she's real good at first impressions."
He laughed.
I could hear her chewing out my parents downstairs and I listened amusedly. When she finally stopped yelling to take a breath, I could hear my mother say something. There was silence followed by stomping on the stairs.
Amy burst into the room again shoved a stack of papers of a chair to sit. She sat there fuming and giving me murderous looks.
"What'd they say?" I asked.
"I'm not old enough."
"Well, you made a really good first impression."
She glanced at Billie Joe lying beside me. She still didn't realize who he was.
"Are you gonna introduce us then?"
"Yeah, ok," I said, nudging Billie Joe.
"What?!" he asked annoyed.
"Get, up and meet my sister!"
"Ok, ok."
He sat up and rubbed his eyes, seriously smudging his eyeliner. He then held his hand out towards Amy and shook hers.
"Billie Joe."
"Amy," she replied back.
Billie Joe was now becoming a little more awake and looked around the room.
"Damn, what a mess. How did I not kill myself trying to get in here in the dark?"
Amy and I giggled.
He then glanced up at the poster above the closet and looked at me with his eyebrows raised.
"You have a poster of me? Come on, you don't need that when you have the real thing!" he teased.
Amy got a confused look on her face and slowly turned her head to look at it. Then she slowly turned her head back to look at Billie Joe. Realization finally showed on her face. She gasped and blushed.
"You're... you're... THE Billie Joe?!"
"Uh... last time I checked," he answered with an amused look on his face.
"THIS in your mystery man?! And you wouldn't even tell me?! Bitch!"
I laughed and asked, "So how was your date last night?"
***
After Amy finally stopped giving me the cold shoulder for not telling her she told me all about her new boyfriend.
We had gone downstairs and were watching TV when Amy's cell phone rang.
She squealed in delight and ran out of the room. Billie Joe looked at each other and laughed.
She came back in a few minutes later still talking loudly on her cell phone.
"Ok, hold on I'll ask them," she spoke into the phone.
She put her hand over it and turned to me.
"You wanna go to the carnival? It's supposed to be really fun; it has like games, rides, animal shows, cars, stuff like that. It could be like a double date and you can meet Jordan! Oh please come Chris!" she begged.
I turned to Billie Joe who shrugged his shoulders.
"Up to you," he told me.
"Alright, if you really want me to go."
"Yay! Hey Jordan? Ok they're coming... "
She walked back out of the room.
"I'm gonna take a shower and get ready. Help yourself to anything in the kitchen," I told him, motioning in that direction.
***
We decided to take my car because Billie Joe didn't want his to get dirty. I drove a 1992 Mazda Miata; it was a convertible with a ragtop and sat only two people but it was old and I didn't mind a little dust touching it.
We followed Jordan's jacked up F-150 out to the carnival. I had no idea why they wanted to go so bad but it didn't really matter. Billie Joe was there to keep me sane.
The carnival spanned ten acres and would take days to walk the whole thing. We weaved in through the many booths following Amy and Jordan. They finally stopped in front of a shooting range.
"Oh, play this one. You go hunting with your dad so you should be good at this one!" Amy told him.
Jordan forked out some money and took aim. He hit seven out of the ten moving targets which I thought was pretty good. Jordan looked pleased with himself.
Billie Joe rolled his eyes, which Jordan happened to see.
"You think you could do better?" Jordan asked him, paying for another round.
"No idea," he told him, walking up to the booth and shelling out a couple of bucks.
I rolled my eyes. Why was everything a competition to guys?
Billie Joe and Jordan prepared to fire and I went over to stand next to Amy.
"Who do you think will win?" she asked me quietly.
"No idea. I don't know if Billie Joe has ever even touched a gun before."
They began firing and ended up both hitting the same number of targets. Jordan looked slightly pissed off about it and Billie Joe looked pleased with himself.
We walked through some more booths together before deciding to branch off and go separate ways. After agreeing to meet them at four, Billie Joe and I went off in the opposite direction they were going.
We walked along hand in hand laughing at all the pathetic things people both bought and sold at the booths.
Soon, the booths started to thin out and we found ourselves at the car section. People hauled their old, new, pimped and suped up cars to sell or just show off. We walked along the rows admiring all the different ones.
We came upon one that caught my eye. I walked over to it and nearly drooled on the chipped finish. Billie Joe came up behind me and put his arms around me.
It was an old Corvette. The bright orange paint was chipped, the seats were peeling apart, the dashboard was cracked and it appeared to have several missing parts from the engine.
"She's a nice car, isn't she?" said a man looking to be in his mid fifties in a thick Texas twang.
"It's gorgeous," I replied.
"Not in very good shape though," Billie Joe threw in.
"She needs some work. That's why I'm sellin'r. Don't got the time or the money to spend."
"What year is it?"
"It's a seventy-two. Man I bought it from didn't take very good care of it. I figured I'd fix 'er up real nice, but it turns out it was worse off than I thought t'was.
"How much you selling it for?" Billie Joe asked.
"I'd let it go for a couple thousand seein as how it's in such bad shape."
My heart sank. I couldn't afford to spend that much on a car at the moment, I was already saving up for an apartment so I could move out of my parent's house.
"Well, thanks anyways," I told him sadly.
We walked away; Billie Joe was practically pulling me away from it. He walked me over to a food booth and bought two lemonades. We sat down at a picnic table and he reached for my hand across the table.
"You really wanted that car, huh?"
"It's my dream car, minus a paintjob. A Corvette Stingray- a six speed with a black paintjob and black interior... "
He smiled at me reassuringly.
"You'll have one someday I bet."
"Maybe."
He got up mumbling 'bathroom' and walked off, leaving me sitting there absorbed in day dreams of that Corvette. I snapped back into reality as Amy and Jordan sat down across from me.
"Where's Billie Joe?" she asked.
"Bathroom," I answered.
"Having fun? We are. He won this for me!" she told me waving an enormous, tacky stuffed bear with a heart on its stomach.
"Incredible." I answered.
"I totally think we should come again tomorrow!"
Jordan shook his head violently and I laughed.
"Yeah, maybe not."
She looked at Jordan to see what I was laughing at. He looked innocently down at her and smiled. She laughed kissed him.
"Get a room you two! Damn!"
"What's wrong with you?" she asked me.
"She found her dream car but can't have it," Billie Joe said, appearing out of thin air and sitting beside me.
"Let me guess, a Corvette right?" she said mockingly.
"Yeah... " I said sadly.
She rolled her eyes before turning to Jordan and asking him to buy her a drink.
***
It was now nearing the end August and Amy was back in school. I could hardly believe how fast that summer had gone by. Well, I had been working on the album ceaselessly all summer, but still.
I was over at Pete's house; we were in his room looking at apartments on the internet. We had decided it would be easier just to share so that we could split the rent. We were poor until the album came out and we figured we would wait to actually rent one until then. It was still two whole months away but it was still fun to look.
We soon became bored with that and tried to decide on something to do. Billie Joe and the guys were out of town doing an interview, Travis was out with his girlfriend, and Brandon sick and couldn't do anything but sleep.
We decided to go play pool for a while. We walked into the building; it was mid afternoon so there were plenty of tables open. We picked one in a back corner and played a couple of games of nine ball.
After a while, the place started to fill up. A large group of guys settled at the table next to ours. They made me uncomfortable because they kept staring over at me.
They got louder and more boisterous with each new round of beers they ordered. A couple of times, one of their pool balls would go shooting off the side of their table and roll over to us. They got mad at us for it instead of blaming themselves.
One guy in particular kept looking over at us. It was really starting to really creep me out. Eventually, he came over to us.
"Have we ever met before?" he asked us.
"I don't believe so," Pete said, confused by the suddenness in which the man had come over.
"Are you sure? I know I've seen you before... you come here often?"
"No, barely ever," I answered.
He thought for a moment, stroking his chin and leaving blue smudges on his face from the end of the pool cue.
"I got it! I saw you on the Internet! Um... something about time... anyways, you're the band Reprise Records signed, right?"
I looked amazed at Pete. I didn't think anybody knew about us yet.
"Time Spent," Pete told him.
"Time Spent! That's right! I knew I had seen you before!" he yelled, looking pleased with himself.
"Yo Jimmy, what the hell ya yelling about over here?" a large man came over asking.
"These two are famous!" 'Jimmy' told his friend.
"Who are they?" he asked.
"Time Spent," Jimmy answered.
"Well I've never heard of them," he said, giving us both doubtful looks.
"Our first album isn't even out yet. It comes out in October," I told him.
"Then they aren't famous yet dummy. Now get back over here, it's your turn."
They walked back over to their table leaving Pete and me alone. I turned to look at him, a smile on my face. We had just been publicly recognized for the first time ever.
