FicWad

Needless to say, I drank way more that night than I had intended to and I slept with Jordan. Don’t look at me that way! If a girl can’t have sex on her birthday, when can she have sex? I honestly can’t say I remembered much about it except that he looks a lot like Paul in the dark. It’s one of the reasons I preferred Jordan over some random STD ridden guy from a club. The only proof that I had that Jordan and I HAD in fact “knocked boots” were my clothes strewn across the floor and a note he’d left me saying to call him if I needed to. I didn’t really need any proof that I’d drank too much because I had a splitting hangover headache, but even without that I’m sure the scattered beer bottles on my floor would’ve been enough of a hint.

I stumbled into the shower and once I had composed myself and picked up my room a bit I ventured into out of my room and into the kitchen for some coffee. I can’t say I was surprised that the loft was trashed and honestly it wasn’t as bad as some of the parties we had thrown. Granted, there was trash blanketing the floors, an unrecognizable man passed out in the boy’s bath tub, and what suspiciously looked like a pool of vomit on the balcony. I was standing in the middle of the destruction that used to be my kitchen, struggling to open an industrial sized bottle of Tylenol when the front door swung open to reveal my band mates, our newly acquired agent (it still felt a little weird to refer to someone that way), and Quinn.

“We come bearing McMuffins!” Payton bellowed as Waldo cleared a space on the counter for the bundle of red and yellow bags that Adam was carrying.

I wanted to burst into tears, not only because the boy’s screaming was making my head pound, but because I was really and truly grateful that someone had finally turned up to help me open that damned bottle of Tylenol. I managed to muster up a smile and held the bottle out pitifully for Russ to open.

“Looks like you’ve had a rough night, sweetheart,” he said handing me a couple of pills and his soda to wash them down with.

“I love parties,” I mumbled and started to shuffle towards the food.

“Not what I heard,” someone said causing me to wince at the unexpected loudness and look up from the mountain of ketchup packets on the counter to see Bert walking through the open door with a McDonald’s cup balanced carefully on top of his head.

I gave a derisive snort and pulled the robe I was wearing tighter around myself. As the boys began to clean the apartment, I delved silently into my ham and cheese McMuffin and my new friend, Trevor (as the guy in the bathtub turned out to be a Trevor), made coffee. I watched Bert rummage through the CDs stacked around the stereo in the living room before finally putting one in that turned out to be a mix CD I’d made Amy recently in an attempt to bring her back from her MTV’d zombie-like state. It started with The Hold Steady singing “Killer Parties”. I chuckled to myself at that and resigned myself to the fact that A) I was stuck with Bert McCracken for what was turning into an uncomfortably long time so I better learn to tolerate him(and his smell) and B) his taste in music wasn’t all that bad. I consoled myself with the fact that he was possibly the most obnoxious person I had ever met.

After about an hour the boys sat down to Russ’ cajoling so that we could talk business and by the time Russ had finished his seventh cup of coffee and Trevor had made his polite exit we had worked out that we would go on a short tour during the winter months with The Used (and subsequently, Bert) and what Quinn referred to as “Bert’s good twin’s band” My Chemical Romance. After we were firmly rooted in the public spotlight we would go into the studio and make out debut record. I was happy, Payton was excited, Adam was overjoyed, Waldo was ecstatic, Amy was still asleep, and Billy was stealthily chewing on Quinn’s left sneaker that he’d kicked off over by the couch. Not too long after the ink dried on our contract with Reprise, Russ and Quinn left to go pick up Jeph and Dan from a friend’s house. They promised to bring back Chinese later, but they left Bert with me. I suddenly decided it was about time for me and Amy to have some girl time so I dragged her out of bed and into my room and left the boy’s slack-jawed playing some video game in the living room.
***
“Touring!” Amy squealed for the third time from her sprawled position on my bed, causing me to reach over and turn my stereo up just a teensy bit louder.

“Yes, Aims,” I replied patiently, pulling on some ripped up laundry day jeans and an old Clash shirt. “’Touring!’ Now hand me my shoes and come with me shopping.”
“Marley, it’s touring,” she said slowly, like she was talking to some one a couple of fries short of a Happy Meal. I rolled my eyes and nodded as I forcibly wrenched my shoe out from under her leg and smacked her with it.

“With a famous band and everything,” I finished for her, imitating her wonder filled tone. “Now get your fat ass up and come with me. If you cooperate I’ll buy you a smoothie.”

“You sure know how to charm ‘em, Marley,” she said batting her eyelashes at me as she sat up and pulled on her sweater. “Violence and sugar.”

“Yes that,” I said plucking Billy off of my bed and walking out of my bedroom with him. “Plus no one will ever believe you’re a rock star’s girlfriend dressed like that.”

“Like what?!” she said.

I set Billy down on the couch where he turned around three times before falling back asleep. “Like June Cleaver.”

“I do not dress like June Cleaver!” She screamed at me as I darted for the door. I don’t think the guys even saw us leave.
***
BERT’S POV(Present day-similar to Marla'sPOV in Chapter1)
I was drawn to her; it’s kinda hard to explain why. She’s pretty fucking hot. That’s obvious, but it wasn’t just that. As cheesy as it sounds, there was just something about her. I hadn’t spoken more than six sentences to her and I probably sounded like an idiot for half of those, but even though she had glared and snapped at me I still felt an uncontrollable urge to make her laugh or smile. I know it’s the old cliché of wanting what you can’t have, but I still wanted her. It was made clear, almost painfully so, at her party, that Marla didn’t have anything to fear from old clichés. She looked more than comfortable sitting in that Jordan guy’s lap. I mean, if you had just seen this guy you would completely under stand. He was so goddamn tall and he had that douche haven’t shaved in a look every asshole guy is adopting now. Compared to him, who in their right mind would even look twice at a smelly little troll like me? But you don’t want to hear poor little Berty complain about some unattainable girl. “He’s famous, he could have anyone.” Then again, when have I ever cared what anyone else wanted? This is my part of the story; you wanted to hear it so you’ll listen to my bitching too.

After I had seen Marla at that show, I wanted to get a closer look at her. Just to assure myself that I hadn’t imagined her. When I finally caught up with her, she became one of only two people to ever surprise me. The first person was Quinn, when he told me I should be in his band. Based on what I’d seen, Marla’s friends sure as hell knew who we were, but even at her own party she wasn’t impressed. I found it a bit…what’s the word? Refreshing. I thought it was refreshing to not have to live up to being “front man” for The Used around her. I could just be Bert around her.