Westbound Sign ➵ Billie Joe Armstrong

Westbound Sign

Collin

The light hit my eyes in slants through the blinds, slow and golden, the kind that makes you forget for a second where you are. My head throbbed faintly, not a full hangover, just the ghost of one and the last thing I remembered from the night before was Uncle Pete bringing out his fiddle and my cousin Tommy shoveling moonshine at me like it was gatorade and I'd just run a marathon.

They'd done the same to Billie, who had barely managed to stay upright after the second round and called my cousin a "whiskey goblin" before giving up and sitting on the ground like gravity had taken offense to him.

Now, the house was quiet. That eerie, sacred kind of quiet where the chaos has all burned out and all that's left is the morning after.

I turned my head slowly, the pillow cool against my cheek, and saw Billie. Still asleep. His mouth parted slightly showing his crooked teeth, one arm draped across his stomach, the other under my pillow like he'd reached for me sometime in the middle of the night.

He looked so... still. The way he never looked in real life. Not onstage, not even in sleep usually. But here, now, in the little room where I'd cried about math and boys and learned how to french braid my own hair, danced to Madonna with Erin - he looked like he belonged.

And he did.

Because he was my husband.

The word landed like a pebble in my stomach. Not heavy. But real.

Husband.

I stared at the ceiling for a while, the old glow in the dark stars from elementary school still barely clinging to the plaster above. Only a few remained, faint and forgotten. I'd packed up most everything else - the shoebox of letters, the stack of mixed tapes, the yearbooks, the softball trophies. The boxes sat by the door, taped shut, ready to be wedged into the truck later this morning.

I was leaving this room. Leaving this house. Not in some dramatic way but in the honest, grown up kind of way. In the way you leave when you've outgrown something with love.

Billie stirred next to me. His hand reached up to rub his eyes, slow and groggy. Then he blinked and looked over.

"Hey," he said, voice thick with sleep.

"Hey," I whispered.

His lips quirked up. "Are we alive?"

"Barely."

He laughed quietly, then winced and pressed a palm to his temple. "Your family was trying to kill me. Pretty sure I saw God after that second jar."

"They're from Texas," I said. "That was their love language."

He grinned, then looked at me longer, softer. "You're my wife."

I felt my heart kick in my chest. "I am."

He reached out and ran a thumb over my cheekbone, pushing my hair behind my ear like he had a hundred times before. But this time felt different. I wasn't just the girl from the hallway, or a jail cell, or selling the band's merchandise to drunk people. Or the one who'd sat beside him on a rooftop at 2am, picking apart the pieces of our broken goodbyes we never said. Or the one he'd written songs for and never said why.

Now I was the one he'd promised forever to.

This was permanent, like our stupid impulsive tattoos.

"You okay?" he asked, his voice quiet.

I nodded, my throat thick. "Yeah. I think I am."

He pulled me close until my head was on his chest, the steady rhythm of his heart grounding me. I closed my eyes, letting it all settle, he weight of what we'd done, the lightness of what we were walking into.