Westbound Sign ➵ Billie Joe Armstrong

Epilogue One - Homecoming

Collin

2004

Nine Years Later

...

The scissors made that soft, whispering snip that always sent a shiver down my neck.

Erin leaned forward, squinting in concentration, her brow furrowed in that same familiar way she used to look when she was applying eyeliner before a Friday night out in high school. Only now, it was nine years later, and she was cutting my hair in my kitchen - barefoot, in pajama shorts, with an almost empty bottle of wine on the table between us.

"Don't move, or you're gonna end up with a mullet," Erin warned, voice bubbling into laughter before she even finished the sentence. A lock of my hair fell onto my shoulder, and she flicked it away with the kind of precision only a woman with both wine and chaos in her bloodstream could pull off.

She cut like her life depended on it - because, well, it did.

After one miserable year in the bay wearing pantsuits and pretending to care about quarterly reports, Erin had thrown her calculator in the trash and marched straight into cosmetology school. She'd said it was either that or arson.

Now she owned her own salon, a chaotic little masterpiece of hairspray, loud music, and gossip. She'd made it, in her own stubborn way. The girl who once did my eyeliner before middle school dances had gone pro.

And honestly, she'd been the first person to ever put eyeliner on the band. Billie was mesmerized when he first looked in the mirror, saying it was the coolest he's ever looked. Mike swore it gave him "emotional depth," and Tre just liked how it made his eyes "pop."

I grinned into my wine glass. "You sure you know what you're doing?"

Erin snorted. "Please. I've tamed Mike Dirnt's cowlick. You're easy."

I laughed too, clutching the stem of my wine glass. "If you give me a mullet, I swear to God, I'll tell everyone you were sober when you did it."

"Oh please," she said, snipping another section and brushing loose strands from my shoulders. "That's the most you threat I've ever heard."

The TV hummed softly from the living room - a rerun of Sabrina the Teenage Witch flickering on the screen, casting blue light across the kitchen walls. The house was quiet otherwise, too quiet, but in that warm, sleepy way that comes when the day's been long and the world outside has finally stopped asking for anything.

Erin set the scissors down on the counter and poured the wine between our glasses. "There," she said. "You're officially a rockstar's wife again. Perfectly chaotic, in all the right ways."

I smirked, swirling the wine. "You say that like I ever stopped being one."

"Yeah, okay," she said, rolling her eyes. "Miss 'I fell asleep on the couch watching Sesame Street.'"

"That was one time."

"Twice," she corrected.

I threw a balled up paper towel at her, which she caught easily and tossed back with a grin.

It was strange, how easy it still felt with her. Even after all the years, all the change - the tours, the house, the chaos, the noise and distance and different versions of ourselves we'd both become - when it was late and the wine was open and the world got small again, we were still just Collin and Erin.

Two girls in a kitchen, laughing over nothing.

Outside, the streetlight buzzed faintly, and somewhere in the distance, a car passed - just a soft whoosh through the open window.