Tom DeLonge's Intern

Chapter 22: Homemade Cookies

After the 'special' night that I gave to Tom, we were actually doing pretty well. He seemed to be more chipper than he had been in past months, and I hoped that I was at least part of that reason. I'm sure another factor was due to blink not having met for a band meeting since the end of their Self-Titled tour, but Tom hadn't said so. Since blink was kind of a triggering subject for him, I didn't like to mention it. Unfortunately, Tom couldn't avoid blink-182 forever. After all, it was his band, so he'd have to deal with them eventually. Better sooner than later I suppose.

They had a band meeting scheduled in late 2004 for some shows that were going to be held early in 2005. To my knowledge, this was the first time they were going to be meeting since their tour ended months ago. I knew that Tom had some new material that he had written by himself at home that he wanted to show the guys, but it was a little different than what their latest album had been. He was tentative about it, but the songs had the typical Tom DeLonge passion and inspiration, so I didn't think it was anything radically off track from their usual songs.

I stayed late at the office on the night of the meeting to get some overtime as well as pass the time until Tom got out of it. We grabbed lunch that afternoon since he wasn't at Macbeth and wanted to see me to help calm his nerves. A knock at my door startled me since my face was practically against the computer screen as I was trying to finalize a design for a new line of shoes. I snapped my head up to look at Tom and waved him in, pressing 'save' on my computer screen before closing out of the program.

He trudged over to my desk and fell into one of the chairs across from me, deep sighing and removing his hat from his head.

"How'd it go?" I asked cautiously, leaning back in my chair.

Tom looked up at me as a response, his eyes sad and hopeless.

"Really? Even after not seeing them for months?"

"Yeah," he replied, grabbing a pen from the desktop and fidgeting with it.

I felt so bad for him. It was clear to me now more than ever that blink was truly draining for him. Toxic, even. He had been right about that part. I wondered why. How could something that meant so much to a person be nothing but poison to them? Tom had so much hope going into the band meeting but came out looking like he had just been run over by a semi-truck. I arose from my chair and walked over to him, grabbed the pen from him and took his hand so he'd stand up. I hugged him as tightly as I could and for a moment he just stood there limply until he finally reciprocated. Tom buried his face in the crook of my neck and kissed my collarbone a bit before sighing again.

"I don't know what to do anymore," he said, but it came out muffled into my skin.

I stroked his soft brown hair gently, "I wish I could help you."

We pulled apart slightly, Tom gripped my waist and stared at me, making me uncomfortable. Not that I didn't enjoy it; I wondered if he was picking out my flaws or something. I looked at the ground, shuffling my feet from nervousness.

"Can you stay with me tonight?" Tom asked quietly, then tightened his grip on my waist.

Looking up at him was enough for me to know that he wasn't in the best of mental states at the moment. His eyes were shifty like he was paranoid, there were bags under them and they possessed this sadness that absolutely killed me.

"I need you," he added before releasing me from his grip.

"Absolutely I will stay with you tonight," I replied, standing up on my toes to kiss his cheek. I grabbed my bag full of work materials, then clocked out and walked with Tom to my car. I let him know that I needed to get a few things from home before I went to his house, then kissed him before we drove out of the parking lot in our separate cars.