"IF YOU WANT me to be honest, I think you're fucking crazy."
She might have been insulting him -- hell, even if she was, he appreciated the metaphorical nod of her acknowledgement -- but what really made Charlie smile from ear to ear was the sound of Billie's laugh through his phone speaker, as genuine and melodic as the music he could pluck forth from the strings of his acoustic.
It was bliss to even listen to her speak.
"How am I crazy?" he laughed, waiting to hear her clever response. She always had one up her sleeve.
"Well, you took a guy's band and made it your own, and you're going on the tour he was supposed to be on," Billie pointed out, still tripping over her words with laughter.
"Not to sound egotistical, but it was pretty much my band all along."
"Oh is that so?" she challenged. "You sound pretty egotistical right now to me."
"Yeah, that was egotistical, not going to lie."
They laughed again, and Charlie realized that the tops of his cheeks were aching from the amount of smiling he'd been doing with Billie over the phone. He was standing outside of his manager Ellen's Seattle office, hidden beneath an outstretch of covering that kept him dry from the last sprinkling bits of a storm that had rolled through.
Charlie loved anything having to do with band talk, and formulating ideas for Residual Riot, a band he could truly call his own kept him fully driven with energy. But that didn't mean that in the three hours that he'd already been talking with Ellen, Emerson and Grant, Billie had not crossed his mind.
He missed her. She was back in Los Angeles with filming obligations on her hands, and Charlie found himself wishing that he too was in the City of Angels. And Charlie hated Los Angeles, which only spoke volumes of how much in turn he cared for Billie.
"You can be egotistical around me. Bigheaded Charlie isn't so bad," Billie said. He could almost hear the smile in her voice, curving upwards on her beautiful face. He felt a pinch of longing in his chest to be in front of her, seeing that same smile in person.
"You know, you've sort of contributed to my bigheaded-ness."
"So now you're blaming me?" Billie cried, another bout of her laughter ensuing.
"Well, yeah, kinda'. Maybe I wouldn't be so egotistical if I wasn't aware of the fact that I have you."
Billie's laughter faded and she grew quiet, but Charlie didn't worry; it may have only been months since they'd gotten together, but he knew her periods of quietness were not usually held in anger. When Billie was quiet, it was because something really great was occupying her mind.
"I like it when you say that," she confessed, lowering her voice to almost a shy mumble.
Billie being shy? Charlie never thought he'd live to see the day.
"Then I promise I'll tell it to you every single time we talk," he replied, matching his voice to hers. There was nothing that Charlie wasn't willing to promise Billie.
All of his life, he'd balked over promising a girl anything -- not because he didn't want to, but because he felt like he would never measure up to those promises of grandeur. But with Billie, he didn't mind pledging himself to her in every way possible. If he had to promise her the moon, then of course he would lasso it down from the sky if he had to. He'd always find a way for her.
Charlie wasn't scared to be in love with her already.
He'd questioned his feelings at first, wondering maybe if his exuberance over Residual Riot and getting Liam out of his life once and for all was simply making him overly excited.
