Bite My Tongue (Oli Sykes Fan Fiction)

Vice Grip

I sat in the lobby of Epitaph waiting for Phil and other executives to meet with me about something for the company and possibly getting a promotion. I sat and played with the necklace Oliver gave me for Christmas, not daring to open it and see the picture inside. It already broke my heart this morning when I realized he wasn't there. 

He left last night, so it was my first time waking up alone in a while. None of them have contacted me in any way to let me know if they got home safe or how it was being home. No one had called or texted or Skyped or emailed and it killed me, but life goes on and I wasn't going to let this get in the way of me doing something with my life. But it still hurt so fucking bad.

Finally Phil called me into the conference room and I sat down to his right and listened to everyone talk about the agenda for this meeting. We were going to be talking about recordings, tours, and new bands that were being considered as far as I could tell. I kind of spaced out while looking around the room, taking in the appearances of the people that were here. There were only two other women in the room, but it was more than I was used to. I wished more women would work in the music industry so that we weren't completely over run by men but that was another problem for another day.

One of the men across from me with short, black hair spoke to me first, "So Anne, if you're up for it we would like to put you on another tour. You did really well with Bring Me the Horizon. We would place you with a band doing audio while they finish their album and then you would manage them on their tour in the fall." He explained. 

I have no idea what his name is, which was probably a bad thing. It hurt to hear the band name after them leaving yesterday, but they were moving me up. I was going to manage again and I was going to do audio for a real album and that was probably the most exciting thing that I had ever heard. It almost made me forget about the aching in my chest whenever I thought about Ol- him.

I tried my best to not sound too excited, I wanted to keep my composure as professional as possible. "I would love to manage again. Which band would I be placed with?" I asked, and luckily I stayed pretty calm. I wanted to scream with excitement. I would be working on a real album and I would manage for a full tour.

"Parkway Drive. They're recording now so you could go down and meet them when we're done here if you would like and then start working with them tomorrow." Phil answered, smiling at me. 

He sounded so professional, and it was strange coming from him but we were in a business meeting, it wasn't like he was going to be able to be as relaxed with me as he normally was. He ran this company, he had to act professional. Especially while the label was still growing and he wanted it to get bigger.

"Sounds great. Thank you, so much."I said to all of them collectively. 

After that I sat and listened to them talk about planning other tours and recruiting new bands and recording new albums. I heard a lot of bands that I knew just from working with the company or I had listened to before, and a few that I had never heard of at all. I was fascinated with everything they were doing and still insanely happy that I was going to be going on another tour. Even though losing the guys was rough I knew that this would help me a lot.

Once the meeting was over and they all dispersed, Phil walked with me to the studio where Parkway Drive was recording. This studio was on the lowest floor of the ten story building. We decided to take the stairs for a small amount of brother/sister bonding time.

On the walk down Phil asked me how I was handling my break up with Oliver. "You know, are you, like, okay?" He sounded nervous and worried. 

I knew he was concerned about me but it was the last thing I wanted to talk about right now.