A Story to Tell Your Friends

The paperwork had been pushed through with the kind of exponential pace that only money could buy and within a couple of days, my visa had come, my tickets booked and a boatload of paperwork thrown on my desk for me to sift through in a grand total of six days. As it stood, we were four days out of leaving for England and I had barely scratched the surface of all the things I needed to know. Fueled by Ramen had thrown even more stuff on me via Jack so I could help with SWMRS, while Hopeless threw everything they had on All Time Low and Waterparks at me. I was so fucking tired.
“Clara, will you just come to bed already? It’s late and I wanna cuddle,” Jack pouted at me. I glanced up from my mountain of paperwork briefly, shooting him an apologetic smile. Given the sheer amount of crap I had to deal with, I’d begun taking it home with me. I hated to do it to Jack when I stayed at his, but I didn’t have much of a choice. The notes Hopeless had given me on the bands themselves (All Time Low was labelled: ‘you don’t need this, but I’ve been told to give you it just so we can say we have’) had taken much of the first day to sift through and that was with only scanning the All Time Low file for things I didn’t already know.
“Soon, I promise. I just have a few more files to look over.” Jack sighed at my response, flinging himself back down on the sofa next to me and turning the TV back on.
“I could tell you everything you need to know. All our arrival dates, stupid backstage preferences, who not to let use the toilet in the dressing room. Everything.”
“Lovely,” I responded, disgusted at his toilet insinuation. That was one piece of information I could gladly do without. “But can you tell me your arrival times? How your equipment is being shipped and where it’s due to land? Who’s due to pick it up from there? Can you tell me what flight SWMRS are going to be on and when I need to have cars ready to pick them up? And, finally, can you decode your ass hat tour manager’s chicken scratch?” Jack laughed, muttering a ‘hold on’ before taking a picture of said ‘chicken scratch’ and typing on his phone. I was currently perusing a file about backstage set ups, which had apparently been briefly annotated by Brian, their tour manager.
“Brian says ‘it says suck my dick, butt munch.’ I mean, I’m not sure how accurate that is, but he’s insisting that’s the translation.” I laughed lightly at Jack’s words as he showed me the text.
“’Hey asshole, it looks like a two-year-old wrote this. What does it say?’ Is it any wonder he responded with that?” I laughed again, reading Jack’s original text to him. He shrugged, grinning at me as he continued to type on his phone. “Ugh, why did I agree to this?” I pouted, leaning my head against Jack’s shoulder as I picked up another file to read through.
“Because if you hadn’t I would have swanned off to England for a month, missed you like crazy and ruined everyone’s time? Plus, you clearly hate having peace and quiet in your life.”
“Yep, that about sums it up. That and, I guess, I would have missed you like crazy too. My phone bill does not stretch for international minutes.”
“For real though, he says it’s supposed to say ‘don’t let Alex touch this.’” I snorted, seeing that the note actually, in context, told me to not let Alex touch Jack, beer, anyone else’s guitar or other bands.
“This note makes me think Jalex is real.” Jack peered over my shoulder, reading the note in context himself.
“Jalex has always been real. You and Lisa are our beards,” he shrugged, trying his best to keep a straight face, but failing to suppress his smile fully. “No, but Alex does get touchy feely when he’s had a few beers and Lisa isn’t around to distract him. And, uh, I guess I get a little touchy feely and naked when I’ve had a few beers. No exceptions.” I looked at the most recent file I’d picked up, seeing that it was SWMRS itinerary and decided it would be my last bit of work for the night.
“Okay, I’m going to do SWMRS, then we can go to bed,” I told him, pushing everything else to the side to be picked up again in the morning.
“You’re going to do SWMRS?” Jack raised his eyebrows at me and I rolled my eyes. “I bet Billie Joe would be real pissed you’re going to do his son and all his son’s friends.”
“Oh, God, I’m going on tour with Billie Joe Armstrong’s son and the entire internet knows I have a crush on Billie.”
“Yep. And I have it on good information that Joey already knows. And, by good information, I mean I met the dude and said ‘hey, my girlfriend has a huge crush on your dad!’ It didn’t go over as funny as I thought.” I groaned, hitting the folder to my face and simply praying Jack was joking.
“Can I just pretend not to be your girlfriend for a month?” I asked, peering over the top of the folder as Jack chuckled at me.
“Not a chance. You think I want these other bands trying to steal my girl?”
“I can guarantee you told Joey about my crush on Billie so I didn’t have a shot at enacting my master plan.”
“Guilty,” he grinned. “I won’t have you worming your way into the Armstrong household and leaving me.”
“Ugh, well, tomorrow I actually have to go home and do laundry, so you can have a break from me messing up your place with a hundred files you don’t need,” I replied, flipping open the file to check up on SWMRS arrival and departure times and where we were due to meet them. That was my main priority honestly. We were flying from here to JFK so that the five of us could all fly together to England from there, but god only knew about SWMRS or Waterparks.
“Honestly, we all have to practice tomorrow,” Jack told me. “And given it’s the last one before tour, I don’t think it’ll have an early finish.”
“Let me guess, it’ll finish at 2am with shots in some bar.” He grinned at me innocently and I laughed, shaking my head. “Now shut up and let me finish so I can go to bed.” He groaned lightly, turning off the TV and standing up.
“Fine, but I’m going to shower and you better be in bed when I’m done.”
“Twenty minutes and I’m done, promise.” I got an unconvinced noise in response, before he picked his way through the mess I had made of his apartment and left me alone on the couch.
I wouldn’t admit this to anyone, but I was struggling to get through everything I had to do and remember it all. I had copious amounts of notes from all the files I had already made my way through and I could only remember half of them. I didn’t skate through my education, I was good at making notes and organising things, despite how messy my life was, hence how I managed to actually get my current job. The point I was making was that notes usually helped me to retain all the crap information I needed and it was just not working today.
I missed Tammy. I loved spending time with Jack, but he distracted me. Tammy, on the other hand, distracted me for five minutes with gossip, then sat me down with a coffee and told me to just get on with it. I hadn’t seen her in days, between my nights at Jack’s and her nights with Chris, I hadn’t had chance to even tell her about the UK tour. It didn’t help being busy, and maybe that was what had been distracting me, because we needed a catch up night and I needed her to tell me I was going to absolutely ace this.
I sped through the rest of the file, thankfully it covered a handful of basics and some of the information I had actually been looking for, which I duly noted down. I sighed loudly, pushing myself up off the couch and padding toward the bedroom, making no attempt to tidy up the mess I had made. I’d pick up what I needed in the morning, but, for now, I was focused solely on Jack and sleep. I had been neglecting everyone for the past few days. Jack got my attention first, then tomorrow I would focus on Tammy. My priorities were going to shift for tomorrow only, and then I would refocus on work until Jack and I left for England. I had this.
Miss you boo xo
I snuggled under the covers as I sent my text to my best friend, my current resolve in my mind. Jack made an appearance around five minutes later, pulling me into him. I turned around to face him, wrapping my arm around his waist and resting my head on his chest.
“You’re exhausted,” Jack muttered. “You need to take a break.”
“I will, I promise,” I told him. “I’m gonna take it nice and slow tomorrow night and sleep so much.”
“Ignore anything to do with us, I’ll fill you in and you know it.”
“That’s what she said,” I murmured, yawning lightly. Jack chuckled, his chest rumbling, soothing me to sleep a little faster.
“I knew there was a reason I loved you.” I smiled into him, feeling myself being pulled closer to him as he pressed a kiss to the top of my head. “Now sleep, cutie. You got this.”

Notes

I literally just finished this, so excuse any typos.
Another filler, but I finally figured out where/how I'm ending this, so that's something.
Don't expect the pace to pick up, cos I suck.