Boulevard of Broken Dreams

You Gave Me the Answer

I started hyperventilating at the realization that this was 99% probably the actual Billie Joe Armstrong.

"Hey...sweetie calm down, come with me," he leads me down the hallway and taps his key on the door to unlock his room.

He had an actual room. This was his hotel room. He had to be real...right?

"I see you're flustered, but try and calm down." We walk over to the bed and take a seat.

"This isn't happening. My mind is fucking with me again."

"No no no," Billie denies, taking a strand of my hair and placing it behind my ears. "It's actually me this time. I know that can be hard to believe, fucking trust me on that one, but it really is. Don't get all nervous; treat me the way you always have."

I avoided eye contact with him. Instantly I felt star struck. Is it possible? To really be with him right now? No way.

"Stop trying to convince me that you're actually here right now," I plead. "I know I'm in the rehab center and they probably put me on some drug or something...I know there's no way that you're here right now. So please, stop trying to get me to believe that this is you.You're not real. It's not funny anymore."

Billie slowly reaches his hand out to touch mine, but by instinct I reject. He sighs and gets off the bed to pace around his room a bit. I look up to see him make his way to the window and spot out the skyline of Boston.

"I didn't think it was going to be this fucked," he mumbles to himself.

"What do you mean?" I finally get the courage to respond.

His hesitation lasted a minute before he finally turned to face me.

"I had dreams of you too, yah know. You would tell me about how confusing things were for you. How you had a hard time putting things together. All you were sure of was how mixed up shit was, but you had no idea why. I promised that I would help you. I promised I would be there. I told you that the moment you saw me in person, both of us would know everything would be okay."

My eyebrows scrunched up with each word he spoke.

"I never thought the moment would finally come where we would see each other,- and I doubted more so that it would fuck us up more than before."

"I don't want to doubt you Billie," I stumbled upon my words. "But it's all I know how to do. How can I trust something that comes and goes as it pleases? Something that everyone else uses as a conviction for my craziness? It's hard, Billie. It's fucking hard."

"I know it is. I'm in the same boat as you, remember? What matters now is that we're together. I wish that would be enough."

We gazed into each other's eyes and it brought me some inner peace and comfort. He was wearing the same exact thing he had in my dream the night before. What a beautiful man.

"Is it really you, Billie? How do I know for sure?"

He smiles and struts back to the bed.

"It's really me, Layla. I know that can be hard to believe, but I'll tell you everything I know. Maybe that will help you out a bit."

"Please do, Mr. Armstrong," I smirk. "Start from the beginning."

Billie smiled softly and cleared his throat. His hands ran over the sheets to smooth out and he made himself comfortable.

"I can't remember too much from before the dreams. Life was mediocre at best. The guys and I were working on our next album, but things seemed to be moving pretty slowly. We all had our own problems but no one was really confessing them. It was a pretty numbing period, to be quite honest."