Inspired by rockstars everywhere.

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Alice had never been so in love with anyone before Damon.

She also realized that she had never been so fed up with anyone until she met him.

Despite all her instincts telling her not to, Alice got up, and hit play on the answering machine again.

“I know you're there, Al. We land in three hours. Come meet me at the diner on tenth around three.” Damon sighed softly into the phone then, pausing. “I love you. Let's talk about this.”

The night before he left was one to remember.

The screaming match had rattled the walls and shook Alice to her core, and made Damon want to pull his hair out. Neither of them enjoyed it, but it happened, and they still hadn't talked about it properly. Not even when the band's tour bus pulled up outside, and Damon left a note for Alice who was fast asleep, telling her he'd gone. He made sure to sign it with an I love you, but that didn't mean Alice would just forget about it. Damon didn't expect her to.

It was a long thirty-one days. Alice spent most of it doing the activity in question, the one that had been the catalyst of their fight, and the cause of Alice's current mood.

Writing really was her life. It was one of her pure joys.

The perfection she strived for, her poetry, had allowed her to survive high school, and got her into college, and allowed her to fill up an entire book of pages filled with her thoughts. 

She leaned back into her chair, and examined the computer screen. The glow of the white background against the black letters made her squint a bit. They seemed too bright after the amount of time she'd been staring at that screen. Hours.

She liked it more than writing on paper though. Because of the keys, her fingers were able to keep up with her thoughts a little better than having to write out everything by hand.

In the morning, Alice's latest piece had to be sent to her editor. It was done, or at least that was what she had told herself a few days previously. But it had nagged and screamed at her to be looked at again, and she couldn't resist. Not when her need for perfection got in the way of things. Kind of like how it had managed to create a chasm between her and Damon.

A large, gaping hole. One that had over a month to spread itself further. To really set in.

Alice could of sworn she felt her chest hurt just thinking about it for barely even a second.

Sometimes, her own thoughts about Damon were what made her cringe. But she couldn't help it. Definitely not now.

Not when there was so many things about Damon to miss.

Alice justified it by reminding herself that the Damon she had in her head wasn't a carbon copy of the one she could touch and hear. The one she had cried over.

It was a distorted version of him. Romanticized, really. A remake of him that was worse in every way.

Alice hated it, because thinking of him in this way erased everything that had happened. It told her brain that she had nothing to be angry about, when she in fact did.

Who was Alice trying to fool? No matter how she thought of him in that instant, Alice missed Damon.

As she replayed that voicemail in her head, it made her nervous, the idea of meeting him. Maybe if they talked about it outside of Alice's apartment, they wouldn't bring the problem back home with them. The only issue was that the problem was practically painted right over the drywall.

If Alice was going to make it on time, she was going to have to start cleaning up now.

The problem-Alice's writing-would become an even bigger mess if Damon came home to find papers scattered everywhere.

The downstairs neighbors probably thought someone was running back and forth just to annoy them as Alice tried to gather all the crumbled up sheets of printer paper that contained first drafts, even final ones, of nearly half of the stories she had written in the last month. There were too many to count.

Alice couldn't help but scold herself as she threw all the papers into a small sized box, being careful to not ruin any of them even more than they already had been. No matter how useless they were to her, she refused to throw them away. They were too precious. Thoughts gave her comfort. Even ones she didn't find pleasure in.

Wasting no time, Alice shoved that box full of a whole other world onto the back shelf of the closet in her bedroom, and was sure to cover it with all the summer clothes she couldn't wear with it being January. Until I find a better spot, she told herself.

With that, she needed to leave. She had to go meet the physical version of Damon.

This one wasn’t a figment of her imagination. Alice wasn't sure whether or not he would be angry, or elated to see her.