When I pictured the “road trip” to Philly I didn’t picture it consisting of getting lost, listening to Buckley and Brennan bark over Trace’s loud ass music, and dealing with Trace’s infamous long distance road rage I’ve heard so many entertaining stories about. I thought the ride from Jersey to Philly was going to be a fun one, it was anything but. Somehow we completely drove past Philly and ended up in York driving around aimlessly for a while, Trace’s idea not mine. When we finally got back on the highway to head back in the direction of Philly I let Trace drive which was the biggest mistake of my life.
That man needs to be locked up for the speed he was driving at; I feared not only for my life but surprisingly for the lives of the dogs in my back seat going crazy. But we finally got to the arena safely and in one piece.
“I’m never letting that man drive my fucking car again. He almost killed us.” I joked as Trace and I entered Justin’s dressing room, where we found our favorite pop start lounged out on the couch talking on the phone. He held up his finger to let us know to hold on and had an annoyed look on his face.
“Geesh. Sorry your righteousness.” I let his dogs off of their leashes and they went running over to Justin and jumped on top of him. He let whoever he was on the phone with that he had to go and hung up.
“What were you saying?”
“From the look on your face I’m guessing you were on the phone with Jessica. And I was saying that your best friend almost fucking killed me and those two beasts.” I pointed at Buckley and Brennan who were now wrestling each other at Justin’s feet.
“Don’t call them that, and I could have let you know that Trace doesn’t know what the speed limit is here on planet earth. Down in Munchkin Land he’s one of the only ones tall enough to drive so he takes advantage of the open speed limit. And I don’t want to talk about Jess right now, I can already tell her visit here is going to be quite irritating.”
“I told you not to date that boring bitch, but no, no one listens to Alana who knows about bad relationships.” He glared at me before looking at Trace to acknowledge him for the first time.
“You hungry man? I’m starving and the catering is crap here. I go could for a cheese steak right now.” My eyes opened wide at the mention of food; Trace and I shared a small bag of chips on the way there and it may not show but this girl can eat.
“When in Philly right?”
"I thought it was when in Rome idiot?"
"Same difference"
Things were peaceful in my life for the first time in weeks during our afternoon in Philadelphia; Justin decided to leave his precious babies at the arena with Marty who offered to tame them. Yeah okay well, everything was peaceful until Justin got his ‘bright idea’ as he called it, I thought it was stupid.
“Correct me if I’m wrong LaLa, but I’ve heard from my sources that you haven’t been on a date in a long time right?” Trace started to choke on the pretzel he was eating; yeah that’s right, choke and die you traitor. I knew who Justin’s ‘source’ was, and he came in a package of 5’5 with a faux hawk and a poser ass Jack Daniels tattoo. Some friend he was.
“Your sources are nosy little dweebs who have nothing better to do than go spilling private information that I thought was going to be kept between us. Thanks Juanito.” He turned beat red from laughing at me calling him Juanito, the name Justin and I pick on him about frequently.
“Don’t blame Trace for telling me, I was in the room when he was calling you the other week. Listen, Jessica’s plane lands in about an hour and she’s bringing a friend. So I was wondering if you’d be down for double dating? She says he’s a really great guy and she thinks you two would hit it off.”
“First of all, I don’t need your boring ass girlfriend to hook me up with her friends. Second of all, how would she know who I would and wouldn’t hit it off with, she’s met me like 4 times and one of those times I was a complete asshole.” Let’s just say I’m not too fond of Jessica Biel for the simple fact that she's whiny, boring as hell, and annoying.
“It’s worth a try La. It’s been a really long time since you’ve been in a relationship and I think your due to start looking for someone again.”
“Excuse me?”
“Let’s face it, the guys you’ve dated in the past haven’t really been worthy of you La. Jeff is a great guy, I’ve met him a few times and I, your best friend, think that you would like him. It’s time to stop settling for anything.” I don’t get why he was so interested in my love life, he’s been that way since we met and I don’t see it changing anytime soon.
“Why can’t Trace just be my date? I like him, we hit it off.” I wrapped my arm around Trace’s waist as we walked down the street to a store he had been raving about all day.
“Yeah JT, why can’t I be her date? How is that fair that I get left out of all of this?”
“So it’s settled, I’ll go if Trace can be my date. That Jeff character can think that I’m there to meet him, but we’ll know that all my attention is really towards this sexy piece of Hispanic male right here.”
Somehow I was forced to go pick up Jessica at the airport and Trace accompanied me (says he needed to be my bodyguard), and somehow he conned me into letting him drive again. When the two of them were walking out of the terminal I saw her friend Jeff, and from the conversation I heard them having he sounded like an egotistical bastard like all of my exes.
“Hey Trace.” Trace received a hug from Jessica and he shook Jeff’s hand. I saw the discreet look that he shot at me, and he was thinking the same thing as me; I could tell because of the amazing ESP we’ve developed with each other in the 8 years (yeah I’ve known him as long as Justin) we were friends.
“Hey guys.” My ‘bodyguard’ stepped back and waited for a confrontation between Jessica and me to happen. He knew that we didn’t like each other and he found it very amusing and was waiting for us to throw some fists. Not likely, sorry buddy.
“Jeff this is Alana, Justin’s friend I was telling you about. Hi Alana.” Nice seeing you too bitch. Let’s not be excited about being here or anything you ungrateful little snot.
“Nice to meet you.”
I hate introductions. They’re seriously the most annoying thing in the world because for me, that’s usually the first and last time I see someone (I don’t meet new people very often) and I don’t like wasting my time.
And I was wasting my time with Jeff. We ended up going out after Justin’s show and not before, which was fine by me because I wasn’t hungry, but Jeff and Jessica decided that they were starving and complained during Justin’s whole set (in case you were wondering Trace and I almost killed the two of them). Our late dinner ended up being a disaster in my opinion. We listened to Jeff brag about the marketing firm he works at in Manhattan for about 20 minutes before Trace interrupted him and we started to talk about my students (whom Jeff and Justin’s prized girlfriend weren’t interested in at all).
When we got to the hotel Justin came down to the room I was staying in to ask me how I liked Jeff, as if he didn’t know already.
“Knock knock, get decent if you’re not. Surprisingly I’m not in any mood to see your D cups or that ass of yours tonight. I just want to say goodnight and get to sleep.” I hate when he jokes about my body like that. Why did he have a key to my room?
“Hey I’m in my room you asshole!” I was lying in my bed with Brennan next to me when he came through the doorway. Yeah, somehow being around Justin calmed them down and I actually missed not having one of the dogs in my bed to sleep so I stole a monster from Justin.
“How’s it going in here?” He laid down right next to me and started to play with Brennan’s paw.
“It’s going. I’m just watching a movie before going to bed.”
“So, Jeff…” I knew that was coming.
“Hell mother fucking no Justin. Your little girlfriend must think I love to talk about myself or something because we have nothing in common and he’s fucking annoying and self centered.”
“He’s not that bad LaLa. You didn’t even give him a chance.”
“Weren’t you the one who said I need to stop settling for anything? Well he’s anything and I’m not settling. This is how I see it: we date, he moves up in his marketing firm to CEO or something and realizes that we don’t click romantically anymore and we just need to stay friends.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Oh but I do and I’m not down for that type of drama again Jay. Please, let it go.”
“Fine.” Things were silent in the room for what seemed like 20 minutes before Justin spoke up again.
“I’m glad you’re here. I’ll make up for what happened tonight tomorrow. Me and you will go out to eat and do some more shopping.”
“Just us?” It was something that never really happened; if he was on tour and I visited a group of us always went out and I was looking forward to spending the day with him. But even when he promised it would be just the two of us it never really turned out that way.
“Just us, I promise. But right now I need to get back up to my room before Jessica calls Johnny and tells him I went missing.” I made a mental note at that point to go see Uncle Johnny the next day because he didn’t have time to see me that day.
“Tell her you were going to get ice for your knee?”
“You know me so well. Goodnight La.”
“Goodnight JuJu.” He kissed my forehead, rubbed Brennan’s head, and winked at me before he left the room.
Even after his horrible date picking skills he exhibited with agreeing to set me up with Jeff, I couldn’t really be upset with Justin. He’s my best friend and my ‘brother from another mother’ (as him and Trace like to say to people when it comes to me) and he was only trying to look out for me. I just wish he stopped at Jeff when he was trying to ‘look out’ for my love life.
