I'm Not Broken Hearted (Patrick Stump / Fall Out Boy Fanfic)

Chapter 1 - Allie (Ten Years Later)

 It was strange, to say the least. The last time I lived in this city, I was eighteen years old. It had been my last summer here before I started college, and I had just graduated from high school. Now, I was twenty-eight, and I had just moved into a brand new apartment in my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. This was to be my first time living alone, even though my best friend followed me in the door, holding a box in her arms.

As she looked around, she nodded, "Not bad, Al. Not bad at all."

"Are you kidding me, Sara?" I laughed, "It's literally the smallest apartment in Chicago. Maybe the smallest apartment in all of the United States."

"Well," Sara laughed, setting the box down. "Look at the bright side; You're not living with your parents anymore."

"That makes me feel so much better," I teased, playfully pushing her as I walked by her into my tiny little kitchen. It would do, for my purposes. It's not like I was planning on moving a boyfriend in with me anytime soon...if ever. Nope, I was a lonely, moody, little author from Chicago, and I didn't even have a published work yet. Unless you were to count the half-assed articles I wrote for the local newspaper...which I didn't. That's not the kind of writing I was into. I was much more interested in writing novels, but I have yet to actually get anywhere with that, and I needed to make money somehow. So, the newspaper it was.

For the next two hours, Sara helped me carry all of my things up from the moving truck and into the apartment to begin unpacking. The first thing we pulled out was my old stereo, that I had bought with my allowance while I was still in high school. Sara pulled open a box of all of my CDs and cassette tapes, and looked at me expectantly. "Pick whatever you want," I laughed, turning my back to her as I started to push my loveseat against the wall, beneath the window. A moment later, Green Day started pumping out of my speakers. For a while, Sara and I pushed furniture around, unpacked box after box, and sang along to all of our favorite songs. It turned out that Sara had grabbed one of my old mixed tapes, and had thrown that in.

Just as we had decided to take a break and flop down tiredly on the love seat, an all too familiar voice broke through the speakers across the room.

Where is your boy tonight?

I hope he is gentleman.

And maybe he won't find out what I know...

You were the last good thing about this part of town.

As the music picked up, I sighed and ran a hand through my hair, getting up to stalk my way into the kitchen. Sara followed me, hesitantly. She watched me quietly as I got myself a glass of water, pulling a glass out of the yet to be unpacked box on the counter. "Allie?"

I turned to look at her, raising an eyebrow in question.

"Do you...want me to change the tape?"

Sara had been my roommate during out freshman year of college. She had been away, studying in the library the night I did made that phone call. She knew how much I had hurt myself.

Instead of dwelling on it, I smiled and set my glass on the counter, shaking my head. "I love this song," I said, briskly walking back to the living room as I sang along. She didn't mention it again, and we continued unpacking, for the rest of the afternoon.

That night, I laid on the couch with two blankets and my favorite pillow, since my bedroom hadn't been unpacked yet, and flipped through channels on the TV. Finally, I settled on the news, unable to find anything decent to watch. I set the alarm on my phone for 6:00am, since I had work tomorrow morning, and set it on the coffee table in front of me. I tossed and turned for a while, tired but unable to fall asleep. This was a regular occurrence, with or without a television in front of me to keep me up. Finally, I resigned myself to the fact that I would have to down an entire pot of coffee before work in the morning, and turned on my side to watch the news.

Nothing particularly caught my interest for a while, and without even realizing it, my eyelids began to finally droop shut. I caught a final glance at the digital clock on the cable box, which read, "1:47am," and the last words I heard being said from the TV were something about the breaking up of a band, whose name I didn't quite catch.