Blood & Bone: A Second Chance, Friends to Lovers, Emotional Rockstar Romance

Past - Jack-1

PAST

Jack tiptoed down the stairs, holding his breath when the wood bowed and creaked under his weight. The house was old and he knew by now which steps were loose but sometimes in his haste, he made a mistake. It was always best, in Jack’s opinion, to be a ghost. He could hear his father’s snoring skip a beat but then, as Jack let out a breath, the snoring resumed. He went into the kitchen and stood in front of the fridge debating whether he should risk the noise of opening it. There probably wasn’t anything with a use-by date that hadn’t already passed. He knew there was a box of pop tarts in the cupboard so he opted for that instead.

Jack peered into the living room, seeing his father’s leg slung over the back of the couch. A dirty sock, slipping precariously over the heel. The cabinet door above the sink was hanging on one hinge. His father obviously having pulled on it too hard and then using it to steady himself, after going through a 6 pack of beer and what looked like a bottle of Whiskey. Hence, the reason he was passed out on the couch this morning. Last night, Jack had listened from his room upstairs. First, there was the unmistakable creak of wood splitting and then his father’s curse floated up the stairs just off the kitchen. Jack knew better than to come down and see what happened. He also knew it would be best to fix it in silence while his father was at work.

A ghost.

His backpack hung over the kitchen chair and when he pulled it, he mistakenly knocked over the chair making a loud noise. Righting it hastily, he quickly slung the bag over his shoulder and headed for the back door. Jack could hear his father groan something indiscernible from the front room and before Jack could reach the threshold of the door, he was pulled back, hard. He felt his neck jerk like the snap of a rubber band. He was flung so hard he landed on the floor, the wind knocked out of him.

His father grabbed him by the collar and pulled him from the floor. “Where do you think you’re going?” His father asked. “Sneaking around like a goddamn coward.”

No longer a ghost.

Although they were the same height, Mick O’Donnell was much stronger. His arms were sinewy muscles, the product of extensive manual labor. His hair was dark and curled around the collar at the nape of his neck. His eyes were the color of sea glass, very pure but it was a lie of the person who peered from them. It unnerved Jack how much Mick looked like an older version of himself. Mick was a mean drunk, who came home from a job he hated to a life he hated even more only to drink himself into forgetting his reality.

Jack was finding it hard to breathe, his neck constricted by his father’s grip on his shirt collar. Jack didn’t answer because he knew it didn’t matter what he said. All he could think was how stupid he had been to let the chair fall over when he was so close to leaving unscathed. Every day, Jack walked on eggshells, never knowing how Mick would react. His father was a labyrinth of dark corridors and Jack never knew when he turned a corner, what he might find.

“Huh?” Mick shook him, waiting for an answer.

“I was going to Wade’s.” Wade Kernish was one of Jack’s best friends. “To do homework.” He lied.

A rumble in the driveway signaled one of Mick’s buddies picking him up for his shift. There was only one vehicle, an old pick-up truck, that Mick never used because it rarely ran. The constriction in Jack’s throat was relieved when his father let go.

“Homework?” Mick looked down on him. “You’re stuck in this s**t town just like your old man.” Mick laughed leaving Jack on the floor of the kitchen, rubbing his neck. Jack had been lucky this time.

“Homework’s not gonna get you out of here.”

This was not the worst of it.

Jack supposed it was his destiny to be stuck here just like his father told him. He’d probably end up in jail too but Jack had other plans and that was why he was heading to his friend, Wade’s. Jack watched as Mick grabbed his jacket, slug a half-empty bottle of warm beer that was left on the table, and walked out the front door without so much as a glance back at Jack.

Jack never knew his Mother. She died when he was a baby and Mick never talked about her. He would never find out what kind of woman she was, the plans his parents made if they were happy together? All he knew of his mother was a picture that sat on the side table in the living room of her holding Jack when he was a baby.

Jack had lived with his maternal grandmother after his mother died. Mick had been in jail for who knows what. Unfortunately, Jack’s grandmother passed away when he was in middle school. He had to move back to Payson from Phoenix and lived with his father, who was neither pleased nor displeased about the situation. Mick was not a complicated person. He liked to drink and play poker with his buddies who were also drunks. When Mick was drunk, he hit Jack. Mick was drunk often. Whether Mick found pleasure in hitting him, Jack never knew, nor did he care to know.

On the rare occasions when Mick wasn’t drunk, he was quiet and somber. Sometimes Jack saw a flicker of regret in Mick’s eyes but it was a ghost of a thing, just like Jack. It appeared and then it was gone and hard to tell if it was ever there in the first place.

Jack knew that if he stayed in Payson, Arizona, he would end up just like Mick. There was nothing here for him but a bar stool, a mill job, and a jail cell. Jack picked himself up from the floor and looked at the hanging cabinet door. In the drawer, he grabbed a screwdriver and hauled himself up onto the counter so he could reach the screw. He made a new hole and secured the door back in place. When he was done, he left out the back door and ran through the woods behind his house. The woods were like a corridor from the life Jack had to the life he wanted. His friend

Morgan was waiting outside of the gas station in his parents’ Buick.

“What took you so long?” Cash asked, giving Jack a look of annoyance. Apparently, he had been waiting a while. Cash was tall, his seat pushed back to make room for his legs to work the gas and brake. He had a large nose that fit perfectly on his face. His hair was the wheat-colored blonde of youth and he wore it slicked back with gel, high in the front, and combed to a point in the back. The remnants of a mohawk still showed, the sides finally grew in enough to give the slightest whisper of what it once was.

“Had to fix a cabinet door,” Jack explained.

Jack never gave his friends any indication that something was wrong at home. Of course, they all saw unexplained bruises that they had the decency not to ask about. There were times when Jack would bunk in Cash’s room or on the couch in Wade’s garage when things at home were unbearable.

“Jesus, you drive like a Grandpa,” Jack said annoyed. Payson was a small town with no traffic and Cash stopped at the four ways, looking in all directions as if he expected a traffic jam.

“Don’t give me s**t, O’Donnell.” Cash looked at him cross but with the hint of a smile.

“Someone steal your Cornflakes this morning?” Jack teased.

“Yeah, your mother.” Cash smacked him causing the car to swerve. “See what you made me do?” Cash yelled at him, righting the car.

Jack chuckled.

Jack met both Cash and Wade in Junior High when he had moved back after his grandmother’s passing. Payson was a small mountain town, and everyone knew Mick and therefore, Jack. The three of them bonded over their love of absurd punk music. That was how the band was started. Wade got a set of drums from his parents that year. They expected he would grow tired of them quickly but 4 years later, to their dismay and the neighbors’ chagrin, Wade still banged away in the garage along with Jack’s old Fender guitar and Cash’s Gibson bass.

Cash parked the car in Wade’s driveway in front of the waiting open garage door. Wade had his drums set up in the corner. A dusty stained rug lined the space in front of it and an old couch that looked like something from his Grandmother’s house, squatted along the side. A few amps sat next to the couch with cords running back and forth waiting to trip the next unsuspecting person.

Jack learned to play the guitar while living at his grandmother’s. She had a neighbor who introduced Jack to his first guitar. The minute he’d picked up the Fender it was like a door slid open inside him, revealing a room that was to be filled with music. He was still an angry kid, but now he had an outlet, a way to expel the demons. Too impatient to learn how to read music, he could listen to a tune and replicate it, which he was told was something rare and beautiful.

He liked the sound of that because like a ghost was rare and beautiful in its own right, Jack was similar.

The guitar and his clothes were the only things he took with him to live with his father. Five years later, that’s still all he had. Jack soon learned to find a hiding place for his guitar and later, to leave it at Wade’s, for fear that his father would pawn it. It sat in its case next to Wade’s drums. Such an idle place for such a monstrous force. Only when Jack had it in his hands, did he feel right in the world. In a world that was mostly chaos for Jack, the Fender was a piston that fell into the engine block ready to ignite.

They played the songs of their hero’s. The lyrics talked about breaking out, standing up, not giving a f**k. It became Jack’s little ember of hope. Over time Wade’s parents had stopped wearing earplugs and embraced the fact that the drums were here to stay. Sometimes the neighbors would stop on their walks around the neighborhood to be treated with a mini-concert. “Say, what’s that song?” or “Do you know any Rolling Stones?” They would call out.

“Ruby Soho!” Jack would yell out and receive a confused look along with “Huh? Never heard of it.” Then he would break into the chorus of ‘I Can’t Get No (Satisfaction)’ to which he would be rewarded with a thumbs up.

Wade sat on the ratty couch that doubled sometimes as Jack’s bed. Wade’s inky black hair looked like spikes all over his head. He had impossibly long eyelashes over friendly brown eyes. Even though Wade was seventeen, his high cheekbones made him look adolescent. Compared to Jack and Cash, Wade was the calm one, always getting them back in line with practice schedules and local gigs. However, there was nothing calm about the way Wade played the drums. He was like a contained bomb if there was such a thing. The tick, tick, tick in perfect cadence until the explosion.

Wade’s house was a typical middle-class ranch model, two parents, a little sister, and a dog. Wade even had a fish named Larry in a little glass bowl in his room. Cash and Wade were invested in the band’s success but the difference was they wanted the band to succeed but Jack needed it to.

Jack worked at a mechanic shop in town and used the money he made to buy amps and gas money to get around. They managed to buy a van to carry band equipment which they affectionately named The Beast because it expelled black smoke from the tailpipe every time Wade jumped on the gas. If Cash drove like a Grandpa, Wade drove like he was trying to win a NASCAR race.

Wade’s Mom came into the garage from the side door. She held out a can of soda to each of the boys and a plate of sandwiches which Jack quickly gobbled up. He was hungry since he never did get to eat the pop tart.

Wade’s little sister ran out after her and plopped down onto the couch next to Wade, a satisfied smile on her face.

“Mom!” Wade yelled, not giving his sister, Maura, the attention she desperately wanted.

“Maura, leave your brother alone.” Maura gave her Mom a withering look but got up and followed her back into the house. At the door, Maura lifted her middle finger to Wade.