Chapter 1

Everyone thinks it took me a forever to fall in love with her, but I’ll tell you right now, I think I was in love from the moment we met. I will never forget the day I first laid eyes on her. It was love at first sight. From day one. Small, chubby, with a toothless smile and little patch of golden hair atop her small round head. She was absolutely beautiful. But I think it was her eyes that got me.

You see, more than anything, it’s the eyes that haunt you. All at once full of wonder, bewildered, yet somehow accusing. You can see almost anything you want in them if you look long enough. Trust perhaps? Or is it resignation? A glimmer of understanding that seems to vanish in an instant.

Either way, they always stay with you. I think it was her eyes that first really got me. Bright, big blue eyes that held so much depth, it was enough to make you cry. They made me feel weak, and vulnerable, and a million other unfamiliar, human emotions. Most of all love.

I hate to get all gushy and shit, especially when I like to think of myself as a some sort of action man but…Love does not hurt. Well, it does, but it’s a different type of pain. Love fucking stings. It’s like when you used scrape your knee as a child, and your mother whipped out the alcohol, and you know in the end it is going to make you feel better, it’s good for you….But shit does it fucking sting.

Emotionally and physically, love can drain you out, it can have you giggling like a fool, and at the next moment crying like a child on your ex-girlfriend’s bathroom floor... But, I think, I digress. When I met her, I tell you, I was fucking jaded when it came to the subject of love.

I figured I didn’t need it. I’d tried it out, and I had decided it wasn’t for me. You have got to understand, I’ve never really been the “relationship” type. I’ve been more the “for now” type. I was especially bad once I’d left London for L.A. That is where all the freaks like to play. A constant supply of leggy blondes that city has to offer. I swear, I think they’re cloned here.

For a long time, I was confusing lust with love. I was confusing a lot of things, actually. 25 with my own little hole of a place to live in, my priorities were completely skewed. Woman, and booze, and my music were all that really mattered to me, and I was content with drifting through each day, as if in a daze, not knowing what the next moment would bring. It wasn’t actually that bad. Fuck, it was brilliant.

Then I got introduced by one of my band mates to Jeanie Sparrow, this beautiful (I mean really, devastatingly beautiful) waitress/aspiring actress/model/baby-sitter/sex-goddess. She liked to flatter me, especially my music, which I definitely wasn’t against. She was different. She understood me, I guess. I don’t know. Anyway, I reckon I was ready to marry the bitch. That is until she left me and married someone else. I really lost my faith after that.

So then it was like, fuck woman, fuck booze, fuck my music. Well, maybe not booze, but definitely the other two. I think I spent a straight month, locked in my room, staring at the wall. Nothing was entertaining anymore. They say when you’re at your lowest, at your most emotional point, that’s when your talent really comes through. Well “they” are fucking bastard liars who should be shot, stuck with pins, and fed to dinosaurs….uh. Anywho, I couldn’t write shit. My guitar stayed leaning against the wall opposite my bed, collecting dust. It’s really just there for show, anyway. I’m crap at guitar.

On Halloween night last year, I was doing exactly what I’d been doing for what felt like forever. Sprawled out on my couch, trying to get interested in a crappy television program. Friends was on. Oh, how I abhor that fucking show. It literally makes me sick. I hate sitcoms, I hate anything with a laugh-track and a conflict that gets solved in thirty minutes or less, actually. It just seems so calculated…but, I digress. Again.

The buzzer rang. I ignored it. At least, I tried to ignore it, but the little git at the door seemed to have his finger glued to the damn button and was pressing it over and over again. Was it another damned trick-or-treater? I wearily stood up and waltzed over to my door, ready to snap at whatever snot nosed teen had decided to interrupt me at eleven o’-fucking-clock at night. Perhaps I would also impale him with my guitar, just for fun.

“Look you fucking---Ronnie? Ezra?” It wasn’t a trick-o-treater, worse, my two best friends. They looked a bit, for lack of a better word, strange, tonight. Well, for one thing, Ronnie was wearing a loin cloth. And Ezra was wearing a black button down shirt, black trousers, and a white collar around his neck. He also seemed to have a stuffed dummy with it’s arms tied around his waist, face…er…facing him. Have you gotten a visual yet? Yes, not funny. Not funny at all. Well, maybe just a little…

“What are you doing here?” I asked, not liking the look of things already. The last time I’d opened the door to them there had been a kidnap attempt and some very interesting bruises.

“We’re here to save you, ol’ buddy ol’ pal. You’re going out tonight.” Ronnie informed me. He was rather distracting, I must say.

“Heheh, no, I’m not.” This is the part where I try slamming the door in their faces and they manage to push their way in. Then, they proceed to bitch and moan and nag, nag, nag until I feel that my head is about to explode. Tits were mentioned. And who doesn’t love tits? “Alright, alright, I’ll fucking go. But I’m not wearing a costume.”

“Costume?” Ronnie asked, smirking, “I thought you were already in a costume.” Oh, har har. So very fucking clever, that one is. Also sucks more on the drums than I do on the guitar. Smarmy bastard. I got out of my place before I had any second thoughts, and next thing I knew we were in a club entirely too loud and too….blinky. Yes, blinky. You know, it had those idiotic blue lights that flash on and off and make you feel as if you’ve gone into an epileptic seizure.

I was the simple pair of jeans and blazer in a sea of Fred Flinstones, Marilyn Monroes, Cowboys, and Devils. God, do I hate Halloween. How grateful I am that I never really celebrated it as a child. It was quite amusing, you know, observing all those people frolicking about in masquerades when their very personalities were just as big of a façade. The costumes just made it that much harder to sift through the fakes and the phonies. Not that I cared. Suddenly I just really wanted to get laid.