Summer 2000

“Shit, we gotta find a guitarist and a bassist, RJ. This is our third time losing to those motherfuckers.”

RJ played with his chewing gum while lounging behind his drumkits. He kept twirling the sticky rubbery thing in and out of his mouth that it was making me distracted.

“Dude are you even fucking listening to me?” I threw my pick at him and it landed on his forehead. Bullseye!

“God Lzzy! Just look in the mirror!”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“You’re holding an instrument that’s pretty much looks like a guitar, and you have a weird box shaped thing there called…Marshall, and you want to find a guitarist?”

My God, he was right! Right my ass! “Who’s gonna play piano if I play guitar?”

He rolled his eyes and started to crash his cymbals annoyingly. See, the drums used to belong to dad, and even if he took a good care of it, it’s still old. Some screws had loosened here and there, making the sound too sloppy and getting on my nerves.

“RJ, I’m serious!”

“I’m serious too, sis. Look, you play guitar in school once and people just stopped calling you freak. So why not channel that into the band and,” Ba dum tss! He smashed. “- now we’re complete!”

Yeah I recalled, there was this one time I played guitar for a choir performance in school and left everybody in awe. Before this they looked at me as a freak, because of my short spiky hair and my band tees and ripped jeans. I also glare at people, I don’t normally look at them. I glare.

“We’re short of a bassist though.”

“I can be your bassist!”

Both me and RJ turned around to the recently opened garage door. Dad was standing there, with toolbox in his hand and the other holding a plank of wood, probably just coming from his wood work job from the lawn.

“Come on dad, you must have something better to do?”

“Nope. I’m retired and I missed playing guitar in front of people.”

Dad casually picked up his old bass guitar and plugged it in. I exchanged glances with RJ and he shrugged, saying that maybe we should try dad and trust him with it.

“Okay dad, we’re warming up to Nirvana first.”

“Hit me.”

We jammed to Nirvana Smells Like Teen Spirit and dad seemed to stumble a few chords while he was reading my fingers. Maybe we should start with an older song.

“How about Metallica, dad?”

“How about Megadeth?”

Wow. “Okay. Rust in Peace?”

“I love that song.”

~*.*~

Dad is officially our bassist and I became an instant guitarist for Halestorm. We’ve been actively out playing gigs around Philly, until one fine day, a nice guy approached us. He looked decent with his blue button down shirt and pair of Dockers, hair slicked back to his head and kinda out of place for metal heads gig place like here.

“Hey guys, great great performance back there. I’m already a fan.”

I squealed. Like literally squealed. Felt like I wanna kiss him all over because this was the first time someone approached us and admitting to be our fan.

“Really dude? Thanks so much.” RJ initiated a hug to him and he looked a bit uncomfortable with him.

“RJ, you’re fucking sweaty. Stop hugging people randomly!”

“Oh, sorry dude. Shit, your shirt’s all ruined.”

“No problem. Not my favorite shirt anyway.” He smiled and I can’t help but notice how cute he was. My stupid mouth however, can’t stop itself from spitting out things like;

“You’re cute.”

Boy did I see him blushed and he looked even cuter. RJ elbowed me and I shrugged. “What? Just stating the truth.”

“Don’t mind my sister. She hadn’t got laid for so long – ouch!”

I kicked RJ in the shin and faked a smile at dad who was raising his eyebrows at me. Then he proceeded to introduce himself.

“How are you doing? I’m Roger Hale. Call me Roger. This is RJ, my son and Lzzy, my daughter.”

“Hi, I’m good. I’m Joe Hottinger. Call me Joe.”

“Well Joe, today is your lucky day.” RJ swung his arm over to Joe’s shoulder.

“It is? Why?”

“Because my sister Lzzy here, wants to buy us a round of drinks! Weren’t you sis?”

“RJ, you’re sixteen!” Dad yelled at him and RJ ran his eyes away.

“Uh..I mean, I can just drink coke. Or milk.”

We didn’t get the chance meet many of our fans and to be honest they were too proud to accept us into the circle, plus we were using our DAD as one of the band members so when Joe came to us, we treated him as friendly and warm as we can be.

“Joe, no offense but I wanna ask you this. You look like a 9 to 5 worker, with your slacks and everything. Missing a necktie, but still you look like an outcast among those metal heads earlier.”

Joe smiled and his eyes looking down to the beer he was holding. Oh yeah, RJ had to drink milk and dad was watching him like an eagle. Me? I settled for a light beer thank you. Tonight is school night.

“I was on my way back from a job interview.”

“Whoa. Flunked?”

He nodded. “You’re still in school?”

“Final year.”

“Don’t go for a day job. It’ll suck your creativity out.”

“You’re a musician too, dude?” RJ asked, getting closer to Joe.

“Sometimes. Used to be in a band like you guys but I don’t really have time to jam and they kicked me out just like that.”

“Whaat? What do you play, man?”

“Lead guitar.”

Suddenly RJ and I looked up to each other. I’m pretty sure he was thinking about the same thing as me.

Notes

A/N: first met with Joe <3