Cross My Heart

Ronnie

“Matt whenever you play Call Of Duty, you look like the stupid cartoon character in every show. Your jaw goes slack, your eyes go glassy and if I hit you around the head with a hammer, you’d have tiny little birds flying in circles around your skull.”

Still comfortably perched in the warm spot that Johnny had left me as he’d gone to grab my cellphone, I watched as Zacky stifled back a chuckle at my words. I had somehow managed to insert myself into their conversation and yet, everything that I’d said was completely true. I had a hard enough time dragging him away from the screen when they had press- I was close to just throwing the game out of the window while we were speeding down a highway, if only to whip Matt into shape just a little bit.

It looked as though as Matt’s adorable wife Mikayla, all five feet four inches of her, was going to have her work cut out for her when he returned. It was always a little strange to see the pair of them together; Matt dominated everyone but Jimmy with a powerful stance of just over six foot, and yet this tiny woman in comparison had him wrapped firmly around her pinky finger.

“Now I remember why we hired you,” Matt chuckled, somehow managing to laugh off my statement as I wrestled myself from the rickety seat, placing my now empty cup on the weak looking picnic table they’d set up in the middle of the group.

“Because I can whip even you into shape, Sanders?” I asked, squealing when he wrapped his large arm around my waist and dragged me closer to him, holding me almost as though I weighed nothing at all.

“Precisely. Plus, your insults are just wonderful.”

“RONNIE!”

Almost immediately, my head snapped towards the source of the noise, a surge of blinding panic washing through me at the anxiety that stained the voice that was yelling out my name. With Matt’s arm still tucked firmly around my waist, I glanced around the almost empty parking lot to see Johnny racing towards me, his legs moving over the ground as quickly as his legs could carry him. Yanking myself out of Matt’s grasp, I began to pelt towards him as fast I could, meeting him halfway as he grabbed my arms, dragging me towards the brightly lit bus on the other side of the parking lot.

“Ronnie….Brian…bus…Alex…Brent….here…” his voice was staggered and breathless as he dragged me closer towards the door, pumping his legs as fast as he could, his long nimble fingers wrapped firmly around my wrist.

Almost as soon as my son’s name had popped into his disjointed flow of words, my heart clenched slightly in its usual rhythmic pumping, my throat constricting as the panic began to set firmly in on me. My stomach began to somersault dramatically beneath my skin and with my maternal instincts soaring through me like a bolt of loose electricity; I wrenched myself out of Johnny’s grip and leapt up the stairs of the bus, staring wildly around the front lounge.

It was only then that I saw Brian sat on one of the long, black leather couches, a cool glass jug of orange juice perched next to him on the counter and my baby boy sat on his lap, a glass held between his little fingers. My older brother’s eyes were filled with a sudden nervousness as he caught the sight of me stood in the lounge, and as Brent followed his Uncle’s gaze, his face split into a wide, beaming smile.

“Mommy!”

Handing Brian his glass of bright juice; he pushed himself away from the other man and raced towards me, holding out his skinny little arms for a hug. Almost instinctively, I knelt down and hauled him closer to my chest, squeezing him as tightly as I could before he began to struggle, searching for a little more room to breathe. As the sound of large footsteps began to move up the steps of the bus, the sign that the three men we’d left out in the cold were now returning back to the warmth of the room, I lifted Brent up into my arms and strolled to the other end of the lounge, taking a few deep breaths to calm myself down.

Johnny was still staring curiously at the boy in my arms, and was with a startling realisation, I remembered that he had never met my son in person before. And even if there had been a few brief, fleeting moments between the pair of them, Brent hadn’t registered it enough to stop calling Johnny his ‘Uncle’ and start referring to him as his ‘almost father’. Even without turning to look at him, I could feel Brian’s eyes burning into my skin as he clutched his cellphone in his hands, tossing the lump of metal between his calloused palms and remaining strangely silent for someone who could never usually keep his mouth shut.

With Zacky and Jimmy already pulling their next beers out of the mini refrigerator that sat tucked inbetween the various kitchen appliances on the bus, Matt strolled through the parting in the middle of the lounge and collapsed down onto the couch nearest to me, his eyes running over my son and then at me. For a moment, I allowed myself to take a few deep breaths, hoping that the steady rhythm would calm me slightly as I held onto my son, pining slightly for him now he was in my arms.

Both Johnny and Brian seemed to be hovering a few inches above their seats, if only so they could jump to the rescue if they were ever called.

“Mommy?” Brent suddenly asked, lifting his head up from the comforting crook of my shoulder, taking in his lavish surroundings and the bus that he’d been placed on by his bastard of a father.

“Yeah?”

“Daddy says that I get to live with you now. He gave me all the ‘portant papers and the writing when he put me in Uncle Brian’s bed and said we were gonna live together for ever and ever!” Brent announced, wriggling down from my grasp and jumping down onto the floor, making a beeline for Zacky as he began to babble about his baseball team and the game they were planning on winning just a few short days away.

Almost immediately, I turned on my heel and began to run through the bunks, hearing the sound of my name being yelled from the lounge like blood rushing through my ears. Brian’s bunk was still as messy and disorganized as his bedroom had been when the pair of us had actually lived together under the same roof, and as I pushed the blankets aside, a thick wedge of legal documents stared back at me, their subject blindingly clear.

‘Superior Court Order of the state of California, for the county of Orange. Custody of Brent Colbie Haner-Goldberg is hereby relinquished by Mr Alexander Christopher Goldberg to the child’s biological mother, Ms Veronica Juliette Haner. Cause of custody: Father is unable to take care of the child as he will no longer be working/living in the United States’

What followed the statement looked to be a series of legal implications and strange orders for me to sign off, and as I sunk firmly down onto the comfortable mattress of Brian’s bunk, I felt tears spring into my eyes. Everything suddenly seemed so clear; the field trip that Alex had tricked Brent into believing, just so he could bring him out to the bus and leave him without a second thought. How had he made his way past security?

After at least several different women successfully attempting the same thing, measures had been put in to stop people getting on the bus and yet, here Brent was without even a scratch.

Just the idea of having my son with me full-time was enough to bring a watery smile to my lips and yet, I couldn’t help but let my logical brain think of the implications. I was a full time working mother; I had a band to manage on the road as well as a hundred different shows to plan out and to operate smoothly, all without having half of my attention divided towards my son.

As dots of condensation began to stain the paper in my hands, I heard the sound of footsteps echoing through the bunk area as the door leading into the front lounge was slid closed, muffling the laughter and chatter of my friends. As the bed dipped beside me slightly, I couldn’t help but feel my eyes well up again as Brian wrapped his bulky arms around my slender frame, enveloping me in a tender embrace.

“Hey, hey, hey- don’t cry! Ron, I thought this would have been a dream come true- Alex is out of the country and Brent’s here with you. Why the tears?”

“How the hell am I going to manage you five with Brent? I can’t just bring him on the road all the time, he needs to have a normal life. I’ll call Alex, track him down and drag him right back to the country and then I can go back to…” I began only to have Brian put his large hand over my mouth, effectively silencing me in the middle of my speech.

“Ronnie. That kid has five uncles that love him to pieces, and even more on the other bus- we want to have him out here with us. Jason could have him helping out with the drums, you know how much he loves playing around with them.”

“But what about school? His Little League games? The doctor, the dentist…?”

“Ronnie, relax,” Brian soothed, gently withdrawing the papers from my hand and throwing them back down onto his bunk with the infamous half grin that the pair of us had perfected over the years, “We’ll make the spare bunk up for Brent and he can sleep there for the last few dates. We can shuffle around our press so one of us is watching him all the time and we’ll try to keep the drinking around him to a minimum, OK? We can sort this out, Ron.”

For a moment I stared incredulously up at him until I rolled my eyes and collapsed into his embrace again, allowing myself to get lost in his ever familiar scent.
We would work it out, I thought to myself.

And the first thing I wanted to do was introduce Johnny as the man he was, rather than another Uncle to my baby.