⊹⃬۫🎧 ̸᩠໋࣪꣹۫ : Love Hurts – Nazareth

JULY 5, 1976, 11 PM — Los Angeles, California

The cheap beer can was next to you, half-empty; you didn’t care about the warm beer anymore. The sky, heavy and gray, swallowed up the city in a dirty haze as the rain started to fall, lightly soaking your Mary Jane shoes — the ones you got on sale at Woolworth's.

The buzz of the broken fluorescent hallway light mixed with the muffled sound of distant sirens, like a scratched vinyl track spinning on loop on the turntable. The cold cement steps of the rundown building where you lived with your mom — and with the echoes of the choices she made — pressed against your thighs, too exposed under that ridiculous baby-blue taffeta prom dress.

The stupid, overpriced dress you had picked out weeks ago, flipping through Seventeen magazine, believing it was going to be the most unforgettable night of your life.

And it was.

Just not the way you dreamed, listening to slow ballads by the Eagles or Fleetwood Mac on the AM station.

The cigarette — a Marlboro stolen from your mom’s purse — burned between your fingers, leaving your skin dirty and trembling, but it stood as a silent witness to the humiliation. Your makeup — that eyeliner you tried to copy from a Farrah Fawcett photo — was smudged from crying, your teased hair ruined by the thin, sticky Los Angeles rain.

He had gone with someone else.

No explanation, no warning. Just the image of him crossing the dance floor decorated with silver metallic balloons, to the sound of some Elton John song, holding hands with the new girl from chemistry class. And you, standing there, in front of the smudged mirror in the school bathroom, mascara running, silently asking what the hell was so wrong with you.

You wanted to scream, cry, slam the door — anything to erase that damn image from your mind.

But nothing worked. Nothing…

You had been a stupid joke… just like the jokes you used to make about Joan Jett, when you saw her with her band in the back alleys of Whisky Go Go, because of her “reputation.”

She’d definitely be laughing at you now, when… the building’s door creaked open upstairs.

Heavy footsteps.

The familiar scuff of worn leather boots, and that black jacket that never left her shoulders, even in California’s stifling summer.

Joan Jett.

She stopped at the top of the stairs.

That same look as always: blasé, bulletproof, like nothing and no one could ever touch her.

You didn’t even need to look to feel it.

Her silence. The weight of that stare that always cut right through you, even when you two pretended to hate each other. Even when you pretended to hate that dirty, rebellious, too-free-for-someone-like-you way of hers.

But now… you didn’t even have the strength to pretend.

You just sat there, dress all wrinkled, makeup destroyed, cigarette burning down to the filter.

“You know that’s a huge waste of a cigarette, right?” Joan said, quickly walking down the stairs and stopping right next to you.