Ever since Mika had joined the cast Jerry and Jack's relationship had suffered a serious rift. The latino was so furious with the black belt that whenever the two of them spoke Jerry would end up yelling at him half way through the conversation. The problem was that Mika was a very serious subject for Jerry and Jack had sort of exploited that. It was not that Jack did it maliciously, but Mika being in the show was tough for Jerry.

The pair of them- Mika and Jerry- had dated a few years back. She made him go through all of these ridiculous tests to eventually become his girlfriend and once he completed them all they were very happy. Jack and all of his friends always poked fun at Jerry for being on cloud nine with her, but Jerry at the time did not seem to care. They did virtually everything together and his best friend was never so happy. But Jerry screwed up. A week before the two of them shared their one year anniversary, Jerry had gone to a party. High school was a place of temptation and parties went along with those temptations. At this party, there was a lot of alcohol and it was Jerry's first time dealing with it, so he made a lot of mistakes that night. Mistakes that spread throughout the school like wildfire. It did not take Mika long to find out.

Jerry still regretted his mistakes that night because it cost him Mika. He had spent the past two years trying to nullify his mistakes, but Mika did not want to hear him out. Jack had thought, in his infinite wisdom or stupidity, that by getting Mika in the show Jerry would have the chance to repair the rift, but Jerry did not look at it like that. His best friend saw bringing Mika into the equation as a betrayal of trust. He thought that Jack was trying to manipulate the situation, which was partially true. But Jack wanted to see his friend happy again. Ever sine the two of them had joined the show, Jerry had a new light in his eye. Shakespeare suited him, it was something that he was good at and Jerry cherished everything that he was good at. There were very few things Jerry was confident in and now Shakespeare was one of those things. So Jack wanted to give his friend something else to be happy about- Mika. Apparently he should not have meddled. Jerry verbalized as much.

As the show grew nearer and nearer though, it seemed to Jack that all of his friendships grew more and more strained. Jerry, who could not forgive him for his Mika trick, barely spoke to him unless it was absolutely neccessary, which stung. Jerry was the best guy friend that Jack had ever had. The pair of them did everything together and confided everything in each other. Without Jerry, Jack felt hopelessly lost. He couldn't talk to Milton or Eddie about half of the stuff he spoke to Jerry about. Eddie would always try and turn the conversation, whenever Jack spoke to him, about his own accomplishments because Eddie was so insecure. And whenever Jack spoke to Milton it became a lecture. They were good friends to Jack, but they were no Jerry. It was not a friendship of no boundaries or limits. And he had effectively ruined that. All because he wanted to meddle with Mika.

His friendships with the guys were not the only relationships of his that were suffering. Following the day that he left Kim's room, the two of them had not been able to complete a scene, a good scene, since. Every time that they worked together it was stale and contrived as if the two of them just wanted to get it over with. The scenes were getting so terrible that Wdoviak had told them to stop kissing until they figured out where they had hit a brick wall. The black belt had half a mind to tell his director that they were hitting a stand still because he was really in love with Juliet and she didn't care, but he felt that might have been a tad hasty.

Outside of rehearsals, he and Kim had not spoken. They exchanged hellos and all of the niceities, but anything beyond that were disregarded. He was not sure if it was her doing or his, this new manner of talking to each other, but someone was doing it. And it killed him. All he wanted to do half the time was wrap her up in his arms in the middle of the hallway and ravish her head to toe. Kiss her like he loved her for everyone to see, but he knew that she would only push him away. And, honestly, Jack was done being hurt all of the time. He needed some level of respect and she stripped him of it so much that day that he refused to be the one to make a move anymore. He was doing being love's idiot.

This show had affectively ruined Jack's life. He just wished- at this point- that the whole thing would just go away. That it would be done with, that someone would quit and force them all to just stop the show. In fact, he had considered quitting a few times himself, but he could not bring himself to crush all of everyone's hard work. Even now, after everything, he still cared too much. Sometimes he wished he could just turn it all off; make everything as if he did not care so that he could live his life the way that best suited him, but he was not that man, he was a good man, which sucked. He wished he were worse of a person, he wish he were worse of a friend, he wish he had less of a moral code. But he had all of those things, it was what made him Jack.

So when he stumbled into practice that day and threw his bag down in his usual seat, he resigned himself to his fate. This was his world right now- this stage and auditorium. It was all his life at the moment and he had to embrace that it would continue to be so until the show was over. Until his life had been returned to him, but he knew it would never be the same. Even when the show was done and more regular dojo practices came up and his free time was spent at Phil's, this show had changed him and his friends. They were all different now and he wasn't sure if they could ever get what they had back again.

He missed them.

As Jack was lost in his thought's Kim and Jerry were on stage discussing the boy. He only snapped out of his thoughts to notice the conversation because he heard hair spray and that was sort of his mating call. He heard the phrase hair spray and he was up and running. His hair was not the product of sheer, dumb luck. It took time and energy.

But, regardless, he heard the pair of them discussing him and found himself inching over toward the front of the stage so he could hear their musing.

"-with Mika was not cool, Kim. I mean, you guys know how much I care about her, yo." Jerry whispered to Kim as the two of them pretended to prepare for lines. Jack knew that he had come into the conversation a tad late, but it was obvious that they were talking about him. The hair spray comment and the stuff about Mika was a dead give away. They were being so obvious that they might as well have been wearing a sign. Luckily, for Jack, they were so wrapped up in their conversation that they did not notice Romeo himself standing at the lip of the stage.

Kim brushed a strand of her blond hair behind her ear and chewed on her lip, the very motion that almost always drove Jack mad, and said, "I know, Jer, but I do think he was trying to help you, in his way." That comment made Jack pause. In his own way? Was it possible that Kim was defending him if even for a little? It was unbelievable to him that she could even think to defend him after the way that she had treated him, which he had still not forgotten.

The Latino rolled his eyes and said with a pout, "Please Kim. Save me your bullshit. You're only saying that because you two are making out."

"Am not!" Kim snapped back at him. Her face was flushed red. He wasn't sure if it was from embarrassment or anger, but either way she was red in the face. He knew that the most reasonable explanation was anger, but there was a small piece of him that wanted to think that he had made her blush. The blond drove him crazy and he wanted to at least think in his head that he might have done the same for her.

Jerry rose his eyebrow and asked in a concerned voice, which made a jealous, green monster pop up in Jack, which was ridiculous because he knew how Jerry felt about Mika, "So I take it you two still aren't talking?"

She shook her head no and nibbled at the bottom of her lip. It took everything in Jack to not jump up on the stage and pin her down to the floor and kiss her right then and there. The girl had to know how beautiful she was to him, she had to know that whenever he looked at her his heart skipped a beat and he was fine with that because it was her. Anyone else he would have felt like an idiot, but she was never like that for him. WHAT WAS HE THINKING? She was like that for him. She had told him off and made it clear how she felt to him. Why was he even thinking these things? Kimberly Crawford messed with his mind.

Still nibbling on her lip, she told Jerry, "No… he won't even look at me. He's my best friend, Jerry, I didn't mean to hurt him, but we're playing parts. At least, I thought we were."

Jack had thought before that his heart was broken. He had thought that night when he left her house that Kimberly Crawford had taken his heart and shattered it beyond repair, but that feeling then was only a fraction of what he was feeling right now. Those words stung like alcohol being poured into a fatal wound, it stung like seven million stings, it stung more than breaking every bone in his body. His heart was shattered. He could feel it actually. It was held up in a small pile on the floor. And there was no way that he was going to be able to put it back together now.

Gathering himself together, he stormed out of the auditorium rather loudly. On his way out he kicked open the door to the auditorium and slammed his combat boots on the ground as he walked. The black belt was almost certain that the entire auditorium had gone to a stand still as he left, but as his granddad would say- he didn't give a shit. He was angry, in fact, that he was not even aware of the person following him out of the auditorium.

As he ran down the main, outdoor steps of the school that was when he finally heard a voice calling after him. The very voice that had just shattered his heart, "Jack! Jack, wait up. Jack slow down!" The blond finally caught up with him and grabbed him by his forearm, "Jack wait."

He shrugged her off forcefully and said with a growl, "Don't touch me, Kim. Get off!" Her eyes blinked with surprise and started to water a little and as much as he wanted to reach out and envelope her in a comforting hug, her last words still rung in his head. They played over and over again like a broken record that he could not seem to get silent. It killed him on the inside because he knew that those words would probably always be the undercurrent of his veins. Always there like a poison reminding him that he was a fool. A fool, indeed.

And that was when she started to cry and slam into his chest with her fists in anger, but he did not stir. He was deeply planted to the ground like a tree with his roots firmly in place. As she hit him and cried, he seemed seemingly unphased, but on the inside he was screaming. With each hit, though, she punctuated another word, "You did this, Jackson Anderson! YOU! Why do you keep doing this?"

In a deadpan, monotone voice, he said, "Oh really? What did I do?" All the while she pounded on his chest.

"You keep making this so hard. Why can't we just be friends and not address it? Why do you feel the need to complicate it?"

That was when he grabbed her hands and removed them from his chest, "Don't worry, Kim, I won't make that mistake again. I'm done."

And then that was when something unexpected happened- she kissed him. She kissed him angrily and full of passion and with so much vigor that he almost fell backwards. It took him a moment to recover from the shock, but then he was kissing her back. He was holding her tightly and roaming his hands all over her back on the front steps to the school.

In the back of his head, his logic was screaming for him to stop and remember what she had said to Jerry and to acknowledge everything that she knew, but he could not stop. There was something more deeply routed in him to kiss her then to pull away. He did not have the strength to resist. So he held her closer to him and almost ripped her shirt as he held onto it as a life line. As if, if he let go, she would disappear into thin air.

After several long moments of kissing, she finally pulled away with red lips and stained, mascara cheeks and to him she was more beautiful now then ever before. But what she said next surprised him. "Where is your car?"

He just blinked at her for a few moments before he mumbled out its location, "Side lot."

"Let's go, Anderson." And Jack could not help but be stunned at her. His mind, which was usually face paced due to karate and reflexes, was completely stunned and in shock from everything that had and was happening. Like a zombie he let her lead him to his car. When they finally got there, she unlocked the back doors and pushed him inside. Jack was so confused he could not even comprehend what was happening.

The next thing he did know for certain, though, was that he was being pinned down to the cushions of the backseat of his car and Kim Crawford was straddling him and kissing him with everything that she had. All he could do was blink and sort of go through the motions of kissing her.

He was seriously confused. What did all of this mean? And what was happening.

He did not know. What he also did not know was that as the two of them spent time together in the car, a rehearsal for Romeo and Juliet went to a standstill. Without the two leads they could do very little, but inside that car the two teens did not care. They were too busy drinking in every part of each other…. And Jack was confused. He was so confused, but he was done with getting no answers. As soon as Kim returned his lips to him he was going to ask what was going on. He needed answers and he was going to get them.

He just wasn't sure if he was ready to get them or not.