This excerpt is Chapter One of Caroling Catastrophe, a standalone romance in the Forge Sparks universe. The full story—including the guaranteed HEA—is available on Amazon and free with Kindle Unlimited.
Chapter 1
The bell hadn’t rung yet, but Maya Torres was already at his desk, Doc Martens planted on the scuffed linoleum, guitar case leaning against her hip like a weapon she was deciding whether to use.
Jack Hayes looked up from the stack of permission slips he’d been pretending to review and knew immediately this was going to be one of those conversations. The kind where a student wanted something he couldn’t give them. The kind that made his coffee go bitter in his mouth.
The classroom smelled like it always did, old radiator heat, stale energy drink, and the familiar staleness of donated instruments that had seen better decades. Through the windows, November gray pressed against the glass, and the first snow of the season was supposed to hit tonight. Jack could smell it in the air, that crisp bite that meant winter was finally done threatening and ready to deliver.
“Mr. Hayes.” Maya shifted her weight, fingers drumming against the case in a rhythm he recognized. The opening to “Everlong.” She’d been playing it in the practice rooms for weeks. “Can I ask you something?”
He pushed his glasses up from where they’d slid down his nose, third time this period, which had to be a record, and gestured to the chair across from him. The metal legs scraped against the floor. She didn’t sit.
“Sure. What’s up?”
“Berklee.” The word came out fast, like she’d been holding it in. Practicing it. Her fingers stopped drumming. “I’m applying. Early admission deadline’s in two weeks.”
Jack’s hand stilled on the permission slips, his red pen bleeding into the cheap paper. Through the classroom windows, he could see the parking lot where his Subaru sat next to Ms. Patterson’s minivan and the vice principal’s Tesla that nobody talked about. The old building creaked and hissed in the corner, struggling against Riverside High’s chronic budget cuts and a heating system that was older than he was.
“That’s ambitious,” he said carefully. The words felt like cardboard in his mouth.
“My portfolio’s ready. I’ve got the grades.” Maya tucked a strand of dark hair behind her ear, revealing the small treble clef tattoo she thought he didn’t know about. “I need a teacher recommendation. Ideally from you.
Jack leaned back in his chair, which squeaked in protest. The sound echoed in the empty classroom, mixing with the distant noise of students in the hallway. On the wall behind Maya, a poster from last year’s spring concert curled at the edges, the tape yellowing. The print job had been donated by Black Squirrel Press in Foxmeadow—Sawyer Whitaker always cut him a deal on school materials, probably because they’d both given up on bigger dreams and understood each other’s particular brand of resignation. Even cheap letterpress printing looked better than the district’s ancient copier, which smelled like burning rubber and regret.
“Maya.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose. His glasses left grooves in his skin. “Berklee’s expensive. And competitive. Have you thought about—”
“If you’re about to say community college, I’m walking out.” Her knuckles whitened on the guitar case.
“I was going to say UMass.” Jack pulled his glasses off, cleaning them on his shirt. Without the glasses, Maya blurred into shapes. “Good music program. In-state tuition.”
“Be realistic?” Maya’s voice had an edge. She finally sat, perched on the chair like she might bolt. “You mean give up before I even try?”
The heating system groaned louder, and somewhere down the hall, a locker slammed with a hollow metal sound that made Jack’s teeth ache. He put his glasses back on. Maya came into focus again: seventeen, talented, first-generation college applicant with a dream she’d probably been carrying since she first picked up a guitar. Her battle vest was covered in patches from bands Jack had loved in another life—Refused, Converge, Modern Life Is War. Bands that had meant something when he was her age. When he still thought meaning something was possible.
Seven years ago, Jack had stood in a different classroom, telling his department chair he was just taking the teaching job temporarily. Just until Staticwerks got their big break. Just until the industry noticed them. Just until…
“I’m saying be smart.” The words felt like they were coming from someone else. Like he was reading from a script titled How to Crush Dreams 101.
“You went to Berklee though.”
“For two years. Then I.”
“Yeah, I know. You had a band.” Maya looked down at her hands, picked at a patch on her vest. “Staticwerks. My cousin sent me old YouTube videos. You were really good.”
Jack’s phone buzzed against the desk, vibrating through the manic piles of loose paper. He ignored it. “That was a long time ago.”
“But you were good at it.” She gestured toward the corner where two guitars rested. “A Martin acoustic and a Les Paul. Those aren’t cheap guitars.”
His phone buzzed again. Definitely Gloria, his mother, who texted like she was being charged per message: short bursts of information that somehow always required immediate responses. Probably something about dinner on Sunday or the church newsletter or why wasn’t he dating someone nice.
“I play.” Even to his own ears, it sounded defensive. Hollow.
“So I stayed late last Tuesday to practice, and I walked past here on my way out and those guitars were in the exact same spot they were in September. Same dust on the cases and everything.”
The observation landed like a punch. Jack opened his mouth, closed it.
“I just thought…” Maya shifted in her seat. “If you were good enough to actually play shows and everything, and now you’re telling me to be realistic… I don’t know. Feels like a shitty move.”
The classroom door swung open and three sophomore girls tumbled in, laughing about something on someone’s phone. They brought the smell of cafeteria french fries and too much body spray with them. The moment broke. Maya stood, slinging her guitar case over her shoulder with practiced ease.
“Forget it.” Her voice was quieter now. Less certain. “I’ll ask Ms. Patterson.”
“Maya, wait.”
She stopped at the door, didn’t turn around. “You gave up on music, so everyone else should too. Got it.”
The door closed behind her with a soft click that somehow felt louder than a slam.
Jack sat at his desk for a long minute after she left, staring at his dusty guitars.
How to Crush Dreams 101. He should add that to his teaching credentials.
Mom (2:47 PM): First practice Sunday 4pm
He stared at the screen. Around him, students were pulling out instruments, tuning, warming up. The noise should have been familiar, was familiar, but today it felt like it was happening to someone else. Like he was watching his life through a window instead of living in it.
“Mr. Hayes?” A freshman whose name he couldn’t immediately remember was waving at him from the third row. Braces caught the fluorescent light. “What’re we doing today?”
Jack looked at Maya’s empty seat, then at the guitars in the corner. Weak afternoon light cut through the windows, and his phone felt too heavy in his hand. The weight of everything he wasn’t saying pressed against his chest.
“Scales,” he said, shoving the phone in his pocket. “Let’s start with scales.”
The school parking lot was half-empty by the time Jack locked his classroom door, the key sticking in the old lock the way it always did. He’d stayed late to grade last weeks homework he definitely hadn’t graded during his free period, and now the November wind cut through his jacket like it had a personal vendetta. The air tasted like snow, that particular combination of cold and moisture that coated the back of his throat.
His car sat three rows back, the only Subaru in a sea of newer Hondas and Toyotas. Twelve years old with a ski rack he never used and a collection of parking tickets wedged in the glove compartment that he kept meaning to pay. The door handle was cold enough to burn, and when he slid behind the wheel, the seat felt like sitting on a block of ice. His fingers were numb on the keys.
His phone buzzed again as he turned the ignition. The engine coughed twice before catching.
Mom (4:23 PM): Did you see my texts???
Mom (4:23 PM): Pastor’s new. Very nice. Single daughter who just moved back.
Mom (4:24 PM): Think she’s about your age
Jack dropped his head against the steering wheel. The horn gave a brief, sad honk that echoed across the parking lot. The leather of the wheel was cracked under his forehead, and it smelled like old coffee and the pine air freshener that had stopped working three months ago.
Single daughter. Of course there was a single daughter. Gloria Hayes had spent the eight years since his father’s death oscillating between overwhelming grief and relentless matchmaking, and Jack had never figured out which one exhausted him more. Or which one was actually about him and which one was about her trying to fill the space Dad had left.
He typed back one-handed while the Subaru shuddered and wheezed: Can’t do it. Lessons to plan.
The response was instant: Already told Pastor David you’d do it. Don’t make me look bad.
“Christ,” Jack muttered. His voice sounded too loud in the quiet car. Through the windshield, the school looked smaller than it had this morning. Smaller than it had when he first started, telling himself this was just temporary.
His fingers hovered over the keyboard, phone screen reflecting in his glasses. He could text back, make an excuse. Claim he had a deadline or a migraine or literally anything else. She would be disappointed but she’d get over it. She always did, because disappointment was apparently the primary currency of their relationship these days.
Instead, he pocketed the phone and pulled out of the parking lot. The Subaru’s heater took three miles to kick in. it always did, no matter how much Bennett’s charged him to fix it, and by then he was already passing The Hideout. The dive bar where Staticwerks used to play every other Saturday. The neon sign was dark this early, the red and blue tubes cold and lifeless, but Jack could still see the setlist from their last show taped to the window. Years of sun had faded it nearly to nothing, but it was still there. Someone had written “Best show ever!” across the bottom in Sharpie that had bled into illegibility.
Marcus had asked about getting the band back together last month. Not here, not at school. They’d run into each other at the grocery store, of all places, both looking for the same brand of beer. Marcus with his shopping cart full of goldfish crackers and juice boxes, the evidence of his twin daughters everywhere. They’d talked for maybe five minutes in the produce aisle, and Marcus had mentioned maybe doing a reunion show. Nothing serious. Just for fun.
Jack had laughed it off. Said something about how he didn’t have time, how teaching kept him busy. Marcus had nodded, understanding or pretending to, and they’d gone their separate ways. Jack had forgotten about it until Maya’s observation today, her voice echoing in his head.
Those guitars were in the exact same spots.
There’s dust on them.
At the next red light, his phone buzzed a fourth time.
Mom (4:31 PM): Bring the song sheets from last year. In the church office somewhere.
Mom (4:32 PM): Also you need a haircut.
Jack looked at himself in the rearview mirror. His dark hair was getting long, past the point where it looked intentional and into the territory where it just looked like he’d forgotten he had hair. His glasses were smudged. They were always smudged, and the tattoo on his neck peeked out near his jaw. Black ink against pale November skin. The edge of a design that continued down his chest and across both arms, a map of who he used to be drawn in permanent ink.
Behind him, someone honked. The light had turned green.
He drove home through Riverside’s downtown, past the converted lofts where rent was climbing a hundred dollars a year like clockwork, past the coffee shop that used to be a hardware store, past the triple-deckers where he’d grown up and where families like Maya’s still lived, stacked on top of each other like hope in architectural form. The city was changing, had been changing for years, but slowly enough that you could pretend it wasn’t happening if you didn’t look too close. Like watching yourself age in a mirror you saw every day.
His apartment was on the third floor of a building that was trying to be historic but mostly just leaked when it rained. Jack took the stairs two at a time, his messenger bag banging against his hip with each step, and let himself into the studio that cost too much but had good light. The door stuck like it always did, swollen from humidity and age.
The guitars were the first thing he saw. Not the ones at school, these were his. His real ones. A Gibson Les Paul he’d bought the week Staticwerks signed their first venue contract, back when signing anything felt like making it. A Gretsch hollow-body that had belonged to his father, the one instrument Dad had kept when he’d sold everything else to pay for Jack’s tuition. Three others lined up against the exposed brick wall, each one representing a different version of who he’d thought he might become.
The apartment smelled like old wood and newer paint, like the landlord’s halfhearted attempt at gentrification. Jack dropped his bag on the couch, a secondhand sectional that had seen better decades, and stood in the center of the room. The guitars looked back at him, silent and waiting and somehow accusatory.
When do you play them?
He’d told Maya he played. But standing there, surrounded by instruments that had cost more than his car, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d picked one up for more than five minutes. Couldn’t remember the last time he’d written something, recorded something, created something that mattered. The calluses on his fingers were fading. Becoming soft.
His phone buzzed again. He pulled it out, expecting another text from Gloria about haircuts or church or why wasn’t he married yet.
It was Marcus.
Marcus (4:45 PM): Emma found an old Staticwerks poster in the garage. The one from that show at The Winding Tap. Remember that night?
Marcus (4:46 PM): Anyway, standing offer if you ever want to play again. No pressure.
Jack read the texts twice, then set his phone face-down on the kitchen counter that separated the living area from the kitchenette. He opened the fridge, beer, leftover pad thai in a container that was probably older than it should be, condiments of similarly questionable age, and grabbed a beer without looking at the label. The bottle was cold and wet with condensation. He twisted the cap off, and it clattered onto the counter with a tinny sound.
The first sip tasted like bitter hops and resignation. Like every other beer he’d drunk alone in this apartment, telling himself tomorrow he’d figure out what came next.
The Gibson’s case showed its age when he opened it, and his fingers moved across the familiar surface. The guitar inside was perfect, maintained by habit more than intention. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually taken it out to play.
Jack closed the case and drank his beer standing up, looking out the window at Riverside’s skyline, such as it was. The old mill towers with their broken windows catching the last of the afternoon light. The church steeple where he’d apparently been volunteered for caroling duty. The new lofts going up near the river, construction cranes like skeletal fingers reaching into the gray sky. Everything changing. Everything staying the same. Everything managing to be both at once.
His phone buzzed one more time.
Mom (5:02 PM): See you Sunday. Don’t be late. ♥️
Jack finished his beer, the last sip flat and warm on his tongue, and tossed the bottle in the recycling bin under the sink. It landed with a hollow clink against the other empties he kept meaning to take out. He sat down at his tiny kitchen table, more of a breakfast bar, really, and opened his laptop. The screen was smudged, the keyboard sticky from god knows what.
Around him, the guitars waited. They were good at waiting. They’d had seven years of practice.
Outside, November dark came early and fast, swallowing the city in increments. Streetlights clicked on. Somewhere in Riverside, a church caroling group was starting up. Somewhere, a pastor’s daughter, single, about his age, newly moved back, was probably getting her own version of this conversation. Her own mother probably volunteering her for things. Her own version of expectations and disappointment and the weight of other people’s hopes.
Jack almost felt sorry for her.
He pulled up his email and found Maya Torres’s name in his student roster. Her early admission deadline was in two weeks. Berklee wanted a teacher recommendation. A letter from someone who believed in her. Someone who hadn’t given up.
The cursor blinked in the empty text field. White and accusatory.
When do you play them?
There’s dust on them.
Jack closed the laptop without typing anything. In the darkening apartment, the guitars stayed exactly where they were, casting long shadows across the floor. Outside, the first snow of the season started to fall, and somewhere in the city, church bells rang the hour.
He didn’t pick up a guitar. He didn’t write the recommendation. He didn’t text Marcus back.
He just sat there in the dark, listening to the heating system groan and the sound of his own breathing, and wondered when exactly he’d become someone who told seventeen-year-olds to be realistic.
