Back to Where We Started From (Miracle)

Chapter Ten

Sure enough, Julia was unable to keep her dry toast breakfast down. She lied across two bus seats, a trash bag in front of her and a blanket thrown over her. She was in the front row, with no one behind or across from her.

"So, let me ask you something," Rizzo said to Jack as they sat beside each other a few rows back from Julie. Jack turned away from the window, looking to his friend.

"You've hated Mac since 76, you started a fight with him the first day of practice, and now you two are all buddy-buddy."

"That's not a question," Jack pointed out. "And you heard Herb that day at practice. We're a team. I'm hopefully not going anywhere and neither is Herb's golden boy, so we might as well get along."

"My question is, does any of this have to do with Julie?"

Jack gave Rizzo a funny look.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, are you being friendly with Mac because you wanna be friends with Jules?"

Jack rolled his eyes, shaking his head at Rizzo.

"You're being ridiculous. Mac and I can be friends. Plus, have you met Julie? I think she'd have no problem being my friend even if Mac didn't like it."

"Yeah, but she values his opinion so maybe you want him to like you so he says good things about you," Rizzo argued.

"You're taking this way out of proportion. Jules and I are friends. Mac and I are friends. We're all just friends," Jack stated, starting to get annoyed with his friend. He meant what he said. He liked Julie, but Jack O'Callahan was never the type to pretend to like someone he didn't, not even for her. Somewhere along the line, he had realized that Rob really wasn't that bad. He didn't think the two of them would ever be the best of friends, but he didn't mind Robbie. 

"Relax, OC, I was just making an observation," Rizzo defended himself. "Jules is cool, and you two seem to be hitting it off."

Rizzo and Jack had been friends since college, and Rizzo had seen Jack flirt with more girls than he could count. Jack has certainly been known as a ladies' man around Boston University. Rizzo could tell Jack and Jules were genuinely friends. Jack liked to make fun of her and joke around with her, which was different than his usual quick and charming flirting. He seemed to actually care about his friendship with Julie.

"Yeah, she told me a lot of stuff about her family and LA and stuff. She's a lot different than I expected her to be."

"What, you mean back when you had a crush on her?" Rizzo couldn't help but tease him. After they had gone to see Aerosmith in 76 with a group of their friends, Jack couldn't stop talking about her for a week. Jack's lips were pressed into a thin line as he glared at his friend.

"Back when I had a crush on her, she was Julia Brooks, this big rock star," Jack explained, before shrugging, his face softening a bit. "Now, she's just Jules."

"Ya know, she probably appreciates that. I'm sure she's dealt with her fair share of people only wanting to be her friend because of her fame."

Before Jack could respond, they heard Julie throwing up again. Although, there wasn't much left in her so it was more like painful dry heaving. Jack looked around the seat to where she was curled up and saw Herb and Doc checking on her. Jack checked his watch. The good news was, they were probably pretty close to the hotel. The bad news was, she had been sick for nearly 24 hours, and Doc had decided if it exceeded 24 hours, Julie was heading to a hospital. When he got on the bus earlier that day, Rob had informed his teammates that they were able to keep her fever from getting above 101, but they couldn't get it to go down. Herb seemed incredibly stressed out. He had been nice to bring Julie along (Of course there was always the constant fatherly instinct over her, and he didn't entirely trust Patti to be able to keep her out of trouble. Especially with the boys gone.). But now with her being sick in a foreign country, he felt bad. He wasn't able to fully take care of her, and he certainly wasn't putting her on a plane alone to go home, plus he still had the team to worry about.