We’re free to be our entire selves again.
It was what we all needed to hear. I don’t think any of us haven’t thought about the last show at least once today. The energy here, though? Fucking hell.
The energy is a one-eighty.
I can’t wait to get on that stage. I’m restless, thirty seconds from getting out of this chair and jumping up and down. Each time I tap the drumstick on the countertop, I see the drums in front of me. I hear the strikes, see the crowd bouncing along…
All to the heartbeat we’re creating.
Concerts aren’t just a sanctuary. They’re also an emergency room. We all arrive on the verge of the flatline, in need of care that only the music can give us. This band? We’re just the doctors. Our fans are the blood. And the music?Fuck.
The goddamn music…
The music is the scalpel, the stitches, and the aftercare all at once. For two hours, we get to heal the broken, and when they leave, they take a piece of us with them.
The dressing room door opens then. My eyes lift in the mirror, immediately finding Mads’ gaze over his mask as he enters. He points to the gap between the door and frame with a smile in his eyes, and I pull my headphones off just in time to hear the last syllable of our name being chanted from the crowd.
“Glorious,” I say, spinning in the chair to face him. “Chills. Every time.” I hold up my arm so he can see the hair standing on them.
Mads crosses the room toward the space where he left his things. “You remember how loud it was at DeathFest?”
I blow out a breath and grin his way. “Hell yeah. Insane.”
“Times that by five,” he tells me.
My head tilts back as I swivel back and forth. “Fuck me,” I say as I hit my sticks together. “That’s wild. Seriously?”
“Fuck yeah.” He changes clothes from his hoodie into his regular checkered button-down over a Young Decay metal font tee.
Stella sticks her head in the door then, smiling brightly when she looks between all of us—Reed meditating on the floor, Zeb crashed out on the couch with his headphones in, towel over his face as he air guitars. When I asked him which podcast he was listening to today, he replied with the name of a cold case show about hikers disappearing in national parks.
I realized later that it was the first podcast I ever heard him mention, the same one he and his mom once discussed before the shows. Peering his way, I wonder if he’s reached out to her this year like he said he was going to, or if the wounds are too fresh still.
Young Decay.
Young Decay.
“What’s up, Stels?” Mads asks her.
“Fifteen,” she answers. “You going out on one more round?”
“Yeah one more for good luck, right?” he replies, flipping his collar out.
She smiles at him before peering my way. “How are you feeling, Bon?”
Young Decay.
Young Decay.
The chant pricks the back of my neck with anticipation.
Headlining show—a fuckingnewheadlining show.
And we’re playing my song.
“Psyched and a little terrified,” I admit.
“Yeah, fuck that, Bed.” Mads smirks at me. “They’ll go crazy for your shit.”
