KENNY:Sometimes it’s actually more painful to be a small fish in a big pond. To be close, but never there.
HANNAH:But our day will come. We’re going to break out—I can feel it in my bones. All we have to do is keep working our asses off. The trick is never quitting. That’s what separates the people who make it from the ones who don’t.
GINNY:What Kenny said about fire in the belly? That’s Hannah. She’s always had superhuman levels of ambition. She’s been writing songs since she was twelve.
KENNY:If anyone can will us to success, it’s her.
INTERVIEWER:You sound kind of intimidating, Hannah.
HANNAH:Women with ambition are intimidating to a lot of men.
INTERVIEWER:Ha. Well, what are your dreams for the Future Saints?
HANNAH:Easy. I want to be the best fucking rock band in the world.
INTERVIEWER:So you’re not asking for much.
HANNAH:Oh, I’m asking for everything.
Chapter 4
Theo
Saturday, April 13, 2024
I can’t believe she quit.”
“I don’t understand why it’s a big deal.” On-screen, Bryan settles into his armchair. “Doesn’t that give you a Get Out of Jail Free card? Now you don’t have to work with this nightmare band everyone was telling you was the second coming of Mötley Crüe. You went out there, you introduced yourself, the band broke up, and now you’re off the hook. You were going to cut them from the label anyway. They just did it for you. Maybe you can finally take a vacation.”
I pace the hotel room. “Always the vacation talk with you.”
“Yeah, well, you’re the only person I know who takes less time off than I do.”
I meet Bryan’s gaze through the screen. His features are arranged in the same gently admonishing look he’s been giving me for ten years. The vacation thing probably says something dire about me, given that my best friend from college is an investment banker who frequently works eighty-hour weeks. Using the finance degree we both earned at Dartmouth for its intended purpose, my mother would point out.
“Is it the promotion you’re worried about?” Bryan’s high-rise apartment is dimly lit, and through the windows behind him, the skyscrapers of New York City glitter in the dark. Luckily for me, Bryan had been pulling another late night when I texted that I needed to vent. “Do you really think Roger will count this as a failure just because you didn’t get an album out of them? He’ll just sue, right? Manifest’s legal team eats artists like them for dinner.”
I stop pacing. Strangely, I’d barely thought about how Hannah quitting would affect my promotion. And before meeting the Saints, my promotion was all I’d thought about for the last year. According to Roger, all I needed to do was clinch this next assignment: get the Saints to produce a record that would make Manifest money, and then we could ditch them with no regrets. It would be the final notch in my belt, securing my promotion to president of artist relations, and making me the youngest department president in Manifest’s history— and Roger’s right-hand man. That last part was implicit. Ever since I started at Manifest, I’d been imagining how it would feel for Roger to shake my hand and tell me he was proud of me. I’d rehearsed the moment in my imagination so many times that sometimes it felt more like a memory than a dream.
“It’s not about the promotion,” I insist. “It’s weird, but you know how I deep-dive for every assignment? I’ve read literally everything about this band, watched all their videos, listened to their albums, and I feel like I know these people. The last thing Hannah Cortland would do is quit. This is a woman who’s been working her entire life to make it. She has big goals. I don’t know, man, I feel like something’s wrong and I have to fix it.”
“Mm-hmm.” Bryan kicks one leg over the other and arches a brow. “I know what this is really about. And it’s more than just not wanting to mess up your streak as ‘the Fixer.’”
I wince. It’s not that I don’t appreciate having a reputation at Manifest. It’s what got Roger’s attention in the first place.But “the Fixer” makes me sound like a hitman for the mob. It’s almost as bad as “the Grim Reaper.”
Bryan mistakes my wince for a protest and holds up a hand. “Look, we’ve talked about this. You have a savior complex. Anyone hurting, you see them and boom”—he snaps his fingers—“thirteen again.”
“Come on—”
“Nah, man, I’m serious. I say this out of love. It’s what makes you good at your job. But you have to draw a line somewhere.”
“I get it.” It’s what I always say whenever this topic comes up. Unfortunately, my lack of boundaries is the one subject that turns my jock-and-stocks best friend into a pseudotherapist. “And, to be honest, the Saints already hate me. Even if they were still together, it wouldn’t be smooth sailing.”
“See? Perfect. They hate you. You no longer need anything from them. Wham, bam, vacation, ma’am. I hear Aruba’s nice this time of year.”
I don’t know how to explain what’s keeping me rooted in California instead of jumping on the next flight home to New York. Half my job comes down to intuition. “I feel a connection to them . . . ” Truthfully, I don’t know how to explain it other than a gut feeling. “Maybe I was meant to be here—”
A sharp knock sounds at my door.
