“Bass down,” the sound guy drones, poking a finger at my amp like he’s scolding a raccoon.
I roll the knob back a hair, enough to look obedient. “How’s that?”
“Less wrong,” he says. “Guitar off-axis. Drums: Behave or be arrested.”
“No promises,” Eli says brightly.
I tell myself I’m not scanning the doorway. I absolutely am. It’s stupid—this is our night, our three songs, our small square of noise—but my eyes keep snagging on tall silhouettes like gravity has a type. It shouldn’t matter. It matters anyway, and I hate that it does as much as I love that it does, which makes me a cliché and a liar all at once.
“You’re vibrating,” Drew says out of the side of his mouth, nudging a cable with his toe. “If you start ‘Hope He Shows Up’ in B minor, I’m resigning.”
“It would be in C minor,” I say. “And it would chart.”
He snorts, then glances toward the door at the same moment I do. A gust of cold rides in with a cluster of big guys in letterman jackets, shouldering through with that careless, friendly force everyone parts for without admitting they did. My chest jerks once before my brain catches up. Not him. My stomach drops alittle, and I pretend it’s because the PA whined, not because I’m pathetic.
We line check. The folk duo ahead of us thanks us anyway like we were great, and I don’t have the heart to tell them time travel isn’t real. The bartender yells something about three-dollar domestics into the mic, and feedback screams at him. Panthers hoodies edge closer to the front. A pair of very large students plant themselves near the bar and block the sightline for three rows; a ripple of complaint breaks against them and dissolves. The sound guy stares at me over his readers like I’ve personally offended him by existing.
“Steel Saints,” he groans into the talkback, and somehow the room hushes, which is maybe magic or maybe mutual exhaustion. “Make it worth it.”
Eli clicks us in. One-two-three-four. The floor drops out in the best way.
We open with the old one, the one that lives behind my sternum and knows where the bones bend. Eli hits his snare; Drew’s line slides in with that deceptive simplicity he practices for hours; Miles stitches light on top where there wasn’t any. I step to the mic, adjust the pick where it sits on my index finger, and let my throat do the thing it does best—open raw, no apology. I don’t sing pretty. I sing sharp. People don’t lean into pretty; they bleed for sharp.
The crowd is multiple faces and none. I clock the guy who learned our chorus last month and yells it back, off-key and perfect. I clock a couple on the pinball machine pretending no one can see them. I clock the team jackets near the bar, big backs, loud talk, and then?—
He’s here.He’s here.
He’s not in a jacket; he’s in a plain long-sleeve. Tall without trying, shoulders squared because he doesn’t know how not to, posture like a grandmother haunts him with a ruler. Histeammates—some of them the same guys I flyered at the café—are with him: friendly, loud, elbowing one another with the easy rhythm of men who sweat together daily. One of those guys spots me behind the bass, does a small double take, and grins with a little two-finger salute that saysyeah,we came.
I nearly swallow a consonant. Miles hears me wobble and buttresses the phrase with an extra half bend, a little shoulder check that keeps me upright. We finish the first song on a wave that expands the room. Cheers slap the ceiling, slide along the ductwork, rain down warm and cheap. I breathe in the smell of fryer oil and think it might be my new favorite scent.
“Hey,” I tell the mic, because talking is scarier than singing, but sometimes you feed it anyway. “We’re Steel Saints. We’re broke. Tip your bartenders; they pretend to like us.”
It gets a laugh. It always does. The bartender flips me off with a smile.
The second song jumps in before the room can remember it was mid-conversation. It’s faster, dirtier, the kind that makes strangers find the same beat and call it a pact. I drop my center of gravity and lean toward the edge where the stage surrenders to the floor. Glitter-liner girl screams, “I love you,” even though she probably says it to her pizza too. I let it ride past without catching, because if I catch everything, I drown. There’s only one thing in here I’m trying to catch, and I can’t do it with my hands.
He’s closer. Ollie either drifted or the room shifted around him; I can’t track which. He’s with three of the guys from the café—the friendly ones—which confirms the small thrill I’ve been nursing since I slid that flyer under a cardboard sleeve. The tallest one wears a cap low and holds his phone up at points, not obnoxious, just documenting like it’ll be funny later to show the captain he went to a band thing and didn’t die. The one without the cap—the mouthy one—leans toward the third and shouts something I can’t fully hear over the drum wash. It’s thebar, though; voices carry in stupid ways. I catch “Marshall” and “saints” and a good-natured “dude can’t even spell party,” and then they’re cracking up about something else. It isn’t cruel. If anything, it’s fond. He’s the butt of the joke and the heart of it at the same time. He takes it with that polite half smile, but his eyes don’t leave the stage.
Eli air-smashes a crash at the downbeat, and I launch into the hook like I’m trying to make the neon beer sign combust. The bar gives it back. That’s what I’m addicted to: the exchange. You throw a piece of yourself, the room throws something bigger, and for four minutes you both forget you owe the world money and apologies.
I could stop at two and call it a win. We don’t. Some nights aren’t for playing safe.
Miles turns his head just enough that I catch his raised brow:You sure?He knows what’s next. I nod, and my throat goes dry the exact instant Drew sets his hands. Eli rolls one stick between his fingers and breathes like he’s about to sprint.
We don’t announce a damn thing. The riff crawls out low and new, mean and careful, the way a cat watches the door before it bolts. It tastes like copper at the back of my tongue. The room tilts toward it without recognizing it. Bars are smarter than people—they feel when something matters.
I step into the line and let the words do what they came here to do.
“You looked up and I forgot the score,
A thousand voices, I only heard yours.
Armor fitted in a hallway light,
Silent weight in the middle of the night.”
It lands like I wrote it into the air. My voice catches once onarmor, because I wrote that line too close to bone and my body knows it; the crack says more than clean would. A woman at the bar goes still with her glass midair. A couple in the corner stopslaughing. The song is slower, heavier, stripped—no glamour, just the muscle that makes truth stand upright.
