“Thanks,” I say. “You pulled a stupid one from space last night. Rude.”
“Lucky,” he lies. I huff. He glances toward the door like there’s a leash tied around his ribs and someone’s tugging. “They wanted to come,” he adds, as if I asked. “I’m supposed to… I don’t know. Be here.”
“You are,” I say before I sand it down. “It’s annoying.” I’m so full of shit and we both know it.
A ghost of a smile runs across his mouth and vanishes like it’s not allowed to stay. He leans his head back against the brick, the tiniest clunk, and stares at the slice of sky framed by the alley like it might give him a playcall. The streetlight runs over the line of his throat when he swallows, over the steady plane of his cheek. He does controlled so well it makes me want to throw something just to see what he’d do.
“That last song,” he says, and his voice dips even lower, like he’s trying not to wake something. “It was different to the first two.”
My chest goes tight. He didn’t ask. He doesn’t have to. The question is in the air like smoke anyway.
“New,” I say carefully. “Sometimes they come out that way. No time to lie.”
He nods slowly, as if he’s filing that in a cabinet he doesn’t want anyone to know exists. He tracks his gaze back to me. “Why’d you sing it tonight?”
“Needed to,” I say, because anything else would be an insult to both of us.
He stares at me like I’m a language he’s only ever read on street signs. A car glides by and a fan of light sweeps the alley; for a second, we’re two silhouettes pressed flat, and then the world has depth again. He looks like he might say something else and then chooses not to, which is maybe the most honest thing he could do.
“Your friends,” I say, because I’m not made of ice, “they were… cool.”
He huffs a small laugh through his nose. “They’re idiots. But good ones.”
“They said you’re straight,” I add, soft as I can. Not a jab, just a reported weather condition. “Like a… footnote.”
His shoulders go still. It’s not anger. It’s a brace. “People say a lot of things,” he replies, and there’s a flicker of something that might be hurt if I were cruel enough to pry. I’m not. Not tonight.
“Not my business,” I say, meaning it, and for once my mouth doesn’t run past my sense. “I’m glad you came.”
He meets my eyes for the first time without flinching. Whatever he’s made of, it’s not brittle. It’s dense. Heavy. He carries it like he’s used to the weight. “I don’t really do bars,” he says, which I already knew.
“Habit’s a hell of a drug,” I answer. “Sometimes you need a loud room that isn’t about you. Where you can be bad at something and no one will put it in a notebook.”
He almost smiles again. Then the door opens behind him, and someone yells his name into the night, friendly and too much: “Marshall! You ghosting? It’s Jason’s birthday, man!”
He tightens, muscles turning rigid. He looks at the flyer corner peeking from my jacket pocket. I pull it free and hold it out before I can second-guess.
“Longer set in two weeks,” I say. “If you want noise that’s yours for a minute. No jerseys. No speeches. Cheap beer. Terrible lights. The whole sin.”
He looks at the paper. Then he takes it carefully, but his fingers still brush mine. It’s heat in a small place, and I hate that my body writes songs without permission. He slips the flyer into his jacket pocket.
“I don’t promise,” he says. It’s new, that phrasing. He’s a captain; promises are his bones.
“I’m not asking,” I say. “I’m just telling you where the door is.”
There it is: the quick, reckless, real smile I don’t think he ever puts on camera. It lifts the corner of his mouth and turns his eyes warm for a second, and it feels like I just saw a shooting star—which I would mock if anyone else said it to me.
“That last song,” he says again, almost to himself this time, as if the words are pressing his ribs from the inside. “I like it.”
“Yeah,” I say, trying not to swallow hard. “Me too.”
Inside, the friendly guys from the café cheer something indecipherable. The door belches heat and bass again, and a wind of bar air wraps around us both. He glances back, then to me. The look readsI should goandI want to stayandI don’t know what to do with that, which is a language I speak fluently.
“Good set,” he says, softer than anything else he’s said. He adjusts the flyer in his pocket like he wants to make sure it won’t escape. “Good night, Rafe.”
My name in his mouth is dangerous. It fits there too well. “Night, Ollie.”
He steps back once, turns, and disappears into the warmth. The door swings shut, muffling the room. I stare at the place where he was like an idiot until the bass re-synchronizes with my pulse.
