The alley is suddenly only me and the lamplight and the far siren of a city that refuses to sleep. I think about lighting another cigarette but don’t. I pull the pen from my pocket instead, bend my notebook over my thigh, and write with fingers that still tremble like I sprinted.
You said you don’t promise; I said come breathe,
You’re built out of duty and I’m built out of need.
You looked up and the noise turned thin?—
If you walk through the door, I’ll let you in.
The letters lean like I’m on a moving train. I cap the pen, tuck the book away, and breathe in the thin citrus night. The door opens; it’s not him. It’s the mouthy café teammate, who pauses when he sees me and lifts his hands in a no-big-deal peace sign.
“Yo,” he says, amiable, voice low so it doesn’t travel. “You guys were solid.”
“Appreciate it,” I say, and mean it.
He nods at me. “Cap’s… he’s focused. Season and all that. He’s straight too.” He says it like a friendly guardrail, not a warning. “Just… don’t make it weird for him.”
“I’m allergic to normal,” I say. “But I can avoid weird.”For him.
He snorts. “You and me both, man.” He hitches a thumb back at the door. “Thanks for the rec. Better than a frat. We’re gonna bounce before somebody tries to crowd-surf and breaks their neck.”
“Good call,” I say.
He starts back in, then glances over his shoulder.
“He likes music,” he adds, a little conspiratorial. “Like, actually listens. Don’t know what that means. Just… you know.”
“I know,” I say, and he grins and vanishes into the heat.
I push off the wall and head back inside because I should, because the band is mine and we’ve still got cables to coil. The sound guy pretends he didn’t like our set by finding new things to complain about, which is how he saysgood job. Drew appears with water he will later insist was tequila and wiggles his eyebrows until I tell him to fuck off. Eli announces he talked the bartender into one free gin and tonic, which is a lie, and Miles plays a three-note melody under all the noise that makes me want to write a bridge immediately.
We break down gear, laugh too loud, invent stupid in-jokes that will last a week. My body starts to come down from the cliff, the buzzy jitter settling into a warm ache that means I did something that mattered to me and survived it. Through the smear on the window, I can’t see anything but neon and flyers and the reflection of my own grin, which I don’t recognize but don’t hate.
On the walk home, the city does its after-hours trick—sirens a few blocks away; palm fronds rattling like bones; someone practicing trumpet out a dorm window, scales climbing rung by rung. The air is cool enough to feel new in my lungs. The wordmaybeweighs like a next song.
He said good night like he meant it. He said the song was different like it surprised him. He took the flyer without promise, and that’s better than a promise right now. I’m not stupid; I heardstraight. I heard it from mouths that like him. I saw the leash tug. I also saw the split second where he didn’t look away.
People are contradictions. Songs happen in the cracks.
Tomorrow will be whatever it is. Tonight is enough to write on. I have four lines I didn’t have before, a chorus I believe in, and a reason to put my cigarettes in the trash.
I let the strap of my bass dig into my shoulder and walk faster because I want to get home, I want to write, I want to sleep, I want to wake up already wanting the next loud room. And beneath all of that, steady as a bassline I can play blind, I want him to walk through a door that isn’t his, into a place where no one tells him who to be, just for one song.
That’s the want. I can live on it awhile.
CHAPTER
FIVE
Thursday afternoonson campus are a joke. No one wants to be in class, no one wants to be at practice, and no one wants to admit they’ve already checked out for the weekend. Students move like zombies—half from exhaustion, half from caffeine that’s keeping them vertical against their will. The sun throws long shadows across the quad, the kind of gold light photographers would kill for, but most people are too buried in textbooks or phones to notice.
I notice. Not the light—him.
Ollie Marshall.
He comes out of the student center like he owns the place, which, in some ways, he does. He’s the kind of guy whose face is plastered on posters in the rec hall, captain of the team the “cool” people pretend they don’t care about until March rolls around. Tall, broad, built like the universe sculpted him for layups and leadership. His walk is steady, controlled, every stride deliberate. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he’d rehearsed it.
No teammates surround him today. No posse. Just Ollie, alone, which makes him stand out even more.
