I sing the verse low to see if the words hold up without tricks.
“I’ve loved boys, I’ve loved girls…” I let the phrase sit. No coyness, no wink. Just truth. “I never planned for you to happen…” My throat goes tight for a second, and I push through it. I hit the end of the verse and look at their faces.
Eli’s grin is gone. He’s listening like a drummer and a friend. Drew’s mouth is a thin line, that concentration face he getswhen he’s pretending not to feel something. Miles nods once, the muscle in his jaw jumping.
“Again,” Miles says.
We run it twice without stopping. The second time I find a better vowel oncrimson, less sharp, more open. I adjust the melody oncrossed my lineso the note lifts at the end instead of dying on the floor. The chorus arrives with more weight, the lyric clicking into place like a door finding its frame.
By the third pass, I know this isn’t a sketch. It’s a song. We don’t have a title yet, but that will come.
We finish and let the last chord fade. The room is quiet in that particular way that happens when sound drains out and leaves a different kind of noise behind. Eli clears his throat and then ruins the mood like he always does when he feels too much.
“So,” he says, sticks ticking against each other, “you want to talk about varsity boy?”
“No,” I say.
“Is he hot, though?”
I hate that I laugh. “Unfortunately.”
“Basketball?”
“Yep.”
“Tall?”
“Stupidly.”
“Jerk?”
“No.” I surprise myself with the answer. “Quiet. Kind of serious.”
Eli leans back. “You’re not into the chest-thumping types anyway.”
“I’m not into the types who scream their name at parties,” I say. “They’re loud in all the wrong ways.”
Drew tucks his hair behind his ear. “What is this, then? You’ve seen campus jocks before. You’re not exactly the blushing kind.”
I glance at the notebook and then away. “I don’t blush.”
“True,” Eli says. “You smirk. So what’s special?”
“I don’t know,” I say, and the honesty feels like swallowing a battery. “He looked right at me. And then he went bright red like… like he wasn’t expecting to get caught being human.”
Drew’s eyebrows tick up. “That’s weirdly specific.”
“Shut up.”
He holds up a hand in peace. “I’m not making fun. I’m observing. It’s new watching you write about an actual person you saw twelve minutes ago. Usually you need to brood for at least three days and then ask us to pretend to be impressed by your process.”
Miles’s mouth moves just enough to count as a smile. “It’s best when you don’t pretend.”
Eli taps the snare head with his fingertip. “So you’re adding him to the roster.”
“There’s no roster,” I say.
Eli squints. “There’s definitely a roster.”
