“That’s okay,” I say softly. “We’ll figure it out when we get there.”
The look he gives me then—half gratitude, half relief, all raw—is one I’ll never forget.
And when he finally gets up to pull on his hoodie, when his bag thumps against his shoulder and he lingers at the door, the room feels too small for everything he left behind.
“Sunday,” he says, voice rough. “If I can get away.”
“Yeah,” I tell him. “Sunday.”
And then he’s gone, footsteps fading down the hall.
I collapse back into the sheets, staring at the ceiling like it has answers. My body hums with the echo of what he said, of what it means. For him. For me. For whatever the hell this is.
He trusted me with his truth. And no matter how much it terrifies him, no matter how much it scares me, too, I know one thing for sure: I want more.
The sports bardown the street is packed shoulder to shoulder, every TV screen blazing with March Madness, and it feels like the whole of LA has crammed into this one place. Jerseys, beer pitchers, pretzels the size of steering wheels. The smell of grease and sweat and hops clings to the air thick enough to taste.
The volume spikes every time the Panthers touch the ball, but my eyes aren’t on the screens overhead so much as the one player they keep cutting to.
Ollie.
He’s a fucking storm out there. Sharp cuts, thunderous drives, the kind of plays that make the commentators trip over their own excitement. His teammates lean on him like a band leans on the bass—he’s their anchor and their fire at once, the pulse that holds the whole thing together. And I can’t look away.
When the buzzer finally sounds, when the announcers are practically foaming at the mouth about Panthers’ captain Oliver Marshall leading them into the next round, the bar erupts like we just won the damn lottery. Beer sloshes out of plastic cups, people slam tables, strangers hug each other like they’ve been best friends for years.
My bandmates are no better. Eli nearly knocks Miles off his stool with a high five. Drew’s grinning since he actually is a fan of the sport. Even Miles cracks something that passes for a smile, and that guy’s usually stoic enough to make statues jealous.
I clap, too, maybe louder than anyone, but my chest is tight with something I don’t let spill onto my face. Because if they win the next one, they’re on to the Sweet Sixteen. And if the schedule gods line up the way I think they might? Ollie will be in the same city as me. Vegas.
But I’m not telling him that. Not yet. Call it superstition, call it nerves—whatever it is, I’m not about to jinx either of us. He doesn’t need that kind of weight. He’s already carrying enough.
Besides, I’ve got my own fire to walk into.
The datefinallycame through this morning—our Vegas showcase. We’d been given a target window before, “sometime next month,” but then luck punched a hole in the calendar. A band slotted for this week had their singer bail—something medical, something sudden—and just like that, a spot opened up.
Five days.
And if I thought we’d been rehearsing like maniacs before, now we’re possessed. Every free second is instruments, lyrics, riffs tightened until our fingers ache and our throats are raw. Every joke from Eli or Drew lands half a second late because we’re running on fumes and adrenaline. Miles just keeps reminding us to breathe, his voice low and calm, the anchor we don’t admit we need.
And then tonight—our first real interview.
It’s notRolling Stoneor anything. Just an indie mag, one of those half-blog, half-zine setups, but still—it’s a spotlight. A chance. One we earned after The Lantern gig, the one that flipped a switch none of us can shut off now.
We crowd into a booth at a café close to the bar we’ve just left behind that smells like burnt espresso and cinnamon, guitars stacked against the wall beside us, coffee cups sweating onto napkins. A recorder sits in the middle of the table, its red light blinking like it’s keeping time.
The interviewer’s young, sharp-eyed, the kind of person who looks like she already knows the answers but wants to see how you’ll spin them. Her notebook is open but mostly ignored. She’s more interested in how we carry ourselves.
“So,” she says, smiling like she’s already got us pinned, “there’s buzz around you guys after The Lantern set. People are saying you’re one of the bands to watch this year. What’s fueling that? What makes your sound different?”
Eli jumps in first. Of course he does. He’s always first, always loud, his whole body buzzing like he’s got electricity in his veins. “We don’t fake it,” he says, leaning forward, hands cutting the air. “We’re not chasing whatever MTV’s pushing this week. We play raw. We play messy. We bleed all over the stage and let the crowd figure out what to do with it.”
Drew leans back, arms crossed, expression lazy but voice sharp. “What he means is—chemistry. We’ve been at this since freshman year. You don’t get the kind of stage presence we have unless you’ve fought and fucked around and figured each other out. It’s not just the music. It’s the way we move together.”
Miles adds, steady as ever, “Trust. That’s what makes it different. Doesn’t matter if it’s a bar gig for thirty bucks or Vegas for three hundred. We trust each other to hit the note, to land the beat, to carry the weight when someone drops it.”
And then her gaze lands on me.
“Your lyrics,” she says. “They’ve been called sharp, intimate, almost too personal. Some say they sound like they’re about someone. Who?”
