Miles tilts his head. “You mean… quit school?”
“Yeah.” I meet each of their eyes, one by one. “If we get the offer, if someone gives us a real chance, I’m not walking away from it. We’ve worked too damn hard.”
Drew whistles low. “You’re really ready to throw that cap and gown away, huh?”
“I never cared about the gown,” I admit. “Just the music. The rest was a way to keep people off my back. But this—what we’ve built—this feels real.”
Eli grins. “Good. ’Cause I’ve been looking for an excuse to drop out since freshman orientation.”
Miles chuckles. “You’d need to actuallyattendclass to drop out, man.”
“Details,” Eli says. “Besides, my mom already assumes I’m a degenerate.”
Drew drops into the nearest chair, rubbing his jaw. “My dad’s gonna lose it if I quit. He’s still got the same speech memorized from when I bailed on pre-med.”
“Tell him it’s a different kind of anatomy,” Eli says. “You’re studying sound waves and heartbreak.”
We all laugh, the sound echoing off the walls—loud, familiar, a little reckless. But under it, there’s something steadier. A hum of belief.
Miles plucks a low note and lets it vibrate through the air. “We’re really doing this, huh?”
“Yeah,” I say again, softer this time. “We are.”
He nods once, thoughtful. “Then we’d better be ready to burn everything else down if we have to.”
Eli raises his can. “To the burn.”
Drew clinks his water bottle against it. “To the chaos.”
I lift my bass neck, tapping it lightly against the Red Bull can. “To the band.”
Miles smiles. “To the moment.”
We drink to it—whatever “it” is. The risk. The hunger. The hope.
For a few minutes, no one talks. We just play quietly. Nothing formal—no setlist, no structure. Drew catches a riff, Miles finds the pulse, Eli slides in with a rhythm so tight it makes the air thrum. I follow, instinct leading the way. It’s messy, improvised, perfect. The kind of sound that feels alive enough to bite.
When it ends, the silence after feels holy.
“That,” Eli says, still breathless, “that’s what they’re gonna hear tonight.”
“Damn right,” I say.
Miles leans back, rubbing a hand over his face. “Feels weird, you know? Like this might be the last time we’re justus.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“I mean—what happens if it works? If a label is interested and says yes, if we tour, if we stop being a college band and start being something else? Everything changes.”
I think about it for a second—really think about it. The long nights in shitty apartments, the times we almost quit, the near misses, the tiny victories that kept us breathing.
“Then we hold on to this,” I say finally. “The music, the friendship, the way it feels right now. We carry that with us. Everything else is noise.”
Eli points at me with his drumstick. “You really should be the one giving the interviews.”
“Iamthe one giving the interviews.”
“Yeah, well, now I see why the reporters love you. You talk like a Hallmark card with a leather jacket.”
