He finished on a held note that bled into a beat of quiet. Then palms, not many but warm, gathered him back from wherever he’d just gone.
The bartender handed him water. “On the house.”
Milo smiled. “Cheers.” He did his best to look grateful.
He packed the set list first, then the guitar went next, its strings muted with a palm so they didn’t ring as he moved.
A woman with glitter still clinging to her cheeks touched his sleeve. “Your voice hurts,” she said, her brow furrowed as if she was searching for the right words. “In a good way, though.”
Milo huffed a laugh that wasn’t unkind. “That’s all I’ve got,” he said, and meant it. “Thanks for listening.”
He waited until the room turned its attention back to pints, pop music leaking from the speakers, and the slow drag of Saturday night before he slipped off the stage and into the tiny back room that smelled faintly of stale beer and salt water. Milo set his guitar down and rubbed the pads of his fingers, raw from the strings. His phone buzzed in his pocket.
A DM from James, an old uni friend he hadn’t spoken to in months. The message was just a screenshot: a flyer, grainy but bold.
HOT LEATHER GUYS
Ten voices. One filthy harmony.
James’s caption underneath:This screams you. Leather a cappella. All gay. Do it.
Milo snorted, shaking his head. “Yeah, right.” He wasn’t exactly group material. He’d tried harmony before, tried trust before, too.
Neither had ended well.
But his thumb lingered on the flyer, tracing the wordsall gay. Andleather. The honesty of it hit too close, as if someonehad taken what he hid best and plastered it in neon letters for all the world to see.
He opened his voice memo app, hummed a rough line that was half melody, half ache, then layered it with a harmony that curled like smoke. He played it back, listening to the way his voice folded against itself.
The flyer glared up from the screen, demanding his attention. Milo’s chest tightened.
Jake would laugh his head off if he saw this.
The thought was sharp as glass, and as quickly as it rose in his mind, he shoved it down. He closed his eyes, exhaled through his nose, and without giving himself time to think, tapped over to Trainline.
A ticket to London.
The confirmation email chimed a second later. He stared at it, his heart thumping, and whispered to the empty room.
“Guess I’m doing it.”
It was time to get out of here.
Outside, the sea smell muscled its way up the street, briny and insistent. He took it in, his shoulders loosening a notch. The guitar case was heavy in his hand.
Or maybe that’s just the evening.
On the walk back to his bedsit, he tried not to hum, but it wouldn’t be contained. Just a line, enough to keep the ghosts from getting clever. When they did, they always found the lake house in his head, the raised voices, the door slamming like a drum.
“Your voice hurts in a good way,” he repeated under his breath, as if the words were a spell that might soften the edges.
At the corner, a night bus sighed past. Someone inside was laughing too loudly. Milo stood in the wash of its headlights and counted to eight the way he’d been taught, letting his breath catch up with him.
One more gig. One more ghost. He kept moving.
The train rattled north, the countryside smearing into greens and greys against the glass. Milo sat with his guitar case wedged against his knee, his fingers drumming the latches in a restless rhythm. A low hum worked its way out of his chest, snatches of harmony to keep him steady, keep him anchored.
But ghosts never needed permission.
