Marco hears me anyway. “Don’t say it like you’re mad,” he calls from two lockers down. “This is what you wanted.”
I flip him off without looking. Because he’s right. And I hate that he’s right. The thing is—my rise still makes sense to my brain. It’s incremental. It has steps. It has patterns. It’s the League in a nutshell: earn an inch, hold it, earn another.
Rafe’s rise doesn’t do steps. It doesn’t creep. It fucking sprints.
Steel Saints goes from doing well towhat the hell is happeningin about five minutes flat. One week they’re thrilled to sell out a few venues, the next they’re adding dates so fast it makes my head spin trying to keep track. It’s like someone cracked open a dam and the whole thing just… rushes.
I keep getting alerts—new show announced, second show added, third show added. Cities stack up on his calendar like bad Tetris. Nothing fits. Everything gets shoved in anyway.
Rafe sends me screenshots sometimes, half proud, half panicked.
Rafe: Look at this routing!
Rafe: Who decided this? The fuck?
Rafe: I’m going to die in Ohio.
Me: You’re not allowed to die in Ohio.
Rafe: Also, Eli made us do “celebration shots,” and now I’m vibrating.
Rafe: If I send you a voice note and it’s nonsense, no it isn’t
He reacts with a string of laughing emojis, then disappears for six hours because he’s probably being pulled into another interview, another photoshoot, another meet-and-greet in some fluorescent hallway.
I watch it happen through my phone like everyone else—like I’m a fan with better access.
Clips sent at stupid hours that I open under my hotel sheets with my brightness turned all the way down so I don’t wake up angry. Short shaky videos from the side of the stage. Backstage selfies where his face is flushed and sweaty and lit wrong, like he’s taken them mid-run because he can’t stop moving long enough to breathe.
Voice notes that are half laughter, half disbelief.
“Babe,” he says, voice coming in crackly over the noise, “I swear to God—they were screaming the words back at us. Not just one song. Every fucking song on the damn album.”
I hear the clink of glass before I hear his laugh again. Someone in the background whoops. Someone else shouts his name like they’re calling him toward the fun. He sounds like the night is swallowing him whole, and he’s letting it. Then he turns the phone so I can hear it. The crowd. It hits me so hard I have to sit up.
Thousands of voices, loud and raw, singing something that used to be just Rafe in our apartment with a guitar on his knee. That used to be him messing up lyrics and laughing at himself and looking at me like I was the only person worth performing for.
Now it’s—this. Big enough to swallow him whole.
My chest aches in a way I don’t have a word for. Pride, obviously. Pride so sharp it makes my throat sting. But also something else. Something meaner. Something like…mine, even though I know that’s not fair.
The last note in the recording warps as he moves, and then I hear his laugh again. Bright. Breathless. High on it. When the voice note ends, I stare at the screen longer than I should. Like I can reach through and pull him back.
Hours later—when my night is finally quiet and his is just winding down—I get the softer messages. The ones that aren’t adrenaline. The ones that feel like him exhaling.
Tonight’s no different.
Rafe: I miss you.
I stare at that for a second before answering, thumbs hovering like the words might bite. I miss him so badly sometimes it feels physical. Like a bruise. Like pressure in my ribs. But if I say it like that, he’ll hear the crack in it.
So I keep it simple.
Me: Miss you too.
It isn’t dramatic. It’s just true.
We get very good at missing each other.
