“Then stop running yourself into the ground.” She softened slightly, just enough to let me know she was worried instead of pissed. “You've got ten minutes to pull yourself together and get onstage. Drink some water, eat the protein bar I left on the amp, and try to look like you're not about to fall apart.”
She left before I could respond, taking the whiskey with her, and I stood there in the empty dressing room feeling like I'd been stripped down to nothing. The hollow feeling in my chest hadn't gone away. If anything, it had gotten worse, spreading out into my arms and legs until my whole body felt numb and disconnected.
I pulled out my phone and called Talia before I could talk myself out of it.
She answered on the second ring, her voice warm and familiar and exactly what I needed to hear. “Hey, you. How's the show?”
“Good. Fine. Just finished the first set.” I sat down on the couch where I'd just been buried in some stranger and tried to sound like I wasn't coming apart. “How's everyone doing?”
“Micah's studying, Poppy's watching a movie in the living room, and I just got home from work.” I could hear her moving around on the other end of the line, probably putting groceries away or starting dinner. “We're all fine, Soren. You don't have to check in every five hours.”
“I know. I just wanted to make sure.” I rubbed my free hand over my face and tried to shake off the exhaustion that had been following me around for weeks. “Did Poppy finish her history project?”
“She turned it in yesterday. Got an A, by the way, so you can stop worrying about that too.” Talia paused, and I could hear the shift in her tone that meant she was about to say heavy. “You okay? You sound off.”
“I'm fine. Just tired.” It was the same lie I'd been telling for months, and Talia knew it as well as June did, but she let me have it anyway.
“Okay. Well, don't forget we've got rent due next week. I'm covering my half, but you'll need to have the rest ready.”
“I've got it covered.” Another lie, but this one came easier because I'd been telling it for years. Rent, groceries, utilities, Poppy's school fees, Micah's tuition payments. The list never got shorter, and the money never stretched far enough, but I'd figure it out the way I always did. Pick up another shift at the bar, sell some gear I didn't need anymore, maybe hit up Luca to see if he knew anyone looking for drum lessons.
We talked for a few more minutes, easy and familiar, and by the time I hung up I felt slightly more human. Slightly less likeI was going to shatter if someone looked at me too hard. Talia had that effect on me. She was the only person who knew the full weight of what I carried, and she'd never once tried to take it from me or tell me I couldn't handle it. She just showed up, did her part, and made sure I knew I wasn't alone.
I stood up and grabbed the protein bar June had left for me, choked down half of it even though I wasn't hungry, and then caught sight of myself in the mirror hanging crookedly on the wall. I looked rough. Hair messy, eyes a little too bright, shirt wrinkled from being pulled on in a hurry. I looked like exactly what I was: a guy who'd been drinking too much and sleeping too little and using his body like it didn't matter because acknowledging that it did would mean acknowledging all the other things that mattered too.
I touched the bracelet on my left wrist without thinking about it, fingers brushing over the worn dark cord and the small silver clasp that had been replaced twice now. The bracelet was simple, unassuming, the kind of thing most people wouldn't notice unless they were looking for it. But it mattered to me in ways I didn't talk about, in ways I couldn't fully explain even to the people who'd been there when I got it.
Stay. One more day. Keep going.
I dropped my hand and turned away from the mirror before I could spiral any further. The second set was starting in five minutes, and I needed to be ready. Needed to be the version of myself the crowd expected: loud, energetic, alive. I could do that. I'd been doing it for years.
The stage wasmy favorite place in the world, and I hated that it was true.
Because it meant that everywhere else felt like waiting. Everywhere else was bills and responsibilities and the constant low-grade panic that I was one bad month away from losing everything. But up here, with the lights hot on my skin and the bass vibrating through my ribcage and my sticks in my hands, I could let go of all of it. I could stop thinking about rent and custody and whether I'd remembered to pay the electric bill. I could just hit and hit and hit until my arms ached and my chest loosened and my brain finally shut up.
The crowd was good tonight. Loud, drunk, energetic in the way that made the whole room feel alive. I could see them moving in the half-dark beyond the stage lights, bodies pressed together, hands in the air, mouths open and singing along to lyrics they'd probably learned off our EP. Luca was up front working the crowd like he'd been born to it, and June was holding down the low end with the kind of steady competence that made everything else possible.
I fell into the rhythm without thinking, letting muscle memory take over. My hands moved fast and sure, sticks cracking against the snare and toms in patterns I'd played a thousand times before. The noise was overwhelming, beautiful, exactly what I needed. It drowned out everything else. The dressing room. The phone call. The rent. The bracelet. The hollow feeling that had been sitting in my chest since I'd woken up this morning.
Drumming had saved my life, and I wasn't being dramatic about that.
Hockey had been my first language. The thing I'd understood before I'd understood most other things. I'd loved it with the kind of single-minded intensity only kids could pull off, and I'd been good at it too. Good enough that people had started talking about scholarships, about futures, about the kind of life I couldbuild if I just kept skating. And then everything had fallen apart, and hockey had become one more thing I'd lost in the wreckage.
Music had filled the gap. Not right away, and not neatly, but eventually. I'd picked up drumming in high school because a friend had needed someone for his garage band, and I'd discovered that hitting things in rhythm felt almost as good as skating used to. It gave me the same release, the same focus, the same sense of my body doing what I needed it to do. And when my life had detonated senior year and I'd disappeared, drumming had been one of the few things I'd taken with me.
It had kept me sane through the worst years. The ones where I'd been working three jobs and raising my siblings and trying not to drown under the weight of it all. I'd played in dive bars and basements and anywhere that would let me set up a kit, and slowly, piece by piece, I'd built a life that looked almost functional from the outside.
The song ended and the crowd screamed, and I grinned and raised my sticks in acknowledgment before launching into the next one. This was the part I was good at. This was where I could be the version of myself people wanted to see: confident, talented, alive. I didn't have to fake it up here. I just had to hit and let everything else fall away.
By the time we finished the set, my shirt was soaked through with sweat and my arms were shaking from exertion. I stood up from the kit and waved to the crowd one last time before following June and Luca offstage. The adrenaline was still buzzing through me, making my hands restless and my pulse too fast, and I knew from experience it would take at least an hour for my body to come down enough to feel normal again.
Luca clapped me on the shoulder as we walked toward the dressing room. “Killed it tonight, man. That bridge on 'Static Bloom' was sick.”
“Thanks.” I grabbed a towel off the rack and wiped the sweat off my face, already thinking about the drive home and whether I'd have time to shower before crashing. “You weren't bad either.”
“Wasn't bad?” Luca pressed a hand to his chest in mock offense. “I was a goddamn rock god up there and you know it.”
June rolled her eyes and started packing up her bass. “You're both insufferable. I'm going home.”
