Jo replies twelve hours later:looks good!
Two words and an exclamation mark. I stare at the reply. Jo is in love. Jo talks about Rebecca backstage with an unguarded brightness. I'm glad for her.
But I'm furious at the hole her happiness is leaving.
The next month brings more voice notes.
The first voice note is an accident. I’m backstage after a show, thumbing out a text about the setlist, and my thumb hits record instead of send—forty-three seconds of me, unedited, going on about a bass run I tried in the bridge of “Golden.” My thumb hovers over the trash. And then I don’t delete it. I sit there with it a second, this little grey bar with my actual voice inside it, and sending her the real sound of me instead of tidy little words feels like a bigger step than it has any right to—more than a text, less than a call, a door I get to open or leave shut. I open it. I send it before I can talk myself out of it, and then I stare at the phone like it might bite.
Hers comes back in under an hour. Sixty seconds, her voice low and unhurried, the voice of a woman lying on a couch with the TV off. “Okay, the extra bit—no. You’d kill the momentum and the whole thing would sound like it’s apologising. Maybe leave it. Let it be a little rude.”
She’s right. The voice notes don’t stop after that.
The sound of her voice at night differs from her texts. Texts are sharp. Voice notes are rounder, slower. She pauses mid-thought. She laughs at her own tangents. She says "anyway" when she's about to say the real thing, as though the word is a door she has to open before she can walk through it.
Me:Can I ask you something nosy?
Lena: My favourite kind.
Me:Are you seeing anyone?
Lena:No. The last one ended after eight months. We probably only talked like four times.
Me: Right. Mine was similar, except mine was three months.
Lena:I see.
Neither of us types the obvious thing—that we’re single at the same time, in the same careful, self-protective way. But something behind my ribs that usually sits still and heavy lifts an inch off the ground, and I catch myself grinning at three grey words in the dark of the van like they’re a love letter.
I'm on the road. Three cities in four days. The van smells of Sandy's essential oil diffuser and Jeremy's instant noodles and the cumulative exhaustion of people living in a rectangular metal box. I text Lena from a parking lot at 9 PM, after load-out,standing next to the van with my phone in one hand and a lukewarm coffee in the other.
What did you eat for dinner?
Stir fry. I put an ocean of soy sauce in and now I can't taste anything else.
So you made soy sauce with a side of stir fry.
Ha ha. It’s a bold flavour journey and I stand by every drop.
As you should. Commitment is the whole game.
I check my social media and groan.
The headline: SANDY GAUNTLET SPOTTED WITH NEW FLAME. Different club, different city, same grainy photos. The "new flame" is the studio engineer from Monday's session.
I read it in the hotel bathroom, sitting on the edge of the bath in my underwear, and I call the label before I've brushed my teeth.
The A&R rep and publicist are both concerned. They use the phrase "reputational trajectory," which is code forour investment is at risk.I say the things I always say: the band is focused on the music. Sandy's personal life is hers. The EP is on track. All of it is true.
After the call, I text Lena.
Do you ever get tired of being the person who holds everything together?
She replies with a voice note.
"Yes. All the time. But sometimes I feel like nobody notices. 'Oh, you were doing all that?' Yeah. I was doing all that. But I also find it so hard to ask for help."
She pauses.
