Page 388 of End Game

Austin gives me names before I leave.

Artists.

Producers.

People who apparently sometimes need songs.

“Send me demos,” he tells me. “Not just Signal Saints shit. Write whatever comes out.”

“That sounds suspiciously like homework.”

“It is.”

“I'm thirty percent less interested.”

“You want to do this professionally or not?”

I open my mouth.

Then close it.

Because—

Yeah.

I think I do.

Not necessarily full-time.

Not necessarily in Chicago.

But more than I have been.

More sessions.

More writing trips.

Maybe other artists.

Maybe someday music pays enough that bartending becomes the thing I do sometimes instead of music being the thing I fit around bartending.

That possibility no longer makes me want to throw up.

Much.

The last thing Chicago teaches me is the one I didn't expect.

I don't want Austin's stage.

I like stages.

I fucking love stages.

Give me a microphone, four idiot bandmates, two hundred drunk people, and an electrical system that is probably violating at least one municipal code, and I am having an excellent night.

Even the charity show was incredible.

Walking onto a stage that size was like somebody injected adrenaline directly into my spine.