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“Sienna, I agree with them that given the momentum of this tour, taking a full month right now would be⁠—”

“I don’t care what you agreed to. You’re my manager. You’re supposed to be on my side. You should care about what I want.”

“You signed a contract,” she says.

“I signed a contract that said forty-five stops. I did forty-five stops. Then you shoved me back up onto that lift after I told you I was done.” My voice cracking on the last word, and I hate it. I hate how trapped I feel. How small I feel. I hate that she sees this and doesn’t care.

I press the heels of my hands into my eyes and take a breath. Do not cry. Not here. If I cry in front of Nicki, she’ll win. She always wins when I cry. She turns it into proof that I’m tired, that I’m not thinking straight, that I should let the grown ups handle it.

“Sienna,” Nicki coaxes softly, running her hands over my shoulders. “Let’s just get you changed into some sweats. Maybe get some food and melatonin in you, and then we can discuss this tomorrow once you’ve had a good sleep.”

“No.” I jerk away from her, rolling my eyes and flinching when the tip of her fingers touches me.

“Sienna,” she snaps, reaching back out to me.

“If you touch me again, I will fire you,” I say, through gritted teeth.

Nicki’s hand drops to her side. Her mouth works for a second like she’s about to argue, then stops.

I turn around before she can put her face back together and I limp back the way I came. Past Bow, who is standing in the doorway of the dressing room with her hands still firmly on her hips.

I push past her and start to undress. I peel off the broken-heart tank. I peel off the booty shorts and the bra, and I leave all of it in a glittering pile on the floor.

“Echo,” Bow says, her voice sharp as she runs to pick up my pile of clothes.

“Leave it, Bow,” Nicki reprimands, joining her assistant.

I dig through my purple duffel bag, and I pull out my after-show outfit, the one that is always packed for me. Plain black sweatpants. Sneakers. A sports bra. An oversized matching hoodie, three sizes too big, that swallows me to the point that only a super observant fan can identify who I am, and that’s if they see my face. I walk over to the vanity and slip on my huge glasses, then slide my wallet and phone into my pocket. I sling the duffel across my chest. I pull the hood up over my hair, tugging the strings tight until I can make a bow underneath my chin.

When I finally look up in the mirror, Nicki is staring at me. “You will do those shows, Sienna. Whether you like it or not. We’ll talk in the morning.”

I don’t give her the dignity of a response. I shove past her and turn right towards the service corridor that connects backstage of the arena directly to the street and Penn Station, normally used for the crew to grab food or take quick smoke breaks.

I don’t know what I’m doing. I can’t tell where I’m going, but I need to get out of here. I need air that isn’t being pumped through a vent and recycled by twenty thousand people. I need a sidewalk that isn’t being swept for me by a security detail beforehand. I need to make one single decision tonight that nobody has signed off on or scheduled for me.

The energy from being on stage is slowly spilling away, and I can feel the chill of my life creeping in again. The burning silence I’ve filled with people I pay to laugh, to create, to manage and take care of me. Because that’s what it is. Every voice in my life that should be a friend is a contract. Every person who tells me I look beautiful is being paid to say it. Every laugh in my dressing room is a laugh on the clock. I haven’t had a real conversation with someone who wasn’t being compensated for their time in months. Maybe even years.

The corridor narrows and slopes down, the lighting going from fluorescent white to the dim yellow of the Penn Station underbelly. The walls change from arena concrete to MTA tile. I pass a maintenance door propped open with a cinder block, and then I’m in the long tunnel that spits the MSG crew out into the bowels of the station. An announcement bleeds through the walls, a woman’s muffled voice confirming that the 12:17 am to Freeport is now boarding on track ten.

I follow the tunnel until it opens up into the Amtrak concourse.

Middle of the night, but Penn is Penn. A man in a suit is asleep upright on a bench with his briefcase between his knees. A woman in scrubs is eating a sandwich out of a plastic clamshell. Three guys in Knicks jerseys argue about whether the game was rigged. A homeless man in a coat too big for him is pushing a cart that squeaks every third step. Nobody looks at me. Nobody looks at anybody. This is the gift of New York at midnight: everybody is too tired to care who you are.

I crouch down next to a closed Dunkin’ Donuts, slipping my phone from my pocket. There’s no one I can call besides Grandma Mary, and she’s either asleep or out dancing with her boyfriend, Bud. I don’t want to worry her, but until I figure out my next move, I need to kill some time.

So instead, I open up Instagram on my burner account. I only follow a few people. Some friends I made in the first semester of college, the people in the band that’ve been with me for the past six years, and my childhood best friend, Iris. I don’t like anything or comment. Drawing attention to their accounts isn’t worth the risk. I found out the hard way when I commented on Grandma Mary’s anniversary dress. Some superfan tracked my burner, and then my grandmother was being harassed all over the internet, good and bad. I won’t do that to someone I love again.

I scroll. Pictures of engagements, parties, silly videos with friends, carnival rides, all normal things that make me recklessly envious and self-deprecating. I just played to a packed Madison Square Garden. I’ve booked a flight to Bali for tomorrow. If I wanted to buy myself diamonds from Tiffany’s, I could. But I can’t remember the last time a friend invited me to a party, or arranged to meet for coffee, or dared me to ride a roller coaster.

I swipe once more and see that Iris has posted again. Her bakery, Butter Treats, did a summer flight of fresh jelly-filled desserts. Crispy cannoli dusted with peanut butter and filled with fresh cream swirled with sweet strawberry jelly catches my eye because it’s called Echo Chamber. I can almost taste it. I can almost smell her kitchen, that warm, buttery, cinnamon-thick air that lived in her childhood home and probably lives in the back of her bakery now. I can’t help but feel like she made this one for me, even if it’s completely unlikely I will ever taste it. I haven’t spent enough time at home to see her, or try a dessert, in years. I usually pass through in the dead of night with gifts, just long enough to eat a bowl of Grandma’s legendary rasta pasta, and not a second longer. My schedule never allows for more.

I keep scrolling through the post. The second image is Iris leaning over the counter, laughing at something off camera, her brown hair pulled up in a messy bun, flour on her cheek. She looks happy. Her blue eyes glisten like the ocean at night. But that isn’t what takes my breath away. It’s the guy in the back, half cut off, leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed and that crooked half-smile on his face.

Grayson.

Wow. He hasn’t changed and looks completely different at the same time. His shoulders have always been broad but they’re heavier now, filled out the way a man’s shoulders fill out and hulking. His dark-blond hair is still cropped close in that short country buzz, and there’s a five o’clock shadow across his jaw like he finally got the bread he’s been begging for since middle school.

His cheekbones cut shadows down his face. Those beautiful crystal-blue eyes crinkled at the corners at whatever Iris has said to make him laugh, surprise written across his face like he has never quite trusted his own joy.