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“Cal.”

“It’s been a while.”

“It has. You got a minute?”

“Literally a minute. I’m in the middle of something important.”

“Middle of what?”

“School.”

“Right. School.” He says it like a man flicking a bug off his sleeve. “Listen. You sitting down? I had drinks with Andy from Apex last night.”

The label that’s been circling the band since Sun on Glass went viral. I stand up a little straighter.

“Tell me.”

“He still likes the band. And he likes you, Cal. Says you remind him of a younger version of himself.” A huff. Pretty sure that’s not a compliment.

“Okay, this is good news, right? Let’s negotiate.”

“Ah, there’s a but. He wants to see something. He wants a reason, a spark, you know? The numbers since the drop are... not catastrophic, but not great. You’ve plateaued on social. Sun on Glass is doing tens of thousands of streams a week, it’s a working song, but it’s not the song it was. Kids have moved on. There’s a new dance. Andy needs momentum. Buzz.”

“Okay.” I pace the hallway.

“We can do a meeting in a couple weeks. The whole band needs to be there. Think of it like this—” I can picture him doing the rainbow with his hands. “We walk in with some fire, some buzz, some fuck-k-in razzamatazz”—I rub my forehead. If Danny wasn’t so good at his job, I’d happily never speak to him again—”behind us, we walk out with a deal. We walk in cold, we walk out with nothing, and he never takes my call again.”

Getting signed again would be huge. I know we said we’d do it alone this year but none of us could deny the power that signing again would give us. Especially now that we’ve already got an audience. It would give us a fresh start and mean that the boys haven’t waited a year for nothing.

“Okay. Right. Let’s make some buzz. What about a free show? Venice Beach, or⁠—”

“No. Nothing like that,” he cuts in. “Nothing that costs money or carries risk. I’ve got ideas.”

“Like what?” I already dread it. I historically hate Danny’s ideas. We nearly came to blows the time he suggested I shave my head to generate ‘speculation’.

“Couple of things. We’re talking to Spotify about a feature. Talking to Tom Granger about a remix of Sun on Glass—something harder, EDM, drop it on a Friday, run a small campaign. And—” He pauses. “And Cal, hear me out before you say no. We’re talking to the people around Violet Marlowe.”

Every muscle in my body locks.

“No.”

“Hear me out.”

“There’s nothing to hear.”

“This isn’t the Issy situation.”

“It’s exactly the Issy situation with a better contract.” My voice stays calm. “You start with dinner. Add a few photographs. Let the internet decide we’re fucking. Six months later, everybody gets publicity, and I get another woman selling pieces of my private life.”

“Violet wouldn’t⁠—”

“You don’t know what Violet would do. Neither do I. That’s the fucking point.”

“Cal, be reasonable here. Just let me send you the proposal her team wrote out.”

“There’s a fucking proposal? About me and a woman getting dinner?”

“Well, they’re suggesting more of a six-month thing. Violet’s got an album in the fall, there are breakup songs on it⁠—”