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A blender whirs from the front counter. Jian and Alondra call out people’s names as they slide drinks to the front.

Jase says, “I know how you feel, about your parents not wanting you to have a career in photography. My mom thinks the same way about music.”

Never would I have guessed this about Jase’s mom. He’s so carefree that I imagined his mom would be the same way.

He fishes his phone out of his pocket, taps on the screen, then hands it to me. There’s a list of songs with short and straightforward titles, all of which are lowercased.

“Listen to the first one,” Jase says, nodding at his phone.

I tap on the first track, which is titled “i miss dad,” then hold the speaker to my ear. The song starts off slow, each string strummed with light strokes creating a melody similar to the first few drops of a rainstorm. It crescendos with a heavier twang of chords ... then stops. At first, I wonder if I was so into the song that I didn’t pay any attention to its length. Turns out, when I check its duration, the song is just fifty seconds long.

“I can definitely feel the sadness, in both the chords and the melody,” I say. “It makes me want to cry.”

“That’s exactly how I felt when I was composing it.”

For the first time since seeing him, he looks sad. My heart aches, and I look at him with a face that I hope asks, Are you okay?

He catches my gaze, then replies, “My dad died a couple of years ago. I wrote that song after his funeral.” He shakes his head. “Car accident.”

“Oh, no, Jase, I’m so sorry.” I really am, and if I were better with words, I’d probably say something more meaningful. The Green Day lyrics on his backpack—lines from “Wake Me Up When September Ends”—now make perfect sense. Thinking about the crooks at the edges of the letters, I wonder if Jase was crying while writing the lyrics on his backpack.

His shoulders relax as his eyes lock back on mine. “He was the best. Before he and my mom had me, he was in a band. They couldn’t get a record deal, so they broke up. But my dad loved music so much he taught me the guitar. We’d play lots of old rock songs together and even tried making our own. They all sounded terrible, but they were fun to play.”

I chuckle imagining this. “I would’ve loved to have listened to them.”

Jase smiles and shakes his head. “You wouldn’t, trust me. Save your ears.” He glances back at his phone. “He really got me. My mom doesn’t. You know how you said your sister and your parents think the arts is an impractical career path to follow?”

“Yeah?”

“My mom thinks the same thing about music. She’s only cool with me performing here because I get paid, but she doesn’t want me to be a musician like my dad was. I guess she’s scared that I’ll fail, too. But I want music to be my life. I’m bad at everything else, and I’m good at playing guitar. I get excited performing onstage and even practicing in my room.”

My mind flashes to all the times I’ve pressed down my camera’s shutter button, looking through the viewfinder, along with the nights I’ve stayed up to edit a photo until I liked what I saw. I lean forward, feeling my face soften. “It’s tough having a passion that people don’t take seriously.”

Jase looks at me for a moment, then nods. “Yeah, it’s really tough.” He swallows the same way I did earlier, and I just know he’s about to tell me something so big it overwhelms him. “And you know how you said you’re scared of disappointing your parents? Well, I’m scared of disappointing my dad. It’s stupid, I know. How could I disappoint someone who’s passed away? But he failed to make his dreams come true, so I want to live his dreams for him.”

I can’t imagine how difficult it is, working hard to achieve the dream the one you love most couldn’t. It makes my hope for him—that he becomes a musician, performing onstage like his dad had wanted—that much stronger.

“He’d be proud,” I say.

A small smile lifts across his face, and he tells me more. He talks about his little brother Jordan, describing him as The Next Big Sculptor. He also tells me that his mom wants him to go to college, but he doesn’t because he’s not interested. In fact, Jase isn’t thinking about the future at all—he just wants to enjoy every moment.

As the aroma of watercolors and coffee grows stronger, Jase and I share more songs and photographs. He asks me questions about my editing process and my inspiration for taking each photo. I ask him the story behind each song—all of which have a duration of no more than fifty seconds—and his feelings when composing them. You can learn so much about someone based on how they express themselves through their art.

Suddenly, someone bellows, “Why hello there!”

I would’ve thought it was Nora if the voice weren’t deep and unfamiliar. A boy with curly brown hair, who I recognize as Say It Proudly’s bassist, wraps his arm around Jase’s shoulders. This boy radiates Nora energy. Jase furrows his eyebrows at the curly haired bassist. I’m guessing he doesn’t usually greet anyone this way. Joining them are the Black boy with the glasses (the lead singer) and the brown-skinned boy (the drummer). The bassist looks at me and smirks. He and the lead singer exchange looks, glance at me, then snicker. Jase catches them snickering and shoots them a glare. My stomach flips. Do they recognize me as the girl whose ice cream dropped on her foot? If the drummer remembers, he doesn’t say anything. He stands there with a stoic look, arms crossed like he just wants to leave already.

“Well, well, well,” the bassist says. A grin creeps across his face, his braces catching a glint of light.

Please, please, please, don’t bring up the ice cream incident.

“Jase, you never told us you were on a date,” the bassist teases.

A blush tickles my cheeks, and I look down so they don’t see my face, though I wonder if I’m making my embarrassment that much more obvious.

“She’s just tutoring me,” Jase says.

“Wait, for real?” The bassist laughs like this is impossible to believe. “Or is tutoring code for something else?”