Page 48
The first thing Luca does upon arriving in Berlin is go for a run. She’s gone for an hour, following the jagged line of the Spree through the city, and only makes her way back when her calendar app gives her a heads-up. The run helps burn through some of the restless energy that built up on the drive, but she still feels high-strung by the time she reaches the hostel.
She checks her phone to see Henry has texted her a link to the viral video, followed up with keeping things professional is going well, then?
Luca shoots back a half-hearted fuck off.
After dragging herself up to their room, she takes a shower that’s hot enough to leave her skin pink and warm to the touch. The video keeps replaying in her mind. She does not look at her phone again.
When she leaves the bathroom, dressed in sweatpants and an old T-shirt, the others are crowded around Toni’s laptop on the floor. Pizza boxes are scattered around the blanket nest they’ve built.
“Hey, Rookie,” says Izzy, leaning back on her hands. “Sit down. We’re about to release the song.”
Tentatively, she nears the huddle of blankets on the floor. Miray scoots over to make room for her. Unfortunately, that leaves Luca sitting right next to Florence. She looks up when Luca’s knee bumps against hers, eyes widening as they drop down to Luca’s shirt.
Luca winces when she follows her gaze. The red lettering across her chest reads, Overworked and underfucked. “I’m running out of shirts,” she says.
Florence nods, ears pink, and turns her attention back to the laptop.
Squinting through her glasses, Luca can make out the interface of a streaming app where Toni is currently setting up their song release. Luca’s heart does something strange when she sees her own name in the song credits. It’s the first thing Scorpio Season is releasing that features her drumming.
“All right,” Toni says. “I think we’re good to go. I’ve already scheduled the video release, so it’ll upload automatically.”
Right. Luca almost forgot. A few days before leaving for tour, they’d filmed themselves playing the song in their practice basement. It’s not the most aesthetic footage, but Izzy said it didn’t matter; at least it’s authentic.
“I’ve prepared the social media announcement.” Miray holds up her phone. “We’re almost at one hundred thousand followers now.”
Luca stares at the number. That’s almost forty thousand followers in one day, only because of a video of her and Florence fooling around on stage and a fan rumor that isn’t really a rumor. She doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
“Okay.” Toni angles her laptop so all of them can see. “‘big teeth—demo,’ releasing in three, two . . .”
On one, she hits share.
Miray follows suit with the announcement post, and just like that, their song is out in the wild. It’s a surreal, disorienting feeling that only grows as the first comments come rolling in.
“To ‘big teeth’!” Miray says, raising her water bottle.
“To lesbian werewolf songs,” says Florence.
“To Flo and Luca’s stage chemistry,” Toni adds.
Izzy wolf-whistles, loud enough to make Luca’s ears ring. Flushing, she looks over at Florence. The moment their eyes meet, the disbelieving laugh she’s been holding in since the car ride tears free from her throat, mixing a moment later with Florence’s breathless chuckle.
They put on the video of their performance while Toni hands out lukewarm pizza and overpriced drinks from the vending machine in the lobby. For the first time since that morning, the tension melts out of Luca. Sitting in a circle on the hostel room floor, Florence’s knee pressing against hers more intentionally now while the others chatter around them, makes her feel more grounded than even a run could.
She looks around: at Miray, with tomato sauce smudged on her nose; at Izzy and Toni, trading pizza toppings; at Florence, wearing her matching pajama set and a smile that is so utterly, quietly content that Luca stops breathing for a second.
Something warm and blinding settles in her chest as she takes it all in. She can’t believe she has only known them for a month.
“Hey.” Florence’s voice is soft as she nudges Luca’s thigh with her foot. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah,” Luca says, and then falls silent because she doesn’t know how to put what she’s feeling into words.
She doesn’t know what she expected a song release to be like. She doesn’t know what she expected a band to be like. Whatever she imagined, she knows that this is better—just as she knows, with bone-deep certainty, that she never wants to lose it.
This band is the most important thing to me, Florence told her. Luca thinks she finally understands.
Florence Gibson
@scorpioflorence
