The chorus hits and the entire room moves as one organism. Rhonda's bass line carries them. Carries me.
The lights come up and my phone buzzes against my hip.
Rhonda: Go through the Stage door, left of the bar. Tell the guy in the beanie you’re with me.
Backstage.
She's leaning against a road case with a towel around her neck and a water bottle in her hand, and she sees me and the grin arrives before she can stop it.
"You came!"
"I said I would."
"You also said it depended on whether I'd spill soda on you again."
"I'm willing to take the risk."
She’s close enough now that I can see the sweat at her hairline and the exact shape of her mouth, and I catch myself looking at it—at her mouth—a beat too long before I make myself look at the road cases instead. My face goes hot. I study a coil of cable like it’s fascinating.
"Did you like it?" she asks.
"Maybe." I smile.
She scoffs. "What does that mean?"
"I loved it. I also noticed you changed the arrangement for the bridge."
"You noticed that?"
"Yeah, I notice everything. It's my best quality and my worst one."
She laughs. Short and surprised.
"I cut a bar," she says. "Your critique from month three was right. I meant to tell you. I kept meaning to."
"Did you just say I was right?"
"I said your critique was right, not you."
“That's the same thing!”
“No, its not.”
"I'm going to screenshot this conversation in my memory and frame it."
She laughs.
The sound of it feels surreal, now that I can hear it in person.
She smells like stage sweat and underneath it something warm—vanilla, or sandalwood. The scent that lives in the collar of a hoodie. The kind of thing you can only know by being this close.
"You know what's funny?" she says. "I've been thinking about that critique for months. Playing the cut-bar version in my head during every single show. And it makes the build work so much better. The way the bass and the drums line up now—it's cleaner. It's what you said it could be."
"You're different today," she says. "Quieter."
"I'm really a shy person."
Rhonda snorts. “No, you’re not.”
