Sentimental bullshit.
But my fingers play it anyway, and the vibration travels up through the wood and into my chest and slips in beside the bond threads.
The dressing room fills up without ceremony. Phoenix drops onto the couch with the subtlety of a building collapse, his blond mane falling loose around his shoulders. Raf perches on the arm of the couch, scrolling through his phone. Bells claims the folding chair beside me, tucking one boot underneath her.
Raf's phone lights up with a video call notification. He glances at it and his whole face lights up.
The screen fills with chaos. Kids shrieking in the background, a woman with Raf's same dark eyes and jaw leaning too close to the camera. "Is Bells there? The girls made her a sign. Show her, show her?—"
Two little faces shove into frame, holding up a piece of poster board covered in glitter glue and stickers with a stick figure that does look sort of like Bells because of the giant tuft of upside-down white fake fur glued to its head.
Bells is already off her chair and crammed against Raf's side, waving. "I love it! Is that a unicorn sticker? That's the best fu—freakingunicorn sticker I've ever seen."
More shrieking. Raf's sister is laughing now, shouting instructions at the kids in Spanish while simultaneously telling Raf he needs a haircut only for her jaw to drop when she sees Phoenix's mane.
"They ask about Phoenix every time," Raf mutters to me, passing the phone off to Bells. "And they've been texting Bells more than they text me. She's even in the meme chat. I've been replaced."
"We're all meeting them after the tour wraps up," Bells tells me over her shoulder, drowned out by the kids yelling and showing her their toys. "Albuquerque. Raf's mom is making dinner. She'salready been teasing me with pictures of a pork dish that looks insane. It's wrapped in a banana leaf."
"She's making that foryou," Raf corrects. "And Phoenix. She's makingmedo the dishes."
Phoenix grins. "Well, it's cause for celebration."
"Does she know about you two?" I ask them.
"She knows," Raf says with a resigned sigh. "She knows everything about all of you. I have lost control of my entire family."
When the video call wraps up and Raf gets his phone back, he starts scrolling through his notifications.
"Meridian's publicist wants to schedule a formal sit-down," Raf says, squinting at his screen. "Quote,a carefully moderated conversation about the band's journey and artistic vision. End quote."
"Translation, they want us to cry on camera," Bells says flatly.
"Carmine says we can push it to next month." Raf scrolls further. "The Reverie's lawsuit got tossed. Apparently Jake's lawyer billed him forty grand before figuring out he didn't have a case, and with it getting out that Stephen Hughes did indeed rip off Nash's work…well."
Phoenix winces. "Ouch."
"Couldn't have happened to a better asshole," Bells mutters.
The door opens and Carmine steps in, tablet under his arm, looking marginally less like a man on the edge of a psychotic break than he has for the past week. His suit is pressed instead ofrumpled. His tie is back. The dark circles under his eyes are still there, but he doesn't look like a zombie himself anymore.
"Everyone alive?" he asks, since he gave up on asking if we'regoodor evenokay.
"Debatable," Raf says, grinning.
Carmine pulls up a stool and sits, crossing one leg over the other. "Quick update before you go on. The ticket resale market for tonight is through the roof. Highest secondary prices I've seen for any act this quarter, and that includes two arena tours by artists with four times your streaming numbers."
"Morbid curiosity," I say to my guitar strings.
"Morbid curiosity still buys tickets." Carmine taps his tablet. "The Isabel Frost story is holding steady as the primary narrative. Rex, your… well, yourfaceis still circulating, but engagement is dropping. The outlets are seeing diminishing returns because they won't share the uncensored versions."
"Great," I mutter. "I'm being memory-holed."
"You're beingnormalized," Carmine corrects. "Which is the goal."
Raf snorts and stretches. "Kind of funny, isn't it?"
Carmine raises an eyebrow. "What is?"