“No, I’m not,” I say, sounding calm, because that’s what I am: so calm even my own brother has to blink multiple times at me, as if he doesn’t think he’s hearing me correctly. “I’ll never be him again. I’m just me.”
Closing my eyes, I shake my head and mumble, “Fuck. I think I fucked up bad. I can’t even blame Wren if she doesn’t show tonight. I can only blame myself.”
It’s my fault for letting fear petrify me into a statue. My fault, not hers. The things I said to her that night after karaoke were needlessly cruel. I honestly don’t deserve another chance.
“There’s still time for her to show,” Deacon says.
I open my eyes and survey the bar. It’s the same bar we sang together at. There’s a stage farther in, tons of tables and booths in between. Mic nights are for anything: poetry and journal readings, showing off new lyrics, anything and everything. Not to toot my horn too much, but I bet anything mine will be the most professional out of them all, for obvious reasons.
Pope might be gone, but parts of him still linger inside me. Or maybe he was never real to begin with, and it was always me under the mask. Frankly, I don’t know which one would be worse.
If Pope was never real, then the asshole was always me.
Me. I’m the problem. It’s always been me.
“Well, no matter what happens,” I tell him, “I’m glad you’re here. It’s good to see you.” Truthfully, we hardly see each other at all these days. I didn’t go home around the holidays, which means I didn’t see him or our parents. We live in two different worlds now, so we don’t talk much, either.
“It is,” Deacon says with a nod. “Someday we should all get together, like the old days.”
“I don’t think the others would want to see me.” Not after I stalked their new girl a bit and almost got framed for her kidnapping. That whole thing was some messy work.
“I think you’d be surprised. It’s been a long time. Everything that happened… I think they’re over it. They miss you. We miss you. Band ain’t the same without you.” My brother sighs. “I was going to quit too, you know. Not so much in solidarity, but because I just couldn’t do it anymore. It didn’t feel the same.”
This story, I know where it’s going. “And then you fell for Angel and your entire world changed.” Surprisingly, I don’t sound too bitter about it, not anymore. In the beginning, I totally did, but that time has long passed.
He shrugs, not bothering to argue with me.
Of course his world changed. Of course all their worlds changed. Angel became the center of their universe, and they became a whole different band with both her and Priest as the frontrunners.
I guess my brother’s point is that it’s not necessarily a bad thing for your world to change, even if it does change for a girl. Sometimes, that’s how life goes, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Him, Priest, and Bishop all seem happy from what it sounds like, even though they’re sharing Angel. Maybe I could do it long-term, too, if she gives me a chance.
We talk for a bit more, though we quiet down once the night gets going. My performance is near the end, which unfortunately means we need to sit through a bunch of awkward poetry readings and even a freestyle rap. Some people get up there with guitars similar to mine and strum along, singing their sad songs.
It’s all very amateur, but everyone has to start from somewhere. I know those songs we wrote when we were nothing more than high schoolers pretending to be rockstars in our parents’ garages weren’t winners. The more you do something, the more you practice, the better at it you’ll get.
Then, suddenly, it’s my turn. As the host welcomes me on the stage, I open my guitar case and pull out my guitar. It’s as sleek as an acoustic guitar can be. Zigzagging through the crowd, I make it to the stage, and a few people awkwardly clap. I pull up the stool closer to the microphone, sit, and adjust the stand to my height before I swing my guitar onto my lap.
My gaze roams the bar. While talking to my brother, I kept tossing glances to the entrance, thinking I’d see Wren right as she walked in, like in those movie scenes, but I didn’t see her.
She’s not here. She didn’t come.
That traitorous heart in my chest feels tight when the realization hits me. The old me tries to resurface, the me who wants to storm out of here and give up, but I don’t let those intrusive thoughts win. I stay right where I am, sitting on that stool, on that stage, with my guitar in my hands, and I do what I came there to do.
Perform.
I lean my mouth closer to the mic and say, “This is a song I wrote about a girl. I’m calling it Soulfire.”
My fingers strum the chords in the same melody I practiced these past few weeks. Once I play the intro, I jump in with the first verse.
“Once upon a time, I was a villain,” I sing, that same old raspy voice emerging even though I try to tamper it down a bit. Even now, bits and pieces of Pope shine through. “I cared about nothing but the thrill and thought this is life, this is it. This was everything I wanted, isn’t it?”
Songs are always best when you draw inspiration from real events, from your past. It’s something I learned a long time ago.
I’m winding down the first chorus, about to leap into the second verse, when I spot someone slipping into the bar in the far corner, near the entrance. My gaze locks on her, and everything I’m doing stops just like that. The fingers playing.The voice coming out of me. Everything halts the moment we meet eyes from across the room.
Wren.
Wren is here. She came.