“I don’t want you like this.” It’s barely more than a whisper. “I don’t want to be your regret. I said I’d take whatever piece you give me, but that...I can’t be that.”
He’s never said no before. It’s always been me who walks away.
I don’t know how long we stand in a stalemate before the rushing in my ears is interrupted by a shuffling sound on the other side of the door.
“Okay, lovebirds! Time’s up! We have a show to play. I really hope you aren’t fu—”
I glance past Cole’s shoulder just in time to see JP’s eyebrows shoot up to his hairline.
“Ooh la la!” He lets out a whistle. “Excusez-moi!”
He starts to back away with his hands up. Cole and I glance at each other, and I can feel the distance between us expanding by the second even though we haven’t actually moved. He lets go of my chin, and my leg drops away from his waist.
He stares hard into my eyes and looks like he’s about to say something before he shakes his head and turns to leave.
“You’re an asshole,” I hear him mutter as he storms past JP and off the bus.
I stay there against the wall for a moment. I didn’t realize I was panting until I tried to take a steady breath and couldn’t. I ball my hands into fists and fight for air before I follow after Cole.
JP is still standing in the aisle, staring in the direction Cole went. He turns to me and tilts his head to the side.
“So...?”
I smooth my romper down before shooting him a glare.
“Youarean asshole,” I repeat, and then I make my way off the bus.
* * *
The pressureof performing seems to make everyone hyperaware of each other, and I know the fact that Cole and I can’t meet each other’s eyes backstage doesn’t go unnoticed. I stare at the tense lines of his shoulders in front of me as the stage goes dark and the band makes the silent walk to their instruments.
They’ve always known how to make an entrance. An even bigger version of the Sherbrooke Station sign they bring to all their shows hangs from the rigging behind them, made to look like the marker of a Montreal metro stop. As JP starts up an eerie synth intro to fill the silence, the sign flickers to life and the band is silhouetted in its glow for a moment before the rest of the lights flare and they explode into the first song on their setlist.
The audience loses it. It would be easy for me to get swept up in the energy of the show and forget about everything else, but I see the way Cole’s fumbling his way through the song. I know he could be playing blindfolded with earplugs in and he’d still be good enough to make any aspiring bassist’s eyes pop out of their head, so I doubt the crowd can pick up on it, but I can tell he’s off. The other guys keep trying to catch his eye, but he’s closed himself off. He’s shut down and pulled everything inside. He isn’t playingwiththem anymore.
I almost miss my queue to go out on stage. I nearly trip as I hurry out and search for the tape marker on the floor I’m supposed to be aiming at.
I spare a glance at the audience and instantly realize that was the wrong thing to do.
There are so many people. The crowd looks like it’s surging forwards to swallow me up. The stage lights are blinding. The adrenaline pumping through my body seems to be slowing my reflexes down, not speeding them up. My fingers feel numb where they’re clutched around the neck of my violin. I might as well have just stepped into a sensory deprivation tank and not out onto a massive stage—that’s how surreal and separated from my own senses I feel right now.
I can’t believe Sherbrooke Station does this almost every night. I can’t believe that for the next three weeks,I’llbe doing this almost every night. Standing in front of a crowd of almost ten thousand screaming people feels like the culmination of something, like the end of the road or the edge of a cliff. It’s a reckoning. It’s Judgement Day. It’s laying all that you have bare to something greater than you and praying with all of your soul that you won’t be found wanting.
Ace says something to the crowd about the song we’re going to play, clearly stalling for time, and I know I’m ruining things. I know I’m about to crack in front of almost ten thousand strangers.
This was a mistake.
I shake my head to clear it and wedge the violin under my chin. I glance at Ace and nod. A hint of relief seeps into his face, and he makes some kind of signal that has the other guys starting up the intro to the song.
It takes everything I have to pull myself together enough to play. I let the sounds wash over me, and I remind myself that I’m not here for me right now. I’m not even here for him. We’re both here for the music, and suddenly the crowd is no longer waiting to swallow me down and drown me. They’re here to lift me up. They’re here because they need something, and somehow, I know how to give it to them.
Their screaming doesn’t scare me anymore. The noise gets even louder as I bring my bow to the strings, but it’s urging me on now, seeping into my skin and circling through my bloodstream until it feels like the crowd is a part of what I’m playing.
We’re making this music together: me, the audience, and the four people I share the stage with. Ace is wailing his lyrics out like they’re his dying breath, Matt is thrashing behind us, and JP is working his keyboard for all its worth, but it’s still Cole’s bass I feel the most. It’s his steady pace that guides me.
I twist my head to see him, and it’s like we’ve gone back to five years ago. We could be playing in a basement right now, or some dingy dive bar, and Sherbrooke Station could just be some college band no one had dared take a chance on yet. The past still sat heavy on Cole and I’s shoulders back then, but it was so much lighter than it is now. Time seems to pile more and more weight into all our decisions, and yet, on this stage and in this moment, the weight shifts.
It shifts just slightly enough for us to remember what life was like without it, until the last notes fade and the crowd breaks apart and that weight falls back into place, heavier than ever.
