Nabil’s eyes have gone so wide he looks like a cartoon. “Shit. Holy shit. You’re serious.”
“Yeah.” I brace for him to start trying to talk me out of it. “I am.”
“Wow. I’m proud of you, man.”
I feel my jaw drop. “You are?”
“Yeah.” His face lifts into a wide grin. “You’re walking away from a deal with Nautilus Records to, like, pursue life as a mastering engineer in Montreal. That takes balls.”
“Huh.” I sit up straight on the bed, a new energy zinging through me. “I suppose it does.”
“Have you told Mohammad yet?”
I let out a dark chuckle. “Um, no. He will probablyhavemy balls.”
Nabil swears again. “Oh fuck, yeah, he’s gonna be pissed.”
I check the clock in the corner of my screen and let Nabil know I have to get ready for dinner.
“And then I’ll spend the night pondering how I’m going to announce this to everyone tomorrow,” I add.
He laughs and then gets serious. “Hey, uh, any word from Paige?”
My shoulders drop, and I sigh before I can stop myself. “Nothing new. She still wants space. It’s driving me fucking crazy. I just...I can’t lose her. I can’t.”
I’ve spent every second I’ve been here thinking about her. I can’t even look at a damn palm tree without thinking about how much I want to send her a picture of it. This weird limbo where I don’t know if we’re okay or not is killing me.
“Hey, you won’t,” Nabil assures me. “I’ve seen you two together. I know you’re not gonna lose her.”
To his best friend credit, he does a good job at sounding extra hopeful.
“By the way, what hotel are you staying at?”
“Huh?” I squint at the abrupt subject change.
“Just curious. Did they get you a boujee one?”
“Mildly boujee.” I give him the name, and he nods.
“Well, good luck with dinner, and tomorrow. Let me know how it goes.”
“Thanks, man.”
We hang up after that, and I finish getting ready before heading down to the hotel’s restaurant for dinner with Mohammad, a few people from Nautilus, and the proposed vocalist for the single. She’s an up-and-coming pop singer named Dannika, and we’ve met once already at the Nautilus office. She seemed like a genuinely nice and talented person, and I hope me pulling out of the single doesn’t impact her too much.
“Okay, Salah.” I mutter a pep talk to myself as I take the empty elevator down to the first floor. “One more dinner, and then tomorrow, you pull the plug. You can do this.”
The doors open onto the modern, grey stone lobby dotted with red velvet armchairs. I head over to the hostess standing in the entrance to the restaurant and tell her I’m with the Nautilus reservation.
“Youssef!” Mohammad calls as the hostess leads me across the resto-bar decorated with the same colour scheme as the lobby. He and the rest of the group are seated in a huge round booth at the very back. “Just in time!”
I shake a few hands and then squish in beside Dannika. She smiles at me, and we jokingly shake hands too. She’s got platinum blonde hair with the roots dyed gold, which somehow works for her. I noticed how pretty she was the first time I saw her, but it wasn’t much more than an after-thought. Mostly I just thought about how much I wanted to ask Paige what her thoughts on dyed hair roots are.
We get through a round of drinks and appetizers before the guilt over what I’m going to do tomorrow really sinks in and gets my stomach churning. It’s one thing to know what I have to do; it’s another to be faced with the prospect of actually doing it. Combined with the constant apprehension about Paige, my nerves are beyond shot.
I need some air.
“Excuse me,” I mutter before getting up and heading over to the bar. I ask for a glass of water and lean against a bar stool to stare out at the lobby after the bartender drops it off.
