Chapter 1 #2
But you blush like you mean it, and it shoots right through my spine
I’m not here to join your section, I don’t paint myself in blue
I’m here because a chorus woke up at the sight of you.
That one makes me swallow, which I hate. I cap the pen, uncap it again, cap it—a nervous tic I can’t kill.
Eli rolls the stick along his knuckles and eyes me. “You just—very casually—wrote a coming-out verse. You know that, right?”
I shrug. “I’ve been out since sophomore year of high school, man.”
“Yeah, but you never write it like that.” He tips his chin at the page. “It’s usually more ‘the world is a setlist and we’re gonna burn it.’ This is… personal.”
“Do you want me to go back to swearing for three minutes?” I deadpan.
“No,” Miles says before Eli can answer. “Play it.”
Drew sits up with a groan like gravity is morally offensive. “We don’t know the chords.”
“C minor,” I say. “Verse walks down, chorus lifts to E-flat minor. Keep the progression simple. The lyric’s the point.”
“Look at Mr. Pop Structure,” Eli says. “Who are you, and what have you done with my grunge goblin?”
“Play,” I say, and lift the bass.
We ease in. I keep it spare—root notes under a steady pulse, a slide into the pre-chorus to set the hook.
Drew finds the shape fast because he’s a savant when he isn’t an idiot.
Miles tucks a high line above it, clean and patient, refusing to crowd the vocal.
Eli gives me that heartbeat and leaves space on purpose, which is his love language even if he’ll never say it.
I sing the verse low to see if the words hold up without tricks.
“I’ve loved boys, I’ve loved girls…” I let the phrase sit. No coyness, no wink. Just truth. “I never planned for you to happen…” My throat goes tight for a second, and I push through it. I hit the end of the verse and look at their faces.
Eli’s grin is gone. He’s listening like a drummer and a friend. Drew’s mouth is a thin line, that concentration face he gets when he’s pretending not to feel something. Miles nods once, the muscle in his jaw jumping.
“Again,” Miles says.
We run it twice without stopping. The second time I find a better vowel on crimson, less sharp, more open.
I adjust the melody on crossed my line so the note lifts at the end instead of dying on the floor.
The chorus arrives with more weight, the lyric clicking into place like a door finding its frame.
By the third pass, I know this isn’t a sketch. It’s a song. We don’t have a title yet, but that will come.
We finish and let the last chord fade. The room is quiet in that particular way that happens when sound drains out and leaves a different kind of noise behind. Eli clears his throat and then ruins the mood like he always does when he feels too much.
“So,” he says, sticks ticking against each other, “you want to talk about varsity boy?”
“No,” I say.
“Is he hot, though?”
I hate that I laugh. “Unfortunately.”
“Basketball?”
“Yep.”
“Tall?”
“Stupidly.”
“Jerk?”
“No.” I surprise myself with the answer. “Quiet. Kind of serious.”
Eli leans back. “You’re not into the chest-thumping types anyway.”
“I’m not into the types who scream their name at parties,” I say. “They’re loud in all the wrong ways.”
Drew tucks his hair behind his ear. “What is this, then? You’ve seen campus jocks before. You’re not exactly the blushing kind.”
I glance at the notebook and then away. “I don’t blush.”
“True,” Eli says. “You smirk. So what’s special?”
“I don’t know,” I say, and the honesty feels like swallowing a battery. “He looked right at me. And then he went bright red like… like he wasn’t expecting to get caught being human.”
Drew’s eyebrows tick up. “That’s weirdly specific.”
“Shut up.”
He holds up a hand in peace. “I’m not making fun. I’m observing. It’s new watching you write about an actual person you saw twelve minutes ago. Usually you need to brood for at least three days and then ask us to pretend to be impressed by your process.”
Miles’s mouth moves just enough to count as a smile. “It’s best when you don’t pretend.”
Eli taps the snare head with his fingertip. “So you’re adding him to the roster.”
“There’s no roster,” I say.
Eli squints. “There’s definitely a roster.”
I sigh. “There’s a history. Men, women. I didn’t fall out of the closet yesterday.”
Drew nods like he’s writing a thesis. “Rafe Ortiz, bisexual agent of chaos.”
“Sounds like a Marvel character,” Eli says.
“Sounds like our press bio,” I say dryly, and they all groan because they know I’ll put anything in a press bio if it sounds like it’ll sell three more tickets. That, and between our jumbled mix of sexualities—some labelled, some definitely not—I think I could totally make it work.
Miles’s gaze tilts to the notebook. “Do you think he’ll end up in more than one song?”
“I think I don’t plan songs,” I say. “They happen or they don’t. This one happened.”
“Is he going to hear it?” Drew asks.
“I don’t write to get heard by one guy,” I say, then shrug because I can’t help myself. “If he does, he does.”
Eli waggles his sticks. “You’re going to go stare at a basketball in a gym, aren’t you?”
“We have a gig Saturday,” I say, because that’s true. “If I happen to walk past a scoreboard on the way to the venue, that’s called cardio.”
“Cardio?” Drew laughs. “You smoke weed every other night and complain about stairs.”
“I complain about everything,” I say. “It’s my charm.”
Miles sets his guitar aside. “Run it again.”
We do. This time I mark a second verse that digs a little deeper.
You walk like the room is a promise you made
I move like a fuse, and I’m tired of the fade
I don’t speak your language, but I hear your name
Booming off the rafters from a different kind of stage.
I keep the vowels simple, the consonants clean. I’m not hiding in poetry today. It feels good. Like the shape I’ve been trying to hold for weeks finally stopped slipping.
Eli drags the kick a hair behind the beat in the pre-chorus, and it makes the whole thing roll forward. Drew adds a small hammer-on in the verse that warms it. Miles lands the kind of bend that feels like turning your head to listen when someone finally says the thing out loud.
We stop, breathing hard in the stale room like we sprinted. Nobody schedules sprinting, but it still counts.
Eli points at me with a stick. “You’re seeing him again.”
“Why do you care?”
“Because I want the bridge,” he says. “And if he looks at you like he did in your head, the bridge will write itself.”
“That is the worst reason to involve a stranger in my art,” I say.
“It’s the most honest reason,” Miles counters.
He’s right. I hate that he’s right and I love that he’s right, because it means we still know how to tell each other the truth without flinching. Bands die when they start lying about small things. We are not dying. Not this year. Hopefully not ever.
Drew leans back against the wall and tilts his head. “What’s the title?”
I look at the notebook. The words sit there like they’re daring me to commit.
“‘Crimson High,’” I say, and everyone nods like we all heard it land.
Eli taps the rim of the snare. “Okay. ‘Crimson High’ after ‘City Static’ in the set. We’ll test it Saturday. If they don’t look up from their cheap beer, we kill it. If they scream, it stays.”
“Fair,” I say. “Let’s be brutal.”
“I was born brutal,” Eli says.
“You were born loud,” Drew says.
Miles lifts a shoulder. “Same thing for drummers.”
Eli flips him off with a flourish. It’s almost elegant.
I write the set order along the margin. We’re always making lists, printing flyers, hunting for five-dollar strings on Craigslist, bribing the campus radio kid with pizza to do a ten-minute feature. People think the music is the job. The job is all of it.
“Rafe.” Drew’s voice is gentler. “You good?”
“Yeah.” I mean it. The coil of frustration that’s lived behind my ribs for a month has loosened. “I’m… good.”
He nods, and his mouth curves. “Cool. Because we’re going to be late for that open mic if we sit here and talk about your varsity boyfriend.”
“He’s not my anything,” I say.
“Yet,” Eli sings under his breath.
Miles stands and stretches, back cracking like a knuckle. “Pack it. Run ‘Crimson High’ twice more tomorrow. Then we don’t touch it before Saturday so you don’t overthink it.”
“Bossy fucker,” I say.
“Effective,” he answers.
We move. Cables coil. Cases close. The room cools from the heat of four bodies and a new song. I tuck the notebook into my backpack like it’s fragile. It isn’t. It’s a weapon if I aim it.
On the way out, Eli flanks me. “So, you’re bisexual, the campus captain is beautiful, and you’re writing about his face. Do we need to prepare for chaos?”
I snort. “I’m always prepared for chaos.”
He grins. “True that.”
Drew holds the door with an elbow. “What did your ma text you?” he asks, because he knows my phone has been buzzing in my pocket for ten minutes.
I check it. A photo of my little sister at the kitchen table back home, hair messy, colored pencils everywhere, a plate with two tortillas and beans shoved to the side.
Mamá’s caption: Tu tía says hi. We love you.
Don’t forget to sleep. A string of heart emojis that would get me roasted if anyone else saw them.
“Family,” I say, pocketing the phone with a smile I don’t have to practice. “They think I’m a genius. I’d like to live up to it.”
“You will,” Miles insists.
We spill into the hallway. It’s dimmer now. Outside, the early December sun is tilting toward that gold that makes the palm fronds shine like someone polished them.
As we head toward the exit, a pack of jocks laughs somewhere behind us, that big open sound that turns heads. My neck prickles, but I keep my eyes forward. I do not scan for a captain with a face I already put in a song. I’m not that obvious.
We go through the door to the outside steps, and the light slams into me.
I blink into it and see the city stretching out beyond the campus—the low sweep of buildings, the grid of streets, the distant stain of smog on the horizon like a line somebody refuses to erase.
It looks like possibility if you squint right.
“Open mic?” Eli reminds me, bouncing on his toes.
“Open mic,” I say. “We test ‘Crimson High’ acoustic after the third comic bombs. We own the room. We make them care.”
Drew salutes with his pick. Miles checks the time and nods, already crafting the set in his head.
We climb down the steps, four men who feel like a band again. I touch the leather bracelet at my wrist, a habit. I think about the sudden heat on a stranger’s cheeks, the steady way he carried himself, the way he looked surprised to be seen.
I’ve never had a type beyond “interesting.” People who make the air feel different. I didn’t think a campus captain would do that for me. But he did. It hit fast. It hit true. It made my hand move on a page like someone turned the lights on.
I won’t say a word to anyone who doesn’t need to know. I won’t chase something that isn’t mine. But I will write the hell out of what it did to me. I will put it in a room with bad lighting and dirty carpet and see if strangers feel the jolt I felt.
We cut across the quad. A girl with purple hair strums a guitar by the fountain and butchers a chord. I fight the urge to correct her. There’s a time for teaching. This isn’t it. This is for taking what just woke up and giving it a name.
“Crimson High,” I say under my breath, testing the shape of it again.
“What?” Eli asks.
“Nothing.” We step onto the street.
The air outside carries a bite it didn’t have at noon. Somewhere downtown, a siren threads through traffic. A busker bangs a drum near the corner store and sings off-key about rent. The city sounds like a rehearsal. We’re ready for the show.
I give a shit about three things: my family, my band, the music we’re making. Tonight, a fourth thing tapped me on the shoulder and turned red under bad lights. I won’t pretend it didn’t happen. I won’t pretend it’s more than what it is either.
I am bi. I am out. I am not stupid.
But I am curious. And curiosity is a good way to make a song better.
We head toward the bar that lets undergrads play for free if they promise not to break anything.
I walk faster than usual. My fingers itch for the strings and the pen in equal measure.
I’m not a fan of basketball. I don’t plan to be.
I plan to write. I plan to sing. I plan to take whatever the hell today was and turn it into something worth shouting over a room.
If a captain with quiet eyes walks past the door while we’re doing it, that’ll be a bonus. If he doesn’t, I still have a chorus. Either way, we’re going to make someone look up from their cheap beer and feel something again.
That’s the job. That’s the only job that’s ever made sense.