Chapter 16 #2
And if I thought we’d been rehearsing like maniacs before, now we’re possessed.
Every free second is instruments, lyrics, riffs tightened until our fingers ache and our throats are raw.
Every joke from Eli or Drew lands half a second late because we’re running on fumes and adrenaline.
Miles just keeps reminding us to breathe, his voice low and calm, the anchor we don’t admit we need.
And then tonight—our first real interview.
It’s not Rolling Stone or anything. Just an indie mag, one of those half-blog, half-zine setups, but still—it’s a spotlight. A chance. One we earned after The Lantern gig, the one that flipped a switch none of us can shut off now.
We crowd into a booth at a café close to the bar we’ve just left behind that smells like burnt espresso and cinnamon, guitars stacked against the wall beside us, coffee cups sweating onto napkins. A recorder sits in the middle of the table, its red light blinking like it’s keeping time.
The interviewer’s young, sharp-eyed, the kind of person who looks like she already knows the answers but wants to see how you’ll spin them. Her notebook is open but mostly ignored. She’s more interested in how we carry ourselves.
“So,” she says, smiling like she’s already got us pinned, “there’s buzz around you guys after The Lantern set. People are saying you’re one of the bands to watch this year. What’s fueling that? What makes your sound different?”
Eli jumps in first. Of course he does. He’s always first, always loud, his whole body buzzing like he’s got electricity in his veins.
“We don’t fake it,” he says, leaning forward, hands cutting the air.
“We’re not chasing whatever MTV’s pushing this week.
We play raw. We play messy. We bleed all over the stage and let the crowd figure out what to do with it. ”
Drew leans back, arms crossed, expression lazy but voice sharp.
“What he means is—chemistry. We’ve been at this since freshman year.
You don’t get the kind of stage presence we have unless you’ve fought and fucked around and figured each other out.
It’s not just the music. It’s the way we move together. ”
Miles adds, steady as ever, “Trust. That’s what makes it different. Doesn’t matter if it’s a bar gig for thirty bucks or Vegas for three hundred. We trust each other to hit the note, to land the beat, to carry the weight when someone drops it.”
And then her gaze lands on me.
“Your lyrics,” she says. “They’ve been called sharp, intimate, almost too personal. Some say they sound like they’re about someone. Who?”
I knew this was coming. I’ve been waiting for it. Hell, part of me wanted it.
So I lean back in the booth, slouch casual, picture of couldn’t-give-a-fuck cool I’ve been perfecting since high school. My eyebrow ring catches the light when I raise it. “A magician never reveals his tricks.”
Her brows rise, amused. “So you’re not denying it?”
“Wouldn’t be any fun if I did, would it?” I flick my gaze to the recorder, then back to her. “Let’s just say inspiration comes where it comes. And when it does, you don’t question it. You bleed it out and pray it hits as hard onstage as it did in your chest.”
Drew snorts into his coffee, soft but loud enough for me to catch it. He knows me too well. Knows I’m hiding something real behind the swagger. Knows my lyrics stopped being generic months ago, when Ollie and his dark eyes and unintentional blushes barged into every rhyme I’ve put down.
“Love-heart eyes,” Eli called it once, half mocking, half sincere. He wasn’t wrong. Our sound’s been sharpening itself on love songs I never thought I’d write.
The interviewer leans in. “So, what should people expect in Vegas?”
This time I grin wide, letting the smirk melt into something hungrier. “Expect noise. Sweat. Expect us to play like we’ve got nothing to lose. Because we don’t. Vegas is just the start.”
The recorder blinks red between us. My heart drums double time.
Five days. Five fucking days until we find out if we can make the industry hear us.
Five days until I might be in the same city as him, each of us standing under lights, carrying every ounce of expectation our worlds have piled on our shoulders.
The interviewer flips a page in her notebook, pen tapping the margin. “One more thing.” Her gaze lands on me again—direct, curious. “There’s speculation online. About who your songs are about. Some people think… a he.”
The air at the table shifts just a fraction, like a snare tightening. Eli’s grin gets sharper. Drew cocks his head, amused. Miles just waits—steady, unblinking—like he’s ready to step in if he has to.
“Was there a question there?” I ask, lazy drawl in place, even as my pulse kicks.
Her lips curve. “Your songs—these love songs—are they about women or men?”
I should’ve seen it coming. Hell, I did. But it’s one thing to expect it, another to have it laid out like a chord you can’t dodge.
Eli jumps in before I can answer, laugh bubbling out of him. “Oh, come on. You think Rafe’s ever been picky about who he lets wreck him? Please.”
The whole table cracks up. Even Miles’s mouth tips, which is practically a standing ovation from him.
I flip Eli off, smirk glued to my face. “Fuck you.”
“You wish,” he fires back, grinning wide.
The interviewer laughs, too, but she’s watching me. Waiting for me to actually answer.
So I let the smirk soften, just a little. “Yeah,” I say finally. “I’m an equal opportunist and write from experience. All kinds of experience. If a song’s about someone, it’s because they lit a fire under my skin, and I don’t give a shit what anyone thinks about the specifics.”
Drew claps me on the back, his voice low but audible. “Translation: Yes, he’s bi, and no, you don’t get names.”
“See, Drew gets it,” I say, leaning into the casual pose again.
The interviewer’s grin turns sly, like she knows she just got something more than I wanted to give. She tucks her pen behind her ear, clicks the recorder off, and says, “That’s going to get people talking.”
“Good,” I say. “Talking’s half the game.”
She packs up, thanks us for our time, promises the piece will be up before Vegas. And then she’s gone, leaving just the four of us and the mess of empty cups and guitar cases crammed into the booth.
Eli whistles low. “Well, shit. That went better than I thought.”
Drew smirks. “Yeah, until Rafe here decided to flirt with the entire internet.”
Miles, calm as ever, just shrugs. “Doesn’t matter. It’s true. Better to say it yourself than let other people say it for you.”
The words land heavier than I expect. I meet his gaze, but he doesn’t look away, doesn’t joke. Just waits until I nod once, small but real.
And for a beat, there’s quiet. The kind that says they’ve got my back, that whatever comes out of this, it won’t be me alone.
Then Eli ruins it, of course. “So this mystery muse,” he says, wagging his brows. “Am I supposed to believe it’s not me? Because I swear, man, the last chorus sounded exactly like my ass.”
We all crack up, tension bleeding out in the way only this band can manage.
The café feels too quiet once the interviewer’s gone, the recorder no longer blinking red between us. For a second, all I hear is the scrape of a chair and Eli slurping the last of his latte like he’s trying to be annoying on purpose.
Then Drew leans back, arms behind his head, and smirks at me. “Well, congratulations, Casanova. You just came out in print.”
“Please,” Eli says, wagging his brows. “Like that’s news. We’ve been living with the gospel of Rafe’s sex life since freshman year.”
I flip him off again, but there’s no heat in it. My pulse is still thrumming, the words still echoing—yeah, I write from experience. All kinds of experience.
Miles, steady as ever, says it before anyone else can. “Doesn’t matter. We agreed years ago—no hiding.”
That makes Eli sober up a little. He nods, curls flopping into his eyes. “Yeah. Fuck hiding. The whole point is honesty. We write what we live, we play what we feel, and we don’t make excuses for it.”
And fuck if he’s not right. And double thank fuck that while I don’t talk about it much with my parents, they know I’m bisexual and respect that there’s no way I’d hide that part of myself.
Drew drums his fingers against the table, voice lower. “Even if it makes people uncomfortable.”
“Especially if it makes people uncomfortable,” Miles corrects, and when his dark eyes flick to me, I feel it settle.
This pact we made back when the band was nothing more than a half-broken drum kit, mismatched amps, and a handful of bad songs—when we swore we weren’t gonna twist ourselves into something fake just to fit in.
Eli grins again, lighter now. “Besides, I like to think of us as an equal-opportunity band. We’ve got enough kinks and preferences between the four of us to cover a whole damn Pride parade.”
That earns a laugh, because he’s not wrong. Eli’s stories alone could scandalize half the dorms. Drew’s quieter about it, but he’s never hidden the fact that his ex is a guy who still shows up to our gigs. Miles? He’s dated whoever the hell he wants without apology since day one.
And me? I guess I’ve always been open about not giving a shit who I fall into bed with. But saying it out loud, on record, where people outside this booth will hear it? That hits different.
“You good?” Drew asks me, softer now, like he can see the way I’m turning it over in my head.
I shrug, casual as I can make it. “Yeah. Just didn’t expect it to feel like… a line I crossed without thinking.”
Miles’s mouth tips at the corner. “Lines are bullshit. You don’t need to think about it. You just need to live it.”
Eli slaps the table like he’s sealing the deal. “Exactly. We live loud. No shame, no filters. That’s the only way we make music worth hearing.”
The words settle into me like another kind of bassline—solid, grounding, impossible to shake.
And just like that, the moment shifts again. Drew’s already reaching for his guitar case, Eli’s cracking some joke about groupies, and Miles is standing like he’s got rehearsal schedules tattooed on the inside of his skull.
But the vow hums under it all.
No hiding. Not from ourselves, not from each other, not from the world.
And fuck if that doesn’t make me proud to be theirs.
We spill out of the café into the sharp night air, guitars slung across our backs, cups still buzzing in our hands. The place is too small for all that energy, and the second we’re outside, Eli practically bounces down the sidewalk, already riffing on some ridiculous imaginary headline.
“Local band front man outs himself in indie rag, fans everywhere cry: Please let it be me!”
Drew groans, laughing anyway. “Jesus, Eli. You ever shut up?”
“Nope,” Eli says, popping the p with a grin. “Besides, you saw her face when she asked. She wanted the scoop, man. And you just handed it to her.”
I smirk, even though my pulse is still twitching from the interview. “Better me than you clowns. You’d have turned it into a knock-knock joke.”
“Maybe.” Drew shrugs, hands stuffed in his pockets. “But it fits. The honesty thing. The pact. You said it, Miles said it. No hiding, right?”
Miles, walking steady as a metronome beside us, just nods. His voice is quiet but solid when he says, “Right.”
And that’s when Eli, of course, can’t resist. “So… about this muse of yours.” His grin is pure mischief. “Tall? Fair? Broody captain of the Panthers?”
Drew elbows him, but he’s smiling too. “Don’t be an asshole. We all know.”
The words hang for a second, louder than the traffic, louder than the bass rattling from some passing car.
They know. Of course they do. There’s no disguising a six-foot-four presence in our small apartment.
“Unofficially,” Miles adds, tone even. He glances at me, and his gaze is the opposite of teasing. It’s grounding. “We know, but it’s yours. We don’t touch it.”
Eli lifts both hands, mock innocent. “Hey, I’m not touching anything. Just saying, if I had guy blushing at me in the gym, I’d have written a fucking opera by now.”
Heat flares in my face, and I shove him lightly as we cross the street. “Shut up.”
But Drew cuts in then, softer. “You don’t have to say it out loud, Rafe. We’ve got eyes. And ears. And we’re not gonna spill it. Not to anyone. Not even him, if you don’t want that.”
The knot in my chest loosens just a little. Because that’s the thing about this band—we fuck around, we give each other shit, we make each other insane, but when it matters? We hold the line. Always.
Eli whistles low again, but his voice loses the edge of teasing. “Hell, man. If he keeps putting that kind of fire in your lyrics, I say ride it. World’s full of worse muses.”
Miles hums, almost approving. “As long as you’re careful.”
And Drew, eyes glinting in the streetlight, adds, “As long as you don’t lose yourself.”
I don’t answer right away. The words stick in my throat, tangled up with the memory of Ollie’s blush, the weight of his gaze, the way he plays guitar like it’s a secret he doesn’t want anyone to find out.
Finally, I clear my throat. “Yeah. I know.”
We walk on in comfortable silence for a while, the city humming around us. It’s not until we’re almost back at the apartment that Eli pipes up again, lighter this time. “So what’s the plan, maestro? You gonna keep writing cryptic love songs and drive us all crazy, or you gonna actually—”
“Eli,” Miles warns, sharp but not unkind.
Eli shuts his mouth, though his grin doesn’t fade.
And me? I just shake my head, because what can I say? They know. Unofficially. And it’s enough.
For now.