CHAPTER 6 ALFIE NATE
ALFIE
NATE
Julian stands in the booth, headphones on, eyes closed like he's somewhere else entirely. Dark strands fall across his forehead, damp with sweat from the second take. He's lean, restless energy contained in a frame that never quite settles—always shifting weight, always moving.
His voice carries through the speakers—raw, unpolished, honest in a way you can't fake. You hear it in the way he drags a syllable just a beat longer than expected. Like he's afraid to let it go.
Tommy sits hunched over his guitar, cigarette tucked behind his ear instead of lit. Dark hair that’s lighter at the ends, falling past his collar in a way that makes him look younger than twenty-two. His fingers move like they're translating something only he can hear.
Ink covers both forearms—half-finished sleeves he adds to every few months, like he's writing his story in images instead of words.
The riffs come easy for him. Too easy. He doesn't think—he feels, and the music follows. It's instinct. Gifted in the way that scares me a little, because people like that burn fast if they don't learn how to rest. If they don't learn that brilliance isn't sustainable without recovery.
Levi counts them in, steady and grounded. The oldest at twenty-five, broad-shouldered and solid behind the kit. Short dark hair, beard trimmed close. He's the anchor—the one who shows up on time, who remembers soundcheck schedules, who keeps the chaos from spinning completely out of control.
Sonny locks in on bass, eyes sharp, listening harder than he plays. Twenty-one and still growing into himself—tall and lanky, all angles and elbows, blondish hair twisted into short locs. He's the new kid, but he's earned his place. Knows when to push, when to disappear into the pocket.
This is the first time they're all here together since Tommy went quiet. Since the missed rehearsals. Since the worry lodged itself somewhere behind my ribs and refused to leave.
I've been carrying it around for weeks now, this low-grade fear that something's breaking down where I can't see it.
The song builds slowly. No rush. No shortcuts. Just patience and trust layered over themselves until they become something larger.
It reminds me why I believe in them.
Why I'm certain—unshakably certain—that if they keep their heads straight, if they stay alive long enough to see it through, this band could be one of the biggest in the world.
They have what you can't teach. What you can't fake or force or manufacture in a writing session.
Chemistry. Truth. The kind of raw honesty that makes people stop what they're doing and listen.
When the track ends, the room stays silent for a moment longer than necessary. No one reaches for the talkback. No one breaks the spell.
We all know when something lands right—when the music becomes bigger than the people making it.
"Again," Julian finally says, voice rough from the take.
They run it back.
I watch Tommy this time.
The way his shoulders stay tight even when the music loosens.
The shadows under his eyes that makeup can't quite hide—dark circles that speak of too many nights running on empty.
The way he never quite relaxes, even when he's in his element.
Like he's braced for impact from something the rest of us can't see coming.
I know that look. It's the look of someone carrying too much for too long. Of secrets stacked so high they start to leak through the cracks.
You can't outrun that kind of weight. Not by staying busy. Not by staying loud. Not by keeping moving and never looking back.
It just waits.
When I was younger, that voice in my head told me things I believed. That I was disposable. That I deserved what happened. That if I stopped moving, stopped numbing, everything would catch up and swallow me whole.
I lived inside that voice for years. Let it dictate every decision, every relationship, every moment of self-destruction I convinced myself was control.
I learned the hard way what happens when you let that voice get comfortable.
They take a break after the third run.
Water bottles crack open. Levi stretches, rolling his shoulders. Sonny scrolls his phone, already checking messages from whoever's waiting for him outside these walls.
Tommy doesn't move. Just sits there, guitar still in his lap, staring at nothing.
My phone buzzes in my pocket.
I answer, stepping away from the console.
"Ollie."
His voice hits me like a wave. Loud. Warm. Familiar.
"Well shit. There he is. Jesus, I miss your face."
I smile before I can stop myself. "You say that like we don't text every other day."
"Not the same," he says immediately. "When are we going for a surf? I need to squeeze in some wave time before this newborn starts kicking my ass with no sleep."
"Smart," I say. "Get it in while you can."
"Damn right," he laughs, and I hear the grin threading through his voice. "Mia says I'm in denial about how much my life's about to change."
"How is she?" I ask, settling back against the mixing desk. The studio chatter fades to background noise.
"Beautiful yet somehow so terrifying," he says, pride woven through every word. "Doctor says maybe five weeks."
Five weeks until everything changes for him. Until he becomes someone's father. I lean back, staring at the scuffed floor, at the decades of wear that map out every band that's passed through here.
"You're going to be a dad, Oliver.”
"I know," he says without hesitation, without false modesty. "Best one too. Kid's gonna have jokes, good looks, style, and an uncle who hangs out with The 1975 during the week. You're free to babysit on weekends though, yeah?"
I huff a quiet laugh. "If it means I can teach them how to play guitar, then yes."
There's a pause then.
"Jake would've loved this," Ollie says quietly.
My chest tightens. The air in the room feels thinner.
"Yeah," I manage, voice steady even as something inside me fractures. "He would've."
It still hits me sometimes—how much Jake missed. Ollie's wedding. The baby. All the ordinary miracles that come after surviving your twenties.
He should be here for this. He should be the one giving Ollie shit about becoming a dad, making jokes about diaper changes and sleepless nights. Jake never got the chance. Monty took that from him. From all of us.
The memory is sharp, uninvited. The gunshot. The hospital lights—fluorescent and unforgiving. Machines keeping time while my brother faded, each beep measuring out the seconds of a life ending too soon.
Me trapped in a fentanyl-induced coma, watching it happen over and over like a film I couldn't shut off, couldn't escape, couldn't rewrite no matter how many times I lived through it.
Rehab taught me how to sleep again. Eventually. It taught me that loud noises don't mean danger anymore—even if my body still flinches before my brain catches up, even if the echo of that gunshot never fully leaves.
"I also need to tell you something," Ollie says, pulling me back from the edge of that memory.
His voice shifts, careful now.
"There's a chance Nora might show up."
The room spins. Just slightly. Just enough that I notice my hand gripping the edge of the desk a little tighter.
"To the baby shower," he adds. "Have you, uh, spoken to her since the wedding?"
"No," I say. Too quickly. The word comes out harder than I intend. "That was the last time."
Five years. Five years since I saw her across a crowded reception, laughing at something her then boyfriend, Liam, said. Five years since I realized walking away hadn't made it hurt any less.
"I wish you'd told her, man."
"It was too late anyway." The words taste like ash.
There's a beat. Then Ollie exhales slowly, the sound weighted with something I can't quite name.
"Then it wasn't. Now it is."
I don't understand at first. Not really. The words don't process, don't compute, don't arrange themselves into meaning.
"She's getting married."
The words don't land right away. They hover. Weightless. Wrong.
My mouth opens. Nothing comes out.
My mind scrambles for some response, for anything that makes sense of what he just said.
"Nate?" Ollie says. "You there?"
I don't answer. Can't answer.
Because something inside me just broke—clean and quiet and final. Not a crack. Not a fracture. A complete severing of something I didn't know I was still holding onto until it was gone.
Seven years of telling myself it was temporary. Necessary. A sacrifice with an expiration date.
Seven years of believing that someday, somehow, when the timing was right and I'd survived long enough, fixed enough of myself, there might be a chance to undo what I'd done.
That summer seven years ago—Jake's funeral, the hospital discharge, the weight of grief and guilt so heavy I couldn't stand under it—I nearly died. Overdosed in drug den on a cold concrete floor while my brother's body was still warm in the morgue.
I went to rehab to survive. To claw my way back from the edge. To become someone who could wake up without wanting to disappear.
But somewhere in the back of my mind, through two years of rebuilding myself piece by piece, I believed the door I'd closed was only locked, not sealed shut forever.
I believed that if I got clean, got whole, proved I could be the man she deserved—maybe there'd still be a chance.
Turns out it was permanent.
"Nate—"
"I gotta go," I say, voice distant even to my own ears.
I hang up before he can respond.
The phone feels heavier in my hand than it should.
I stand there for a moment. The studio continues around me—muffled laughter from the booth, the low hum of equipment, Tommy's guitar riff bleeding through the walls.
Everything normal. Everything the same.
Except nothing is.
My hand is still gripping the edge of the desk. Knuckles white. I force myself to let go. Shake out my fingers.
Breathe.
The door opens.
Nick appears in the doorway. His eyes are red. Raw. Swollen in a way that tells me he hasn't just been crying—he's been shattered.
He hasn't bothered wiping his face, hasn't tried to compose himself before walking into this room.
I straighten and my stomach drops before he even speaks.
"What's wrong?" I ask, already knowing from his face that whatever he's about to say will change everything.
He looks at me, voice stripped bare.
"It's Alfie. He's... he's gone."
And just like that—
What little I had left shatters.
Two losses. One breath apart.
Two pieces of my life ending in the span of a single phone call.
I don't react the way people expect. No shouting. No collapse. No dramatic breakdown.
Just a deep, hollow quiet that settles in my chest like it plans to stay. Like it's moving in permanently, rearranging the furniture, claiming space that used to hold something warmer.
"Fuck."
Nick stares at me like he knows better. Like he can see past the calm exterior to the wreckage underneath. Like he knows this quiet isn't peace—it's shock wearing the mask of composure.
"Nate—"
"I'm okay," I say, even though we both know it's a lie.
He just stands there, waiting, giving me space to break if I need to.
I don't.
Can't.
Because if I start, I won't stop.
And somewhere deep inside, the part of me that learned to survive by disappearing folds in on itself again—convinced, more than ever, that loving quietly means losing completely.
That caring without claiming, protecting without possessing, ends the same way every time.
With nothing left but the echo of what you couldn't say when it mattered.