Chapter 16 #2
“Where’s this coming from?” Mick asked, absently twisting a long curl around his finger. “Is this where you tell us you wanna break up?”
“No—” I started, but Thump cut me off with a strangled noise.
“You wanna break up?!”
Ghost pushed off the dresser, suddenly standing. “Bodhi, what the hell?”
“I don’t—”
“Oh my god,” Thump whimpered, bleary eyes already filling with tears. “This hurts more than when my high school girlfriend left me for the captain of the Mathletes.”
Mick’s knee started bouncing. “Maybe we could try counselling?”
“We’re not a married couple,” Ghost snapped. “And I’m pretty sure there’s no therapy for bands when your frontman decides to bail.”
The situation was spiralling fast, and I was scrambling for a way to regain control when Riff’s voice cut through the chaos.
“Guys!”
Silence slammed down over the room. Not the comforting kind. The kind that buzzed with tension. Mick, Ghost, and I turned to Riff, who now had a fully crying Thump tucked against his chest.
“He doesn’t want to break up,” Riff said, calm and certain. “And I don’t think he’s talking about us . . .” He gestured around the room. “At all.” He glanced at me. “Right?”
I nodded so fast I was surprised my head stayed attached.
Thump sniffed and pulled his knees up, curling in on himself. Moments like this were a stark reminder that he was the youngest of us, even if it wasn’t by much. “S-so you don’t want us to b-break up?”
I managed what I hoped passed for a reassuring smile. “Nah, man.”
“Oh, thank fuck,” Ghost muttered, pressing a hand to his chest as he dropped back onto the bed.
Mick looked up at me from the chair, shaking his head with a fond grimace.
“You scared us, Bodes.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, holding my hands up in surrender. “I didn’t mean if you were happy with us as bandmates. More like . . .” I scratched at the back of my head. “With how things have been working. Songwriting. The tour. All of it.”
“Oh,” Riff said, understanding dawning as a smirk tugged at his mouth. “You wanna know if we’re happy with the label.”
I shrugged. “I mean, I guess if you want to put it that way—”
“No need to be diplomatic, bro,” Riff cut in, grin widening. “If I’m being honest, I think they’re assholes.”
My eyebrows shot up.
“Yeah,” Ghost added. “I hate the sounds they make us use sometimes. Not because they’re bad, exactly. They just . . .” He trailed off.
“Don’t sound like us?” Mick supplied, and Ghost nodded immediately.
“Exactly.” Ghost sat up. “It’s like they take our song, hand it to Taylor Swift and say, ‘Make this more pop,’ then give it back to us and call it finished.”
Thump grunted his agreement, wiping at his eyes with his sleeve. “Some of the lyrics suck too,” he muttered. “We’ve seen your songwriting, Bodes. Their stuff doesn’t even come close.”
My cheeks warmed, heat blooming fast. “Thanks, man,” I murmured.
“They let us do what we wanted at the start,” Mick said, gaze drifting to the window. “But the more money we made, the more control we lost.”
“That’s because we’re their cash cow,” Ghost spat.
“Why—” My voice cracked, and I stopped to clear my throat. “Why didn’t you guys say anything?”
Riff shrugged, smile turning a little sad. “Why didn’t you?”
“I just . . .” I dragged a hand down my face. “I didn’t want to sound ungrateful.”
Mick let out a short laugh. Then Ghost joined in. Then Riff. Thump snorted, and suddenly it was contagious. Before I knew it, all five of us were laughing so hard it hurt. The kind of laughter that stole your breath and left your stomach aching.
Mick doubled over in the chair, clutching his middle. Riff tipped his head back against the wall. Thump’s face scrunched up, eyes wet again, but this time from laughter. Ghost draped an arm over his face.
And me? I bent forward, hands braced on my knees, wheezing as tears streamed down my cheeks. Some from laughing. Some from grief. From everything we’d lost along the way.
On paper, it did sound ungrateful. The label had given us a career, a platform, a name people recognised. We had the fans we did because of them. But a cage with gilded bars was still a cage. And over time, the space we had to move, to breathe, to be ourselves, had shrunk until it barely existed.
As the laughter faded, leaving only sore abs and lingering smiles, the room fell quiet again.
But this silence was different. It wasn’t heavy.
It was expectant. Hopeful. I inhaled deeply, filling my lungs until it almost hurt, then exhaled as I straightened.
I looked around the room at my bandmates. My brothers.
For the first time in years, I felt steady.
Everything I loved was right here. The only thing missing was pink hair, emerald eyes, and a mouth full of sass.
“So,” Riff said eventually, stretching the word out. “What does this mean for us?”
I curled my toes into the carpet, grounding myself.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said firmly. “None of us are.”
Thump sagged in visible relief against Riff’s chest, and Riff’s hand smoothed down his back, grounding him.
“I just—” I paused, choosing my words carefully. “I don’t want us to wake up one day and realise we stopped recognising what we’re doing. Or why we started doing it in the first place.”
Ghost tilted his head, watching me closely now. Mick leaned forward in the chair.
“We’ve been pushing non-stop,” I continued. “Tour after tour. Album after album. Press. Expectations stacked on expectations. And I know we’re lucky. I know that. But somewhere along the way, it stopped feeling like ours.”
Thump sniffed. “I still like drums,” he offered weakly.
“I like drums too,” I said, a ghost of a smile tugging at my mouth. “That’s kind of the point. I want us to remember who we were before all of this got . . . so loud. Before music became something we survived instead of something we loved.”
Riff spoke then, voice low and even. Grounded. The kind of voice that had talked me off ledges more times than I could count.
“We’ve always been a band,” he said. “But we’ve also always been each other’s safety net. When one of us wobbles, the rest close ranks. That’s never changed.”
He looked at me directly. No judgement or fear. Just certainty.
“You don’t have to carry this alone, brother.”
Ghost nodded once. “If you’re asking whether I’m willing to slow down, or shake things up, or piss off the label a little . . .” His mouth quirked. “Yeah. I’m in.”
Mick followed. “Same. I didn’t sign up to be a product. I signed up to make noise with you idiots.”
Thump lifted his head, eyes still glassy but earnest. “I just want us to stay . . . us.”
Riff squeezed him gently, then looked back at me. “So say it,” he murmured. “What do you actually want?”
I swallowed, heart thudding.
“I want a meeting with the label,” I said. “After the tour. Once we’ve had time to figure out what we want as a band.”
Thump snorted. “Sounds like a hostage negotiation.”
“Isn’t it?” Riff replied, ruffling Thump’s already disastrous hair. “Our contract’s nearly up. We lay out our demands and threaten to walk if they don’t comply.”
Ghost chewed on his lower lip. “What if they call our bluff?”
“There are other labels,” Mick said with a shrug. “We just never really looked before.”
“Exactly,” Riff agreed. “Noctis is big enough now. We don’t need them like we used to.” He paused, then added, softer but certain, “Hell, we could go independent if we wanted.”
And for the first time since we started the band, that idea didn’t sound like a fantasy. It sounded like a choice.
Thump straightened up, pulling away from Riff’s chest. “What about Clara?”
“We could hire her ourselves,” I said. “If she wanted it, I mean. It’s not like we’re short on cash.”
Mick nodded, serious. “Yeah. I don’t think I’d want another manager.”
“I don’t think anyone else could wrangle that one,” Ghost deadpanned, nodding towards our drummer.
“Hey,” Thump growled, shoving Ghost’s back with his foot.
Ghost twisted around and slapped his calf in retaliation, and the two of them immediately devolved into bickering, voices overlapping, insults half-hearted and familiar.
“It’d be nice,” Mick mused, stretching his arms over his head. “To have a bit more creative freedom.”
And that reminded me.
“I, uh . . .” I tugged the crumpled notebook from my pocket and flipped it open to a marked page. “I wrote something.”
Riff perked up instantly, grin wide and unguarded. “You did?”
“Yeah.” I shifted my weight, suddenly hyperaware of my own pulse. “It’s still rough but I thought . . . maybe we could um, work on it after the tour.”
Riff held his hand out, and after a moment’s hesitation, I passed the notebook over. His eyes skimmed the page, moving quickly. At first, his brow furrowed. Then the corner of his mouth ticked up, and he glanced at me over the edge of the paper.
“This is different.”
“Uh, yeah . . .” I said, trying my best to sound casual.
“Very different,” he added, passing the notebook to Mick.
Mick nodded slowly as he read, thoughtful, but my focus stayed locked on Riff. I didn’t look away from that knowing stare.
He was right. The song was different. Not in structure or sound, but intention. I’d never written about another person before. Not really. My lyrics had always been abstract, observational. Life, grief, anger, the band, the world. Even when I’d brushed close to intimacy, it had been vague. Safe.
This wasn’t.
I hadn’t named anyone, but I hadn’t needed to. The imagery gave it away. The metaphors. The gravity of it. Anyone who knew what was going on between Iggy and me would hear it between the lines. And Riff knew.
I’d written a love song. A love letter, really. For Iggy.
Mick passed the notebook to Ghost, who skimmed it and handed it to Thump.
Soon the three of them were talking over one another, tossing out ideas, melodies, favourite lines.
Oblivious to what the song actually was.
Riff, meanwhile, just leaned back against the pillows, arms folded behind his head, grinning at me like he’d caught me red-handed.
“Well,” he said, far too smug. “I think this could be our next big hit.”
And I didn’t argue.
Because all I could think about was singing it to Iggy.