Chapter 4 #2
I look like a man who has never begged in his life, and I hate that. It’s not who I am at all. It’s not who my mother raised with her gentle hands and fierce heart. I’m not a man she would be proud of. Not if she knew what I took to get here, the sacrifices and betrayals that built this career.
I take a deep breath and push it out slowly, centering myself in the chaos.
Then, beneath all the other noise, something else slips through the speakers. Something that cuts through the din with surgical precision.
The sound of a piano. Clean, crisp, controlled notes, calling to me like a siren song. The sound reaches somewhere behind my ribs and flips a switch, awakening something I’ve tried to keep dormant. The room keeps moving, but my body stills, locked in place by melody alone.
A name forms in my head before I can stop it.
Miles. My Miles. I was the only person to call him by his middle name, a privilege I earned and lost. His parents named him after Miles Davis, a nod to the jazz musician he was to become, whether they knew it or not.
The name became a secret between us. Held close and protected, intimately wrapped in teenage whispers and promises.
I don’t say it. I don’t let my mouth shape it, but my pulse reacts like it heard the word anyway, quickening beneath my skin.
The melody moves with restraint and confidence braided together. A sound that knows it has power and refuses to waste it. Nothing flashy, nothing desperate, just pure, undeniable mastery.
It drags me backward without asking. A practice room at Berkland. A bench too small for two growing boys. His shoulder against mine like it belonged there, warmth seeping through thin cotton shirts.
I blink and the dressing room snaps back into focus, the memory retreating but not disappearing.
Renee’s voice cuts through. “Malik. Focus.” Her tone is sharper now, concern edging into irritation.
“I am,” I snap in frustration, defensive because she’s right.
I’m lying. My thoughts, my very heart is elsewhere, trapped in a room with a piano and a boy who doesn’t exist anymore.
I turn toward the door. My feet move before my brain catches up. One step. Then another. The magnetic pull becomes irresistible.
Someone calls my name behind me. I don’t stop. I’m hyper aware of everything around me. The hallway is brighter, colder. Full of motion, technicians with equipment, assistants with clipboards, security with earpieces.
People part for me because I’m Malik Carter and gravity bends that way.
They flatten against walls, step aside mid-conversation, their eyes following with that mix of awe and calculation I’ve grown used to.
It should feel good, but it doesn’t. The parting sea of bodies only highlights my isolation, the space that forms around fame.
The piano grows louder as I reach the wings. Louder in volume and presence, becoming impossible to ignore, much like the man playing it.
The air shifts and Julian is onstage. He sits at the piano like it’s a throne, a latent king who hasn’t claimed his kingdom but knows his power.
Leaner than memory, or maybe memory lies about the boy I knew.
His hair is neat, his posture relaxed, his all-black suit and tie fits him like a second skin as his hands move with effortless authority across ivory keys.
No wasted motion. No showmanship. That was never his style. Julian is pure mastery, the embodiment of control and perfect execution.
The crowd is silent in that reverent way, like they don’t want to miss a single note, a collective holding of air.
I watched through blurry eyes as every note hits me right in the chest, the emotion of the moment almost taking me out.
After all this time, here we are. Two grown men pretending to be strangers, connected only by music and memories neither of us acknowledges.
Julian lets the last note fade and leans into the mic, his proximity to it deliberate, intimate.
“Good evening, Los Angeles.” His voice is smooth, deeper than I remember, mature in ways that make my stomach knot.
The applause is warm. Appreciative. Not the screams that greet me, but something deeper, respect rather than adoration.
“Thank you for being here,” he says. “Tonight isn’t just a show. It’s a promise.” His words are measured, each one placed with the same precision he gives his music.
A single note, soft as punctuation, underscores what follows.
“A promise to fund music programs for kids who deserve access. A promise to support LGBTQIA+ organizations fighting for safety and visibility. A promise to push real money toward cancer research and community care. All of these platforms are important and close to both myself and Malik.”
My throat tightens at the mention of my name. Professional, nothing more behind it, but it still burns all the same. My name in his mouth after all this time, like a stranger saying it, like we never whispered each other’s names in the dark.
Julian plays again, sound flowing like color across canvas, rich and vivid. He talks and plays at the same time, threading meaning through melody, a skill I’ve always envied. I can’t move, transfixed, awed by the musician he’s become while I wasn’t looking.
I watch him from the shadows like I’m stealing something I have no right to.
A voyeur, glimpsing his long-lost obsession through a keyhole, trespassing on a moment not meant for me.
He looks older. Sharper. Still beautiful in a way that makes reaching for him feel dangerous, like touching fire. His hands glide and I remember how they used to hover before he surprised me with a touch, tentative and bold at once.
I caught everything. I just didn’t know what to do with it. Scared that he would leave me behind. Scared of what having him would ultimately mean, so, like a dumbass teenager I was, I fucked it up. One decision, one betrayal that cost us everything.
Julian finishes the piece and lifts his head, the last note lingering in the air between us.
“I used to think music was discipline,” he says. “Technique. Control.” His voice carries through the hushed auditorium, intimate despite the thousands listening.
A pause and the audience waits with bated breath, caught in his spell.
“Then I learned silence has weight. The space between notes is where the truth lives.”
My stomach drops like an elevator in freefall. Because silence is what destroyed us. The words not said, the space for irrevocable decisions. It ruins. It corrodes. It leaves questions unanswered and wounds untreated.
His gaze sweeps the room, acknowledging the audience. Then it finds the wings.
It finds me.
Brown to brown.
No smile. No anger.
Just recognition, restraint, and pain held tight beneath the surface, visible only to someone who knows where to look.
I don’t move. In this moment, I can’t breathe. Time suspends, stretching between us like taffy, thick and impossible.
Julian holds it one beat too long. Then he looks away, the connection broken as cleanly as it formed.
The crowd erupts, unaware a war just happened in the shadows, oblivious to the history crackling in the air.
My lungs drag in air like I’ve been underwater, desperate and burning.
“Malik. On deck,” Tracy snaps in my ear, her voice muffled through the blood rushing in my ears.
A hand grips my arm, a knowing squeeze. Renee looks up at me and smiles, her eyes softer than before. “Give them a show.” Four words that carry the weight of her understanding, her permission to feel this, but not to drown in it.
I laugh under my breath. It sounds broken, a fractured thing that barely qualifies as laughter.
Someone hooks the sax strap around my neck. The weight settles, familiar and grounding. My fingers find the keys, muscle memory taking over where conscious thought fails me.
Julian leaves the stage without looking back, disappearing into the opposite wings, maintaining our careful choreography of avoidance.
I step into the light. The crowd screams my name like prayer, a wall of sound that should fill me but leaves hollows instead.
I smile. I speak about love, community, showing up. I say all the right words, practiced and sincere despite the turmoil beneath.
Then I lift the sax and play the opening notes of Apology.
I sing my heart out. I give the audience everything. Bleeding out my soul with every lyric and note of my saxophone, raw and unfiltered in a way that only music allows.
All the while, inside, I’m thinking of Julian. Brown on brown, and the slow dance begins anew, the steps familiar despite the years.
I’m thinking of a dark dressing room down the hall. I’m thinking about after the meet and greet and pictures he will be long gone. An empty space where Julian used to be, a vacuum I still orbit.
This is how it will be. My life spinning in light and noise, a perpetual motion machine.
His staying quiet, contained, precise as the music he creates.
I’ll keep missing him by hallways.
By seconds.
By years.
I’ll dance on anyway.
Because I started this.
Because I chose this path when I betrayed him.
Because I let four months on the road stand in for the apology I don’t know how to give.
It has to be.
Because the man I loved just looked at me like I was a ghost, a specter from a past he’s worked hard to exorcise.
Julian Reed keeps running from me and I deserve every mile of distance between us.