Chapter 15 #2
“So,” Cyaire says after a moment, his tone deliberately lighter now. “You’re kind of everywhere these days. I saw clips of you both on stage in New Orleans. Jules, it was electric. I’m sad I missed seeing it live. My big brother, damn, you’re a household name now.”
I snort, grateful for the shift. “That’s one way to put it.”
“No, I mean it,” he insists. “You’re everywhere.
I can’t flip through social media without seeing video clips of you playing, podcast interviews dissecting you and Malik, or complete strangers arguing about you on the internet like they’ve known you their whole lives.
You’ve crossed over from musician to cultural phenomenon. ”
I shake my head, still uncomfortable with the attention. “It’s surreal. Disorienting.”
“But good?” he presses, searching for the truth beneath my discomfort.
I hesitate, weighing the complexity of my feelings. “Yes, and exhausting. Overwhelming. I’ll be glad when I can go home and sleep in my own bed without cameras waiting outside.”
He laughs, warm and genuine. “Sounds about right, and I don’t doubt it. You’ve always valued your privacy.”
There’s a beat of comfortable silence, then he adds, voice lifting with barely concealed eagerness, “You think I could come out for one of the European shows? Cough. Cough. Paris. Just throwing that out there casually.”
Something warms in my chest as I laugh at the obvious hint. “Of course. I’ll buy your ticket. First class. The works.”
“Oh, look at you,” he teases. “Mr. World Famous with the fancy perks. Throwing around that tour money.”
“Don’t start,” I say with an eye roll he can’t see but can surely hear in my voice. “I’ll downgrade you to economy middle seat so fast.”
“I’m serious though,” he says, a note of genuine hope threading through the teasing. “It will be good to see you without the parentals hovering. On your terms. In your element. I want to see this new version of you up close.”
“I’d like that,” I admit, surprising myself with how much I mean it. “It would be. . .grounding to have you there.”
We talk a little longer, about nothing and everything: his latest audition, a film he’s excited about, the weather in Philadelphia versus San Francisco, until the conversation winds itself down naturally, the way the best ones do.
“Love you,” he says before hanging up, simple and certain.
“Love you too,” I reply, the words coming easily for him in a way they rarely do for anyone else.
The call ends, and the room feels emptier for it, the silence more pronounced. I set the phone aside and lean back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling with its generic hotel patterns, tracking the faint shadows cast by city lights filtering through the curtains.
In the last few weeks, my career has done something I never thought possible.
It’s taken off like a rocket breaking atmosphere, the kind of exponential growth that artists dream about but rarely experience.
Sold-out venues with lines wrapping around blocks, platinum album sales climbing weekly, last-minute interviews with publications that wouldn’t return calls from my label six months ago, and a social media following that multiplied overnight.
Doors are swinging open for me that have been firmly shut in the past, locked and barred against my efforts.
I hate how much of it tracks back to Malik.
I hate the uncomfortable truth that he is partially responsible for this sudden success after years of steady but limited growth.
I know my skills speak for themselves, I’ve never doubted my technical ability or musicality, but talent has never been the problem.
Yes, I made it against all odds, especially after things felt so bleak all those years ago when Julliard was suddenly, devastatingly off the table.
I’ve blamed him for so long, for everything, a convenient target for my rage and disappointment.
Here I am regardless of that, having found my own path to success.
I can’t give him my thanks, not out loud at least. Not yet.
Yes, I thanked him for that night at Scat Bar because I can’t deny that New Orleans changed something fundamental.
That night on Bourbon Street shifted the narrative, both for the public perception and for my own understanding of what’s possible.
Chicago feels distant now, almost dreamlike, swallowed by the momentum and music and the relentless forward motion of the tour that keeps us both too busy for proper reckoning.
We’re mere weeks from Europe now. Only two cities left on the US leg of the tour, and our song is nearly finished.
A piece that has evolved from obligation to something I’m genuinely proud of, something that bears both our signatures in every phrase.
Things between us have been cordial, professional, sometimes so unexpectedly easy that I catch myself off guard.
So easy that I almost forget the weight of our shared past. So easy that I sometimes find myself yearning to be near him again, drawn by some invisible tide I neither control nor fully understand.
I don’t know what that means yet. I don’t know where things will end between us, if reconciliation is possible or even desirable after all we’ve done and left undone.
What I do know with absolute clarity is that the way this tour came together, the pressure, the binding contracts, the fundamental lack of choice, has left a sour taste I can no longer ignore.
If anything, Damon Stone has shown me just how little control I truly have over my own career, and I no longer want to simply roll over and comply.
I’m done letting others control my life for me, whether it’s my parents with their rigid expectations or my record label with their suffocating demands.
I’m not eighteen anymore, wide-eyed and desperate for validation.
I’m not the frightened young man who would sacrifice anything for security.
I’m a grown-ass man with accomplishments and resources and music that people actually want to hear.
I’m in a position now to stand on my own two feet without needing anyone’s permission or approval. I am not invisible. Not anymore.
Other artists have walked away from their labels and built something of their own, taken control of their creative output and business decisions.
They’ve chosen freedom over permission, authenticity over safety.
With the momentum I have now, the growing audience, the impressive streaming numbers, the expanding reach, I don’t know that I need Reality Records the way they think I do.
Maybe it’s time for the power dynamic to shift.
Maybe it’s time to have a real conversation with Eli. A genuine talk about renegotiation, about independence, about what it would look like to build something that truly belongs to me rather than serving someone else’s vision of who I should be.
This feeling is new to me, this sense of possibility, of horizons expanding rather than walls closing in. For the first time in years, I don’t feel like I’m suffocating under the weight of everyone else’s expectations and judgments. I can finally draw a full breath.
Maybe that’s genuine growth from all the painful lessons learned along the way.
Maybe it’s just a temporary lull before the next reckoning comes crashing down.
Either way, I sit with it, letting the quiet settle around me, knowing the next chapter, whatever it brings, is coming whether I’m fully prepared or not.
Change is inevitable, and I’m surprised to discover I’m not afraid anymore.
Instead, I cautiously welcome it with open arms, reaching toward possibility rather than shrinking from it.
I hate to admit it, even to myself in the privacy of this anonymous room, but I have Malik to thank for catalyzing this transformation.
Without this tour, without the collision of our lives again after so many years apart, I would still be living in shadows, under everyone else’s thumb, playing it safe at the cost of playing it real.
Now, for perhaps the first time since I was teen, I can finally see the light breaking through the bleak clouds that have covered my life for so long. A promise of something clearer, brighter, and entirely my own.