27. Split The Party
Chapter twenty-seven
Split The Party
Dex
Apparently, agreeing to spend four weeks in Chicago writing an album with Signal Saints is significantly easier when Austin Fletcher is standing in front of you and significantly harder when his business manager sends you a seventeen-page PDF.
This feels unfair.
The first email I thought was all-encompassing, but then I signed the contract.
I am sitting at the kitchen table with my laptop open in front of me, coffee going cold at my elbow, and an email titled MARCH WRITING BLOCK - TRAVEL & SESSION DETAILS glaring at me like I've done something personally offensive.
Which, to be fair, I probably have.
I click the attachment again.
Maybe the information will be less overwhelming the fourth time.
It is not.
Four weeks.
Monday through Friday.
Studio call at nine most mornings.
Eight-hour scheduled days, with a friendly little note that says sessions may extend depending on creative needs, which is music-industry language for you people have no concept of time and will absolutely still be arguing about a guitar track at eight-thirty at night.
Hotel covered.
Flights covered.
Daily meal allowance.
Ground transportation covered.
A couple of dinners and industry events already blocked into the schedule.
Austin apparently plans to introduce me to producers, writers, musicians, and several people whose job titles sound made up but whose resumes would probably make me shit myself.
There's even a section about studio photography and videography for behind-the-scenes promotional content.
I stare at that one longer than necessary.
It's not like I'm becoming a celebrity.
Songwriters exist quietly all the time.
Normal people do not generally chase songwriters through airports.
Probably.
Still, my name would be attached to anything I help write.
Dex Mercer.
Publicly.
Which is cool.
And terrifying.
And not currently the biggest problem.
The biggest problem is that I bartend four or five nights a week.
For money.
At a real job.
Like a normal person.
A job that generally expects me to appear more often than once a month.
I scroll farther.
Signal Saints is covering basically everything while I'm there, and the session rate is enough that I will make more in four weeks than I would behind the bar during the same stretch.
That's not the point.
The point is what happens when I come back.
I minimize the PDF.
Open my calendar.
Four weeks is a long fucking time when you put it into little colored boxes.
Twenty weekdays in Chicago.
Four Mondays.
Four Thursdays without D&D.
Four weeks of not closing the bar.
Four weeks of not crawling into Micah's bed after a shift.
Four weeks of Cami not stealing bites off my plate while insisting she didn't want food.
Four weeks of Griffin not bitching because I leave cabinet doors open.
Four weeks of Ronan experiencing the peace and quiet he's secretly prayed for since meeting me.
Okay.
Maybe for them there are benefits.
I look at the bar schedule.
I should probably talk to my manager before I spiral.
This is personal growth.
Look at me.
Practically emotionally regulated.
My bar manager says exactly what I hoped he wouldn't.
“I can give you the leave.”
I sit across from him in the office before my shift, one foot bouncing hard enough that the cheap desk vibrates.
“But?”
He sighs.
Fuck.
Any sentence involving employment that includes a sigh before but should be illegal.
“But four weeks is four weeks, Dex.”
“I am familiar with linear time.”
“I need to cover your shifts.”
“I know.”
“You work four, sometimes five nights a week.”
“I also know that.”
“And I can't hire somebody for a month and tell them to fuck off the second you come back.”
I stare at the payroll calendar tacked to the wall behind his head.
The logical part of my brain understands this.
Unfortunately, the logical part of my brain is currently locked in a storage closet while the rest of us set fires.
“So you're firing me.”
“No.”
“Feels firing-adjacent.”
“Jesus Christ.” He leans back. “I'm saying take the leave. Go to Chicago. Do the thing.”
“And then?”
“And when you come back, I will do everything I can to get you hours.”
Everything I can.
Not your shifts will be here.
Not nothing changes.
My stomach twists.
“But you can't guarantee it.”
“No.”
“Or that I'll even have enough shifts to live on.”
His expression softens, which is somehow worse. “I can't promise you what staffing will look like a month later.”
Right.
Of course he can't.
Bars are not nonprofit emotional-support employers.
People quit. People get hired. Schedules change.
Customers still need drinks even when one of the bartenders has wandered off to Chicago to cosplay as a professional songwriter.
My manager leans forward. “Dex.”
“What?”
“You know I don't want to lose you.”
I make a face. “Don't say nice things right now. I'm vulnerable.”
He laughs. “You're good at your job.”
“I know.”
“The regulars love you. The staff loves you. You cover shifts. You make us money.”
“Wow. Keep going.”
“You're also annoying as fuck.”
“There it is.”
He smiles.
Then gets serious again. “If this was you asking for four weeks off to sit on a beach, we'd be having a different conversation.”
“So you're discriminating against vacations.”
“Absolutely.”
“Noted.”
“You're going to write an album with Signal Saints.”
I look down.
He says it like it's simple.
Like that sentence doesn't rearrange all the furniture in my brain every time somebody says it.
“They asked you, right?”
“Yeah.”
“And they're paying you?”
“Yeah.”
“And covering Chicago?”
“Yeah.”
“Then why the fuck are you sitting in my office acting like I'm going to tell you not to go?”
Because that would be easier.
I don't say it.
He waits.
I shrug. “Just checking.”
“Go.” His voice is firm now. “Seriously. We'll figure out the bar when you get back.”
That isn't a guarantee.
I want a guarantee.
I want him to promise that the exact same shifts and coworkers and Thursday-night regular who tips twelve percent but always brings me homemade cookies will be waiting exactly where I left them.
He can't.
That's the problem with leaving.
Things continue without you.
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yeah.”
I stand.
Then stop at the door. “If you replace me with someone hotter, I'm suing.”
“That may be difficult.”
“Because I'm irreplaceable?”
“Because almost everyone is hotter than you.”
I put a hand over my heart. “Hostile workplace.”
“Get behind the bar, Dex.”
At least some things remain predictable.
I tell Grave Intentions at rehearsal.
In person.
Because I'm not a complete asshole.
Mostly.
Cruz finishes tuning and stares at me. “Four weeks?”
“Yes.”
“With Signal Saints.”
“Yes.”
“Writing their album.”
“Potentially contributing to their album. Let's not make it weird.”
Mila throws a drumstick at me.
I catch it badly.
It hits my chest and falls.
“Why the fuck are you talking like you're considering not going?”
“I didn't say that.”
“You're making your panic face.”
“I do not have a panic face.”
Three people stare at me.
Okay.
Rude.
Alex sets his bass down. “When?”
“March.”
“Any gigs?”
“We have the Lair show the second weekend.”
Cruz waves one hand. “We'll cancel.”
My head snaps toward him. “No.”
“You want us to do a show without you?”
“Also no.”
“We could get somebody to fill in.”
“Absolutely fucking not.”
Mila looks at me. “Dex.”
“What?”
“You are not skipping a month writing with Signal Saints because we have a ninety-minute set in Denver.”
“I didn't say I was.”
“You were thinking it really loudly.”
I hate knowing people.
I cross my arms. “We're a band.”
“Correct,” Alex says.
“Bands generally require the frontman.”
“Also correct.”
Cruz grins. “But if our frontman gets writing credits on the next Signal Saints album, do you understand how aggressively we're going to exploit that?”
I blink.
Mila points a drumstick at him. “He's right.”
“You too?”
“Absolutely. Grave Intentions featuring songwriter Dex Mercer, who has worked with multi-platinum artists?”
She shrugs. “We're putting that shit everywhere.”
Alex nods thoughtfully. “Could probably get better bookings.”
“Maybe festival interest.” Cruz's grin grows.
“If you become famous, I expect you to be very clear that we knew you when you still forgot your own cables,” Mila adds.
“I hate all of you.”
Mila smiles. “No, you don't.”
No.
I really fucking don't.
That's another problem.
Grave Intentions isn't just a hobby in the sense that it doesn't matter.
It matters a lot.
We practice twice a week because we like being together.
We play maybe ten shows a year because that's what fits into everyone's lives.
I've written songs with these people.
Sweated on stages with them.
Fought over arrangements and eaten shitty diner food at two in the morning after shows nobody will ever remember except us.
Going to Chicago doesn't erase that.
My brain keeps acting like every new door requires me to burn the room behind me.
Maybe that's a me problem.
Probably.
Most problems are.
Mila stands and hugs me.
I stiffen. “This feels manipulative.”
“It is.”
Cruz joins.
Then Alex.
Suddenly I'm in a four-person band hug that smells like sweat and rehearsal-room carpet.
“This is horrible.”
“Go to Chicago,” Mila says into my shoulder.
“And become useful to us,” Cruz adds.
There they are.
My people.
By midnight, I have made several discoveries.
One: we have spent years joking about never splitting the party—apparently real life doesn’t give a shit about table rules.
Two: four weeks is twenty-eight days.
I already knew this, but seeing it on Google somehow makes it worse.
Three: Denver to Chicago is approximately two and a half hours by plane.
Also information I possessed before tonight.
Four: if you search “can a relationship survive one month apart” at twelve-sixteen in the morning, the internet assumes you are seventeen or deploying overseas.
Neither is helpful. Also, Reddit thinks I need therapy, which feels rude mostly because it is technically correct.
Five: Micah knows when I'm spiraling even if I am completely silent.
Which feels invasive.
He comes into his bedroom and stops.