YOUNG BLOOD #2
"Yeah," I agree. "I do. Got the emotional scars and the premature grey hairs to prove it."
"But I think about her sometimes," he adds. “A lot actually. Wonder who she became. Whether she made it out clean. Whether she found people who loved her the right way, without conditions or cruelty attached."
He pauses. His fingers tap against his thigh.
"And I hope like hell that if we ever did cross paths again, I'd be someone she'd be proud to have known. Not the boy trying to shield her, but the man I became because of everything we went through."
The weight of what he's trusting me with settles between us. This isn't just conversation. This is him showing me something he doesn't show many people.
"In some fucked up way, I still kind of hope that one day she'll hear a song or come to a gig and I'll see her and it’ll be like that iconic movie kind of shit. Kinda pathetic right?"
"Not in the slightest."
"Music helped me make sense of it," he says. "It made me feel close to her." He looks up at me. "And it saved me in more ways than one. It gave me a place to put everything I couldn't say out loud."
He picks up his guitar, runs his thumb over the strings without strumming.
"That's why I do this, you know? Not for the validation or the success, though those are nice. I do it because it's the only thing that's ever felt like truth. Everything else is just noise and survival tactics."
"I get it. Trust me, I do." I say, and mean it completely.
"That's exactly why I built this place. Why I signed you.
I knew you weren't doing this for the wrong reasons. You weren't trying to escape or prove something or fill some void with applause. You were just... doing it because it’s who you are.”
Julian smiles, and it's genuine, reaches his eyes.
“I don’t think I’ve ever actually thanked you for that.”
“For what?”
“You gave me a shot when no one else would. When I was nobody from nowhere who showed up at a bar with a guitar and some songs I'd written in shitty apartments and shelter beds. And for that, I'll never be able to thank you enough."
"There's nothing to thank me for, Jules," I counter. "The music was already there. I just gave you the space to let it breathe. And a significantly better recording setup than whatever you were using before."
"You know, you're just about the only person in my life that actually calls me by my real name."
"Would you prefer I didn't?"
"No, I kind of like that you're the only person that does."
He shifts his weight, and there's something vulnerable in his expression now.
"You've been more than a producer or a label head, Nate. You've been... I don't know, like the older brother I never had. The one who actually gives a shit whether I eat or sleep or burn myself out chasing perfection."
I look away for a second, swallow hard.
"You made that easy. You've always been a good one. Most people your age are still figuring out that other people have internal lives."
"Learned from the best," he says simply.
"Yeah, well. I learned from making every possible mistake, so really you're just benefiting from my extensive catalog of fuck-ups."
He grins at that, and I'm grateful for it—for the way we can move between heavy and light without either feeling false.
We sit in that shared understanding for a moment. The kind that doesn't need dressing up or explaining. This feels familiar. Sitting across from someone younger, hurting in ways that look different but feel the same underneath.
Nick sat with me like this when I was newly sober and everything felt too sharp, too real. He'd let me talk myself into clarity without forcing it, stayed when it got ugly, trusted I'd find my way if I wasn't abandoned to it.
Never tried to fix me, just made sure I knew I wasn't alone in the mess. Which, looking back, probably required the patience of a saint and the tolerance of someone who genuinely hated being helpful.
The shape of that reflects back at me through Julian now. How I've tried to be for him what Nick was for me.
"You don't have to have the right words when you see her," Julian says finally, pulling us back. "You just have to show her who you are now, not who you were when you left. That's all anyone can really ask of you.”
I exhale slowly, something loosening in my chest.
"Alright seriously, how old are you really?”
“It’s just the perks of having a good teacher." He pauses. "Also can't discount the trauma. That shit really speeds up the whole wisdom process."
"Right. Should we add that to the label bio? 'The Row: Emotionally Intelligent Through Collective Suffering'?"
"Catchy," he says with a straight face. "Not sure how marketable though."
We both laugh when my phone buzzes on the desk.
I glance at it—another unknown number blowing up my phone, another thing demanding attention—but I don't reach for it.
Not yet. The world can wait five more minutes.
"You sticking around today?" I ask.
"Yeah," he says. "Thought I'd work through some new material. Tommy's supposed to show too, if he makes it."
"Tommy just needs to know someone's paying attention without making it feel like surveillance."
Julian nods seriously. "I know. It's just hard watching someone on the cusp of greatness, self-sabotaging everything."
"Just keep an eye on him for me? Keep me updated and once the funeral is over, I'll talk to him."
"I've got him," Julian says with certainty. "You just focus on the funeral. And her."
He heads toward the booth then, guitar slung over his shoulder—young blood with an old soul.
I watch him go, gratitude settling deep in my chest, mixing with the grief and the uncertainty and everything else I'm holding.
Before he disappears behind the glass, he turns back.
"What's her name?"
"Nora."
He's quiet for a second, studying my face with that unnerving perceptiveness of his.
"Huh."
"What?"
"That's the first time I've heard you say someone's name and actually smile while saying it.”
I shake my head, but the corner of my mouth pulls up despite myself.
"Get in the booth, smart ass."
He grins, that knowing look that makes him seem older than twenty-one.
"There it is again."
"I will revoke your studio access."
"No you won't."
He's already turning toward the door, confident in a way that's entirely earned. But then he pauses again, hand on the frame, something shifting in his expression.
"Hey, Nate?"
"Yeah?"
"For what it's worth..." He meets my eyes, and the levity drops away, replaced by something sincere and unguarded. "I'm glad you're the one walking us through this. All of it."
He pauses, choosing his next words carefully.
"And I think Alfie and Jake would be proud of that. Of you."
The words land somewhere tender and undefended and for a second I can't find my voice.
"Thanks, Jules," I manage finally. "That means more than you know."
He nods once—understanding that I can't say more right now, that some gratitude is too big for words—and then he's gone, disappearing into the booth where he belongs.
I sit there for a long moment, watching him set up through the glass.
The strange mathematics of loss and recovery.
How Jake's death nearly destroyed me, but in rebuilding myself I created space for people like Julian. How Alfie's passing aches like an open wound, but his legacy lives in Nick, in me, in the way we show up for the people who need us.
How loving Nora and losing her taught me what I was capable of surviving, and that survival eventually turned into something that looks like purpose.
But that's life I guess. Taking your worst moments and demanding you find meaning in them. The universe's favorite party trick.
Somewhere along the way, without fully meaning to, I became the person I needed back then. The steady hand. The one who stays. The one who believes in people when they're still figuring out how to believe in themselves.
Maybe that's how you keep going—not by outrunning the past, but by turning your wreckage into a foundation someone else can build on.
By accepting that you'll never fully escape what broke you, but you can at least make sure it meant something.