As Christian pounds on the door for a third time, demanding we get the fuck out, I drop back on the loveseat. I lazily launch my pen toward our manager. It plinks off the glass, but he gets my point.

It’s been hours since we came back in here. My mind feels empty in a way that soothes the deepest parts of me. The paper’s a mess of crossed-out words and circled ones. But what I want in the end remains mostly legible.

“You have enough lyrics to admit we wrote a chorus yet?” Felix asks.

I stare down at a chorus plus two possible verses and then smirk at him. “No, I might throw them all out.”

“That’s why I can’t believe you recorded it,” Dev says. “You. The dude who refuses to even let his bandmates in his notebook, and you just showed the entire doc crew.”

“Only one of them,” I mutter, sliding off the glasses and powering them down.

We take our time packing up, mostly to spiral Christian longer. He has his manager frown on when we come through the glass door. “We were supposed to be out of here two hours ago.”

“You want an album or not,” I counter.

Remi’s dragging her camera bag onto her shoulder, and I hand off the glasses. I put on my shades and drag on the black baseball cap, jogging down the stairs and leaving the rest of them. Except for Colt, who’s always a few inches from having his dick up my ass. There are worse things than being required to bring your best friend everywhere you go.

I walk outside into the same Seattle drizzle from earlier and the hum of Pike Place Market. Like a good boy, I stay on the cobblestone by the nondescript door.

The space is tucked in a little nook of the historic market but no less alive. No one on the sidewalk spares me a second glance with the sunglasses and hat. Everything else demands their attention, including the iconic neon Pike Place sign acting as a beacon in the distance. I have no issue leaning against the brick and being lost in the movement.

Colt’s head is on a swivel, and I catch him glaring at a fishmonger farther down.

“Don’t worry about him.” I gesture to a flower vendor across the crowd. “If anyone’s a pap, it’s her.”

“Ha. Ha,” he says dryly, but he checks out the granny for a camera anyway. “You know I’d be less stressed if we took the alley exit. Or if the van wasn’t parked in fucking Narnia.”