Aw, Jezz. The gratitude and guilt both come so fast, I can feel my face turn red.

Last Things will play the Crow’s Nest every Friday and Saturday night between now and the end of August. Metal fans: Here’s your chance to say you heard them before the rest of the world.

Because the rest of the world will hear.

When I finish, it’s quiet. I’m not sure if this is because the other guys are still reading, or what. My cheeks are flaming so hard, I don’t want to turn around.

“Holy crap,” says Jezz at last.

Patrick sounds dazed. “Yeah.”

“Yeah,” I agree.

Jezz laughs. Jezz’s laugh is this high, crazy cackle that always makes other people start laughing with him. “I wonder how insane the crowds will get after this.”

“Yeah. He really liked us,” says Patrick. “Well, he really liked . . .” He jerks his buzz cut in my direction.

Here we go. Good thing I hadn’t let myself smile.

“It wasn’t just about me,” I say quickly. I swivel the chair sidewise so I can see Jezz and Patrick without facing them head-on. “It was about us. And I barely talked to him.”

“Which adds to the mystique.” Patrick puts on a reverent voice. “You’re in another sphere.”

“Dude.” Jezz punts him lightly in the shin.

“Whatever,” I say to a heap of shirts and socks on the end of Jezz’s desk. “I hate it when they call me ‘the front man.’”

“Well, you are,” says Patrick simply. “You play lead. You sing. You write everything now. You stand in front.”

You write everything now. The words hit like a dart.

Patrick and I used to write together, way back when we were coming up with our first original, totally crappy songs. Over time, as better songs started coming to me, with the lyrics finished and all the parts already complete, I switched to writing on my own. It was faster that way. And the way the songs came, overwhelming me, filling up my head, I couldn’t move or think or do anything else until I’d let them out on paper. It wasn’t my choice.

But Patrick doesn’t get that.

“You want to write some songs?” I spin around to face him. “Seriously. You want to write something? Go for it. Go ahead.”

That’s not all I want to say. I want to ask if he’d like to be the one awake at three a.m., unable to stop until he gets the songs out. If he wants his brain to be like a radio where someone else keeps switching the stations. If he practices until his whole body hurts, and if that just makes him love it more. But I don’t. Because that would get too close to something dangerous.

Patrick hesitates for a sixteenth beat. “No,” he says. He looks straight back at me. His voice has gone back to being as steady and cool as usual. “I don’t do that. That’s yours.”