Once the crowd quieted down, I told them, “Thank you. Your support means a lot to us.” My eyes drifted to Kiera as I spoke; she was beaming with pride just as brightly as everyone else in the bar, maybe more. It was so strange to feel so much…acceptance. A part of me would never get used to that feeling.

Matt took the brief silence to slip away to our table, while Evan found Jenny and wrapped her in a mammoth bear hug. Griffin, though, wasn’t about to let his captive audience go so easily. Before I could successfully push him to the table, he told the group, “My johnson is gladly accepting all forms of praise…if anyone wants to congratulate me privately.”

After rapping his empty skull, I forcibly moved him to the table to sit down. A little while later, I was again surprised and humbled when Pete, the owner of the bar, came out to congratulate us. It was a little surreal to hear him say he was proud of us as he shook my hand. It was even more surreal to see the weary defeat on his face, like he believed he’d soon have to look for our replacements—a prospect I knew he wasn’t looking forward to, since he hated booking bands. Fat chance of that happening though. One show at a major venue, while cool, wasn’t going to massively change our lives or anything. That just wasn’t the way the world worked. We’d probably never leave this bar; whoever owned Pete’s in the future would have to chase us out when we were old and gray and too feeble to play. Or much sooner than that in Griffin’s case. But being here, playing this bar every weekend for the rest of my natural life, that was a fate I was completely comfortable with, assuming Kiera was by my side for all of it, of course.

The remainder of the night was pretty damn perfect. The guys and I chatted amicably until Matt took off to hang out with Rachel. That earned him some ribbing from Griffin, but Griff didn’t stick around much longer, and left the bar with some blonde. Kiera rolled her eyes and turned her back on the sight of Griffin leaving the bar with someone other than Anna, but from everything I’d seen, those two were far from exclusive, and Anna brought home just as many toys as he did. As long as they were both happy with the arrangement, there was no harm in it, from what I could see.