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The block is already loud when they arrive. Not music-loud. Life-loud. They come in from the next block over and park in a narrow lot wedged between the church and the parochial school, then start unloading without ceremony.

Folding tables ring the edge of the church parking lot, selling crafts, baked goods, and other things people buy because it supports a cause they only remember when the neighbors are watching. People spread out on blankets and lawn chairs under the thin shade of the trees in the medians. Children run in loose orbits, screaming names that go unanswered.

In the far corner of the lot, pressed up against the church wall, a makeshift stage squats in the sun. It’s really just a couple of flatbed trailers parked tight and skinned over with plywood to make a single surface. The footprint is small. The margins are thin. It’s tight, but workable.

They’re one band in a rotation this afternoon. Onstage now, a group of teenagers tear through covers too fast, all elbows and distortion, songs collapsing into each other before they have time to settle. Their parents clap at the end of every song because that’s what you do when your kid is on a stage, even if the stage is just plywood laid over borrowed steel.

J stands off to the side, guitar case open on a folding table, watching the setup assemble itself in pieces that don’t quite want to agree. The PA hums faintly when no one is touching it. The sun sits low enough to throw glare straight across the lot, right into the face of the stage, flattening everything it hits. It isn’t a disaster. It’s worse than that. It’s normal.

A gig’s a gig, even if it’s the St. Anthony’s Craft Fair and Block Party.

Claire hovers without meaning to. Close enough to be useful, far enough not to be in the way. She hands him a bottle of water he doesn’t remember asking for. He nods like he did.

“You good?” she asks.

“Yeah,” he says immediately. Too quickly. He’s already tuning, already listening past her to the stage, the way the last song is running long. He doesn’t look up. “We’ve got this.”

She smiles anyway. She knows the look. Lets it go.

Jess moves through the space like it belongs to her, clipboard tucked under one arm, set lists already torn and folded. She hands one to Trevor, one to Marco, one to Steve, each with a quick word that’s half instruction, half reassurance.

“Same order,” she says. “If we’re tight on time, we drop the third cover.”

Steve squats near the stage edge, eyes tracing distances, already mapping the shortest path. He nods once, more to himself than anyone else, then starts counting how many pieces he can lift in one go. Kick first. Snare nested inside. Cymbals last. He hates rushed changeovers, but he’s good at them.

The teenagers finish a song and soak in the applause, lingering half a beat too long before someone claps them on the shoulder and points them toward the stairs. Cables start coming out before the last chord fully dies.

J closes his case and latches it, the sound sharper than he means it to be.

A shadow falls across him. He looks up.

The monsignor stands there, hands folded loosely at his waist, collar catching the sun. Older than J expects, or maybe just smaller.

“You’re J,” he says, smiling. Not asking. “Velvet Ruin, right?”

“Yeah,” he says. “A long time ago.”

The monsignor laughs softly. “My nephew used to play your record in the rectory when he thought I wasn’t around. Drove me crazy.” He tilts his head toward the stage. “Glad you’re still at it.”

“Me too,” J says, and realizes he means it.

The monsignor pats his arm, already moving away, pulled back into the gravity of the event. Jess is waving at Steve now. The teenagers are finally offstage. Someone drags a monitor an inch to the left and leaves it there.

“Oh,” the monsignor says turning back, apologetic, like he’s interrupting something important. “I forgot to ask. What are you calling yourselves?”

Jess freezes for half a second. Claire looks at J. J opens his mouth, closes it again.

Steve doesn’t look up. “We don’t really—”

“Velvet Roses,” J says, more asking a question than giving a statement. The words land heavier than he expects, but it’s too late to pull them back.

Someone taps the mic. It thumps once and feeds back.

The monsignor smiles, satisfied. “That’s nice,” he says, already writing it down. “Alright. I’ll let them know.”

He walks off as Jess stares at J. “Velvet Roses?”

J shrugs, plugging in his cable. “It’s temporary.”

“Good,” Steve says. “Because it sounds like a wedding band.”

They’re already onstage when the sound tech climbs up beside them, moving fast, eyes down. He drops a mic in front of J’s amp, nudges it an inch with his foot, then crouches to slide one under the snare. The kick mic goes in crooked. No one says anything. There isn’t time.

“Alright, uh,” the tech says into the mic, already backing away. “Next up we’ve got… uh… Velvet Roses.”

A couple of heads turn. Most don’t.

He taps the mic once. It pops, feeds back sharp enough to make someone near the bake sale flinch. He winces, twists a knob, then gives J a thumbs-up that doesn’t mean anything and disappears offstage.

No soundcheck. No count-in from the board. The first chord is the test.

J hits it harder than he means to.

The guitar comes out too loud, brittle on top. The snare punches through everything else. He leans into the mic and can’t hear himself at all. For half a second, his brain stalls, trying to decide which problem to solve first.

Jess is already motioning from the side. Down. Down.

He backs off the volume, shifts his foot, pulls the guitar closer to his body like that might help. The tech rides the fader mid-phrase. The sound lurches, then settles somewhere just this side of usable.

It’s enough. They don’t stop. They can’t. The song keeps moving whether he’s ready or not.

They kick into an upbeat cover, something bright enough to cut through the afternoon if it cooperates. J counts them in without looking back. The tempo is right. The feel is right. The sound isn’t.

The guitar sits wrong immediately. Too sharp on top, no body underneath. The kick blooms and swallows it. The vocal mic picks up everything but him. He leans in and gets more cymbal than voice.

Jess hears it before the second bar is done.

She doesn’t wait. She’s already moving, slipping past a folding chair, ducking under an extension cord, climbing the short ramp to the sound board like she belongs there. She leans in, eyes flicking over the channels.

The sound guy turns, surprised. “Hey—”

“It’s fine,” she says, already reaching for a fader. “Your high end’s eating him alive.”

“I got it,” he says, reflex more than conviction.

She doesn’t look at him. Pulls the guitar back a hair. Pushes the vocal just enough to find the edge. Drops the kick a notch so it stops dominating the room. The mix shifts, not cleanly, but toward something usable.

The sound guy opens his mouth again, then closes it. Watches her work. After a second, he steps back.

Onstage, J feels the change before he understands it. The guitar settles into his hands. His voice comes back to him, thin but present. He exhales a breath he didn’t realize he was holding and keeps playing, trying not to think about how close that was to falling apart.

Jess gives him a quick thumbs-up from the board as the song staggers for another few bars, then finds its feet. The damage is done, but it’s contained.

By the time they limp out of the first chorus, the block hasn’t changed its mind yet. Kids are still running, sneakers slapping asphalt, a Frisbee arcing wide and clipping the edge of a folding table. Someone laughs too loud near the bake sale. A stroller rattles past the front of the stage, parent apologizing to no one in particular. The song exists, but it isn’t being received. Not yet.

J steals a look past the mic.

Most people are still doing what they were doing before he started playing. That’s the rule at things like this. Music is just another weather condition. You notice it when it shifts, then you go back to your life. He swallows and keeps his hands moving, fingers a half-beat ahead of his head, trying to outrun the sound in his own chest.

But not everyone drifts.

A couple on lawn chairs near the curb stop talking and look up. The woman’s hand stays mid-gesture, then lowers to her knee. A man standing under the tree nearest the church turns his body without realizing he’s doing it, beer forgotten in his hand. Someone on a stoop across the street leans forward, elbows on knees, listening from a distance they didn’t plan to close.

Phones stay in pockets. That’s the thing that gets him. No one’s filming. No one’s performing attention. They’re just… there.

J feels the shift like a change in pressure. The sound hasn’t gotten better. The mix is still a little wrong. But a few in the crowd have stopped resisting. He loosens his grip on the neck without meaning to. He lets the last line of the verse hang longer than he planned. The band follows, not looking at him, just following along.

The chorus lands and keeps going without him. Not wrong, exactly. Just faster than his breath can keep up with. The guitar feels suddenly too light in his hands, like it’s lost its weight. He’s aware of everything at once: the edge of the plywood flexing under his boot, the snare cracking a little too hard, the way his voice is riding on top of the mix instead of inside it. He misses a word and has to swallow the rest of the line to stay upright. The song doesn’t stop. It never does. It just keeps asking him to catch up.

His brain starts triaging. Volume. Pitch. Time. He thinks about backing off, then thinks about pushing harder, then realizes he’s thinking at all and that scares him more than the sound. This is how it goes sideways. Not with a mistake anyone hears, but with the slow feeling of losing the thread and knowing there’s nowhere to put it down. He tightens his grip without meaning to and plays the next chord like it owes him something.

Then, between phrases, he looks out again.

Claire stands by the soundboard, shoulder nearly touching Jess’s, arms folded loosely like she’s watching a rehearsal instead of a crowd. When his eyes find her, she looks up, already looking, and gives him the smallest nod. Not encouragement. Confirmation.

Something in his chest unlocks.

The noise doesn’t change. The mix doesn’t magically fix itself. But he stops trying to hold everything at once. He lets the tempo settle into his body instead of chasing it. His shoulders drop mid-strum. He breathes and the next line comes out lower, steadier, like it’s finally found the floor. The band feels it and leans in without looking. The song makes it to the end on its own legs.

When the last chord fades, there’s no pause for banter. He steps back from the mic, taps his foot twice, and nods at Steve.

“Let’s do the other one,” he says.

“You sure?” Steve says, raising an eyebrow.

J nods and reaches his foot to the pedalboard.

The band doesn’t look at him for a count. He just lets his hand fall and the guitar answers, a soft pattern that barely qualifies as rhythm. No strum at first. Just notes, spaced wide enough that the sound of the block leaks through them. Kids yelling. A bottle clinking. Someone laughing too close to the stage.

He sings low. Almost under it, a soft, breathy voice.

I could cry
every time you touch me.

The words don’t carry far. The mic is set for projection, not confession, and he doesn’t fight it. He lets the line land where it lands, a couple of syllables fall away when his breath runs out.

The drums come soft, almost like an afterthought. Brushes first. Then sticks, restrained, keeping time without insisting on it. The bass waits a full bar longer than it should, then settles under the guitar like it’s always been there.

I thought I knew what loneliness was
until it learned my name.

That line reaches the edge of the lot. Not past it. But far enough.

J doesn’t look up yet. He’s watching his hands, the way the pattern repeats without asking him to think about it. He lets the space stretch between phrases. Lets the quiet stay quiet. This is the part that usually gets edited out. He leaves it in.

We stood too far apart
and called it space.

Someone near the front stops moving. Someone else turns a chair without sitting down. The song keeps building, not louder yet, just fuller. Trevor threads a line through the gaps, careful not to decorate it. Steve opens the hi-hat a fraction. The sound thickens.

J finally looks out to the crowd, and to Claire.

She stands by the board, still as before, but now she’s watching him instead of the sliders. He doesn’t hold her gaze. Seeing her once is enough. He feels the center drop back into place.

The guitar grows teeth. Not distortion yet. Just weight. He sings a little higher now, not reaching, just allowing the note to go where it wants.

This love
is a fragile thing.

The band crests around him. The drums widen. The bass pushes. Trevor lets the amp breathe. It’s not loud, but it’s undeniable now. The song has mass.

J leans into the mic for the first time all set.

I don’t say it.
I don’t need to.

He strums the guitar one more time, lets the sustain take over. The guitar fades into a high-pitched feedback loop as the chorus effect tends to do, but he lets it for just a moment. And just as the guitars fade, he sings:

It already knows.

He lets the last word hang until it starts to strain, then steps back from the mic.

For a second there’s silence. Not the kind that means something’s wrong. Just the kind that happens when no one knows whether the song is finished yet.

Then someone near the front claps. Once. Loud in the open air. Someone else joins in, slower, like they’re checking whether it’s allowed. A few more follow. Not a roar. Not even close. Just enough to change the texture of the block.

People turn their chairs toward the stage. A couple of kids stop running and look up, confused by the sudden stillness. Someone across the street lowers a phone they hadn’t realized they were holding.

J stays where he is. Hands resting on the guitar. He doesn’t smile. He doesn’t bow. He just waits until the clapping runs out of momentum on its own.

When he looks over at the soundboard, Claire is still there. Jess too. They aren’t celebrating. They’re watching the crowd now, the way you watch weather moving in.

The block doesn’t go quiet again. But it doesn’t go back to how it was, either.

And for the first time all afternoon, people are facing the stage.

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