Three excruciatingly long months later…

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“Get over here, my brother!” Trevor yelled from the front door of his parents’ house. He’d been staying with them for the last few months while I’d been on tour with Pete, Sam, and “Trevor #2,” as the guys kept calling Steve, the bassist we’d hired to replace our friend.

With three months of sobriety, counseling a couple of times a week, less stress, and proper medical care, Trevor had pulled through. Even with a chronic disease, he was probably the healthiest he’d been in years.

Kitty got to him before I did, jumping up and licking him on the face.

“Eww.” He pushed her away, laughing. “I hope you’re not planning to do that to me too, Dec.”

“I’ll try to control myself.” I pulled her back and told her to sit, so I could say hello. “You’re looking good.” I’d barely gotten the words out when he wrapped his arms around me and squeezed me so hard, I could’ve sworn I heard a few bones crack.

He let me go and stepped back to survey the damage he’d just caused. “Wish I could say the same thing about you.”

“Shut the fuck up. I just spent three months on the road, busting my ass to keep the guys in line, begging a label to sign the band, and then finding a new Declan to sing lead.”

“How’s he working out?”

“My replacement? He’s good. Talented. Smart.” I cocked my head to the side. “Mormon.” Finding a guy who could not only perform well, but who I knew wouldn’t fall into any of the traps that could so easily break up a band had been the part that let me sleep at night.

“You lucky son of a bitch.” He led Kitty and me inside, through the maze of rooms, and into the backyard. “Let her roam around. Dog piss is good for roses, right?”

As soon as I’d unclipped Kitty’s leash, she was off and running across the large expanse of grass, straight for the—

“Oooh,” Trevor and I groaned simultaneously as all four of her paws hit the water.

“You should really have a gate around that pool, you know?”

“Now I do.” He shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. She’s fine. And I want to hear more about what Doug’s face looked like when you fucked him.”

“Over,” I added quickly. “When I fucked him over, you pervert. And I didn’t fuck him over. He made the rules, wrote the contract. He just didn’t know I would have someone smarter than him on my side.”

He nodded. “Speaking of Sara…”

“I should get Kitty out of your mom’s pool before she comes home and kills me.” I gripped the arms of the patio chair and started to stand.

“Sit back down, you coward. The woman saved your ass. So, why haven’t you contacted her? At least to tell her the good news?”

I let out a deep breath. “It’s been months. What am I supposed to say?”

“Maybe start with ‘Thanks for saving my ass.’”

She really had. But our calls had gone from multiple times per day, to every couple of days, to almost never in the first month. For the last two months, they’d stayed at never. Voice mail messages and texts weren’t the same, especially with us having opposite schedules and barely any free time.

Eventually, I couldn’t even fake happiness or hope. So, I’d deliberately avoided calling her, thinking that, instead of spending that time depressing the fuck out of her, I could be using it to make sure three months apart didn’t turn into fifteen.

But I’d been wrong about the time passing quickly. Even with every waking hour being spoken for, months of constantly missing someone felt like an eternity.

“Then following it up with something sappy,” Trevor said. “Actually, maybe you should apologize for being such a dumb shit and then say something sappy. But you’d better hurry the fuck up. Like you said—it’s been months—and women like her won’t stick around forever, even for a face as pretty as yours.”

“All the more reason to leave her alone. If she’s already with someone else, I don’t want to screw it up for her.” The thought was on two-hour loop in my head. If she really were dating someone, I wouldn’t be able to handle it. Every time I passed the end of my driveway, the fear of accidentally running into her and seeing her hand in some other guy’s set in. It was crippling.

“Declan, I love you, but you’re clueless.” Trevor sighed dramatically. “Before you met her, I doubt I would’ve needed both hands to count the times I saw you truly happy—the light-up-your-face kind of happy. I mean, you weren’t walking around all depressed or anything, but we both just kind of pretended not to know that your smile was only skin-deep.”

I nodded slowly. “I can’t just call her up after all this time and pretend I haven’t been thinking of her every day for the last three months.”

“That’s so fucking pathetic.” He chuckled. “You’re a writer. Go write a song for her and snail mail it to her. Fuck, worst case scenario, she never speaks to you again, but you still end up with a song to release that could potentially sell as well as the first one does.”

I sat back and thought about that song. With Ed and Trevor’s help, it had gone viral. Of course, a big part of that was the mystery surrounding who’d written and sung it. There were actual forums where people argued about whose voice it was. I looked at them occasionally to check, but luckily, my name almost never came up. Probably because the old lead singer of Self Defense wasn’t nearly as well known as the anonymous voice was.

We’d opted not to use any of the songs the band had ever recorded, knowing that could lead fans back to me. But I’d had a stack of stuff I’d written for myself that no one had ever heard before, and now they were selling almost as well as the song I’d written for Sara.

Even after giving a cut of the royalties to Ed and Trevor, I was making way more money than Doug had promised me. And I was writing the kind of music I wanted to without having to do any of the shit I hated. My life was almost exactly what I wanted it to be. Almost.

“I have something for her, actually,” I said. “I’ve been holding on to it for a while, waiting until I could figure out how to explain it to her.”

“If it’s a dick pic, don’t send it. No explanation is good enough for sending a dick pic to a woman who doesn’t ask for it.”

Trevor’s incredible wisdom was interrupted by the fine mist of chlorinated water that rained down on us and the horror of seeing a freshly-shaken but still dripping wet Goldendoodle running straight for us.

“Oh shit!” We sprinted for the house, jumping over patio furniture and shoving each other out of the way. As soon as he slammed the door behind us, we both burst out laughing. Kitty stared at us through the glass, probably confused about why we didn’t want to play. After a few minutes, she wandered away, trotting back into the garden to go explore, and hopefully not to go swimming again.

Trevor handed me a bottle of water out of the fridge and leaned against the counter. “I’ve been thinking about my future lately.” He paused. “Kind of started seeing someone.”

“Holy shit. That’s great. When do I get to meet her?”

“Once she’s so enamored with me, a pretty boy like you won’t distract her.”

I rolled my eyes. “Tonight sounds perfect. Just let me know when and where.” I waited for him to agree before continuing. “So, you see a future with her?”

“Yeah, I think so. Her name is April, and she’s amazing. She has a real job that she has to wake up early in the morning to get to. She’s shy, and stable, and listens to the worst fucking music I’ve ever heard. But I kind of love that about her.”

Nothing he’d ever done or said had made me happier than hearing that. Being with someone like April would help keep him from backsliding.

“And I’ve also been thinking a lot about Doug.”

I grimaced. “You poor thing.”

“I want to do what he does, Dec. But better. I want to help little shitheads like we used to be get what they’ve always dreamed of.”

“You mean become a manager? That’s fucking brilliant.” I smacked him on the arm. “Why didn’t you think of that sooner? It’s perfect for you.” He could use his firsthand knowledge of the industry to help musicians do it the right way. “Those little shitheads better appreciate how lucky they are. On day one, the first thing you should tell them is what you said to me once.” I cleared my throat. “And I quote, badly, ‘Until you quit trying, every moment you have is a moment you can get the thing you want most.’”

“I said that?” He rubbed his chin. “I’m so damn smart. There’s just one problem with it.”

“What?”

“How sad it is that you remember me saying it, but you haven’t been living it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Stop being such an idiot and go get the woman you love.”