Page 150 of Call Me Baby 2: Side B
“Around my asshole?”
Jordan’s face softens into pity.
“Baby, you lyin’.”
“Please.” I wince. “I’d rather lose a finger than explain to the ER how my vagina got strep throat.”
Celie smacks the table, finger stabbing the air at me. “Six-Point-Five’s tongue gon’ end up in that bootyhole, just you watch.”
Jordan throws her hand up.
“Mm—manifestin’ it for you, bitch.”
I stir my drink, ice clinking. “Nah. Only ones near that hole is Scott and Charmin.”
Then one strum—
The lights slam down.
Drums pound—
fast, reckless, hitting my chest.
The lights burst across Sunset Decay on the stage, and suddenly the floor’s shaking with ghosts of Warped Tour and burned CDs.
But it’s not a cover band. It’s not nostalgia for the sake of nostalgia.
These guys gutted the sound, rebuilt it with lyrics that taste like right now.
It’s familiar. It’s home.
It’s melodies that make no apologies for surviving twenty years of copycats.
The crowd surges forward.
I’m lunging to my feet, the song yanking me to the balcony rail, my chest leaning over, my heart split between memory and hunger for a band that will rip this decade wide open.
It takes me back—
growing up backstage
with Sharpie lyrics across my Vans,
cigarette smoke in my lungs that didn’t belong to me.
Merch tables were my babysitters.
Tour buses were my jungle gyms.
Soundchecks were lullabies.
Feedback was thunderstorms.
And Dad—I grew up watching him light up over bands like Trash Romance.
Some part of me believed I’d never feel that same gut instinct, that I’d inherit the label but not the gift of discovering talent.
But Sunset Decay’s right here,
