Page 109 of The Sound Between Us

“This next one’s for all the lovers out there,” I tell the crowd, and they eat it up.

The opening chords of one of our biggest ballads fill the arena, and I watch thousands of couples sway together in the darkness. The words stick in my throat. Because I know what searching feels like now. I know what it’s to find something real and lose it because you’re too much of a coward to fight for it.

My voice cracks on the high note—just slightly, but enough that Jamie glances over with concern. The crowd doesn’t notice. They’re too busy living their own romantic fantasies to care that mine is bleeding out on stage.

We reach the final song of the main set, our biggest hit, the one that made us internationally famous. As the opening notes ring out, I catch Henry in my peripheral vision, standing in the wings with his arms crossed, grinning as he watches a money-printing machine in action.

That’s when something inside me snaps.

Three cities and a lifetime of emptiness later, I’m standing on a stage in Singapore, looking out at another sea of faces that blur together into one giant mouth, screaming for pieces of me I don’t have left to give. The arena here is bigger—sixty thousand people packed into a space that feels more cathedral than concert venue. The acoustics are perfect, which somehow makes everything worse. Every note, every breath, every manufactured emotion rings out with crystal clarity.

We’re midway through the show, deep in the ballad section that Henry loves because it drives streaming numbers. I’m supposed to be selling heartbreak to kids who think love means getting a text back within five minutes.

“This one’s about finding your person,” I tell them, and the words feel broken glass in my throat. “About knowing when you’ve met the one.”

The crowd goes wild. Thousands of phone lights sway in the darkness. I catch glimpses of faces in the front rows—teenagers with tears running down their cheeks, couples holding each other, grown women mouthing the words.

The opening chords begin, and I feel something crumble inside my chest. This song used to be about longing, about hope. Now it’s about the most exquisite form of torture—singing about love when you’ve just learned what the real thing feels.

My voice cracks. Not just a slight wobble this time, but a proper break that echoes through the arena’s perfect acoustics. Jamie’s head snaps toward me, his fingers never missing a note on his guitar, but his eyes full of concern.

I push through the next line, but my voice betrays me again. The words about recognition, about knowing someone in your bones, come out strangled and raw because all I can think about is dark eyes watching me from across a vinyl shop, challenging me, seeing right through me.

The crowd is still singing, their voices carrying the melody when mine fails. Sixty thousand people covering for me whilst I fall apart in real time. The irony isn’t lost on me—they’re giving me the love I can’t find for these songs anymore.

I reach into my jacket pocket, fingers finding the pack of cigarettes I’ve been carrying. The crew will lose their minds. Henry will have an aneurysm. Our wholesome pop star image will crumble in real time.

Good.

I pull out a cigarette and light it right there on stage, mid-song, the flame bright against the darkened arena. The crowd’s confusion is palpable—a ripple of uncertainty that spreads through sixty thousand people.

Someone hands me a stool from the side of the stage, and I sit down heavily, taking a long drag whilst the music continues around me. Smoke curls up into the stage lights, and I stare out at the sea of faces, all of them watching me burn.

From the wings, I can see Henry losing his absolute mind. He’s gesticulating wildly, his face purple with rage, probably calculating how much this spontaneous moment of authenticity is going to cost in PR damage control. The security team looks confused, unsure whether to intervene in what might be performance art or a legitimate breakdown.

But the crowd... the crowd is eating it up. They think this is planned. They think this is edge, authenticity, rock star rebellion. Their phones are out, recording every second, already uploading to social media with hashtags about how real and raw this moment is.

Even my breakdown becomes content.

I take another drag, longer this time, and let the smoke fill my lungs. Through the haze, I can see them all clearly—the manufactured intimacy of it, the way they’re consuming my pain as entertainment, the beautiful tragic irony of performing mental collapse for people who think depression is an aesthetic.

A girl in the front row is crying, but not from concern. She’s crying because she thinks this moment is beautiful, romantic, authentically tortured artist. She has no idea I’m sitting here thinking about a woman who told me not to change my locks on her account.

The song reaches its crescendo around me—Jamie and Dex carrying the melody whilst I smoke and stare and wonder when I became this empty. The crowd sings every word, their voices rising to fill the space where mine should be.

Except I know what I need now, and she’s three thousand miles away, probably making terrible tea and alphabetising vinyl to avoid thinking about the mess I made.

I stub the cigarette out on the stage floor and stand up, dropping the stool with a clatter that echoes through the arena. The crowd cheers as if I’ve just performed the most brilliant piece of theatre they’ve ever seen.

If only they knew the truth—that this isn’t performance art. This is just a man realising he’s been sleepwalking through his own life, and the only person who ever made him feel awake wants nothing to do with him.

The song ends, and I walk off stage without acknowledging the applause, leaving Jamie and Dex to handle the transition to the next number. My ears are ringing, but not from the crowd noise—from the absolute silence inside my head where music used to live.

Back in my hotel room at three in the morning, I’m doom-scrolling through my phone. The cigarette incident is already trending on Twitter, TikTok, Instagram—every platform where strangers get to have opinions about my life.

The fan theories are wild—some think it was planned, others are worried about my mental health, and a disturbing number are romanticising what they’re calling my “beautiful self-destruction.”

But that’s not what keeps me scrolling. What keeps me awake, thumb moving automatically through an endless feed of content, is the other trend I found buried in the algorithm.