Page 130 of The Sound Between Us

33

false summit

Seren

My hands are still shaking.

My stomach settled the moment I stepped onto the stage and saw fifty thousand faces looking back at me with something that might have been expectation but felt more invitation. Now it’s just adrenaline with nowhere to go, making my fingers flutter against my phone.

The backstage area buzzes—crew members darting between equipment racks, industry types clustering around anyone wearing lanyards, voices layered over the distant roar of the crowd. Someone drops a flight case with a metallic crash. A woman in headphones barks orders into her radio.

“Seren!” The sound engineer who mixed my set appears at my elbow, grinning wide enough to show his back teeth. “That was fucking brilliant. You had them in the palm of your hand.”

“Thank you,” I manage.

My phone has been buzzing insistently in my pocket, and I finally fish it out to find seven missed calls from Dad and approximately fifteen text messages that I don’t have the mental capacity to read yet. Instead, I hit callback and wait.

“SEREN!” His voice booms through the phone so loudly that I have to hold it away from my ear. “I saw the livestream! You magnificent, brilliant, absolutely fucking gorgeous girl!”

I find myself grinning despite myself. “Dad, please tell me you’re not drunk-crying.”

“I’m not drunk! Well, not very drunk. Kimba, come here! Tell our daughter she’s magnificent!”

“I’m crying!” Kimba’s voice comes from somewhere in the background, slightly muffled. “Happy tears! Tell her I’m crying happy tears!”

“She’s crying happy tears,” Dad reports dutifully.

“I heard.”

“Seren, love, I am so bloody proud of you I might actually burst. Do you know what you just did? You held fifty thousand people in complete silence. Do you understand how rare that is?”

My knees go weak. I slide down the wall until I’m sitting on the floor, phone pressed to my ear.

“Thanks, Dad.”

“And that boy of yours,” he continues, “declaring his love in front of half of Tokyo. Very romantic. Very public. Very⁠—”

“Very mortifying,” I interrupt, though I’m still smiling.

“Very brave,” he corrects. “Both of you. Taking risks, putting yourselves out there. Your mother would be so proud.”

The mention of Mum makes my throat tight, but it’s good tight, warm tight.

“I should go,” I say, watching Harrison move across the stage. “They’re still performing.”

“Right, right. Love you, treasure.”

“Love you too.”

The hotel suite’s white walls seem warmer now, the massive windows reflecting our movements back at us. Harrison kicks off his shoes and immediately starts peeling off his stage clothes, tugging his shirt over his head without a glance toward the bathroom.

“What happens tomorrow?” I ask, settling on the enormous bed and watching him move around the room.

“London, baby,” he says, grinning as he pulls on a t-shirt that makes him look younger and less famous. “I’ve got vinyl to sell.”

The simplicity of it makes me laugh. “You’re going to work in my shop?”

“I’m going to reorganise your entire filing system. Simon’s method is chaos masquerading as organisation.”