Page 286 of End Game

Normal people do not generally chase songwriters through airports.

Probably.

Still, my name would be attached to anything I help write.

Dex Mercer.

Publicly.

Which is cool.

And terrifying.

And not currently the biggest problem.

The biggest problem is that I bartend four or five nights a week.

For money.

At a real job.

Like a normal person.

A job that generally expects me to appear more often than once a month.

I scroll farther.

Signal Saints is covering basically everything while I'm there, and the session rate is enough that I will make more in four weeks than I would behind the bar during the same stretch.

That's not the point.

The point is what happens when I come back.

I minimize the PDF.

Open my calendar.

Four weeks is a long fucking time when you put it into little colored boxes.

Twenty weekdays in Chicago.

Four Mondays.

Four Thursdays without D&D.

Four weeks of not closing the bar.

Four weeks of not crawling into Micah's bed after a shift.

Four weeks of Cami not stealing bites off my plate while insisting she didn't want food.

Four weeks of Griffin not bitching because I leave cabinet doors open.

Four weeks of Ronan experiencing the peace and quiet he's secretly prayed for since meeting me.

Okay.

Maybe for them there are benefits.