"We've been dating for two years and you've never asked me to join your band." Willie pouted from his spot draped over multiple chairs in the practice room.

Alex smiled fondly at him over his drum set. "Sweetie, you play renaissance lute."

"Paul O'Dette was in a rock band before he started playing lute. We'll make an early musician out of you yet."

"You know I don't know who Paul O'Dette is."

Flynn, who was curled up on a bean bag chair next to Willie with her composition homework, shocked everyone by chiming in. "Your loss. He recorded the complete works of John Dowland, and John Dowland can get it." She paused, looking up from her notebook. "Actually, he was a fancy white man in the 1500s. Probably an awful person. But that problematic dead boy could write."

Julie, who was sitting next to Luke on the piano bench, giggled to herself.

"What's so funny?" he nudged her, his voice quiet.

"I'm just picturing Alex playing the theorbo."

He couldn't help but grin back, even though "what's funny about Alex playing the theorbo?"

She counted off on her fingers. "1) Theorbo is a ridiculous instrument, 2) who would be taller: Alex or the theorbo?, 3) the image of Alex playing a theorbo like a drum-"

"Why would he play it like a drum? It's a plucked instrument."

"I mean, why did my mind decide that Alex as an early musician would play the theorbo when renaissance drums exist? There are more fundamental questions you should be asking about how my brain works."

"I did not do my due diligence when I invited you to join the band."

She smirked. "When you invited me to join my band?"

"You don't make any sense."

"Probably regretting not doing your due diligence then, aren't you?" She grinned at him, and Luke tried not to stare, very aware that there was a whole room watching them. But it was hard not to stare. Over the past few weeks, the pain Julie carried was slowly starting to… not vanish, but to live alongside other, lighter emotions. Flynn was clearly instrumental in that, boosting her confidence and providing unwavering emotional support as if they'd been friends for life instead of just four weeks. But he liked to think that the band helped as well.

She certainly helped him. She was the first person in his composition class to match his passion, and the only person he'd ever met who took every pronoun and preposition as seriously as he did. When they wrote together, they were completely in sync, as if they were sharing that music channel in his brain. And when they brainstormed ideas for getting the band out in the world beyond LFCM, she demonstrated a shrewd mind for capitalizing on new distribution methods. Granted, she still struggled with performance, and always seemed tense and on edge whenever she was onstage. But here in the practice room where the band, and sometimes Willie and Flynn, hung out, she was becoming increasingly comfortable and sure of herself.

He didn't know how he was supposed to do the thing he loved more than anything in the world with someone who loved it just as much as he did, who inspired him on a daily basis with her artistry, talent, and power, and somehow remain calm. Luke was not calm. He hadn't known it was possible to feel simultaneously so not calm and so comfortable around someone.

Reggie found the whole thing endlessly entertaining. "I always wondered how Luke would balance dating and being in the band." He flopped down on his bed after a long day in the practice room. "Obviously the answer was that he would date someone in the band."

"First of all, shut up." Luke groaned from his prone position on his own bed. Sure, he'd wondered the same thing himself, but it was one thing to worry about something privately and quite another thing for someone else to guess your worries without you having to voice them. "And second of all, we're not dating!"

Alex perched primly on the edge of Luke's bed. "You're pre-dating."

"Pre-dating is not a thing."

"It is. It's when everyone who knows you two is just waiting for it to happen, and if someone outside the group asks if you're single, the answer is 'technically, but more accurately, no.'"

"Again, not a thing."

Reggie rolled over on the bed to look at them. "Oh no, it is. Nick asked us today if Julie was single and that was our exact answer."

Ignoring the pain in his body, Luke sat bolt upright, almost unseating Alex. "Nick from modern guitar? Nick who's so green his callouses haven't even come in yet?"

Alex and Reggie exchanged an amused glance. "Julie's not interested in Nick. You can only be in the pre-dating stage if it's mutual."

"How do you know it's mutual?"

Reggie mimed zipping his lips and throwing away the key. Alex nodded gravely. "That's confidential."

There was no way Luke was dropping it that easily. "Flynn?"

"Confidential."

"As my best friends, you gotta tell me if you have intel."

Reggie started changing into his pajamas. "Not when it's about our bandmate. All bandmates are equal and thus all intel is private."

"But," Alex put in. "As your friends, we don't think you need to worry."

Returning to the practice room in the middle of the night had become second nature. Julie rarely slept well and the practice room brought her comfort. So he wasn't surprised to come in to see her tinkering on the piano and writing in her own notebook. She looked up when he entered and smiled softly, as if smiling too much in the middle of the night would wake up everyone in the dorm. "Hey."

"Hey yourself. Can I join you?"

"I left you a spot." She nodded to the bench and he slid in next to her. Peeking at her notebook, he grinned his approval. "I really like this one."

"Yeah?"

"I'm not sure what deep dish is, but yeah."

"Context clues." She leveled her mock scolding look at him.

"I mean, I figured it out but… deep dish. It's pizza."

"Maybe you should be doing early music. Your head's all out of sync with the times."

"That's a great song lyric, I'm definitely writing it down."

She beat him to the punch, flipping to a fresh page and scribbling it down. "If it's not legible, it's not much good to us."

Nudging her playfully, he couldn't not notice how close their grinning faces were and how their knees were pressed together.

"Anything in particular keeping you up?" He tried to keep his voice light—he never wanted her to feel like he was prying, but he also always wanted her to know she could talk to him.

"Just thinking about the mid-term performance next week."

He turned towards her on the bench, tucking up one of his legs so he could face her. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"I don't even know what to say. Every time I try to think of a way to explain it, it feels like it comes out completely incoherent."

His hand wrapped around hers as an impulse. "Your feelings don't have to be logical."

She pulled her thumb out from under his hand and rubbed the pad of her thumb over his knuckle. Without taking her eyes off of the movement, she spoke with a shaky voice. "A few months ago, I begged my mom to take me to this one gig, and on the way back we got in a car accident. I have this image in my head, from right before the other car hit us, of the headlights coming out of the dark and somehow knowing what's about to happen. And now, every time I see anything that looks like a headlight, every time the lights are facing me when I'm onstage, it's like I'm back in that car."

He squeezed her hand, unsure of what to say. He'd noticed that Julie used past tense whenever she mentioned her mom, but she'd never explicitly mentioned her mother's death before. "I'm so so sorry."

Julie barely seemed to notice that he'd spoken. "It's not even just about the lights. When I first started playing again afterwards, it was a way to reconnect with her. It felt like she was there. That I could communicate with her or honor her when I was singing. Performing became this private, personal thing, and it never used to be. So now when I'm in front of a crowd, it just feels… like I'm doing something wrong by singing if I'm not singing for her when she died because she was supporting my love of music." Her loud sigh reverberated slightly in the practice space. "See? It doesn't really make sense."

His mind whirred, trying to think of something to say. "No, I get it. But… everything you've said about your mom makes it sound like encouraging you and your music was a big part of who she was. Obviously I didn't know her, but I think if she'd had a choice between a long life not supporting you and a shorter one giving you everything she could, she would have chosen the latter." A bitter part of him wished that his parents would have had a harder time making that same choice.

She nodded, still not looking at him. Something she'd clearly heard before that she wasn't ready to internalize.

"And you can sing for her and for other people at the same time. It doesn't need to be either or."

"I know that here," she tapped her head with her free hand. "But not here yet." She tapped her chest and finally met his gaze, her eyes big and wet. He tightened his grip on her hand.

"There's no rush. Is there anything we can do to support you?"

She shook her head, blinking back a smile. "You're already doing a lot just by existing near me."

"Alex is good emotional support, even if he hypothetically doesn't know how to play the theorbo."

"Not Alex. I mean, not not Alex, the guys are great, but when I said you, I was talking about you singular." His heart stuttered. "I'm really glad I met you."

"Right back at you." The answering smile she gave him immediately imprinted on his heart. He had to swerve the conversation away from this—it was an entirely inappropriate moment to address his feelings. "I have an idea. What are you doing tomorrow night?"

"Karaoke?"

Julie flipped skeptically through the huge binder of songs. But this wasn't Luke's first rodeo. "Hear me out—it's performing music in front of a crowd, but it's not your music and it's not really about music, right? Like, karaoke is at its best when it's not an amazing musical performance-it's you and your friends making fools of yourselves and sometimes adding new contexts to songs you all know. Karaoke is about experiencing joy in the form of music, not about music itself."

Flynn, who was scrunched in next to Julie at the tiny table that was struggling to accommodate the group of six, put a semi-sarcastic hand to her heart. "That's kind of beautiful, Luke."

Alex shook his head, not looking up from the binder that he was intensely scrutinizing. "He has a whole manifesto about karaoke that we've had to hear develop over the last five years."

Reggie stuffed a mozzarella stick in his mouth and nodded enthusiastically. "It started as 'karaoke bad.' It's been really inspiring watching that evolve."

Luke chucked a fry at his bandmate's head, but his outrage dropped when he looked back at Julie. "When's the last time you did karaoke?"

"It's been a while." Her tone indicated that "a while" meant "before her mother's death." "But I love karaoke. Sorry, I mean, I love experiencing joy in the form of music."

She all but stuck her tongue out at him, and his answering dopey smile was only cut short by Reggie's well-timed kick and by Flynn roping Julie into a rendition of "Shoop."

The night flew by, with Reggie doing an extensive turn through what felt like Taylor Swift's entire catalogue, Alex doing a very spirited dance to Neon Jungle's "Trouble," Willie managing to get the entire room clapping along to Five's "Got the Feelin'," and Reggie, Alex, and Luke nailing (if he did say so himself—and he did) a rendition of "Cups." Reggie and Alex, the sneakiest of wingmen, even signed Luke up to perform "It's The End of the World As We Know It." A couple years ago, the guys had challenged each other to see who could best memorize and perform the song's nightmarish verses, and as the insufferable champion, Luke had kept his lyrical knowledge in his pocket as a skill to impress people with. If he was being honest, this was the first time it had ever come up, but Julie's shock when he didn't need to look at the lyric screen once made it all worth it.

The whole night was full of relaxed laughter and a well-earned break from the stress of LFCM, but Luke's favorite part of the evening, hands down, was watching Julie take the stage with increasingly levels of confidence (and often searching for his eyes in the crowd.) Annoyingly, even though he'd wanted to sing a song with Julie, every time he tried to ask her, Reggie loudly and repeatedly suggested Cake's "Love You Madly," which quickly shut Luke up. It wasn't until the end of the night, when the attendant called out, "You're Such A, last song of the night," that Julie seemed to realize that she and Luke hadn't sung together.

She tugged him to his feet.

"Come onnn, you have to sing with me."

He tried to keep his butt in the booth. "It's not a duet."

"Proper karaoke duets are awful. Duets for songs that aren't duets are the true encapsulation of experiencing joy in the form of music." He felt his resistance weaken at her effortless use of his manifesto. "Come on. Not afraid I'll outshine you, are you, Patterson?"

If it had been a love song, he would have resisted more. But this couldn't be too awkward, could it? He popped to his feet. "Bring it, Molina."

She grabbed his hand (his hand!) and dragged him up to the stage, snatching up a mic. He reached for the second mic but she batted his hand away playfully.

"It's meant to be practice for performance, right? So, shared mic."

His brain temporarily shut off—one of the bands techniques for getting Julie through a stage performance was to have her sing with him rather than facing the crowd, but they hadn't practiced it with a mic yet. He'd been both longing for and dreading being so close to her while she was unleashing her voice. And the karaoke microphones were very weak, so you had to have your mouth even closer to the mic to get it to pick up your voice. Sharing a karaoke mic was both unnecessary and a surefire way of bumping faces.

She was… flirting?

Reggie would laugh at him later for framing this as a revelation, but in the moment he could only chuckle nervously. "Whatever you say, boss." He leaned in to share the mic with her, acutely aware of how he could feel her breath on his face and how brown her eyes were.

You keep calling, you keep calling
Saying that you want it back
All my loving, all my loving
But you can't, you can't

Four lines into the song and he suddenly realized that, actually, he maybe should have just gone all in and done "Love You Madly." Singing about a ruined relationship with the girl he had a massive crush on might have been a fun exercise in proximity, but it was extremely uncomfortable.

You keep trying, you keep trying
With that sweet talk on your tongue
But I'm not buying, I'm not buying
I can't, I can't

'Cause you had your chance and you blew it
Yeah, you ripped it up and you chewed it
And the more you talk, you prove it
Yeah, you prove it
That, damn, you're such a

Did you think that I would let you
Crawl right back into my bedroom

Oh god. Why did he have to sing about bedrooms while touching noses with Julie?

After everything we've been through
I know the truth
That, damn, you're such a
Difficult little devil
Trying to put it back together
'Cause you see I'm doing better
Without you now
Damn, you're such a

Dadadadada dadadadada

She tried to dance around for the "dadas" and stopped short when he didn't move. "You have to dance! How can you not dance to this part?"

Shifting his hips side-to-side halfheartedly only prompted her to roll her eyes at him. "Dancing involves arms." He sarcastically swung his arms in circles. "Oh my god, you're terrible."

He stuck his tongue out at her (yes, he, an almost-adult, stuck his tongue out at the girl he liked in public). "You're the one not singing at karaoke."

Shaking her head at him with disbelief, she jumped back in, pointedly:

Are you joking? Are you joking?
I can't, I can't

'Cause you had your chance and you blew it
Yeah, you ripped it up and you chewed it
And the more you talk, you prove it
Yeah, you prove it
That, damn, you're such a

Did you think that I would let you
Crawl right back into my bedroom

This time around, he was prepared for the bedroom line and, if he was honest, he sang it with a slightly suggestive smile. From the look of pleased surprise that crossed her face, he didn't think she missed the change.

After everything we've been through
I know the truth
That, damn, you're such a
Difficult little devil

She smirked during "difficult little devil," making it flirty in a way he really hadn't prepared himself for.

Trying to put it back together
'Cause you see I'm doing better
Without you now
Damn, you're such a

When they reached the dada section, she mimicked his limp dancing. He stuck his tongue out at her (again! Still not how mature flirting works!) and surprised her with a stationary sideways shuffle that was, if he did say so himself (and he kinda had to) decent.

You can take your lies to your next girlfriend

Girlfriend, also a word he wasn't capable of hearing from her while her nose was accidentally brushing against his cheek.

'Cause I don't want to hear it anymore
And if you're all that's left when the whole world ends
No, I still don't want to hear it anymore
Dadadadada
Damn, you're such a
Dadadadada

As the music went quiet for a moment, he became acutely aware of the fact that they had touched noses while singing this song more often than they hadn't. Her face was right there, just an inch away from kissing distance. The guys were going to make fun of him forever for this, weren't they? But the joy on her face… worth it.

Damn, you're such a
Did you think that I would let you
Crawl right back into my bedroom
After everything we've been through
I know the truth
That, damn, you're such a
Difficult little devil
Trying to put it back together
'Cause you see I'm doing better
Without you now
Damn, you're such a

"DICK!" they both yelled to close out the song. The attendant shot them a dirty look, but the nearly empty karaoke bar didn't seem to care.

She lowered the mic with a grin. "You make a pretty decent Hailee Steinfeld."

"High praise coming from you. I assume? I don't really know anything about Hailee Steinfeld."

"But you know that song. You didn't need to look at the lyrics."

"I like how she basically managed to say 'dick' on the radio a lot without getting censored. Fight the power, man." He held up an awkward power fist, still very aware of their closeness.

Reggie's voice cut through the moment. "I think they want to close. You gonna stop flirting and get off the stage any time soon?"

Luke squeezed his eyes, willing his friend to vanish, but Julie just laughed, grabbed his hand, and dragged him off the stage. He was only too happy to follow.

Luke rode the high of karaoke night for the next several days and that, ultimately, was his downfall. He'd loved spending time with Julie outside the confines of LFCM, had loved seeing her relaxed and joyful and, yeah, he was maybe hoping there could be some close quarters mic sharing again. So he suggested that they do a dry run for their midterm at the Eats & Beats open mic night, completely forgetting who had introduced him to Eats & Beats.

He was rudely reminded when they walked in and saw who was setting up on stage.

Luke stopped short, causing Julie to run into him. "What the hell? Luke—"

Reggie immediately turned to him. "Let's just go."

"What's going on?" Julie asked again.

Alex nodded tensely at the stage. "Bobby."

His former bandmate was positioning himself at the front mic, ordering around a group of people that Luke didn't recognize. Apparently the band Bobby had put together at LFCM last year hadn't stuck. The vindicative surge of pleasure that went through Luke felt foreign, but it helped him to remember that they weren't here on Sunset Curve business. Sunset Curve was done. Long live Julie and the Mistakes (working title).

"Nah, it's fine. I'll get our names on the list."

But by the time Luke had gotten them a slot and joined the group at their table, Bobby had started playing. At the sound of the opening riff, Alex swore and Luke froze.

Gently bumping Luke's shoulder with her own, Julie shot him a look of concern. "What is it?"

"My name is Luke."

Looking across the table at Reggie, who was the least visibly in a state of rage, Julie sought clarification. "I don't get it."

"The song," Reggie shot the stage the middle finger. "It's called 'My Name is Luke.'"

"He's not the most subtle plagiarist, is he?" Julie placed her hand on Luke's knee. Any other time, that would have taken the entirety of his focus, but right now it felt like an irritant, trying to soothe Luke when he didn't want to be soothed. "Are you sure you don't want to leave?" Luke just nodded tersely. Her grip tightened. "Luke, the best revenge is for our band to do well. Try to forget Bobby."

But how could he, when Bobby was currently belting out the pre-chorus that had taken Luke weeks of sleepless nights to nail? "There is no Bobby anymore. Didn't you hear? His name is Luke."

The table smacked into a tense silence. Luke couldn't take his eyes off of the stage. Every musical decision that Bobby made with the song that improved it made Luke furious. Every musical decision that undercut what Luke had loved about the song burned. Every musical decision that was the same one Luke had made sparked a memory of writing the song, of workshopping it with the guys, of all the effort and love and artistry he'd poured into it.

He barely noticed when Bobby's band left the stage, or when the next several groups rotated through the stage. That song had been personal: it had been about his journey with his own identity as a musician and a son and here was Bobby singing it, without feeding any of those emotions into it. It was like he'd ripped a page out of Luke's diary after seeing how much pain had gone into the life lived behind the page, and slapped his name on it without even really reading it.

When the group going before them walked onto the stage, the attendant brought them back to the green room to prepare. As Reggie and Luke tuned, the silence underneath their repeated notes was cutting. Luke could feel Julie's nervousness and Alex's anxiety reaching out to him, begging for reassurance, but at the moment, he felt like if he opened his mouth, all that would come out would be scream. The attendant popped her head back in the room. "You're on in one minute."

Julie tried to catch his eye. "You good?"

"Of course. You and Alex go on, we'll join when the rest of the band comes in."

She squeezed his hand, but his hand stayed limp beneath hers. As Julie and Alex exited the green room, Luke made eye contact with the boy standing in the hallway. Bobby.

Luke rolled his eyes and turned away, but Bobby had already dashed in. "Dude, long time, no see."

Reggie stepped between them. "Seriously?"

"Come on, you do what you gotta do, right?" he shrugged, unapologetic. It reminded Luke of the numerous discussions their band had had about privilege. Bobby's stance had always, grossly, been to lean into his privilege under the guise of "gotta work with what you're given, my dudes."

From outside the room, they heard the beginning of Julie's piano intro to "Finally Free" coming from the stage. Luke shoved past Bobby, heading for the door. "Excuse us."

And then Bobby whistled. He fucking whistled. The intro to "My Name is Luke."

"I gotta tell you, man. I owe you one. It really is a killer hook."

Luke knew better. He knew that Bobby was baiting him, knew that violence was never a solution, that men punching things to express their rage was a horrible trope of toxic masculinity, that Julie was counting on him showing up on that stage, but… This guy, this guy used to be his friend, he had parents who supported him and lawyers to defend him and money to fall back on, he was so damn untouchable-

-so Luke punched him in the mouth.

Reggie immediately tried to get between them, but Bobby had clearly been counting on Luke snapping and popped him in the eye. The attendant rushed to the doorway to see what the commotion was, but was too terrified (and probably underpaid) to intervene.

"Please stop!"

The manager rushed in and forced them apart with the practiced strength of a lifetime exposure to toxic bullshit. She glared at them both. "Gentleman, you will leave right now. You are never welcome to come back."

"My band's onstage, we were supposed to—"

"OUT."

Luke and Reggie waited out front for Alex and Julie. Luke was mentally counting the runtime of the song in his head, trying to guess when they'd finish and find out where the guys had gone. But they were only waiting half a minute before the front door opened and Julie rushed out, gasping for breath, with Alex right on her heels. She stopped short at the sight of Luke, her eyes snapping to the stinging part of his face where Bobby had punched him. He didn't need to say anything. She knew.

"Did you… did you get in a fight?"

"Julie, I'm—"

"We told you we could leave! Like, a dozen times! Why did you insist on staying if you knew you couldn't handle it?"

Reggie stepped toward her half-heartedly. "In Luke's defense, Bobby provoked him—"

Alex shook his head urgently at Reggie to shut him up, but it was too late. Julie wheeled on him. "Luke is not Anne Shirley. He doesn't get to assault people who piss him off."

"Julie—" Luke tried desperately to get her to look at him, but she was backing away and shaking her head.

"This was a mistake. This whole band thing was an absolute mistake."

"Julie, please, can we just get an Uber and—"

"No. Alex and I will get an Uber. I don't really give a fuck what you do."

She whirled away and stormed off. Luke couldn't even meet Alex's eyes, but he grabbed Alex's arm to stop his friend from following Julie immediately. "What happened?"

"What do you think? We got to the chorus, she didn't have anyone to sing to, they flashed the spotlight in her face, she had a panic attack and ran off stage." Luke could see it all playing out in his head, felt the physical pain of it. Alex shrugged him off. "I hope punching Bobby was worth it."

Alex hurried after Julie, leaving Luke with a stinging face and a gut full of guilt.

Songs/musical references in this chapter:
• Paul O'Dette ("An Untold Story" from the Casanova soundtrack is one of my favorites, but if you're curious about Dowland, something like "The King of Denmark, his Galliard" is good)
• Salt-N-Pepa's "Shoop" (a missing moment from this chapter is definitely Luke's reaction to Julie singing the "Girls, what's my weakness? MEN" line)
• Taylor Swift (Reggie sings the goat version of "I Knew You Were Trouble" every time he does karaoke, and the audience never appreciates it)
• Neon Jungle's "Trouble"
• Five's "Got the Feelin'" (the song I listened to the most when I was writing the karaoke section)
• Anna Kendrick's "Cups (When I'm Gone)"
• R.E.M.'s "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" (Like Luke, I memorized the lyrics one weekend in the hopes that it would come in handy someday. Shockingly, it has not.)
• Cake's "Love You Madly" (I was so so tempted to have Julie and Luke sing this, so I had to make some nod towards it)
• Hailee Steinfeld's "You're Such A"