The flyer was still taped to the door, limp and curling like it was ashamed of its own adhesive. REVERB NIGHT, all caps, badly kerned, promising intimacy and rawness and probably lukewarm beer. Reid Vexley stood in front of it like a man staring at the wreckage of a memory someone else lived through.
Saturday. It was Saturday. But not anymore. The place was half-closed, lights dimmed down to "we're just cleaning now" and the doorman already shifting back into civilian boredom.
"You missed it, man," the guy said. Not unkind, just not interested.
Reid glanced past him into the dim interior. He recognized the lighting pattern—the ones they used for the final act. He was late. Not fashionably. Just uselessly.
"Yeah," Reid said. "Didn't get the memo. Guess I'm off the list now."
The doorman shrugged like gravity was his job. "Dom said you had other stuff going on."
Of course he did. Dominic Slate, Human Curator of Everyone Else's Lives. Always ready with the half-truth, the PR-friendly excuse to cushion a quiet exile.
Reid didn’t argue. That was the trap: if you push back, you’re dramatic. If you say nothing, you’re forgotten. Either way, you’re the problem.
He nodded once, sharp. Walked off like it didn’t matter, even though he was already cataloguing the details—the guilt-drenched glance from someone through the bar window, the way the event tag never made it to his feed, the silence in the group chat that week.
He circled the block once. Just to think. To not think. He lit a cigarette he didn’t want. It burned too fast. Everything did.
He passed a corner store with its speaker just barely holding on to a late-2000s pop remix. Some breathy singer was crooning about “the one that got away” like it was a brand slogan. Reid smirked without humor. He hated the song. Always had. It sounded like heartbreak on a Hallmark card, glossy and dumb and market-tested.
But tonight, it hit different.
The line looped in his head as he walked:
“I’d go back if I could... but the door’s not open anymore.”
Cheesy. Obvious. Accurate. And it stuck to his ribs like bad pizza.
He hated that it made sense.
A breeze kicked up, not cold but sharp, like it had been saving up. He stopped at the next corner, half-lit in the glow of a liquor store sign, and stared at the street for a beat too long.
He remembered the last Reverb Night.
The real one. The one where he’d opened the show.
Astrid had brought him a drink mid-set, balancing two plastic cups like it was a magic trick. She’d whispered something during the bridge of his final song, something no one else caught:
“You sound like truth in a burning house.”
He remembered laughing, thinking it was maybe the most honest compliment he’d ever received. It wasn’t love, not exactly. But it had a weight.
It had a place.
Now she was across the street re-writing the past with someone else. And Reid? He was left with burned-out speakers and secondhand lyrics he didn’t even want.
He flicked the cigarette into the gutter and turned to go—then paused.
Across the street, under the soft orange halo of a dying streetlamp, they stood.
Astrid Bell, laughing at something. Silas Trammell, standing a little too straight, a little too proud, soaking in the moment like it was scripted just for him.
She touched his arm. He didn’t pull away.
They looked like they shared a language he’d never been fluent in.
Reid didn’t wave. Didn’t interrupt. Didn’t even flinch.
He just watched for a moment—long enough to etch the image into the back of his eyes—and then walked away.
This wasn’t a moment to reclaim.
It was a headline he hadn’t authorized.
He thought about turning back.
Just walking up to them and saying something. Anything.
But what’s the point of interrupting a scene where you’re not in the script anymore?