Page 35 of Every Shattered Note
MustLoveMusic:How’s your March?You have plenty of events?
AlyEuphoriaEvents:Spring’s always busy.Weddings, baptisms, baby showers.March is packed—if we survive this weekend.If we fuck up the Whittmore gala, though?It’ll be like social suicide.No one will touch us.Not even desperate birthday moms with magician clowns and balloon animals.
MustLoveMusic:That bad, huh?
AlyEuphoriaEvents:It’s that bad.
MustLoveMusic:You sound tense.Wanna go for a burger?I haven’t had dinner.
AlyEuphoriaEvents:I have to work.
MustLoveMusic:Sure.But did you eat?
AlyEuphoriaEvents:Not the point.
MustLoveMusic:It’s a little bit the point.You won’t save the gala on an empty stomach and fumes.
AlyEuphoriaEvents:Jules ordered sandwiches.I’ll be fine.
MustLoveMusic:You sure know how to live dangerously.
AlyEuphoriaEvents:Some of us don’t get to be mysteriously hot guys with guitars and flirty smiles.Some of us have to plan chair deliveries and make sure no one forgets the fucking tablecloths.
MustLoveMusic:You think I’m hot?
AlyEuphoriaEvents:That’s not what I said.
MustLoveMusic:It’s what you typed.
AlyEuphoriaEvents:I’m under stress.I could’ve typed that Godzilla is the most good-looking reptile.Your ego is showing.
MustLoveMusic:So’s your exhaustion.Where do I drop the demo?
AlyEuphoriaEvents:I’ll email it to you with instructions.
MustLoveMusic:You sure you don’t want that burger?
AlyEuphoriaEvents:You’re relentless.
MustLoveMusic:You have no idea.See you at Benny’s in twenty—don’t be late.
ChapterFifteen
Dexter
The burger place on the corner isn’t anything special.
Fluorescent lights hum overhead like they’re just barely hanging on—buzzing with the kind of nervous energy I’ve carried in my shoulders since I was a teenager.The cracked vinyl booths are patched with duct tape that doesn’t even try to match.Napkin dispensers jam at the worst possible moment.The ketchup bottle always has a dried ring around the cap that no one bothers to clean.
The fries are too salty.The burgers are too greasy.The milkshakes?Thick enough to break a straw.It’s nothing fancy.But it’s exactly right for days like this—when the world’s been clawing at your back and all you want is comfort to keep you upright while you catch your breath.
I’ve been coming here since long before the record deals, long before my name made headlines for all the wrong reasons—back when it was just me, a journal full of lyrics, and a secondhand Walkman that ate tapes like it was starving.I’d sit at this exact table with my grandfather after school, splitting a burger and scribbling half-rhymed lines on the back of paper placemats while he sipped coffee and told me not everything I write needed to be good.Just to come from my soul.
This place was here before I became a headline.
It’s still here now.
Some things survive when everything else crumbles.
