Chapter 59: The Festival
Sarah sent a message at 6PM on the next day .
@sarah.torres.official: getting ready. I’m actually shaking.
Xavier read it at his desk. Typed back after a moment.
Xavier: good shaking or bad shaking.
@sarah.torres.official: both. Mostly good I think.
Xavier: then it’s the right kind.
@sarah.torres.official: are you on your way already or...
Xavier: I’ll be there, he typed. Don’t think about me. Think about the set.
@sarah.torres.official: okay. Okay yes. The set.
@sarah.torres.official: Xavier..
Xavier: Sarah...
@sarah.torres.official: thank you. For everything this semester. Whatever happens tonight. Thank you.Hope you come quickly, you’re the second main cast of the event. I had things in place where I dedicated one of my new songs and sang alongside you...The audience with be massive with me introducing you.
Xavier looked at that message for a long moment.
Whatever happens tonight.
He smiled. Small. Private. The kind that didn’t reach his eyes.
He set the phone face down and looked at the ceiling.
She doesn’t know what’s coming, he thought. She’s backstage getting ready, shaking the good kind of shaking, thinking about the set I paid for her to perfect in a studio I booked anonymously and upgraded without telling her. He looked at the ceiling. And she’s thanking me.
He didn’t respond to the last message.
He picked up his jacket and his keys and left the apartment.
He didn’t go to the festival.
He walked instead. No destination. Just the city at 7PM doing its Friday evening thing. Restaurants filling up, the particular energy of a weekend starting, people with somewhere to be moving through streets that didn’t care where they were going.
Xavier walked through it all with his hands in his pockets and his phone in his jacket and the particular stillness of someone who had set something in motion and was now simply waiting for it to arrive.
She’s on stage in two hours, he thought. The Arts festival. University wide. External press. Victoria Hale in the third row with her industry connections and her prior session interest and her confirmation that she wants to hear the full EP.
Sarah’s biggest night.
He crossed through the commercial district. Past Ardmore Street. The café, the recording studio two doors down with its clean signage and its professional setup that had cost $15,000 of his money and the same amount of her freedom from her own masters.
He didn’t slow down.
She’s going to perform the best set of her campus life tonight, he thought. The masterclass technique sitting in her muscle memory. The EP material she’s lived in for weeks. The stage presence that’s been building since the first concert I attended and she scanned the crowd and found me not reacting. He kept walking. Everything she’s built this semester is going to come together perfectly on the biggest stage she’s ever stood on.
And then the screen.
He found a bar on the north side he’d never been to before. Small, quiet, the kind of place that took its drinks seriously and didn’t play music loud enough to prevent thinking.
He sat at the counter and ordered something simple.
[ REBATE SYSTEM ]
Transaction Detected: $14 spent on drink
Base Multiplier (Tier 2): 2x
Total Return: $28
[ Net Balance: $645,014.00 → $645,042.00 ]
He checked the time. 8:47PM.
She’s on in thirteen minutes, he thought.
He looked at his drink. Turned the glass slowly in his hand.
Thirteen minutes, he thought. And then it starts.
He thought about the first concert. The VIP section. Amira in burgundy beside him. Sarah scanning the crowd mid performance and finding him not reacting and stumbling half a beat behind for exactly one line before recovering.
That was the beginning, he thought. That half beat.
He thought about the café on Ardmore Street. Her sunglasses on the table. The Instagram follow sent across two feet of pavement. The way she’d walked away without looking back and he’d stood there and thought same girl. Different timeline.
He thought about the community centre. The children. The photo on the corkboard. Sixteen years old at a school microphone pretending not to be terrified.
But let’s be honest, he thought. She’s not showing me the real her out of some genuine connection. She’s showing me what works on a man who doesn’t chase her. He looked at his drink. I’m the first person in her orbit who didn’t perform admiration back at her and she mistook that for depth. Mistook it for something worth being vulnerable around
He sat with that for a moment.
She’s not in love with me, he thought. She’s in love with what I represent. Control she can’t quite get her hands on. Resources she can’t quite trace. A man she can’t quite read.
Same Sarah he thought. The girl who started whoring around two years from now in his previous life,
He finished his drink.
Ordered another.
His phone buzzed at 9:03PM.
Not Sarah. The AV contractor.
One message. Two words.
In position.
Xavier read it. Typed back.
Confirmed. Proceed as arranged.
He put the phone away.
It’s starting, he thought. Right now. Sarah Torres is walking onto the biggest stage of her campus life and the crowd is doing what crowds always do when she walks onto a stage. Shifting, adjusting, giving her the attention she was built to receive.
And the AV contractor is in position.
He looked at his second drink without touching it.
She’s performing the set right now, he thought. The breathing technique from the masterclass. The EP material. Track one. Then two. Then three. Then the showcase piece. The one she finished in a studio I booked anonymously and wrote the best section of the morning after.
Four songs.
And somewhere between track three and four. The screen.
He checked the time at 9:31PM.
His phone buzzed.
Not the contractor this time.
Temi.
Temi: Xavier. Xavier what is this. What did you do. Xavier call me.
He looked at the message.
Then his phone started going. Not buzzing. Actually ringing. Temi. He declined it.
Another buzz. Dana this time.
Dana: what is happening right now
Then Jordan.
Jordan: bro what the actual...