Page 38 of The Escape Plan

Sometimes, I’d think about what it might be like to record my own music.

But I don’t think about that anymore.

In the past year or so, all my creativity has dried up. Shriveled away. The music in me now feels like an itch I can’t scratch, buried too deep to access.

I never finished my album.

There was no need.

I’ve got a real job that I’m grateful for.

“Nah,” I tell him with a half-smile. “Thanks, though.”

“What about signing up for the Indie Music Night?” he asks without missing a beat.

I laugh. “Keeley talked to you?”

“She did. She said you’d come see me and mention some nonsense about helping with sound, but she was very insistent that I try to persuade you to play instead.”

“Of course she did.”

“So, will you? Play something, I mean?”

I study the toe of my sneaker for a moment. I meant what I said to Keeley in the laundry room a few days back—I have thought about performing in the Indie Music Night.

And while I came here today with the intention of telling Ezra I’d help out with sound and behind the scenes stuff, I’ll admit a part of me is still thinking about playing.

“Is everyone gonna be playing original music?”

Ezra’s eyes spark with delight. “A mix of things. Feel free to do a cover if you want.”

It’s probably just a sugar high from consuming a lunch of the waffles and chocolate cereal Keeley absolutely insisted I buy. But I feel like this is something I can do.

It’s strange. Lately, that deep-seated itch in me to play music almost feels like it’s moving closer to the surface again.

It’s something I can hardly dare to hope for. But if I play a cover, there’s no pressure to channel that creativity again. I can simply just play a familiar song and help Keeley’s friend out in the process.

“Maybe something Irish?” Ezra suggests, bringing me back to the present. “People would go nuts for that.”

Steve Earle’s “The Galway Girl” immediately comes to mind—a song about a man who meets a beautiful woman with black hair and blue eyes, and even though he’s not looking for love, he can’t help but be totally charmed by her.

The thought makes me smile.

“Sure,” I find myself saying.

“Nice!” Ezra says, looking genuinely pleased. “Nori will be so happy to fill the last spot.”

He starts talking me through some details, and I nod along, mind whirring with a mix of nerves, trepidation, and excitement, when Ezra casually says, “Keeley will also be helping out, of course.”

“Makes sense. She and Nori are good friends.”

Ezra smirks knowingly. “You two have been hanging out, huh?”

“A little. Sometimes,” I say, because that’s easier than telling him that we were locked in the laundry room together for an hour yesterday after I found her in yet another state of partial undress, and that I picked her up from the roadside earlier and basically kidnapped her to be my shopping partner.

A shopping trip that made me the proud owner of anI’m A Spring Chicken!reusable tote bag.

Ezra and I wander back to the main floor of the shop, and he picks up his salad container again. “I’m glad she has someone watching out for her in her building. Especially now that she and Andrew have broken up.”

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