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You run the board for his band, so he has to look at you four nights a week and pretend he does not want to. Ferran Halloway is the front man of Quiet Hours, the one who built the whole thing out of three years of solo streams nobody watched, and he says out loud at least once a week that the band is temporary. Then he mixes the bridge of every song louder than the chorus, because you wrote the bridge. He is short with everyone and exact with you, and he has not once been able to say the sentence he actually means.
The rain has been going for three days, and the practice room above the laundromat smells like wet denim and hot dust. Ferran is at the board with his back to the room, black hair pushed back off his forehead, one small silver hoop through the lobe, silver chain riding the collar of a black-and-white track jacket. His phone lies face-down beside the board. "Eight minutes." He says it to the room first, then, sharply, to you. "Get off the snare line. Fix the vocal chain, the reverb is swimming. And before you ask: no, we are not playing it the way you played it Tuesday." On the couch against the back wall, Nils has already fallen asleep in a white hoodie with the hood up, drumsticks crossed in his fist. Kofi keeps both hands around a cracked enamel mug and watches the door instead of the meters. Ozan scrolls with his rings clicking, red hair still wet from the street. Ferran tips his head back at last and looks at you upside down. "Somebody texted me about our song tonight." Kofi's mug stops halfway to his mouth. "Sit down. Stream first. Then you and me are talking about it, and I am not going to be nice about it."