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“I love you more.”

We both took a drink and returned to our seats. I tried not to linger on what happened. Tried not to tally it with all the other small things coming together, painting a picture I already knew about, but had never seen in person. I rubbed my thumb on the cold condensation on the bottle.

“Why does the beer always taste better here?” I asked.

Mom laughed. “Because the Rev feels like home.” She leaned against the bar, fiddling with the label on her bottle, looking up into the steel-beam rafters, at the crumbling cement walls, the red mahogany countertop scratched with names of patrons of decades past. “I was just some girl from nowhere Nebraska when I joined the Boulevard. I can’t tell you how many nights we slept in vans and made ends meet by busking on sidewalks and taking wedding gigs and birthday parties.

My parents disowned me. My friends said I was crazy.

Maybe I was, but I’d never trade those years for anything.

I met your dad while playing a two-night gig here, and something just felt right.

We spent the night walking the beach, and the next morning … ”

“The wild horses came through the town,” I finished for her. This part I did know. Dad liked telling this part best.

“It was magical,” Mom said with a sigh. “Something out of a book or a movie—and all my years on the road, I never felt that. That kind of magic. The kind that you feel when you’re really living , you know?

Then I got back to the tour bus and it turned out that a demo Roman had submitted caught a producer’s eye.

He was gonna fly us all to LA—the whole band, all the backup singers.

That night he played the demo song, ‘Wherever.’ By the crowd, I knew it was going to be big.

We all did. And I had a decision to make.

So I made it. My friends said I was crazy,” she added, echoing the sentiment from before.

She raised her eyes to the Revelry, the stage and the lights and the rafters.

“Hell, I might be crazy. But just like I’d never trade those years with the Boulevard for anything, I wouldn’t trade this life here, either. ”

But if she’d never quit the band, she’d have seen the world. She would’ve played on the biggest stages in music history. Instead, she was here in a music venue with a leaky roof and a short-circuited jukebox, drinking root beer.

In the bright fluorescence of the houselights, she looked washed out. Her black hair was mostly gray, pulled back into a high bun, her skin dappled with freckles and sunspots, her rouged lips the same color as her cheeks.

“Do you regret it? Seeing Roman Fell make it?” I asked. As if in answer, Roman Fell and the Boulevard murmured a soft ballad in the background, about chasing things you’d never catch. “Sometimes it feels like you sacrificed your dreams for us.”

Mom hummed along to the music for a moment and took a sip. “Sometimes the dreams you come with aren’t the dreams you leave with, and sometimes you just don’t leave at all. Besides,” she added, leaning against the bar toward me, a smile pulling at her lips, “ you made it. And I’m so proud of you.”

I shifted uncomfortably, trying to tamp down my guilt. I made it, but I wasn’t sure if I was really happy. I made it, but I felt empty. It was hard to feel proud of myself when all I felt was regret. “You could’ve made it, too,” I murmured.

“Ugh, heart .” She rolled her eyes. “Could you imagine? Always feeling like I’m not big enough for my own shadow. The years of therapy I’d need—”

There was a crash backstage.

I sprang off the stool.

There was a “Shit!” And then another familiar voice said, “My hair!” and my alarm quickly morphed into something safely between shock and—well …

“Mitch?” I called.

There was some more noise, stumbling, cursing, before my brother rounded the backstage curtain.

“Oh hey! Mom! Jo!” Mitch waved a bit too exuberantly.

“What are you two doing here?” His T-shirt collar was askew, his hair mussed like someone had pulled their fingers through it.

If I wasn’t his little sister, I wouldn’t have thought anything of him rubbing his mouth, except there was lipstick on it.

I narrowed my eyes. “Mitch …”

A moment later, my best friend shuffled out behind him. “Not just Mitch …”

My mouth dropped open. Mom threw her head back with a crow of a laugh, kicking her feet under her.

“Oh my god, you guys,” I groaned, covering my face. “ Really ? How long have y’all been back there?”

“Since I came in, I’m sure,” Mom said, unable to stop giggling. “And you just didn’t say anything ?”

Gigi and Mitch exchanged the same bashful look. “We didn’t know how to.”

“Probably in the middle of some missionary work,” I added in a mumble, earning a playful slap on my arm from Mom. “Ow!”

Mitch finished wiping his cheek and said, “You’re just jealous.”

While Gigi crossed herself and said, “Ashes to ashes, nuts to nuts.”

And we all burst into laughter. Mom with her bright peals of it, Mitch with his trying-to-keep-a-straight-face snicker, Gigi cackling with unabashed love, and me laughing so hard I felt my sides beginning to ache.

And these were the moments I missed while off chasing my dreams in LA.

Though, what would my dreams have turned into if I’d stayed?

I’d always thought I’d be a songwriter. It was always one of those certainties, come hell or high water, but if I’d stayed instead …

would my dreams have shifted? That was something that stumped me.

If I wasn’t writing songs and spinning ballads of heartbreak and heaven, then what kind of person would I be?

I couldn’t think of another dream I would want besides the one I had.

Then again, I’d never let myself even wonder what other dreams were out there.

Or here, at the Revelry.