The phone call came while I was elbow-deep in finger paint.
"You won!" Margo's shriek was so loud that three of my kindergarteners looked up from their art projects, startled. "Emma, we WON!"
"Margo, I'm in the middle of—"
"Backstage passes. To Crimson Edge. Cleveland, next Saturday. Oh my God, I'm literally shaking."
The paint brush slipped from my fingers, leaving a streak of purple across little Tommy Chen's construction paper sky. He didn't seem to mind.
"I'm sorry, what?"
"That radio contest I've been entering for three months? They picked my name. I have two backstage passes to meet Jax Viper, and you're coming with me whether you like it or not."
My heart did something complicated in my chest—half excitement, half mortification. Because here's the thing about guilty pleasures: they're supposed to stay guilty and pleasurable precisely because they remain private. Nobody needs to know that a twenty-eight-year-old music teacher with a master's degree in education spends her evenings listening to rock ballads written by a man whose publicity photos belong in a museum of "People Too Hot to Be Real."
"Margo, I can't just—"
"It's Saturday. You don't work Saturdays. The drive to Cleveland is three hours. I will pick you up at noon, we will eat gas station snacks, and we will meet the love of your life."
"He's not the love of my—"
"Your Spotify wrapped said you listened to 'Midnight in December' four hundred and sixty-seven times last year. The app literally asked if you were okay."
Tommy tugged on my sleeve. "Miss Wright? Who's Jack Viper?"
"No one, sweetie. Finish your painting."
I lowered my voice into the phone. "I listened to it while grading. It's calming."
"It's a song about unrequited love and leather jackets. You're not fooling anyone." Margo paused, and when she spoke again, her voice had softened. "Em, come on. When was the last time you did something just for fun? Something that wasn't lesson plans or parent conferences or eating sad salads alone in your apartment?"
The truth lodged in my throat. I couldn't remember.
Since moving back to Riverside after my engagement imploded, I'd thrown myself into work with the fervor of someone outrunning a fire. Wake up, teach, grade, sleep, repeat. My students were thriving. My curriculum was immaculate. My apartment was clean and quiet and exactly as lonely as I deserved.
"One night," Margo pressed. "One silly, spontaneous night where we act like the college roommates we used to be. Remember fun? Remember staying up until three in the morning talking about nothing? Remember—"
"Fine."
Silence. Then: "Wait, really?"
I glanced around my classroom—at the finger paint rainbows and the carefully organized reading corner and the alphabet rug I'd special ordered because the standard one didn't have enough representation. Everything in my life was controlled. Curated. Safe.
Maybe that was the problem.
"Really," I said. "But I'm not screaming. I refuse to be one of those people who screams."
Margo's answering shriek suggested she would scream enough for both of us.
The week crawled by in a haze of anticipation I refused to acknowledge. I did not google Jax Viper's recent interviews. I did not rewatch the music video for "Electric Hearts" (four times). I certainly did not spend Tuesday evening trying on outfits in front of my mirror like a teenager before a school dance.
The outfit I finally chose—jeans, a vintage band tee, low heels that were practical but cute—was carefully calculated to look uncalculated. Which was, perhaps, more embarrassing than just admitting I cared.
Saturday arrived gray and drizzly, typical Ohio autumn. Margo pulled up in her ancient Honda, already blasting "Crimson Hour" from the speakers.
"Get in, loser, we're going to meet a rock star."
I climbed in, clutching my purse like a lifeline. "You know the odds of actually talking to him are basically zero, right? These backstage things are usually just... stand in line, get a photo, get shuffled out."
"Okay, first of all, way to crush dreams." Margo merged onto the highway, her enthusiasm undimmed. "Second of all, have you seen the man's interviews? He's actually, like, a person. Not some manufactured pop robot. He writes his own songs. He plays actual instruments. He once spent thirty minutes on a podcast talking about his guitar collection."
"I wouldn't know anything about that."
"Emma. Sweetie. Honey. Light of my life." Margo's eyes never left the road, but I could feel her smirk. "Your Spotify username is literally 'ViperFan2023.' I can see your playlists."
Heat flooded my cheeks. "That was... I was going through something."
"Yeah. You were going through his discography." She cackled. "It's okay to like things, you know. It's okay to be excited about something that isn't your student's reading levels."
I stared out the window at the flat Ohio farmland, the grain silos and the bare trees and the endless gray sky. Margo was right, and I hated that she was right. Somewhere between my engagement ending and my mother's disappointed sighs and my father's patented "I just want you to be happy" speech that somehow made me feel worse, I had forgotten how to want things.
Not need. Wanting was different. Wanting was dangerous. Wanting was standing in front of a mirror at thirty-two, realizing you'd spent a decade building a life you weren't even sure you wanted.
"I'm excited," I admitted, the words foreign on my tongue. "I'm actually, genuinely excited. Is that pathetic?"
"It's the opposite of pathetic." Margo reached over to squeeze my hand. "It's the first normal thing you've said in six months."
The Cleveland skyline appeared on the horizon, gray spires reaching through the clouds. Somewhere in that city, in a building I couldn't yet see, a man I'd never met was preparing to sing songs that had somehow become the soundtrack to my worst and best moments.
I didn't believe in signs. I was a practical person, a teacher, someone who dealt in facts and phonics and the measurable progress of small humans learning to read.
But when "Midnight in December" came on the radio, completely unprompted, Margo and I looked at each other and laughed until we cried.
Maybe, just maybe, this was exactly what I needed.