Ferris Wheel, 4 A.M.

For a year you have not listened to this song.

Not on purpose. Not all the way through. When it came on in a cab, you asked the driver to change it. When it came on in a bar, you went to the bathroom. When Ksenia played it once in the van, ironically, to make fun of how many streams it had, you put your headphones on and stared out the window until she turned it off and said "okay, weird," and never did it again.

Because a year ago you saw a billboard, and the man on it was the man from the Ferris wheel, and the song was about a girl.

And you didn't want to know what he'd turned that night into. Or who he'd turned it into.

Tonight you stand at the side of the stage at the Lantern Room in Portland with a warm beer and your laminate and no excuse. Hollow Saints have been on for forty minutes. The church is so packed the stained glass is sweating. Cassia plays like she's trying to start a fire with her hands. The drummer, a bearded Irishman named Darragh Twelvetrees who introduced himself to you at catering by offering you half his sandwich, hits so hard the candles in the old sconces flicker.

And Ravn.

You understand the billboards now. On a stage, he's not a person. He's weather. Eyeliner smudged, shirt soaked through and stuck to his ribs, rings flashing every time his hands move, which is always. He prowls. He climbs the monitor and hangs off the lighting truss by one arm and sings upside down for a whole chorus. Eighteen hundred people sing every word back to him. The girl next to you at side stage, someone's plus-one, says "oh my God" every time he looks in your direction, like he's looking at her.

He isn't.

Then the lights drop to one blue spot, and Cassia picks the first four notes, and the whole church screams so loud you feel it in your sternum.

"Ferris Wheel, 4 A.M."

You could walk away. You don't.

He sings the first verse almost quietly, close to the mic, eyes shut. Rain came sideways off the water / and the wheel forgot to turn / you counted every bolt out loud / so you'd never have to learn / how high we were.

You stop breathing.

Salt in your hair, nothing to hold / so you gave me something small.

Your hand is in your pocket. Your thumb is on the edge of a pick. You didn't put it there on purpose.

He gets to the second verse and you know the line before it comes, because you've heard it in a cab before you made the driver change it, and you told yourself plenty of people play bass, plenty of girls play bass, it's a common detail, it's a song.

Her thumb on the low E, steady as the sea.

Except he doesn't sing her. Not cleanly. His voice catches on it, a stumble so small nobody in the crowd would hear it, a half-beat where the word sticks in his throat and comes out wrong, swallowed, more breath than word.

Cassia's head snaps toward him. She doesn't miss a note.

Ravn opens his eyes. He's looking at the side of the stage. He's looking at you.

Then the chorus hits, and he's weather again, and eighteen hundred people sing about a girl.

You find him after the encore, in the narrow hallway behind the stage, toweling his hair. A runner is trying to hand him a water and he's not noticing her at all.

"You asked for me," you say. "By name."

He lowers the towel. His eyeliner has run into something gorgeous and tragic. Even exhausted and soaking, he's the best-looking man you've ever seen up close, and the runner beside him clearly agrees, because she walks into a road case.

"Who told you that?"

"Your production manager. Six openers. Six. 'Make sure the bassist comes.'"

"Okay, first of all, Ethan, Grigor's a gossip." Ravn drapes the towel around his neck. "Second, I asked for your band. Your band's good. Your singer's a goddess, your drummer's terrifying, and somebody needs to stand still in the back and hold the whole thing together. That's you. You're the loud part."

"The bass is the loud part."

"That's what I said."

"That's not what you said."

He grins. A real one. It hits you like a stage light. "Roof's open," he says, and walks away before you can make him answer anything.

The Lantern Room's roof is a fire escape that climbs past the stained glass to a flat tar ledge above the bell tower. He wasn't lying. You can see the river, black and slow, with the bridges strung across it in lights.

He's already there. He's got two bags of gas station sour gummy worms, the battery kind, and he tosses you one without looking.

"Where did you even get these?"

"I have people."

"You have a runner who walked into a road case."

"She is a hero and she will be thanked in the liner notes." He tears his bag open with his teeth. "Roof rules."

"No music."

"No music."

So you don't talk about the song. You don't talk about the way he stumbled on one word. You talk about Zoltan, who has apparently already informed Ravn that Bus 2 is "too pretty to be loved." You talk about Ksenia's theory that Portland is a city run entirely by men named Kyle. You talk until the gummy worms are gone and your mouth tastes like a battery and the river has gone silver at the edges.

When he stands to go, he hesitates. Shoves his hands in his pockets.

"Give me your number."

You blink at him.

"For logistics," he adds. Very fast. "Roof logistics. Gas station logistics. What if there's a, a schedule change, and I need to tell you the roof is closed."

"Daria tells us schedule changes."

"Daria," Ravn says carefully, "is your ex." And then, at your face: "Grigor's a gossip. I told you."

You look at him for a long moment. He looks back, and for once he doesn't look bored or cocky. He looks like someone waiting at the top of something high.

You hold out your hand for his phone. He gives it to you. You type your number in and save it as LOW END, and he reads it and laughs once, surprised, like it got out of him.

"Logistics," you say.

"Logistics," he agrees.

The bus pulls out at one. You lie in your bunk with the curtain shut and the phone face down on your chest and you tell yourself you are not waiting for anything.

At 3:02 a.m., the phone buzzes against your heart.

counting bolts / counting you / still can't get the number right

Then, a second later:

that's a lyric. not about anything. logistics question: you up, Ethan?