This is my alt-rock NA serialised story — the book my younger self needed, written by my older self who finally knows what to do with all the bruises.
New here? Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14.
Or you can go to the chapter index.
Dev
The buzz from the new single had already thinned, and I was back in the same grind.
Actually — scratch that.
This is what the last few years have looked like.
Studios that smell like money and anxiety.
Rooms padded with soundproof foam and red flags.
People telling me to lean in, feel more, give edge — but, like, make it hot.
Fake air that costs more than my first flat.
No one actually listening.
Today’s flavour was sandalwood and engineered silence. The kind that absorbs noise and meaning.
I was halfway through tracking vocals for a song I didn’t believe in, trying not to sound like I hated it, when the producer’s voice crackled through the intercom.
“Can we run that chorus again, Dev? But like — more feeling. Break-up energy. But still sexy. You know?”
Connor’s voice slid into my head, uninvited.
You’ve got it bad for her.
I took the headphones off slowly.
“You want heartbreak,” I said. “But make it… what?”
He grinned. “Fuckable. That’s the vibe.”
So I walked out of the booth.
I sat on the floor in the hallway, back against the wall, knees up like I was twenty and pretending not to spiral.
My phone buzzed. Someone from the team. Probably about the shoot later.
I ignored it.
Opened Instagram.
Just a vibe check. Not stalking.
@still.just.sadie
New story.
Low light. Blurry edges. Waves hitting black sand. Some wild New Zealand beach — empty, beautiful, cold.
Caption: My version of noise control.
I stared at it longer than I meant to.
She hadn’t sent it to me. But it felt aimed. Or maybe I just needed it to be.
Sometimes she posted things like that. Quiet offerings. A frost-laced fern. A close-up of mural textures. Once, a narky-looking black bird with a hooked beak — a tui, I learned later — perched on a rusted fence post.
No captions beyond a few words. No context. Just… transmissions.
Little notes passed under a door I hadn’t opened all the way.
Before I could talk myself out of it, I hit call.
It rang twice.
“Dev?” Her voice was low, sleep-rough, but awake enough to make me wonder if she’d been waiting for something. For me.
“Sorry it’s late,” I muttered. “Just needed a voice that doesn’t sound like it’s selling me synergy.”
“Label again?”
“Promo. Studio. The whole machine. Every time I walk in there, I’m meant to bleed — but only in brand-approved colours. I don’t even know why I’m still doing it.”
Fuck. I hadn’t meant to hand her all of that.
She was quiet for a beat, then leaned closer to the camera.
“Remember what you said to me in the hut?”
“Which part?”
“You said you used to love it. The music. Before it started eating you.”
The words landed like a punch to the gut, cut clean through whatever I’d been about to say.
She held my gaze.
“So stop letting it,” she said. “Be the guy who says that shit and actually means it. Pull a Taylor Swift. Re-record the whole thing. Find some scrappy studio and do it yourself.”
I huffed a laugh. “Just like that, huh. Rebuild the house after they’ve already torched it.”
“Better than living in their ashes.”
That lodged. Sharp. Uncomfortable.
“You always gotta drop lines like you’re auditioning for an indie film?” I said.
She smirked, didn’t look away. “You called me, Dev. Don’t act like you didn’t want the truth.”
We sat there for a second. Me staring at her pixelated face. Her hair sleep-mussed, cardigan slipping off one shoulder like gravity had just… decided.
The strip of skin shouldn’t have mattered.
It did.
Heat flared low and fast, completely unhelpful. I shifted, jaw tightening, annoyed at myself for noticing at all.
Get a grip.
When I spoke again, my voice came out rougher than I meant it to.
“Get some sleep,” I said finally, because my throat was too tight to say anything else.
She smiled. Small, real. “Goodnight, Dev.”
The line went dead.
Whatever she’d lit didn’t go out when the screen went dark.
Three hours later, I was in a converted warehouse being styled within an inch of my existence for a streaming platform campaign.
The stylist kept gelling my hair into something she called controlled chaos.
The photographer handed me a mic prop.
“Give us danger,” he said. “Like you just broke someone’s heart but you’re sorry. Sort of.”
“I’m not sorry,” I muttered.
“Perfect,” he grinned. “That’s the one.”
Black and neon. Talk of virality, brand consistency, edgy vulnerability. I was offered three chain necklaces like Pokémon evolutions.
The lights were too hot. Everything smelled like LED and lost potential.
Sadie’s words boiled in my gut.
Better than living in their ashes.
The chains clinked against each other like shackles. I looked at myself — dressed like a marketing brief. A mannequin with a pulse.
Flash. Pose. Flash.
Every shutter sounded like someone else cashing in on what I’d already lost.
I clenched the mic prop until my knuckles ached, then dropped it. The clang cut the room in half.
“Sorry,” I said.
I wasn’t.
By the time I got home, I didn’t turn the lights on.
Dropped the chains on the counter. Peeled off the hoodie. Grabbed my guitar.
No mic. No crew. No vibe brief.
Just me, six strings, and whatever hadn’t been scrubbed out of me yet.
I played the thing I’d meant to record in the studio. Slower. Cracked open.
I hit record on my phone.
Voice memo title: Noise Control.
Saved it to a private folder the label would never see.
I called the guys.
Connor showed up first, still in his leathers, smelling like pub smoke. Then Mateo, Simon, and Owen — voices low, like they already knew I was about to light a fuse.
“I’m done letting the label write our obituary in neon,” I said. “I want out. I want us to do it our way.”
Connor folded his arms. “So what are you saying? We just… walk?”
“Yeah.”
Mateo groaned. Simon muttered something about blacklists. Owen cracked his knuckles, silent.
“Someone told me once I was faking it,” I said. “That it didn’t sound like me anymore. They weren’t wrong.”
That shut them up.
Owen leaned forward. “If you’re serious, I’m in. Fuck the suits.”
Mateo shook his head, grinning despite himself. “Christ. We’re actually doing this.”
Simon exhaled. “No safety net.”
“When have we ever played it safe?” I said.
Connor raised his bottle, reluctant but in. “Alright. If we’re going down, we go down our way.”
A pause. “You got a location in mind?”
I smiled. “Auckland.”
Even Owen cracked up. The tension finally broke.
Connor caught my arm as the others drifted back to their beers.
“If this is about Sadie,” he said quietly, “say that. Because I won’t burn my career down for a crush.”
“It’s not about that.”
It wasn’t about her. She’d just reminded me who I was before I started shrinking.
He studied me, then nodded once. “Good. Because if we’re burning the house down, it better be for the music.”
He clapped my shoulder. “She’s kinda unreal, though.”
The week blurred — calls, favours, spreadsheets. Chaos you couldn’t tell if you were steering or being dragged by.
And me? I wrote. Voice memos piling up like confessions.
Late one night, Connor shut his laptop. “When we drop this on the suits, we go in united. No cracks.”
We clinked bottles. No speeches. Just glass striking glass — and the weight of what we were already doing.
👌