The instrumentation slowly faded as the song calmly came to a close from the soundbar filling Jess's apartment with my heart on my sleeve. It didn't sound polished, or finished. But in my ear, it felt like an honest reflection of what I heard in my head before Jess's and Bastien's deft hands brought it all to life.

"You two are amazing. Not sure how I can thank you both," I professed, still uncertain whenever I was sincere if my words would matter, but Jess and Bastien made me feel safe.

"It's so incredibly you, I love it," Jess softly said as she kissed me on my forehead.

"It's actually kind of all of us, which makes it even better. I think we did a pretty good job for amateurs. Not perfect, but that's us, and that's pretty perfect in its own way," Bastien said as he put an arm over my shoulder and leaned his head up against mine.

In that moment, it truly didn't matter what happened after, just that the three of us created this, and I wanted time to stand still. The three of us, sitting on the couch, surrounded by what mattered. No yelling. No anger. No indifference. Just... belonging. I grabbed the hackysack in my pocket as though it could will Dean into the room with us.

“So, what do you want to do with it? I know we love it, like all the others we've worked on, but it seems wrong not to share them."

I stared at Bastien's laptop on the coffee table. The cursor blinked on the screen, the audio file loaded. So many days of recording, remastering, editing, funneled into one file that could be erased with a single click, like it had no idea how much weight it carried.

I exhaled slowly. No one can take it away... except if the file gets corrupted. Which would be very on brand. One file. That was it, wasn’t it? I wasn’t trying to go viral. I wasn’t chasing numbers. I just didn’t want this thing, this manifestation of our work, to disappear. I didn't want to lose it. I’d already lost too much.

"I think we should upload it."

Bastien didn't say a word, but he pulled up Instagram and set everything up to post and placed the laptop in front of me. The screen was there, glowing, but I was deep inside my head.

I typed in a caption, just a few words:

"From us to you."

I stared at the screen again. The “Post” button beckoned, waiting. My finger hovered over the trackpad, then clicked. The screen refreshed. It was done.

For a moment, the room was completely still. Then Jess grinned and said, “Finally.”

Bastien tossed a piece of popcorn at me. “Dude.”

I felt a rush, the same feeling when I finished a race. Adrenaline pushing, the body wanting to stay in motion but worn down and breath catching. Accomplishment and peace. 

Jess and Bastien leaned in from each side and embraced me.

“It’s out there,” Jess whispered.

“Yeah,” I said.

And I smiled. I was keeping my promise to Dean, one song at a time.