Under Control.

chapter four.

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In the two weeks since her first run in with Fab — and then his band, and then his art, and then his frontman — Nora had found herself at the mercy of curly-haired drummer twice more.

She suspected part of his motivation for suddenly appearing in her days out of nowhere was because he was still carrying on with whatever dalliance it was he was in the middle of uptown. But the other part, she thought, might have had something to do with her. 

Or, more specifically, with the way they'd almost met once before.

The underground shows were something Nora had been a part of while she was still at school. Technically, they had been less than legal — one of her classmates had parents who were commercial realtors, and so by extension, they'd had ready access to a rotation of recently vacated, mostly empty properties. And that, combined with a surplus of youthful motivation and unrelenting confidence, had lead to them putting on a series of pop-up art shows, on the down-low.

It had been an easy way for them to network, and to practice, practically, the skills that their professors were sure that they could learn well enough just by reading about them. And, weirdly enough, all of that had been how Nora had gotten to all of this — this, being her job at the gallery on the above-ground side of town.

Her boss had heard about the shows from someone who knew someone, who knew someone. And then one day, she'd just turned up — this fancy, Italianate woman — and had offered Nora a job outright, on the spot. It was an internship that had morphed into a paying position just as soon as Nora had her degree in hand.

And so, that had been that.

Except, there had been one thing about it all that Nora hadn't bargained for. And that was the fact that by actually doing the thing she'd studied so hard to learn, she would eventually come to despise everything about the industry that surrounded the thing itself and all that it stood for, too.

And also, herself.

Meeting Fabrizio though, and seeing what he could do not just with his hands but also behind a drum kit, had shaken something awake in Nora. And for the two weeks since then, she'd found that she had felt more like herself than she had in a long time. And so having the bouncy boy whose fault it all was turn up every few days to check in on her was, it turned out, just the thing that Nora needed to keep her focussed.

For the past few days, she had begun quietly reaching out to old classmates and connections made along the way, testing the waters to see if branching off might be a thing that she could manage to do without ruining her reputation. Or committing a crime. Or finding herself buried beneath a mountain of debt any bigger than the one she was already under.

And the takeaway thus far had been that it wasn't going to be easy. But, Nora had never fooled herself into thinking that it would be. And anyway, the pleasantness of the distraction was the only thing keeping her head firmly above water for now, which was more than she'd been able to say about herself in quite a while.

Even if she did still have the odd day where she was tempted to let the city swallow her whole.

The last time Fab had popped into the gallery unannounced, he'd all but convinced Nora to swear a blood oath in promises that she'd turn up to the party after the afterparty, after the band's next gig. It was going to be at Albert and Julian's apartment, he'd said — a pronouncement he'd made just before taking to scribbling more notes and a couple of doodles for good measure onto the back of yet another piece of paper off Nora's desk that she would very much be needing again at a later date.

That had been on Wednesday, and today was Friday — the day come due.

And the truth of it all was that Nora felt like doing few things less than showing up to a stranger's apartment, and watching a hoard of sweaty boys getting necked by excitable groupies.