The apartment was silent — too silent. Rhea sat on the edge of a sleek leather couch in her new downtown loft, staring at the muted television screen. The skyline shimmered beyond the tall windows, full of possibility, full of everything she'd once dreamed of. But all she could think about was the message Micah hadn't returned.
She scrolled through their last texts. Two blue bubbles. One "hey, call me when you can." No reply.
Micah had always been the first person she called after a show, back when it was ten people and a dog clapping in a basement bar. He used to drive her home, still hyped off the energy, blasting old punk songs through his cracked speakers. Now, she wasn't sure he even listened to music anymore — not hers, at least.
Rhea tossed her phone onto the couch and stood. Her footsteps echoed on the polished hardwood. Everything here felt staged, like a hotel suite built to impress someone she'd never meet. The walls were bare, the fridge held nothing but bottled water and half a grapefruit, and the silence pressed on her like a weight.
Her label rep, Celine, had warned her this might happen. "Success comes with sacrifice," she'd said, adjusting her designer glasses while flipping through brand proposal decks. "People get jealous. Don't take it personally."
But it was personal. It always had been.
Kat had moved out two weeks ago. She said it wasn't Rhea's fault, but her eyes told a different story — the kind full of sleep-deprived resentment and late-night arguments about noise, dishes, or sometimes nothing at all. Rhea offered to pay her rent. Kat declined with a stiff smile.
Even the fans were starting to change. The ones who had discovered her when she played barefoot in parking lots now accused her of selling out. "Too polished," they tweeted. "She was better before they gave her a stylist." She couldn't help but wonder if they wanted her to suffer forever — if authenticity, to them, meant eternal struggle.
The anger came in waves. Sometimes she swallowed it. Other times, she let it rise. Like today.
Today she stormed out of a photoshoot because the photographer kept calling her "edgy." As if she were some aesthetic to be bottled and sold. He didn't know about the nights she'd bled for this, or the music she wrote crying in a closet. He didn't care.
They all just wanted her image. Not her.
Her guitar, the old one with the chipped pickguard, sat in the corner of the room like a stranger. She hadn't touched it in days. The new producers wanted tracks with "more energy," "bigger hooks." They called her rawness "risky."
But Rhea didn't rise from the underground just to be told how to shine.
The fury was no longer just around her.
It was blooming inside her now.
And it was only a matter of time before it demanded to be heard.