The bar was dark, except for the red lights filtering in from the hallway behind the stage. The band was waiting. The murmur of the audience filled the air like a dense fog. But before they left, time seemed to have stopped, suspended in each person's memories.
Valeria, with her hands in her pockets and her eyes closed, remembered the first time she played a guitar. She was thirteen and found it in a forgotten closet in her aunt's house. It was a broken criolla guitar with only three strings. She learned to play with it. Her escape was music because no one in her house listened. Her father disappeared when she was a child, and her mother sank into silence. As a teenager, she discovered rock by accident, when a neighbor was blasting Nirvana. From then on, she knew she wanted to make noise. Enough for someone, somewhere, to hear.
Cami, sitting on a percussion box, tapped her fingers to a rhythm that only she understood. Her story was different. The daughter of jazz musicians, she grew up surrounded by instruments, but the atmosphere at home was so perfectionist that she ended up hating music for a while. Until, at a street festival, she discovered a punk drummer who played barefoot and furiously. That was her moment. From then on, she fought against the establishment, broke rules, and found her style by hitting hard, without asking permission.
Julián, standing next to his bass, chewed gum like someone trying to quell anxiety. He had been in several bands that never survived egos or oblivion. Music, for him, was a refuge and a refuge. He had played for as long as he could remember. He had quit for a while, fed up with the betrayals and the lack of direction. He had known Valeria since a lyrics workshop at university. They connected over a rhyme and a disagreement. They fought at the first meeting. They became friends at the second. They formed a band at the third.
They were different. Very different. But the noise had brought them together.
Now, there they were. Standing behind the stage, listening to the collective heartbeat of the audience on the other side of the curtain. The lights began to change. A voice backstage gave the signal.
And just before leaving, as Valeria's foot was about to cross the threshold, a shadow at the end of the aisle caught her attention. It wasn't Iván Quintana.
It was someone else. Someone unexpected.