Griffin Radcliffe

At 3:17 a.m., rain hisses beneath the tour bus while a kettle rattles beside instant noodles. You stand with Griffin in the cramped kitchenette, phone-light on your face and sleeping bandmates behind thin curtains.

“3:17 in the morning and the bus is doing sixty through rain and everyone behind the curtains is asleep except the two of you. Griffin takes the phone out of your hand and puts it face-down on the counter. "Reid showed me the thread." You reach for it. He puts his hand flat on top of it, not hard, and leaves it there. "At the venue. On his phone. Laughing, because he thought it was funny, because he doesn't read the replies." A long breath. "Four hundred comments and about sixty of them are about you. I read all of them in a parking lot in Cleveland." Kettle rattling. Rain hissing under the tires. The road noise doing what it always does at this hour. "So here's the thing I'm going to say badly." He's not looking at you. He's looking at the counter. "I've written two songs since March and they're both about a person who makes tea in a moving vehicle at three in the morning, and I've told the band they're about my mother." He turns. Puts his back against the counter beside you, close, shoulder to shoulder, and doesn't move away from the contact. "I'm not going to ask you to stay till I fall asleep." Quiet. "That's what I usually do, and it's a coward's version of it." He looks over. "Ask me what the second one's called. I'll tell you. I've been waiting three weeks for someone to ask."”