Jo paced the private balcony of the sold-out Revelry, second-guessing her heels and stressing over a broken AC on the venue’s biggest night in years. It was the first summer after her mother’s death, and memories of her mother’s voice mingled with Jo’s grief. Despite recent challenges running the club—budget issues, seagulls, ancient equipment, and a leaked schedule of Sebastian’s surprise drop-ins that boosted slow months—Jo felt certain she had chosen the right life in Vienna Shores.

Sebastian slipped into the balcony with drinks, steadying Jo’s nerves. He floated the idea of finally turning the back room into a studio, then paused before finishing his thought as the AC restarted and the vents fluttered to life, relieving Jo. With the show about to start, Jo reflected on the Revelry’s revival: new staff in roles the club once had in its heyday, and a renewed energy with each performance.

The houselights dimmed and the curtains opened on Georgia “Gigi” Simmons’s first Vienna Shores show. Under the spotlight, Gigi commanded the room with ease, and Jo watched with pride from above, catching sight of her father and brother Mitch in the wings, overcome with emotion. The atmosphere reminded Jo of her mother, imagining her just offstage, singing along.

As Jo and Sebastian leaned on the railing, Jo thought about their future. When Gigi began a pop ballad in D major—the first song Jo and Sebastian had written for Gigi, which the crowd sang along to—Jo asked Sebastian, half-teasing and half-serious, about him needing a place to live if he moved his studio to the Revelry and invited him to move in with her. He joked about the pitfalls of creative partners but readily agreed to move in as her boyfriend.

Jo then raised the stakes, asking him about becoming her fiancé. Sebastian answered with a deep, tender kiss instead of words as the audience sang below them. Afterward, they intertwined their fingers, and Jo confessed that even though he was no longer in her head the way he once was, he never truly left it. Sebastian echoed the sentiment. Jo felt a new, gentle feeling blossom where anxiety used to sit—something like a song—while Gigi continued to shine onstage and the Revelry thrummed with renewed life.