Milo walked into the concert hall with Kyleigh. It was a small venue—no seats, with concrete walls and warm, dim lights. He was surrounded by people with disheveled hair, baggy shirts, and torn jeans. Kyleigh was rocking it, too. Apparently, it was the required dress code to get in.
The place smelled pervasively of alcohol, conjuring up memories of fuzzy moments when Milo still drank. He stopped drinking around the same time he stopped going to concerts.
Kyleigh was a fair amount of drunk, with the explicit goal of timing peak drunkenness to coincide with the first song on the album Blame My Ex, which was fun, because she got all loud and shouty. Kyleigh had asked him to go since he was in town, and, in preparation, he started listening to all of The Beaches’ latest albums. And Milo just totally vibed with them. It felt good and somehow cathartic to have this punky group of Canadian women just yell at him in a singsong manner. It kind of reminded him of the same comforting feeling he got when watching The Bear. Milo wondered if this was because nobody really yelled at him when he was growing up. None of his girlfriends had ever yelled at him, and he never raised his voice in anger. Is that what he wanted? Is that why he liked hanging out with Drunk Kyleigh? For the yells?
This train of thought drained immediately from his head when the lights dimmed, and The Beaches, in all their glory, took the stage. Two minutes later, Milo was screaming with Kyleigh and hundreds of other drunk youth
I wouldn't let me near your friends
I wouldn't let me near your dad
But don't blame me, blame Brett
Blame my ex, blame my ex, blame my ex
Don't blame me, blame Brett
Blame my ex, blame my ex, blame my ex
at the top of their lungs.