Extra Bonus #100: Warner Quits The Carraways Aftermath (Patreon)

IMPORTANT: Please do not screenshot and post any part of this bonus scene to other sites or share with non-patrons. All of the Patreon content is exclusive to Patreon and for current patron's eyes only.  Thank you!! xoxo Krista & Becca

RESOURCES:  Check out this narrative timeline graphic to visually see when this bonus scene takes place.

MUSIC: We listened to "Look Alive" by Hana Vu while writing this bonus scene.

WORST DAY OF MY LIFE. This has to be up there. I’ve never experienced this emotion before, and I don’t even want to name it. Stomachs should not be pits. Stomachs should not meet elevator floors when the elevator is rising. I should be rising. I am meant to ascend, so why the hell do I feel like I’m falling?

My eyes ache and burn. One more than the other.

Warner.

My nose flares, and I swallow a knot in my throat. “Fuck him,” I mutter, my tongue dry in my mouth. I thread my hands on the back of my skull and bend down to a squat, feeling more out of breath.

Probably because my stomach is on the floor, along with my ego.

I won’t fucking cry.  

Fuck him. Fuck today. Fuck my band. I wince at myself and stand up, trying to breathe.

I’ve never wanted to damn The Carraways. Even the thought makes me want to bang my head against the wall and throw up. This band has been my life, and it can’t be nothing just because Warner quit.

It can’t…

The elevator doors slide open, and I dazedly step out onto the twenty-first floor, finding my apartment in a pained stupor as I contemplate my fucked future. I unlock the door slowly.

I shuffle inside with the weight of what happened crushing me. I can barely pick up my head.

Then I hear my brother. “Everything okay?” Ben. “Tom?”

I don’t look up, but Ben is probably in the living room as the resident of the pull-out couch. I wouldn’t be surprised if Harriet Fisher is with him. She’s about the last person I want to see on the darkest Friday night in the history of Fridays, but this is my life. I have to meet my demons face-to-face. I’m the least cowardly of my siblings, and the universe clearly knows it.

I drop my keys on the kitchen counter, heading deeper into the living room, and I barely lift my head to see Harriet with her chopped blonde hair and low-rise pants straddling my brother on the couch.

Of course they wouldn’t be hugging the opposite armrests of the couch with a gigantic space between them. Tonight is about torturing me and confronting things I don’t like. This emotion being one of them.

My eyes hurt. My throat burns. “You will be happy to know, Harry…” I raise my gaze higher on her. “That my drummer just quit. And so did Warner.” My bassist. But he’s more than just the bassist.

Harriet scowls, but her lips part. Too shocked to speak.

“Warner?” Ben says, confused like there is no way he’d quit, but it happened and in one of the worst ways that I never would have imagined.

“That’s the whole band,” Harriet mutters.

I let out a weird noise. “Thank you so much for clarifying.” My voice sounds shrill. “Like I didn’t know my band just imploded.” I push back my hair with a rough, frustrated hand.

Harriet’s eyes bug. “Dude.” She leaps off Ben’s lap with more concern than I ever thought she’d spar me. I’m not sure I deserve it. “Did he punch you?” Anger rings the edges of her normal scowl.

“Tom.” Ben launches to his feet, staring heatedly at my eyes that I’m sure look gruesome. Just one, though. The other is still beautifully intact.

Remembering what Warner just did has my stomach back on the floor. I sling my head backward with a frustrated, distraught sound. “He lost it at rehearsal and threw a mic at my face.” That’s not all he did. But I can’t verbally get out all the brutal details right now. I glare at Harriet. “Go ahead and laugh it up, Harry. Tell me I deserved it. I’m an asshole. I had this coming. Rub it in.”

I’m not easy to work with.

It was a long time coming.

I couldn’t hold on to a drummer. What made me think Warner would stick around?

He was my friend.

He’s been my friend.

“You didn’t deserve to get assaulted.”

I barely hear her response. She’s already heading to the fridge. “Do you have any ice packs in here?” she asks us.

“Freezer,” Ben says while he rounds the couch and inspects my puffy eye. Ben Pirrip, coming in with the empathy. He looks pained for me.

“The bruise to the face I can take,” I assure my little brother. “My pride…” I blink a few times, trying to lift my stomach back into my body. “Goddamn Warner.”

Fuck him.

This was never going to work with him. I never realized that until now. I never wanted to accept that. I wouldn’t have.

Ben rests his ass on the back of the couch, closer to my height. “If this is how Warner reacts, I don’t think you should work things out with him. Maybe it’s better to cut ties.”

“I don’t want him back, dude.” I point at my eye. “And not because of this. We can’t agree on anything anymore. Not the tempo, not a song title, not the color of a fucking EP cover.”

Harriet returns with a soft ice pack. She extends it to me, and I’m still stalled out on the fact that she’s being…nice?

I grab it slowly, not sure if I like the pity, but what’s the inverse? Harriet rubs jalapeño pepper juice on the ice pack? I can’t see Ben dating a girl who’d pull that prank on me, but we’re in strange times.

My stomach is on the floor.

My ego is shattered.

My dreams are…

“Thanks?” I say to her.

“Any reason to flex my pre-med skills, Thomas.”

I wheeze out a painful laugh. “Right now I feel like I’m dying. What are you going to do about that?” I can’t even look at her, and I say quickly, “Forget it.” I press the ice to my eye with a slight wince, then I nod goodbye to Ben and retreat to my bedroom.

I collapse backward onto my bed in a tragic heap.

My dreams can’t be fucked.

This can’t be the end of the road. I can’t let this be the end. Isn’t it the end? My eyes try to leak, and my breath is labored like I’m being crushed alive.

What the fuck am I going to do?

Wallow.

I lick my dried lips, no strength to lift myself up. So when my door creaks open, I only rotate my head to see Ben enter.

“Welcome, Ben Pirrip,” I say quietly, “to my pity party of one. You bring any refreshments?” I ask hopefully.

Ben smiles a little while he leans against my dresser. “Empty handed.”

“Boo.”

He points to my mini-fridge. “You want a water?”

“No.” I swallow again. “In truth, dude, I don’t know if I can consume anything. It’s hard enough being force-fed humble pie.” I adjust the ice pack across my eyes and thread my fingers over it.

“Does Eliot know?”

“Not yet.” I inhale a sharp breath. “I’ve never conceptualized The Carraways without Warner, but I don’t want the band to die with him.”

“Why do you think he’ll kill it?” Ben asks.

“We created it together, dude.” I slide the ice pack off one eye to see Ben deep in thought. “What are you thinking?”

“That if Warner washes his hands of The Carraways, then won’t it still live on with you, Tom? It’s not dead if you want to keep the band going. You can find another bassist or drummer or whoever. You don’t need Warner.”

He can’t take my dream from me. He isn’t The Carraways.

I let this sink in and sit up fully. “You might be smarter than Charlie,” I tell him.

Ben laughs hard. “You haven’t even talked to Charlie yet, man.”

“I already like your advice more.”

Ben smiles at me, which inflates my lungs, then he says, “I’m just watching a movie with Harriet tonight, so you don’t need to avoid the living room. We won’t hook up.”

Eliot would encourage they fuck, but I just say, “Thanks,” in a partial daze. He nods, and once the door shuts, I grab my phone and open my notes app.

Words suddenly tear through me.

Lyrics.

My stomach returns to my body as I type out each furious line.

You could never take the reason I woke.

You could never take my anger you provoke.

This voice, these feet, this heart of a thousand beats will go on.

Don’t worry, I don’t need you to see.

Any fucking part of me.

I don’t need you.

You’ll wish you knew.

Any fucking part of me.

The fire you feel is blue.

Don’t you wish you knew?

Any fucking part of me.

I finish typing with a harder breath like I just ran at knee-breaking speed, and I reread the words over and over until they lift me higher.

I stand.

Off the bed. I grab my pillow. Because there is no way in hell I’m going to be alone tonight. Fuck wallowing.

I’m going to watch a movie—hopefully not a nature documentary—with my brother and his demonic girlfriend.

I’m going to be okay.

My band will survive.

Thanks so much for reading this month's extra bonus! We know this one was highly requested as to what Ben said to Tom that night. We loved getting to write this backstory before heading into Silver Sweet. We hope you enjoyed it!

That's the last bonus for the month. More will be coming in August and with the Silver Sweet narrative timeline opened up to us for bonus, you can expect LOTS of great things ahead.

xoxo Krista & Becca

“Warner Quits The Carraways Aftermath" Copyright © 2026 by K.B. Ritchie