Mateo found himself crying on a street corner, his phone pressed to his ear. “I’m scared, Mom. What if I choose wrong? What if I take these opportunities and fail? What if I don’t take them and regret it forever?” “Then you’ll deal with it, same as you’ve dealt with everything else. Mateo, you’re the strongest person I know. You gave up your dreams to help our family. You worked yourself to exhaustion without complaining. You survived two years of feeling invisible. You can handle whatever comes next.”
After hanging up, Mateo walked for a while, no destination in mind. He found himself at a public library and went inside, seeking the quiet. In the music section, he pulled out books on famous saxophonists, reading their biographies. So many of them had struggled, had faced rejection, had dealt with financial hardship or personal tragedy. Success wasn’t a straight line for anyone.
He thought about what James had said—about the moment being hot, about needing to capitalize on attention. There was truth in that; opportunities didn’t wait forever. But he also thought about what Dr. Martinez had said—about building a foundation, about not rushing into something he wasn’t prepared for. And then there was Angela’s perspective—about balancing commercial opportunity with artistic credibility, about building something sustainable.
They were all right in different ways. The question was what mattered most to Mateo himself. That evening, he sat with his grandmother’s old alto saxophone and finally let himself play. Not Glazunov this time. Instead, he played lyrical études and quiet ballads—pieces he’d loved as a teenager, music that felt like coming home. His fingers found the notes easily, muscle memory guiding him through passages he’d played hundreds of times before.
And as he played, he realized something: the viral video hadn’t made him a saxophonist. He’d always been a saxophonist. The attention hadn’t given him talent. He’d always had talent. What had changed wasn’t who he was; what had changed was his willingness to claim it, to acknowledge it, to build his life around it instead of trying to bury it.
The next morning, Mateo called meetings with each of the three professionals separately. He had decisions to make, but he needed to make them on his own terms, in his own way. He met with Dr. Martinez first at the conservatory. Walking through those familiar halls felt surreal. Students rushed past with instrument cases, their faces focused and stressed in ways he remembered intimately. Practice-room saxophones and pianos echoed through the corridors, a cacophony of scales and arpeggios and pieces being slowly mastered.