Hold-

The first time the song falters, Jonah is twenty-nine and still optimistic enough to believe in fresh starts. He’s in the garage, wearing shoes he bought to “change everything,” a phrase he’s already used too many times.

He hits play.

Hold on, I’m co—

The power flickers. The speaker burps and dies. He laughs it off, calls it a cosmic joke, promises to try again tomorrow.

Tomorrow becomes the year he turns thirty. A job shift. A move. A baby. Another baby. A thousand nights of “after the kids go to bed.” The weight rack becomes décor—industrial clutter with the emotional weight of broken promises.

The song returns sporadically, like a drunk uncle who keeps texting “on my way” but never arrives.

In traffic on 41, on a Tuesday saturated with beige bureaucracy:
Hold—
Horn behind him. Light turns green. Drive.

At the office, exhausted, eating a desk salad that tastes like wet adjectives:
Hold on—
Slack notification: Team Huddle in 5.

At Costco, pushing 200 pounds of good intentions in bulk:
Hold—
His son asks for another sample. The moment evaporates.

The pattern ossifies: spikes of willpower shorter than his patience, dissipating before they can coagulate into action. Not laziness—neurological drift. Motivation showing up out of rhythm, out of phase, out of reach.

His body changes slowly but surely. Muscles become rumors. Joints file small protests. Shirts shrink by the laws of shame physics. His doctor describes the numbers as “concerning but reversible,” a phrase that sounds like polite disbelief.

Jonah tries to engineer consistency. He buys planners. He installs apps. He sets alarms that chime like needy birds.

Hold—
Dismiss.
Hold—
Dismiss.
Hold—
“Later.”

The worst part isn’t the failures; it’s the micro-victories that never stick. Moments where he feels the old fire—the version of himself he swore still lived under the accumulated noise.

The song becomes a ghost of that version.

Then a winter comes that feels heavier than its temperature. Work is relentless. One kid gets sick. Then the other. Money tightens. Arguments sharpen. Sleep shrinks to a brittle sliver.

The song goes silent altogether.

Months pass without even a stutter of a note.

Silence becomes its own verdict.

One night—late, bone-tired, mind cluttered—Jonah walks into the garage. He doesn’t know why. Habit, maybe. Shame, probably. The dark in there is softer than the dark in his head.

He stands still. Expects nothing. Wants even less.

A minute passes. Two. Ten.

Then, sudden, clean, indecently confident:

Hold on, I’m coming…

Not a fragment. Not a tease.

The entire opening line blooms out of the speaker like it has a personal stake in his survival.

He doesn’t move at first. The sound feels dangerous—hope at a volume that could break something.

Then he steps forward.

He grips a dumbbell he hasn’t touched in years. It’s cold. Unforgiving. Honest.

He lifts.

No montage. No triumph. Just one man syncing his breath to an old soul track that shouldn’t mean anything but does.

The song plays longer than it ever has. Long enough to matter. Long enough to scare the past.

At the edge of the final chorus, the track doesn’t fade.
It hovers—balanced, waiting, almost curious.

That’s where the story cuts out.

What happens next isn’t on the page.

If the music keeps going or cuts mid-syllable…
that’s up to you, dear reader.