Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 92749 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 464(@200wpm)___ 371(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92749 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 464(@200wpm)___ 371(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
Something in my voice freezes him. “Is everything okay?”
“That depends. Do you want to explain why my melody appears in here with your lyrics attached to it?”
The question hangs between us. The silence would be deafening but someone downstairs in the guitar shop is rifting so damn hard, it’s echoing. Darian’s expression shifts from surprise to guarded, the careful withdrawal of someone accused of something they’re not entirely sure they’re guilty of.
“Can we talk about this inside?”
“We can talk about it right here.”
“Rye, please.” His voice carries bone-deep exhaustion. “I know how this looks.”
“How does it look?”
“Like I stole something from you.”
The admission surprises me. I expected denials, justifications, maybe anger at being confronted. Instead, he sounds tired in a way that transcends the early hour.
“Did you?”
He considers this, leaning against the doorframe. “I don’t know. Maybe. I didn’t mean to.”
“You didn’t mean to take my melody and write an entire fucking song around it?”
“I didn’t mean to find something unfinished and want to complete it.” His eyes meet mine. “I played that harmony because it belonged there. The words . . . fit.”
“That’s not how this works.”
“How what works?”
“You don’t get to take someone else’s music and decide it needs fixing.”
“Is that what I did?” He steps closer, close enough that I can see gold flecks in his brown eyes. “Fix your music?”
“You tell me.”
Instead of answering, he opens the door wider. “Come inside. Please. Let me show you something.”
Every rational neuron in my brain screams that entering his apartment ranks among the worst ideas in human history. That I should hand over his notebook, demand he destroy whatever he wrote using my music, and walk away before this conversation ventures somewhere beyond my control.
I step inside anyway.
The apartment breathes temporary existence and hasn’t changed over the years. Books stack on shelves instead of set there with love and tenderness. Guitars lean against the window. The hardwood floor is covered by threadbare rugs. The Martin from his performance sits on a stand near a chair that’s clearly his preferred spot for playing.
“Sit.” He gestures toward the chair while moving to the kitchen area. “Coffee?”
“I don’t want coffee. I want to know why you thought you had the right.”
He pours himself a cup and returns with his phone. “Because I didn’t think. I heard something beautiful and incomplete, and my fingers moved without permission. You inspired me.” He scrolls through something on his phone. “Listen.”
Sound fills the small space—a recording of that night at The Songbird. The piano melody I worked on, tentative and searching. But underneath it, barely audible, his voice hums the harmony that transformed everything.
“This is what I heard,” he says. “Not just your melody, but the song it wanted to become.”
I listen to myself play, remembering how lost I felt that night. How music helped me think through problems I couldn’t solve any other way. The melody sounds smaller than I remember, more fragmented.
“Turn it off.”
He stops the recording and sets the phone aside. “The words weren’t written about you, Rye. They were written for the song itself. For whatever you were trying to say that night.”
“You don’t know what I was trying to say.”
“No. But I know what the music was trying to say. Sometimes that’s enough.”
The distinction cuts deeper than I want to admit. He’s right—there’s a difference between stealing someone’s story and finding the story that already exists in their music. Between taking something that belongs to someone else and excavating something that belongs to the song itself.
“Show me.”
He moves toward the guitar, lifting the Martin from its stand. “Are you sure?”
“Show me what you heard.”
He settles into the chair and finds my melody on the guitar strings. But this time, instead of just playing my creation, he weaves in the harmony line from that night. The song begins to breathe, to expand beyond what I originally created.
Then he starts singing.
Found myself in a city of second chances
Where the music cuts deeper than the pain
His voice transforms the words from text on paper into something alive. The melody I abandoned becomes the foundation for something complete, purposeful. Like it was always meant to exist this way.
She left her song unfinished in a room that holds too many secrets
But some melodies refuse to die
They wait for hands that understand their weight
For voices brave enough to try
The chorus builds exactly where it should, the harmony supporting rather than overwhelming the original melody. My throat tightens because this is what I reached for that night without knowing how to grasp it. This is the song I couldn’t write because I was too afraid of what it might reveal about me.
He finishes and looks up, guitar still balanced on his knee. “That’s what I heard.”
Silence stretches between us. I should be angry. I should demand he delete the recording and burn the notebook pages. Instead, something loosens in my chest, like a knot I’ve carried for years finally giving way.