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)
“Play it for me.”
“I don’t play anymore.”
“Then sing it.”
“Here?”
“Why not? The place is almost empty.”
I glance around. He’s right—just us and two old men reading newspapers at the counter. Still, the idea of singing in daylight, without the protective darkness of a venue, makes my hands shake.
“I can’t.”
“You can. You just won’t.”
“Same thing.”
“No, it’s not.” He leans forward. “Can’t means unable. Won’t means afraid.”
“Maybe I have good reasons to be afraid.”
“Maybe you do. But fear’s not a great songwriter.”
The challenge in his voice sparks something defiant in me. Before I can think better of it, I clear my throat and hum the opening bars. Soft, barely audible, but the melody flows like it’s been waiting.
“I built these walls with careful hands . . .” My voice cracks on the first line, but I push through. ”Each brick a lesson learned too well . . . Kept out the storms, kept out the pain . . . Kept out everything else as well . . .”
I stop, face burning, unable to meet his eyes. The silence stretches until I hear him humming. The harmony slides underneath my melody like it was always meant to be there, like he’s heard this song before even though I’ve never sung it for anyone.
“How do you do that?” I whisper.
“Do what?”
“Know where the music wants to go.”
“Same way you knew where to build the walls.” His voice is gentle. “Practice.”
I finally look at him. His eyes hold something I don’t want to name, something that makes me feel seen in ways I’ve spent years avoiding.
“This doesn’t change anything,” I say.
“I know.”
“I still can’t—”
“I know that too.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Because sometimes the music is enough. Even when nothing else can be.”
Denise returns with the coffee pot, but I shake my head. “I should go.”
“Rye—”
“The venue needs prepping. Tonight’s a full lineup.”
I slide out of the booth, drop cash on the table for both our coffees and the toast. He doesn’t try to stop me, doesn’t argue about the check. Just watches me as I gather my things.
“That song,” he says as I turn to leave. “It needs a bridge.”
“They all do.”
“No, I mean . . . I think I know what it might sound like. If you ever want to hear it.”
I pause at the door, hand on the handle. “I told you. I don’t write anymore.”
“But you just sang.”
“That was a mistake.”
“Was it?”
I leave without answering, but the melody follows me. His harmony follows me. The memory of sitting across from someone who understands the weight of music follows me all the way back to The Songbird.
Inside the venue, I stand in the empty main room, staring at the stage where he played that first night. Where he bled truth into three songs and reminded me what music could do when you stopped protecting yourself from it.
My phone buzzes with a text from Mom: Lily wants to know if she can show you her song tonight. I told her you’d love to hear it.
I type back: Of course.
Because maybe that’s how it works. Maybe you rebuild yourself one shared cup of coffee at a time, one harmony that shouldn’t fit but does, one piece of toast in a diner where nothing fancy happens but everything real does.
Maybe.
But probably not.
Still, as I start prepping the venue for tonight, I catch myself humming. My melody. His harmony. The bridge I swear I can almost hear, waiting just outside my reach.
The Songbird settles around me, familiar and safe. But safe doesn’t feel like enough anymore. And that melody—our melody—keeps pulling at something I thought I’d buried.
Not yet.
Maybe not ever.
But for the first time in years, never doesn’t feel quite as certain as it used to.
darian
. . .
Bishop Hart’s studio sits in a converted warehouse in downtown Nashville, all exposed brick and Edison bulbs that cost more than most people’s rent. I’ve been here enough times to know which floorboards creak and where the good coffee lives. Today, though, I’m carrying something different than my usual half-formed ideas and bourbon-soaked melodies.
The track plays through Bishop’s speakers, filling the control room with Rye’s melody layered over my production. I watch his face while he listens, reading the micro-expressions I’ve learned to decode over years of pitching songs. His fingers tap against the mixing board, not in time with the music but ahead of it, already hearing possibilities.
“Play it again,” he says when it ends.
I hit replay and lean back in the leather chair that probably cost more than three months of rent. The second listen is always more telling than the first. First listen, producers hear what is. Second listen, they hear what could be.
Bishop’s nodding now, really nodding, not the polite kind he gives to songs he’ll forget before I leave the parking lot.
“Who wrote this with you?” He spins his chair to face me, eyes sharp behind designer glasses.