Page 58 of The Sound Between Us

I’m about to respond, a scathing reply with teeth, but my phone pings.

A message from Henry: Car outside. Studio. 8am. Don’t fuck this.

Saved by the bell.

“I’ve got to go.” I grab my notebook and slide it into the back pocket of my jeans and fish a pair of sunglasses off the counter.

She watches me. Sizing up a vintage coat at a thrift store. “We could talk when you’re back?”

“We could. But we won’t.”

She opens her mouth to protest, but I’m already gone.

“Lock up after you.”

Out the front door and into a California morning that’s bright, smug and too much. I dive into the shade of the waiting car.

The driver, who isn’t Lee, doesn’t say a word, just glances at me in the mirror. He’s seen worse.

The studio’s downtown, in a building that smells of old records and broken dreams. We recorded the album here—the one that sold twelve million copies and ruined our lives.

Studio A smells of vintage wood and new failure. Thirty-foot ceilings, sacred-feeling acoustics, warm lighting. Platinum records on the wall. The space is trying to guilt us into genius. And the SSL 9000 J Series console—smooth and steady, probably the only one of us that isn’t having an existential crisis.

Dex is already there when I arrive, lying flat on the Persian rug in the middle of the room, arms flung wide. Ascending. Hair slicked back, shirt open, sunglasses on even though we’re indoors. He looks like a man who got lost on the way to a GQ shoot, leaned into it, and then got spectacularly high. Which, knowing Dex, is exactly what happened.

Jamie turns up ten minutes late with a protein shake in one hand and a vape in the other. His pupils are moons; his brain’s clearly visiting 2009. We’re all thirty, but we move as though we’re sixty.

Henry’s pacing in the control room behind the glass, mouthing words we’ll never write and pretending we’re still worth saving.

“We need something,” he says through the talkback. That’ll manifest a hit single out of the air.

I stare at the blinking lights on the console. They might deliver divine inspiration. Nothing happens.

“So,” I say, for what feels the sixth time in an hour. “Anyone got anything? A melody? A chord? A word?”

Nothing.

Jamie exhales a cloud of vape smoke. “Pancake.”

Dex groans from his rug-nest. “Don’t say food, man. I’m in space.”

“Got any lyrics?” Dex asks, not moving from his horizontal position.

Jamie shrugs. “I’ve got a half-finished poem about my last colonoscopy.”

I lean back in my chair, staring at the ceiling. I do have lyrics. I have a song. One with a line about wanting more and pretending not to; one with chords that feel like kissing someone for the first time and knowing it’ll ruin you.

But it’s hers.

So I say nothing.

“Come on, Harry,” Dex says, finally sitting up. “You’re the golden goose. You’ve always got one in the chamber.”

I shake my head. “Not today.”

Henry looks ready to throw me out the window. “We’ve got deadlines, Harrison. We’ve got producers, we’ve got fucking expectations.”

And I want to scream at him—I’ve got insomnia. I’ve got jet lag. I’ve got a song in my chest that isn’t mine and a girl in my head who won’t leave.