Page 91 of The Sound Between Us

They all look at me like I’ve suggested something radical instead of obvious.

“It’s not that simple—” Harrison starts.

“Isn’t it? You know what’s wrong. You know what you’ve lost. So stop making excuses and go find it again.”

Back in the studio, something’s different. Maybe it’s the tequila Jamie insisted on buying. Maybe it’s the brutal honesty we’ve just shared over cheap Mexican food. Or maybe it’s that I’ve stopped orbiting them and crash-landed in the centre of their gravitational pull.

Mark looks up hopefully as we re-enter, fingers already twitching toward the faders.

Harrison drops cross-legged onto the Persian rug, guitar across his lap. He’s not posing now, not performing for invisible cameras. Just settled. His fingers find the strings intimate, automatic, instinctive.

“What would Tommie think of what you’ve become?”

The question slips out before I can stop it. The silence that follows is surgical. Clean. Precise. Deep enough to wound.

Jamie’s fingers still on his bass strings. Even Mark freezes mid-adjustment, the emotional climate in the room shifting.

“We don’t really talk about—” Harrison starts.

“That’s exactly why you can’t write anything real anymore.”

I know I’m pushing. Using my place as the outsider to say the thing none of them will. Wielding their grief and pretending I don’t feel guilty about it. But someone has to cut through the scar tissue.

“He’d fucking hate it,” Jamie says, his voice raw. “Everything we’ve become. Everything we represent now.”

“So write about that,” I say simply. “Write about losing him. Write about becoming something you don’t recognise. Write about wanting to find your way back.”

Harrison looks at me then. Really looks. Something inside him snaps back into place after years of being dislocated.

What happens next isn’t performance. It’s not strategy. It’s magic.

His fingers move. The melody he finds is aching, hope laced with grief, memory blurred by longing. Jamie’s bass threads through it, something alive and necessary. Dex doesn’t dominate; he breathes around it, creating pockets for the melody to live and grow.

Mark presses record with reverent fingers.

“There’s something different about today,” Jamie murmurs during a lull, not wanting to break whatever spell we’ve woven.

“Yeah,” Dex agrees, voice soft with wonder. “We sound like us again.”

I’m still in my corner, but I’m not watching anymore. I’m in it. Somehow. Not playing anything but playing all of them. Reading the room, following the current, shaping something invisible but vital.

“The dynamics are all wrong in the bridge,” I say, the words slipping out absently. “What if it’s not about losing yourself, but finding who you really are? Strip it back, just Harrison and the acoustic for four bars. Then bring everything back in, full force, on the chorus.”

Mark’s eyebrows lift toward his hairline. That’s not commentary. That’s arrangement. That’s production instinct speaking without permission.

Harrison shifts the chord progression instantly, fingers moving with new purpose. The space opens. The moment breathes. The song finds its lungs.

“Like this?” He plays it again, softer now, weightless with sudden clarity.

When the bass and drums crash back in, it hits like catharsis.

“Perfect,” I breathe.

Mark is grinning now. Full-on, open-mouthed, fuck-we’ve-got-something grin that transforms his entire face.

“Play it again,” Harrison says, his eyes never leaving mine. “But this time⁠—”

“I’m not playing anything,” I interrupt, but there’s no heat in it anymore.