He Gave Away Our Wedding Song, So I Ended His Signing Day novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Session

Marlo records Tilly singing the song and August Dane asks her whose song it is. She says half.

Tilly came downstairs while I was still holding the phone, and I told her the realtor wanted to move a meeting.

She nodded, and asked if I could help her with the recording on Monday.

"Beau says nobody gets his songs right like you do," she said. "Please, Marlo. I just want it to sound the way you'd hear it."

I said yes before I had decided why.

On Monday I let myself into Studio B on Music Row at nine in the morning and set up the way I always do.

Two microphones for her voice, one close and one back by the far wall. A pad of paper and a pencil by the console.

Tilly came in with a travel mug and a sheet of lyrics she didn't need.

She sat on the stool in the vocal booth and gave me a thumbs up through the glass.

"Ready when you are, boss," she said in my headphones.

"Take one," I said, and rolled the tape.

She sang the song straight through, and it was good.

On the second chorus she sang "kitchen light" where Beau always sang "porch light."

She corrected herself right away and laughed into the mic.

"Sorry. Habit. I've been rehearsing it in my apartment."

"Keep going," I said.

I wrote the time of the slip on my pad anyway.

We did four takes. On the fourth, the door of the control room opened behind me.

I didn't turn around. I knew the footsteps of every person who had ever walked into one of my sessions, and these were new.

"Don't stop," a man said, low. "I'll stand here."

He stood against the back wall with his hands in his pockets.

He listened to the whole take with his head tilted.

When it ended, I hit the talkback. "That's a take, Tilly. Take a break."

Then I turned my chair around.

He wore a charcoal shirt with no tie, and his face didn't give much away.

His dark hair was going grey at the temples, and his green eyes had been on my hands, not my face.

"August Dane," he said. "Lantern Records."

"Marlo Quist."

"I know," he said. "I've heard your mixes. The last Beau Bledsoe record is the best-sounding record we have on the shelf."

"Thank you."

"I wanted to hear the song before Friday's walk-through." He nodded at the glass. "Your cousin is good."

"She is."

"She knows every turn of it."

I didn't say anything.

I remembered him now.

He had stood by the back doors at the party, holding a glass he never drank from.

He was the only person in the room not looking at the stage when Beau gave my song away.

He had been looking at me, and he hadn't said a word about it, then or since.

"Coffee?" he asked now, and held up a paper cup he had been carrying the whole time.

"I have a mug."

"This one has sugar in it. You looked like you'd forgotten to eat."

I took the cup.

It was the right amount of sugar.

"The song," August said, and walked to the console. He looked at my pad, upside down, without touching it. "The board is buying a lot of it. I'd like to know what I'm buying."

"A hit," I said.

"Mm." He studied the screen with the waveform. "Beau's other songs resolve downward, every one.

"In the last chorus he lets the melody fall, and it sounds good in a stadium. People can sing a falling line in their sleep."

"I know his songs."

"This one rises at the end." He put one finger on the screen where the line lifted. "That's a different writer's habit. Or it's a different man than the one who wrote the other twenty-eight."

I put the coffee down.

In the booth, Tilly was drinking from her mug and watching us through the glass, smiling and waiting for the next instruction.

"Beau wrote it for the wedding," I said.

"That's what the paperwork says. I've read the registration." August turned to look at me for the first time since he had walked in. "It says there are two writers."

"Yes."

"I assumed the second was a courtesy. A wedding present. Men do that." He waited. "Is it?"

I thought about the waiver in my purse that I hadn't signed.

I thought about the second verse Tilly sang at the party, with her eyes shut.

"Is that song yours?" August asked.

The talkback light on the console blinked. Tilly had pressed her button in the booth and was waiting to speak.

I let it blink.

"Half," I said.

← Chapter 2 · All chapters · Chapter 4 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend