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 Ishould 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.”
