“Because he called me a nobody?”
“Because he doesn’t understand what we’re building. And because anyone who can’t hear what you bring to the music is tone deaf.”
She goes back behind the bar, pulls out the good whiskey. “You know Bishop’s right. This is just the beginning. The offers are going to get bigger, the pressure worse.”
“Let them come.”
“Easy to say now?—”
“Easy to say, period. I’ve had the big contracts, the approved writers, the whole machine. It nearly killed me. What we’re doing here, at The Songbird, in Bishop’s studio—this is real. This matters.”
She pours two glasses, slides one to me. “To bad business decisions.”
“To good musical ones.”
We drink, and I watch her process everything. She’s scared—I can see it in the way she grips her glass, the tension in her shoulders. Not scared of me, but of what this means. Of being visible to an industry that’s already dismissing her.
“Play me something,” I say.
“What?”
“That new thing you’ve been working on. I heard you humming it yesterday.”
“It’s not ready.”
“Play it anyway.”
She moves to the piano, sits at the bench. Her fingers find the keys, tentative at first, then stronger. The melody is haunting, complex in ways that would never work on pop radio but perfect for what it is—honest, vulnerable, real.
When she finishes, I’m quiet for a moment. “That’s what Mitchell and his approved writers could never create. That’s why we’re going to keep doing this, no matter how many suits show up at my door.”
“You really believe that?”
“I know it.”
“Even when the money runs out?”
“Money always runs out eventually, but I invested well. I’m not afraid. But songs like that? They last forever.”
She closes the piano, comes back to the bar. “Bishop’s expecting us Thursday?”
“Thursday and Friday. Full studio time.”
“Both of us?”
“Both of us. Together. Just like before. Like it should be.”
The door opens and regulars start filtering in for happy hour. Our moment breaks, but the understanding remains. We’re in this together now, for better or worse, nobody and somebody making music that matters.
As the bar fills up and she moves into manager mode, I think about Mitchell’s certainty that I’d change my mind. That reality would set in and I’d choose success over authenticity.
He doesn’t understand that this is success. This bar, these songs, this partnership with someone who writes from her bones instead of from a formula.
Let them all come with their offers and their contracts. We’ll be here, making music that actually means something, even if we’re the only ones who understand its value.
That’s enough. More than enough.
It’s everything.
