Salem asks where he can stand without blocking the projection. Lou points with the pen she stole from behind my ear. He nods and moves a stand two inches because two inches matter on camera.
I warm up in the corner where no one needs to hear me finding vowels. Lou steps onto a chair and adjusts a lens. Mom claps once to test the decay. The room sounds right. We are as ready as we’re going to be.
We test the stream an hour early. The platform holds. The cameras stay cool. Lou runs a short slate and a countdown. She calibrates the projector edges with a grid so the picture fits the wall. Mom hands her a pencil. Lou tucks it behind her ear and keeps working. Ten minutes to downbeat.
The crew rolls. The streaming platform shows a private link with a clock in the corner. The chat is disabled. One comment field says, “live in ten,” then “live in five,” then nothing. I drink water and set the bottle where I won’t kick it.
Lou gives me the look that means breathe. I breathe. The red light comes on.
We begin with silence on purpose. The first frame is the room, not our faces. The projection is a soft wash, the grid lines faint. That stranger’s words—maybe Lou’s aunt or grandmother—the haunting track, it surrounds us. Sets the tone.
I start “Locket” low and slow. I let the verse sit in my chest. Knox gives me the count for the chorus with a tilt of his head. I come in and hear Lou’s whisper in my monitor and in the room. It feels right. It feels like she’s next to me even when she’s behind the camera.
We finish on a held breath. No applause. No chatter. The camera stays wide while the projection dimly holds a single word. Home. It’s small in the corner, not a shout. The thing Lou has never really had.
I almost lose it. I don’t.
We go into the next new song while the walls shift to color pulled from the room. The song finds a pocket and stays there. We end. We do the third song. It’s rougher and good.
We close with a short reprise. I keep the mic close. The red light goes off. The crew exhales. Quincy nods without smiling, which is how he smiles. “We’ll push the replay with the statement and the link to the album preorder. No interviews this week. If anyone asks for comment, they get the music.”
Mom brings out food from somewhere. Chili in a slow cooker and cornbread and fruit. She feeds people who didn’t know they were hungry. The guard eats in the hall. The room settles.
As we pack up, Knox passes the crew envelopes with bonus checks and Quincy runs the file checklist again, because he knows how it feels to lose a take. No one wants that again.
I find Lou by the projector cart. She’s checking the file tree and labeling takes. “You almost had me crying out there, you know. That was beautiful.”
“I almost had me,” she admits with a sad smile. “I kept the type small on purpose so it wouldn’t swallow me.”
“It was a work of art.”
She shakes her head. “It was a proof of concept.”
“Art,” I repeat. She lets me be stubborn. “Let’s go for a walk. Clear our heads.”
“That sounds like a good idea.”
We tell Knox where we’re going and step out through the back door. The guard sees us and nods and keeps his radio on his lap. The air is cool at night. The street is quiet. We keep our hoods down and our hands to ourselves. No one bothers us.
We circle the block, and the moon is full. A few more blocks go by, and we find ourselves in an empty park. A few swings, a jungle gym, teeter-totters. That kind of thing. Picnic benches dot the area. There’s a large climbing behemoth that doesn’t look at all safe, but I sit on the pirate bridge in the middle, and she joins me. The bridge joins two fort-style playrooms, both of which are half my size.
I don’t make a speech, but I have so much to say to her. I don’t know how to make a speech that doesn’t ruin things, though.
So, I start with the truth. “I’m falling for you, Lou. Hard. Fast. I don’t need you to promise me anything. I’m not asking for anything. I just need you to know the thing is happening.”
She looks at me and doesn’t look away. She exhales and licks her lips. “I feel it too.” She swallows and laughs a little at herself. “I’m just…I don’t know what to say. I’m not good at this stuff.”
“Me either. Just…try not to break my heart.”
“I’ll do my best.” She leans in and kisses me, and it feels like a promise.
Can’t help myself. I pull her onto me as I lie back on the bridge. Feeling her warmth, the pressure of her body on me, it’s too much. I’m hard already. My body knows what my heart knows.
She’s the one.
Lou, feisty thing that she is, unzips me while we kiss. I don’t even notice until her hand is on me.
“What are you doing, naughty?”
