As I start the first phrase over again, she softly sings, “‘Didn’t want it, didn’t mean it, but here … we … are … like we’ve pinned all our hopes on a dying … star …’”
I stop for a moment.
Not bad.
I play it again, and this time I harmonize with her as she sings her lyrics.
Didn’t mean it, didn’t want it, but here we are,
Like we’ve pinned all our hopes on a dying star
Damn we sound good together. It was electric onstage at Coastal Hearts, even more pronounced when we recorded “Lip Sync,” but here, alone together in this quiet room, with only the piano and our voices …
I clear my throat.
Just because we both have good vocal skills doesn’t mean there’s anything to it.
I can admire how smart Harmony is and how hard she works and the way her lips purse when she’s thinking, and I can also still acknowledge that it’s kind of shitty to call people out in songs when there are two sides to those stories.
We do the phrase one more time but we’ve got nothing after that, so I have to stop again. We both try to think of the next line.
“‘Don’t think we’ll ever see eye to eye,’” I sing roughly as I plunk out the main notes of my melody. “‘You act like the … rules … simply … don’t apply.’” There’s a stack of blank sheet music ona cart next to the piano, so I grab a handful and a pencil and start jotting down chords before I forget them.
“‘We’d rather be going toe to toe.’” Harmony scribbles that on her open notebook. “’Game on for the tenth time in a row.’”
Harmony and I stare at each other. I don’t think either of us expected the words to start flowing this easily, but neither of us is going to complain.
We have to take what we can get.
We sing through all that a few times, tweaking the melody and harmony. For a minute, the feud doesn’t seem to matter; we’re two professionals working, collaborating.
“‘No holding back,’” I add to the words. “‘We’ll … go for broke. Which one of us is going to choke?’”
She shakes her head. “How about, ‘No holding back’—”
“‘No holding back, let’s duke it out. We’ll prob’ly end up in a double knockout.’” I’m kidding, but sometimes throwing out random phrases helps.
Harmony grimaces, tries again. “‘No holding back’ …”
“’Step in the ring.’”
“‘No holding back …” she repeats, ignoring me, straining for something else.
“‘Let’s … see what you’ve got,’” I offer.
She scrunches her face for a second, then perks up. “Yes. ‘No holding back, let’s see what you’ve got. Come on … hit me with your best shot’!”
All I can do is nod once. The master has spoken.
“From the top?”
Didn’t mean it, didn’t want it, but here we are,
Like we’ve pinned all our hopes on a dying star,
Don’t think we’ll ever see eye to eye,
You act like the rules simply don’t apply,
