“Have you got a spare five minutes?” I ask as he answers on the third ring.
“We’re almost ready to head down.” Christopher’s response is short.
“I promise it won’t take long. I just want you to hear the track and give you something. It’ll be five minutes, tops.”
The silence lasts for three beats before he answers.
“Okay, where you at?”
“Room 315,” I say, hanging up and throwing my phone on the bed before he has a chance to change his mind.
Less than three minutes later, there’s a knock on the door and I rush over to answer. Christopher is standing on the other side in a black three-piece suit and a bow tie. His hair is perfectly parted on the right side. His hazel eyes sparkle like the stars in the midnight sky.
“You look so handsome,” I whisper, before raising my voice. “Come in.”
He walks through, past the queen-sized bed on the right, and acknowledges Rob with a handshake before turning his attention to Freddy.
“Freddy, this is Christopher, my dialect coach. Christopher, this is Freddy my musical director and producer, who you briefly met at Abbey Road the other day.”
“Nice to meet you again,” Christopher says, extending his hand.
Freddy spins around on his chair, shaking Christopher’s hand with a firm grip.
“Can you play him what we’ve got so far?” I ask, twiddling my thumbs.
Freddy lines up the track, then hits the space bar and turns up the volume on the speakers.
“Take a seat,” I say to Christopher, removing an acoustic guitar from an armchair so he can sit. I take the other chair beside him.
My leg bops up and down, not from the beat, but nerves. I’m eager to hear Christopher’s response. His head nods up and down, like the label executives do, whenever I head into their offices to play new music.
The track finishes and I turn to him.
“What do you think?” I ask, but before he can answer, I jump in. “It’s still got a lot of work to do. We need to add more harmonies, a bass, beef up the production. But the core of it is there.”
“It’s great,” he says, a wide smile across his face.
“Really?” I feel like I still need reassurance.
That’s he’s not just saying that to appease me.
“Yes, it’s really great. You’ve got something really special here.”
I don’t know if he means the song or our relationship, but it doesn’t matter.
My heart jumps for joy inside.
“Look,” I say, grabbing my phone from the bed and opening up Spotify. “The song is at number two globally on Spotify. Nine point two million streams. Crazy right?” I hand him my phone so he can see.
“Watch out, Sabrina!” He laughs as he hands the phone back to me.
Sabrina Carpenter’s latest track has me beat by three hundred thousand streams.
“You’re a dialect coach, you could help Alex out with his diction, couldn’t you?” Freddy breaks into the conversation, as he plays back the second verse.
He’s been getting onto me all afternoon about the way I pronounce the wordreunite. He’s made me repeat it so many times to get it right that I never want to hear the word again.
Christopher’s body stiffens at the request.
