She stopped short at the door, eyes narrowing on Brighton.
“Brighton?” she said.
“Hi, Sylvie.”
“Brighton, oh my god, hey,” Alice said, appearing from behind Sylvie and angling around their front woman to wrap her arms around Brighton’s neck.
Brighton patted Alice’s back but released her quickly.
“Good to see you,” Sylvie said, her voice tight.
Brighton didn’t respond to that. “Listen, I’ll get to the point.” She had to do this fast, rip off the proverbial Band-Aid before she lost her nerve. “I need you to stop playing my song.”
Sylvie frowned, her mouth pursing. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Ask Emily,” Brighton said, nodding toward Emily. “Or Alice. They know.”
Sylvie folded her arms as Emily sighed and looked down at the poured-concrete floor. Alice shifted on her feet, her eyes focused on Emily.
“I thought you said she gave you permission to use it,” Alice said.
Emily opened her mouth, closed it.
“What?” Sylvie said. “Gave who permission for what?”
Before the open mic at Watered Down, Brighton had onlyever played “December Light” for three people—Lola, Emily, and Alice. The song had been like a bruise during Brighton’s first days in Nashville, and she’d played it for Emily and Alice as a sort of exposure therapy, a way to tell her story without telling them everything. Emily had convinced Brighton to upload it to the cloud where they kept all their lyrics and charts, but then they’d all forgotten about it.
Or, rather, Brighton had made sure they forgot about it.
“Emily, what is going on?” Alice asked.
“What song?” Sylvie asked. “Someone tell me right the fuck now.”
Emily just sent her hands through her hair.
“ ‘December Light’ is mine,” Brighton said finally. “And no, Alice, Emily never asked my permission to use it.”
“Wait a second, what?” Sylvie asked. “You told me you wrote that song.” She jabbed a finger in Emily’s direction.
“Emily, Jesus,” Alice said, dropping her face into her hands.
“Look, we needed a ballad,” Emily said. “It’s a good song, and I—”
“Stole it,” Brighton said.
“You left it with us,” Emily said. “It was the Katies’ property.”
“That’s not how copyright law works,” Sylvie said, lifting her hands and letting them drop with a slap. “Goddammit.”
Brighton was ready to get the hell out of there. She didn’t want to get into this with Emily, didn’t want to rehash the levels of betrayal, didn’t want to end up soothing Alice and Sylvie in their outrage either.
Her hands shook as she readied to say what had to be said—her threat, as it were—so she stuffed them into her coat pockets, squared her jaw.
“Look, I’ve got dated notebooks and a recording done in astudio to prove I wrote it before I met any of you,” she said. “Stop playing my song, and remove it from your discography on all platforms, or I’m getting lawyers involved.”
She let her words settle for one…two…three…
Let Emily’s eyes meet hers.
