Halfway through the first verse, I realized I didn’t hear a single bar.
Something Princess said earlier had echoed in my mind and drowned everything out.
We don’t know how to not hurt each other.
I cut the track. Malik sharply snapped his neck to look at me behind the glass.
“What happened?”
“Again,” I said.
He stared at me for a moment with his brows dipped. Then he nodded and adjusted his headphones. He ran it again. It was even stronger this time. It was clearer and hungrier. I knew he meant the pain behind his words. He lived and breathed for this, just as I had at his age. He hit the pocket in the second half so smoothly that it should’ve made me react.
When he finished, he waited. Usually, I would have been building, critiquing, coaching, or at least talking from that moment. Instead, I just stared down at the board.
“You want me to punch in that last line?” he asked, cutting through the silence.
I looked up slowly. “Which line?”
He frowned and let out a breath. “The one where I flipped the hook cadence.”
I hadn’t even noticed. I didn’t remember him doing that. That bothered me more than anything. I frowned and shook my head. Malik stepped out of the booth and walked into the control room. The door slung open, and he stood there with one hand on the handle as the headphones hung around his neck.
“You good?” he asked quietly. “You like . . . somewhere else.”
I stared at him for a moment. I thought my expression was blank, but it must have been something else because he quickly tried to correct himself.
“I’m not being disrespectful,” he replied. “I just . . . You usually locked in. You hear everything. You woulda said something by now.”
He was right. That kid paid attention. That was why he was different.
“I’m good,” I said out of instinct. But even I could hear the lie in it.
Malik opened his mouth to say something else, but my phone dinged from my pocket. I clicked the side button to make it stop, but the dings came back-to-back. He looked at my struggle to stop the noise, and he chuckled.
“It’s all good, bruh. Go ahead and check that. I’m ’bout to order somethin’ on DoorDash.” He came inside, letting the door gently close behind him, before walking over to the couch behind me. Once he sat down, he plopped one leg on the table in front of him. With his phone out, he scrolled through and didn’t look up at me again.
I pushed away from the soundboard and pulled my phone out. When I glanced at the screen, I saw there were multiple texts from Yana.
I felt my chest tighten.
Yana: What time we gotta be at the airport for Auntie Kennedy’s wedding?
Yana: Did you get your tux fitted already?
Yana: You should see the shoes mom got for me. They so cute.
For a second, I just stared at them, relieved that it wasn’t anything bad. Only the Lord knew I didn’t need any more bad news. Suddenly, what she’d asked flashed across my mind.
Kennedy’s wedding back home in Detroit. Me, walking her down the aisle. Princess was going to be there. It would be the three of us: Yana, Princess, and me in all the pictures.
I had no idea whether Princess was even still going.
I typed my response out carefully.
Me: Ask your mom when y’all coming. She booked the flights.
I hit send and immediately regretted it. I felt like I had put Yana in the middle of my mess.
