She tells us she can build anticipation before a single episode airs. She tells us she knows the audience because she’s already managing multiple artist accounts, and she’s tracked what people share, what they save, what they come back for. She built Sinful Distraction’s online presence turning it into the kind of following that labels use as leverage in negotiations.
Paige turns toward Bex. “I know you have your own teams but hiring me saves you money. Plus, I already live in Beaumont so you’re not asking someone to uproot their lives or move here.”
Bex looks from Paige to me. “She’s my daughter,” I finally say. “She’s employed by FMG Records and is still in high school.”
“I don’t care whose daughter she is. She knows what she’s talking about. And she’s right, hiring her or someone local saves money.”
Paige grins and it hits me how much she looks like Josie at that age. “I’m not the boss,” I say as I put my hands up in surrender.
“I am and you’re hired,” Bex says much to Paige’s excitement. “We need a logo. Is that something you can do?”
Paige nods, thanks her, and then sits down with her laptop. I’m going to need a bigger studio at this rate. Within minutes, Paige is showing Bex her screen and the two have their heads together talking about how they want something that says romance but has to be masculine. While they design, I email Elle and ask her if we have any available offices in this building and ask her how she feels about expanding.
SIX
The headphones are heavier than they should be.
I’ve worn monitors on stages in front of twenty thousand people. Custom-molded in-ears that cost more than most people’s mortgage payments. I’ve had drum fills shake through my rib cage while Harrison drove the kick through four-on-the-floor at a hundred and thirty beats per minute. None of that ever made my hands shake.
These headphones make my hands shake.
They’re standard-issue studio cans, padded, black, unremarkable. Bex picked them because they’re flat-response, no coloring, which means I’ll hear my own voice the way the listeners hear it. No reverb to hide in. No band to carry me. Just my voice, bare and close, pushed through a condenser mic into however many living rooms, cars, and kitchens are tuned in tonight. Thirty years I had a band and a wall of amps to stand behind. Tonight it’s just me, and I don’t have the first clue whether anybody wants to hear me talk instead of sing.
Bex is behind the glass in the newly constructed producer’s booth. She has her headset on, her board lit and her call screener software open on the monitor beside her. Her notebook is open on the console, already half-full of tonight’s prep notes in hertight handwriting. She looks at me through the window and gives me that wide smile, the same one that caught me off guard the first day she walked into the studio. Then she points at me, points at the mic, and mouths:You’ve got this.
She turns to her board before I can respond. She’s calm. That makes one of us.
Paige is in the far corner of the studio, cross-legged on the floor with her laptop balanced on her knees and her phone propped against the wall beside her. She has three apps open, her editing software loaded, and she’s recording. She’s wearing a Sinful Distraction hoodie she stole from Quinn’s merch box, and her hair is pulled back in a knot that makes her look older than she is. She catches me looking and gives me a grin that is so much like Josie I feel it in my chest.
“You’ve got this, Dad.”
“Don’t talk to me right now.”
She grins wider and goes back to her phone.
The ON AIR light above the booth door is dark. In forty-five seconds, it will go red. Bex has a countdown on her screen. I can see the numbers from here if I squint, but I don’t squint. I look at the mic instead. It sits on a boom arm six inches from my mouth, foam windscreen on, cable running down through the desk to the patch bay beneath.
I’ve spent three decades behind microphones. This one feels different. On stage, the mic is a weapon. You grip it, you own the room, you push sound into a space and the space pushes back. This mic is a conversation. It wants me closer. Quieter. It wants the version of me that exists at two in the morning when Josie asks me what I’m thinking about, and I tell her the truth.
Her. The kids. This career I built.
The countdown hits zero. The light goes red.
I wait until Bex gives me the hand motion to get things moving. I clear my throat, close my eyes, and tell myself I can do this.
“Good evening,” I say. My voice is too loud. I pull back an inch. “This is The Love Line with Liam, and I have no idea what I’m doing.”
Bex’s expression does not change behind the glass. Paige’s fingers stop moving on her keyboard.
“I’ve spent thirty years singing about love. Writing about it, performing it, screwing it up in ways that would take more than one show to cover. I know what love sounds like set to a bridge and a chorus. I know what it sounds like at a hundred and twenty decibels with pyro going off behind me. What I don’t know is what it sounds like when it’s just this: a microphone, a phone line, and whatever you’re carrying tonight that you need someone to hear.”
I pause. The silence is different from stage silence. On stage, silence is a tool, a held breath before the downbeat. Here it’s a gap, and I’m the only one responsible for filling it.
“So here’s what I’m offering. Call-in. Tell me what’s going on. I’m not a therapist. I’m not a counselor. I’m a guy who walked away from his whole life for a decade, came back, and somehow convinced the best woman I’ve ever known to keep me around.”
Bex points to the first blinking line on the call board and holds up one finger. Holy shit, someone called in. My first thought is, it’s one of the guys, Harrison or JD to give me a rash of shit for doing something like this. But then I think it’s Josie, she’s going to tell me that she loves me, that she’s proud of me. Because who in the hell would call-in so quickly to talk to someone like me?
My fingers shake as I press the button and clear the lump from my throat. “You’re on The Love Line. What’s on your mind tonight?”
