Rithy pulls his headset off. “You sound like you’re coughing up your soul in chunks.”
“Maybe I am.” I rub my temple, close my eyes. “Sorry.”
Kiri leans against the glass, voice crackling through the mic. “You wanna take five?”
I shake my head. “No. Keep going.”
“Rafe—”
“Isaidkeep going.”
The next attempt’s worse. The words hit wrong in my throat, the phrasing and melody collapsing into something raw and unfamiliar. My voice gives again, and this time I don’t bother to stop it. When the track ends, I rip the headphones off and shove the mic stand away. The metal clangs in the room.
Ronan’s the first to speak. “You’re trying todrownit.”
I look up, jaw tight. “What?”
“The noise in your head. You’re trying to drown it instead of sing through it.”
I laugh once, humorless. “That what you think this is? It’s just an off day.”
He shrugs, calm as ever. “You only break shit when you care, Rafe. So maybe stop pretending this isn’t killing you.”
The words hang there, no one says anything.
Rithy leans against the console, arms crossed. “We can cover for you with management. Say you’re sick, give you a few days.”
I shake my head. “No time. Apparently we need a ‘clear album identity’ and demos by Friday.”
“Then let them wait,” Ronan says flatly. “You’ve bled for every song on this record. You can take a breath.”
But I can’t, because if I stop, I’ll feel everything at once. The way she didn’t cry. The way she sounded already gone.
“I just need to get through this,” I murmur.
The next track cues up. The first notes rise, her favorite one, the one I wrote half-asleep after I’d sent her a video of the Warsaw skyline and said it felt like we were watching it together. She cried when she heard it. I can’t do it, not this one.
“Skip it,” I say. My voice comes out rough. “Next song.”
The engineer hesitates. “You sure?”
“Yeah. Next.”
I can feel the others watching me, but no one argues.
Rithy mutters under his breath, “You’re bleeding all over the music, man.”
“Good,” I say. “Maybe it'll turn into something useful.”
By late afternoon, my voice is gone. The band’s spent. I pack up my notebook, shove the bandaged hand deeper into my pocket, and head for the door.
The latch clicks behind me, and I hear Rithy sigh. “He’s going to burn himself down before we finish this album.”
Ronan’s answer drifts out faintly before the soundproof door closes. “Sometimes that’s what makes it a masterpiece.”
The city outside my hotel window is a blur of headlights and sirens. Every few seconds, one flickers across the wall like a ghost trying to get in. I should be asleep, but I can’t.It’s been three days. Nothing since. No dots, no new message, no accidental call. Just that final line sitting there like a gravestone. I scroll through it again anyway. Her last photo, hair pulled back, eyes half-shaded by the sun. I told her she looked like she was made of light. She said it was just reflection, but I knew better. Shewaslight. I just didn’t realize how fast it could go dark. I open the message box, my thumb hovers.
Please just talk to me.
