Page 18 of A Song for Another Woman

“No, you’re done with almost everything except saying something true.” She steps close enough that I can smell her tea, honey and lemon. “Admit the only thing between us is that ring.”

The room goes quiet. The phone on the music stand keeps recording.

I look at her. Really look. She's beautiful. Young. Talented. Hungry enough to bite through bone. She sees me as proofof something she wants to believe about herself. If Cade Tyler wants her, then she didn’t just arrive. She conquered.

And me? I’ve let her think there’s a maybe because maybe is useful.

Maybe keeps the room charged. Maybe keeps the comments moving. Maybe keeps me from having to admit the charge was never desire. It was fear with better lighting. It was the sick relief of walking into a room where nobody asks why my wife’s eyes looked bruised at breakfast. It was praise. It was momentum. It was a version of myself I missed so badly I let it use another woman’s hand to point away from home.

My ring feels too tight.

“You want the narrative,” I say, low, “to be that the only reason I’m not with Melody Hunter is because I’m married. That I’d be with Melody instead of the woman I’m married to?—”

The studio door opens.

“Sorry,” Cy snaps from near the hall. “Am I interrupting your career suicide, or should I come back with a notary?”

The sentence dies in my mouth.

Melody’s face changes. Not much. Just enough for me to see she knows where I was headed, and enough for me to see she’s relieved I didn’t get there.

Cy steps fully into the room. I didn’t even hear him leave. His eyes move from Melody to me, then to the phone on the music stand. The red dot glows. He sees it too.

“Turn it off,” he says.

Melody reaches for the phone, too quick. “It’s just voice memos. I record writing sessions.”

“Turn it off.”

She does.

My heart is beating too hard.

I should finish the sentence. I should say it again, clean and complete, with the phone off and Cy in the room and Melody close enough to hear every syllable.

I should say:There is no version of my life where I choose you over Emmy. I married the only woman I’ve ever wanted. I've been a coward, not a man in love with somebody else.

The words are right there. But my throat is dry, Melody looks wounded now, and Cy looks furious.

All at once, I’m tired of being the bad guy in every room. So I pick the weakest possible sentence.

“We’re all tired,” I say.

Cy stares at me like he can’t believe I’m still finding lower ground.

Melody laughs once, small and sharp. “Sure. That’s what this is.”

She grabs her bag and walks out, phone clutched in her hand. The door closes.

I stand in the room I chose, surrounded by instruments, cables, empty coffee cups, and the wreckage of another thing I didn’t quite do.

Cy doesn’t move.

“Say it,” I mutter.

He steps closer. “You want the short version?”

“No.”