Chapter 23 Houston
HOUSTON
“Locket” drops at midnight. We don’t throw a party. We watch the dashboard from the suite with the lights low and the balcony door cracked. Salem paces the rug. Knox watches the numbers without comment. I stand by the window with Lou and listen to the city breathe.
The play count spikes fast. The comments come in waves. People hear the whisper in the chorus and ask whose voice it is. They call it tender. Sultry.
A producer account posts a quick breakdown of the ribbon tone and the way the room holds the piano. A singer I respect does a reaction and stops at the last chorus to say, “That harmony is the kind of thing you only get when people trust each other.”
Someone else calls it “home-recorded honesty,” and I don’t argue with the phrase. Lou watches a few on mute and then sets the phone down. She doesn’t need to read every opinion. I don’t either.
Quincy texts me a list of stations that added it before sunrise. He says we should get off the internet and get some sleep before morning. No one moves. Lou smiles at me and then points her chin at the bedroom. She’s right. We need to be people, not screens.
By two a.m. the first fan covers land. A kid in a dorm room doubles the chorus and smiles when the whisper hits.
A drummer posts a playthrough saying the groove feels like a walk, not a sprint.
A reaction channel pauses on the projection in the teaser we posted last week and reads the comments out loud.
People hear the room. They hear the ribbon.
They argue about whether the piano is the studio upright.
I don’t answer. I like that they’re arguing about sound instead of gossip.
At midday we meet with Quincy and the platform producer on a group call.
We agree on a thirty-minute set with no break.
We settle camera positions and title cards.
Lou shows a sample of the projection with the phrases masked to half opacity.
I ask Lou if she’s sure about using Rosa’s words.
She says she kept them partial and non-identifying.
She says the point is to honor the room, not to tell a stranger’s story.
That sits right with me. Quincy signs off and tells us to rest.
We load into the SUV and head for the studio.
Lou takes me by the hand and walks me into the live room, then into the control room, then back into the live room.
Projectors sit on stands at three corners.
Gaffer tape marks the throw lines. A laptop on a cart hums with a mapping grid. The walls are bare and ready.
Mom is there in a denim dress and cowboy boots, hair down. She has a box of papers on the console. “Don’t touch,” she says, smiling. “I found some things.”
Quincy arrives with the camera crew and a sound cart. He keeps his voice level. “We’re treating this like radio,” he tells us. “No chat. No host. No Q&A. Start on time. End clean. Publish the replay after an edit pass. Comments off.”
Knox walks the set list with him. “We start with ‘Locket,’” he explains. “Two other new ones after. No titles yet. Then a reprise and a note about the album and the residency.”
“Good,” Quincy says. “You’ll have one roaming camera, one fixed low, one wide. No crane. Audio goes to the board. Redundancy on the recorder.”
Salem asks where he can stand without blocking the projection. Lou points with the pen she stole from behind my ear. He nods and moves a stand two inches because two inches matter on camera.
I warm up in the corner where no one needs to hear me finding vowels. Lou steps onto a chair and adjusts a lens. Mom claps once to test the decay. The room sounds right. We are as ready as we’re going to be.
We test the stream an hour early. The platform holds. The cameras stay cool. Lou runs a short slate and a countdown. She calibrates the projector edges with a grid so the picture fits the wall. Mom hands her a pencil. Lou tucks it behind her ear and keeps working. Ten minutes to downbeat.
The crew rolls. The streaming platform shows a private link with a clock in the corner. The chat is disabled. One comment field says, “live in ten,” then “live in five,” then nothing. I drink water and set the bottle where I won’t kick it.
Lou gives me the look that means breathe. I breathe. The red light comes on.
We begin with silence on purpose. The first frame is the room, not our faces. The projection is a soft wash, the grid lines faint. That stranger’s words—maybe Lou’s aunt or grandmother—the haunting track, it surrounds us. Sets the tone.
I start “Locket” low and slow. I let the verse sit in my chest. Knox gives me the count for the chorus with a tilt of his head. I come in and hear Lou’s whisper in my monitor and in the room. It feels right. It feels like she’s next to me even when she’s behind the camera.
We finish on a held breath. No applause. No chatter. The camera stays wide while the projection dimly holds a single word. Home. It’s small in the corner, not a shout. The thing Lou has never really had.
I almost lose it. I don’t.
We go into the next new song while the walls shift to color pulled from the room. The song finds a pocket and stays there. We end. We do the third song. It’s rougher and good.
We close with a short reprise. I keep the mic close. The red light goes off. The crew exhales. Quincy nods without smiling, which is how he smiles. “We’ll push the replay with the statement and the link to the album preorder. No interviews this week. If anyone asks for comment, they get the music.”
Mom brings out food from somewhere. Chili in a slow cooker and cornbread and fruit. She feeds people who didn’t know they were hungry. The guard eats in the hall. The room settles.
As we pack up, Knox passes the crew envelopes with bonus checks and Quincy runs the file checklist again, because he knows how it feels to lose a take. No one wants that again.
I find Lou by the projector cart. She’s checking the file tree and labeling takes. “You almost had me crying out there, you know. That was beautiful.”
“I almost had me,” she admits with a sad smile. “I kept the type small on purpose so it wouldn’t swallow me.”
“It was a work of art.”
She shakes her head. “It was a proof of concept.”
“Art,” I repeat. She lets me be stubborn. “Let’s go for a walk. Clear our heads.”
“That sounds like a good idea.”
We tell Knox where we’re going and step out through the back door. The guard sees us and nods and keeps his radio on his lap. The air is cool at night. The street is quiet. We keep our hoods down and our hands to ourselves. No one bothers us.
We circle the block, and the moon is full.
A few more blocks go by, and we find ourselves in an empty park.
A few swings, a jungle gym, teeter-totters.
That kind of thing. Picnic benches dot the area.
There’s a large climbing behemoth that doesn’t look at all safe, but I sit on the pirate bridge in the middle, and she joins me.
The bridge joins two fort-style playrooms, both of which are half my size.
I don’t make a speech, but I have so much to say to her. I don’t know how to make a speech that doesn’t ruin things, though.
So, I start with the truth. “I’m falling for you, Lou. Hard. Fast. I don’t need you to promise me anything. I’m not asking for anything. I just need you to know the thing is happening.”
She looks at me and doesn’t look away. She exhales and licks her lips. “I feel it too.” She swallows and laughs a little at herself. “I’m just…I don’t know what to say. I’m not good at this stuff.”
“Me either. Just…try not to break my heart.”
“I’ll do my best.” She leans in and kisses me, and it feels like a promise.
Can’t help myself. I pull her onto me as I lie back on the bridge. Feeling her warmth, the pressure of her body on me, it’s too much. I’m hard already. My body knows what my heart knows.
She’s the one.
Lou, feisty thing that she is, unzips me while we kiss. I don’t even notice until her hand is on me.
“What are you doing, naughty?”
She smiles against my lips. “What does it feel like I’m doing?”
I pump against her hand. “Being a bad influence.”
Her laugh cuts through the night. “Yeah. You’re the rock star, but I’m the bad influence.
” She kisses me again and climbs around until she lifts her sundress.
The feel of her wet pussy on me, the chance that someone might walk by at any moment, the heat of her promise, it all sends me into a frenzy.
I edge back so we’re partially tucked into one of those forts, and then I hold her hips to guide her onto me. The tight silk of her is pure heaven. But I want more. Can’t get up in here—the ceiling is too low. So I roll us until she’s on her back, and I’m still inside.
Even though we could get caught, I take my time.
She’s in no rush either. I hold her close, needing her heat, her scent, her body.
Her. Our voices and groans echo off the plastic play structure, filling the cool air.
She arches up to meet me every time, and when I kiss her, I feel her throb on my cock.
So, I lengthen the kiss and move slower to drag it out of her.
That climax shudders through us both. First her, then me. But we don’t stop kissing. If I could, I’d kiss her forever.