15. Harrison
— ? —
Harrison
The studio where Geo works is nothing like the spaces I’m used to.
No platinum records on the walls, no engineers in headphones pretending not to eavesdrop.
Just a narrow hallway lined with practice rooms, fluorescent lights buzzing overhead, the distant sound of someone running scales in a key that doesn’t quite work.
I shouldn’t be here.
I know I shouldn’t be here. She didn’t invite me. She hasn’t responded to my last three letters. The photos of her with Theo Ibarra are still cycling through my feed every time I make the mistake of opening any app, and every time I see them, my chest cracks a little wider.
But I’ve got a question for her, and I can’t do it in a letter. Some things need to be said face to face, even when, especially when, the answer might destroy you.
I find her in one of the recording booths at the end of the hall. The door is propped open, and she’s standing at the microphone with her eyes closed, headphones clamped over her ears, singing something I don’t recognize. Her voice fills the small space, rich and raw and utterly unselfconscious.
She’s beautiful. She’s always been beautiful, but she’s steadier now, without the weight she used to carry when she was trying to be what I needed her to be. She looks like herself. She looks like the woman I fell in love with, before I started taking her for granted.
I wait until she finishes. Until she pulls off the headphones and opens her eyes and sees me standing on the other side of the glass like a ghost she can’t quite exorcise.
Her expression shutters immediately. The openness disappears, replaced by the careful blankness she’s learned to wear around me.
“Harrison.”
She comes out of the booth, arms crossed, shoulders tight. “What are you doing here?”
“I have something to ask you.”
“You could have called.”
“You don’t answer my calls.”
“There’s probably a reason for that.”
She’s not wrong. I’ve given her a thousand reasons to avoid me, and she’s taken every single one.
“I know,” I say. “I know I don’t have the right to show up unannounced. I know I’ve used up every chance you ever gave me. But this is important, Geo. This is the last thing I’ve got to ask you.”
I make myself slow down. “Just hear me out. Please. Five minutes.”
She looks at me, jaw tight, eyes unreadable. Then she sighs.
“Five minutes.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet. You haven’t asked your question.”
“Then I’ll spend some of it on the wrong thing,” I say.
“I need you to hear the whole sentence once, out loud, from me, with nothing hanging off the end of it. I forgot you on purpose. It wasn’t busyness and it wasn’t an accident.
Every morning I made a decision about where my attention was going and every morning I sent it somewhere else, and I kept doing that until you went quiet enough that I could pretend I hadn’t noticed you going. ”
She doesn’t move. She doesn’t help me out, either, which is fair, and which I would not survive twice.
“I was the one who did that to you. There is no second person in that room.”
Her jaw works. She looks at the fluorescent tube over my shoulder for a while.
“Ask your question,” she says.
I take a breath. This is it. Everything depends on this.
“I want you to sing on ‘The Voice I Forgot.’”
The silence that follows is absolute. I watch her face go from surprise to a lot harder.
“No.”
“Geo, hear me out.”
“I said no.”
She takes a step back, like she needs physical distance to match the emotional wall she’s rebuilding.
“I’m not singing on your redemption project, Harrison.
I’m not going to be the prop that makes you look better.
I’m not going to stand next to you on some stage while the world applauds your personal growth and I get to be the supporting character in your comeback story. ”
“That’s not what this is.”
“Then what is it?”
I step closer. Not touching her, not pushing, just close enough that she can see my face, see the truth I’m trying to show her.
“It’s the truth. The song is about you. It should have your voice on it. I wrote it as a confession, but it’s not complete without you. It’s never going to be complete without you.”
“That’s a very nice line.”
Her voice is sharp, cutting. “Did you practice it?”
“Yes. In the mirror. For three hours. I also practiced about fifteen other versions, but this is the one that felt the least like bullshit.”
Her mouth moves. Not quite a smile, but close.
“I can’t do this, Harrison.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t trust you.”
The words come out raw, unpolished, more honest than anything she’s said to me in months. “Because every time I start to think maybe you’ve changed, maybe this is real, I remember the video. I hear you saying I make you feel like you’re drowning, and I can’t.”
Her voice breaks. She looks away, blinking hard. “I can’t let myself believe that this is real.”
“It’s real.”
“How do I know that? How do I know this isn’t just another narrative? Another performance designed to make you look good?”
The question hits me like a punch to the chest. Because she’s right to ask it. She’s right not to trust me. I’ve given her nothing but reasons to doubt, and a few months of letters and coffee deliveries don’t undo the years I spent looking straight past her.
“You don’t,” I say finally. “You can’t know. There’s no way for me to prove it to you. All I can do is keep showing up, keep being honest, keep trying to be the person I should have been all along. And you get to decide whether that’s enough. Whether any of it is ever going to be enough.”
She takes her time. She’s thinking it through, weighing the risk the way she’s learned to.
“The song,” she says slowly. “If I did this, and I’m not saying I will, what would it look like?”
Hope flickers in my chest, dangerous and fragile. I try not to let it show.
“Your name goes first in the credits. You control the sessions, when, where, how long. You can walk away at any point, no questions asked, no guilt trips, no consequences. This is your project as much as mine. More than mine.”
“And the release?”
“Whatever you want. We can keep it private, just for us, or put it out into the world. We can burn the master and pretend it never existed. Your call. All of it.”
She uncrosses her arms. It’s a small thing, almost imperceptible, but I notice it the way I’ve learned to notice everything about her.
“This isn’t forgiveness,” she says.
“I know.”
“And it’s not us getting back together.”
“I didn’t think it was.” I keep my hands where she can see them, flat on my thighs, doing nothing.
“It’s me being curious about what the song could sound like with both of us on it. That’s all. That’s the only reason.”
“Okay.”
“I’m serious, Harrison. If I do this, it’s for me. For my voice. Not for you. Not for us.”
“I understand.” I don’t let a single thing show on my face, which takes everything I have.
The silence stretches between us. I can hear the fluorescent lights buzzing, the distant sound of someone practicing in another room, my own heartbeat pounding in my ears.
“Give me a night,” she says finally.
“Take all the time you need.”
“I will.”
She turns and walks back into the recording booth. Picks up her headphones. Adjusts the microphone.
“Goodnight, Harrison.”
“Think about it,” I say. “That’s the only thing I’m asking for.”
I leave before I can say anything else. Before I can push, or beg, or do any of the things that would ruin whatever fragile possibility still exists between us.
The call comes late.
I’m not asleep. I haven’t been able to sleep in weeks, not really, just that shallow half-rest where your body shuts down but your mind keeps spinning, replaying every mistake, every missed opportunity, every moment you should have done something different.
Her name on my screen makes my heart stop.
“Hello?”
“If I do this,” she says without preamble, “my name goes first. I control the sessions. I can walk away at any time.”
“Yes.”
“And we do it at a neutral studio. Somewhere neither of us has history.”
“Name it and it’s booked.”
“This isn’t forgiveness.”
“You said that already.” It comes out gentler than I mean it to.
“I’m saying it again. Because I need you to understand that this changes nothing between us. We’re still exactly what we were yesterday.”
She pauses. “We’re still whatever we are. This is just music.”
“Just music,” I repeat. “Okay.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow. Ten a.m. I’ll text you the address.”
“Geo, wait.”
“Don’t.”
Her voice softens, just slightly. “Don’t say anything that’s going to make me change my mind.”
“Okay.”
“Goodnight, Harrison.”
“Ten a.m.,” I say, so she knows I heard the only part that matters.
She hangs up.
I sit in the dark for a long time, holding my phone, feeling my chest shift. Not hope, exactly. Quieter than that. It feels dangerously like possibility.
Tomorrow, I’m going to be in a room with my wife. We’re going to make music together.
I set two alarms for a session I refuse to be late to.
Then I lie in the dark and rehearse saying good morning until it sounds like a man who deserves to.