Second Chance Duet

Chapter One

MY LIFE HAS always been loud.

Car horns, the group of tourists talking behind me in a language I don’t understand, Vanessa Carlton’s “A Thousand Miles” booming from some guy’s open-top convertible—it’s happening now on the corner of Forty-Second and Tenth, but it’s all the same to me.

My childhood home was like this up in the Heights—fewer honking cars, but roughly the same amount of people talking—and so was my dorm at Juilliard.

The sounds thrum through my veins. I love it.

Before the crosswalk signal changes, I type out a quick text.

Celia

So sorry, running a few min late!

She responds right away with a picture of a martini in a low-lit restaurant accompanied by a smiling emoji. Okay, she’s fine.

For a moment, I feel a twinge of panic when I remember this morning: a notice stuffed into my mailbox from my property-management company, stating their intent to raise all rents in the building by 10 percent starting in the New Year.

That letter alone had almost been enough to derail my entire day, but then an email came in from one of my clients, letting me know they were “going in a different direction” for their next commercial, so they wouldn’t need me next month after all.

I can read between the lines just fine; this was another job lost to AI music, if you can even call that garbage music.

Problem is, they’re not the first clients I’ve lost to that AI bullshit. They won’t be the last, either. Anything to save a buck, right?

More than anything, I wanted to wallow in my tiny apartment today, the first and only place I’ve ever been able to call just mine in my entire New York life.

After years of living with roommates of all varieties, it was only a couple of years ago I found a place I could afford on my own.

Month by month, I’ve scraped by on my modest ad contracts, with just a tiny savings safety net to catch me should I stumble.

But I had a studio session booked and a corporate giant counting on me to deliver, so I had no choice but to shove those initial worries aside and get my ass to work.

Now that I’m done for the day? Now, I can worry—about the fact that there is no way I’ll be able to afford my apartment in just a few months, about a corporate world that dehumanizes the lifetime of work I’ve put into being a professional musician and composer every time they generate some soulless thirty-second blob of sounds, about every little extra cost that won’t go into my savings account should I have to move.

Costs like this dinner with an old friend, which I probably should have canceled.

The last of the cars whizz through the yellow light just as it turns red and the crosswalk switches over to the Walk signal.

It’s too late to cancel now, so a combination of curiosity and anxiety spurs my legs faster than normal until I’m very nearly running down the sidewalk.

My mind’s preoccupation with my personal financial and career doom fizzles with each pound of my sneakers on the cement.

Despite this new life trajectory, I’m looking forward to seeing an old friend.

It’s been years since I last spoke to Rebecca in person; the last time I remember seeing her was at her Goodbye New York party (which she threw for herself, naturally).

Ever since, she’s been out in LA, hustling hard toward her dreams of being a music supervisor on the biggest of movies.

To my knowledge, she’s been widely successful—her Instagram and IMDB pages are proof of that.

We’ve remained friendly over the years, swapping DMs and comments on social media.

There’ve even been a few catch-up email threads started and later abandoned as we both got busy.

By the time I pull open the door to the cozy Hell’s Kitchen restaurant, I’m sweating.

I spot Rebecca immediately; despite the aesthetic changes she’s made in the last few years, her sharp expression and jet-black hair haven’t changed.

For a second, I hover near the door, watching as she sips her martini while typing one-handed on her phone. Nostalgia rolls over me in a wave.

God, are we really in our thirties now? Where the hell did the time go?

Before the hostess can approach me, I weave through the tightly packed tables to where Rebecca is seated along the far wall. She looks up at my approach, her diamond nose stud twinkling in the candlelight, and her red-painted lips pull into a wide smile.

With some difficulty, she manages to scoot back from the table and meet me halfway for a hug. “Celia! Girl, it is so good to see you!”

“You too, Rebecca,” I reply, the scent of her sandalwood perfume enveloping me in its own kind of embrace.

She steps back from our hug and holds me at arm’s length. Shamelessly, she gives me a thorough once-over; I can feel her gaze slide over my outfit, taking in all the changes that have occurred in me over the last… “God, how long has it been?” I ask out loud. “Like, four years?”

“It’d be five years this December,” she replies. “You look good, girl. Love that you’re still wearing the hoops.”

She releases me. On instinct, I reach for the gold hoop earrings I’ve worn since the day I got them for my high school graduation present.

Occasionally, I’ll swap them out for something nicer when the event calls for it, but Rebecca is right—these earrings are my signature. Always have been, always will be.

We both take a seat at the table and I grab one of the laminated menus to glance over. “Sorry I’m late. Recording ran over today. Had some trouble getting the mixing right.”

“All good,” she says with a wave of her hand. “Honestly, I’m just happy to be back in the city. Every time I come back, I remember how much I miss it here.”

“Yeah? How’s LA treating you?”

Her answer is suspended on her lips when our server appears.

I opt to follow her lead and order whatever it is she’s drinking.

When he leaves us, Rebecca settles back into her chair, flips her long hair behind her shoulders, and lets out a gusty breath.

“It’s good. Ruthless, but good. Everything they say about it is true. ”

“So it really is a plastic, life-sucking cesspool?” I ask with a wink.

Normally, I wouldn’t be so brash with an old friend I hadn’t seen in years, but Rebecca is a part of my fondest memories from college.

Like me (and everyone else), she’d entered Juilliard determined to prove herself.

But where Rebecca differed from our peers was in her forwardness; so many of the elites that made up our musical circles spoke in riddles and passive-aggressive undertones designed to make you second-guess yourself.

That was a truth I had a hard time learning as an outsider, but Rebecca?

She went toward everything headfirst, with brutal honesty and sheer determination as her best weapons, forsaking the pampered, private school upbringing she’d experienced.

At my Tinseltown insult, she laughs. It’s still the same loud, boisterous honk that I remember. “Yes. As you can imagine, I fit in quite well there.”

“Give yourself some credit. You give as much as you can take.” I narrow my eyes to take a closer at her face, searching for any sign of said plastic, but there’s none that I can see.

She looks just like the eighteen-year-old girl who hooked her arm in mine one summer evening and declared we were friends. “You look great, by the way.”

She smiles deviously. “Good. The best work is the kind you can’t see.”

“Wow, I sure have missed your honesty,” I say with a laugh.

For the first time all day, I’m not thinking about my rent increase, my lost jobs, none of that.

I’m just politely thanking the server as he drops off my martini, relishing the immediate burn of gin and vermouth on my tongue when I take a sip, and listening as Rebecca orders a few small plates to share.

When our server disappears again, she shakes her head and rolls her eyes.

“Sorry,” she says. “I shouldn’t have ordered for the table without checking with you.

Did you develop any food allergies in the last however many years? ”

“No. Don’t worry. I’m glad to see some things haven’t changed.”

“Yeah, I’m still a bossy bitch, aren’t I?” she asks, mostly to herself. Her sharp expression softens slightly as she considers this; in the romantic, muted light of this restaurant, she looks wise beyond her years.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing. You know I’ve always loved that about you.”

My compliment brings her wandering eyes back to our table.

She hits me with a shrewd look, her light eyes rimmed with kohl that lends itself well to her new, slightly edgy look.

“I have to be this way now with the egos I deal with every day. But enough about me. How are you? What are you up to these days?”

I blow out a sigh strong enough to make the candle flame dance in the middle of the table. “Oh, I’m good. Still trucking along.”

“Are you still composing? You said you came from the recording studio today, yeah?” she asks, her tone filled with genuine interest.

At this, my heart twists. The barest truth is that yes, I’m still composing—except it’s not at all the work I’d planned to do.

While jingles for advertising campaigns technically count as composing, they aren’t the grand scores I’d envisioned writing as a doe-eyed baby musician in the hallowed halls of one of the world’s finest music schools.

Worse still, I’ve been doing this for years—spinning my wheels while dredging up creativity for banal platitudes about yogurt and power tools.

The only respite I get comes from writing music for aspiring talent.

That’s all I have to sustain the part of me that yearns to create something really meaningful.