Chapter 2 #2
“They think it is beef,” she continues. “Something petty. Egos. Competition. They eat that shit up. But you and I both know that is not what this is. This is about what happened. About what you did. About what he did after.”
I stop walking, frozen in the middle of my own living room.
“Asha.” A warning in my tone. A boundary being marked.
“You know why you did it,” she says gently.
“Do not pretend this just fell into your lap. I know you, Malik. Everything you do is planned and thought out, even if you present yourself as some chaos demon to the rest of the world. You’ve been building to this since you started recording Hues of Blue. Maybe longer.”
I drag a hand over my face, feeling the rough scrape of stubble against my palm. “I thought it would be good for him. His latest album was brilliant but barely made a ripple. He deserves more.”
She clicks her teeth. I know she’s upset with me. I can picture her expression, eyebrows drawn together, lips pressed into a thin line of disapproval. “Say that again,” she says. “But this time without lying to yourself.”
“He deserves more eyes on his work,” I say, irritation creeping in, heating my words. “My audience will hear him. Doesn’t that matter? He gets exposure he has never wanted to chase. He gets to play to sold-out venues instead of half-empty jazz clubs where people talk through his solos.”
“And that is how you are framing this,” she says. “Charity. Malik Carter, musical philanthropist, sharing his spotlight with the less fortunate.”
“That is not what I said,” I say, voice rising slightly. “Don’t twist my words.”
“It is what you mean.”
I exhale slowly, forcing my shoulders to loosen, unclenching my fists. “I am not hurting him.”
“You are not helping him either,” she says. “You are helping yourself feel better. This is absolution, not generosity.”
That one lands. There it is. The bitter pill I have forced myself to swallow for years. No matter how many I take, there is no reprieve from the pain. The pain I caused. The trust I shattered with my own desperate, foolish actions.
I glance toward the saxophone by the window. Polished silver. Waiting silently on its stand, begging me to play out my sorrow. To transform regret into something beautiful, something people will pay to hear, something they’ll never truly understand.
“This album,” I say, softening my tone. “This sound. It fits him. You know it does. It’s almost like I wrote it with him in mind.” The last part slips out before I can stop it.
She sighs. “I know it fits you. It fits the parts of you that still belongs to him.”
I bristle, heat climbing my neck. “That is not fair.”
“Is it not?” she asks. “Because a year ago you were spiraling. A new boy toy on your arm every night. Headlines you pretended not to read. Your label breathing down your neck. And then suddenly you lock yourself in a studio and come out with Hues of Blue. With songs that sound like conversations you never had. With melodies that leave space for piano parts no one is playing.”
I say nothing. Silence is my best defense, but it feels flimsy against her truth.
“And now the first single is called Apology,” she adds. “Come on. You might as well have addressed the envelope.”
“That song is not about him.” I lie, but who am I kidding? Every note, every breath, every lyric vibrates with his name.
She hums softly. Unconvinced. Seeing straight through me as she always has.
I lean back against the counter, crossing my arms across my bare chest. “Look. I cannot change what happened. I cannot undo it. But I can make sure he benefits from this. I can make sure his music reaches people who need to hear it. I can give back some small part of what I took.”
“And that is enough for you,” she says. Not a question.
“It has to be.” I shrug, the gesture hollow even to my own eyes.
She is quiet for a moment. When she speaks again, her voice is softer, gentler. The voice she uses when she’s worried about me.
“You are doing this because you feel guilty.”
I swallow, throat suddenly dry.
“And because you miss him,” she finishes.
“I do not miss him,” I say automatically. Another lie that tastes bitter on my tongue.
She lets that hang between us, a transparent falsehood neither of us acknowledges.
“I miss the music,” I add, offering a half-truth as compromise.
“Same difference.”
Feeling antsy, unable to stand still with these emotions churning inside me, I leave the kitchen and walk across the room. I drop my phone onto the stool beside the saxophone stand and tap the screen, switching her to speaker.
Then I pick up the saxophone, the instrument an extension of myself, a voice when words fail.
The weight settles into my hands, familiar and grounding. Cool metal warming quickly to my touch. I lift it properly, both hands in place, fingers finding the keys, welcoming me home. The mouthpiece fits against my lips like it belongs there.
“I am not asking him for anything,” I say. “I am not expecting forgiveness. I am not trying to go backward. This isn’t about us. It’s about the music.”
“You are trying to pay a debt,” Asha says, her voice filling the room even through the small speaker.
“Yes,” I admit finally.
“And you think that settles it?” She pushes, knowing me more than I know myself, and I hate her and love her for it. “You think four months on the road, sharing him with your audience, is enough to balance the scales?”
I lift the sax and play a soft note, breath steady, controlled. The sound fills the apartment, warm and low, vibrating through my chest like a second heartbeat.
“I think it is what I can give,” I say, the words resonating against the lingering note. “And that should count for something. It’s more than nothing. It’s more than silence.”
She sighs, a soft static through the speaker.
“You better hope he sees it that way,” she says.
Then, softer, “We will get drinks later. Or better yet, have dinner with Deidra and me before you start rehearsals. I will finish scolding you then. And maybe we can talk about what you really want from this.”
“I cannot wait,” I say, infusing my voice with false enthusiasm.
“Mm,” she hums. “Bye, Malik. Try not to sabotage your life completely before I see you.”
The line goes dead.
I lower the instrument and stare at the city again, the future stretching out in neat, unavoidable lines like the grid of streets below. My reflection ghosts in the glass. A man holding a saxophone, standing alone in an apartment built for success but not necessarily happiness.
Four months.
I am surprised I even got my label to agree to that much. They wanted six, maybe eight. Milk the collaboration for everything it’s worth.
Four months of stages and rooms and sound.
Four months of smiling for cameras. Four months of pretending I do not feel the pull of something I set in motion myself.
Four months of watching him from across stages, of hearing his fingers create magic on piano keys, of remembering what we were before I destroyed it.
Four months of avoiding the inevitable confrontation that waits between us.
I am giving him an audience. A platform. A chance to be seen the way he deserves. I took more than I can ever repay with this gesture, this tour, this calculated act of public contrition.
That has to be enough.
It has to be.
Because I already know he will never look at me the way he used to. The way he did before betrayal carved a canyon between us. I am not brave enough to ask for more. Not brave enough to face the full weight of what I did.
This tour is my apology. Hidden in plain sight, disguised as business, as collaboration, as marketing.
I can only hope he can see my heart laid bare in every note I play and every lyric I sing.
That somewhere in the music, he might hear what I cannot say directly.
That some debts can never be repaid, but that doesn’t mean you should stop trying.