4. Something in bloom
SOMETHING IN BLOOM
“ L ook, the party’s over, it’s been a long vacation, and your fans are waiting to see you again.
And you guys all know your rehearsals are exactly the same as your performances.
So let’s do it one more time from the top, and then get busy,” Talia Cole said into the mic, to her son Preston and his band.
Preston Cole took a sip of his water and then stretched his arms wide. He stepped up closer to the microphone, usually his safe haven, but today it was anything but.
The mic was warm. Too warm. Like it was tired of waiting on him to sing something that mattered. Something that would give them all chills. Something he’d been doing his whole life – only right now, in this moment, he wasn’t sure if he was able to do it anymore.
“Preston, you ready?” his mother chimed in over the intercom.
“Yeah, I’m ready.”
“Cause everybody waitin on you?—”
“Ma, I said I’m ready.”
His mother shrugged her shoulders and crossed her legs, rubbing her thumb across her freshly manicured nails, something she would do when she had something to say but was keeping it to herself. It would inevitably come out.
Block Talia out, he told himself. He took another sip of water. You wrote a good ass song, P, you just have to do what you do best, Superman.
Preston took a deep breath as he stood in the booth, headphones crooked over one ear, eyes half-closed like the soundboard might disappear if he blinked too slow.
At six-foot-five, he was the kind of tall that changed the shape of a room.
Broad-shoulders built from years of use rather than display.
His skin was a warm mahogany brown, even-toned – light was drawn to him, as were people, and they were waiting.
The instrumental looped again – subtle keys, a muted snare, a baseline like a heartbeat muffled by grief. He knew the words that accompanied it. He knew where to place the runs, he knew it was a beat away for him to belt out the first note.
But Talia’s voice began to replace the words he knew by heart. Everyone is waiting on you…
He didn’t sing. Not yet.
She was winning. She always won.
On the other side of the glass, his mother watched him like a hawk. Talia Cole. Ex-singer. Ex-star. Still sharp as ever.
He exhaled and tapped the mic as the loop started over.
He just needed to say the first words, and then the rest would flow.
Not only this song, but the entire album, and the world would know Preston Cole was back.
They’d demand more: tours, interviews, constant cameras invading his privacy.
If he could just open his mouth and say the words.
It will all come back . The criticism, the need for security, the never being comfortable. This is the price of fame, P. Just say the goddamn words.
He signaled to the engineer to cue the music again.
He closed his eyes, grabbing the microphone tightly and took a deep breath as the music played. He pushed through all the thoughts that began to flood his mind and finally let his voice escape the prison of his thoughts, guarded by his closed lips. “Mama… this ain’t the moment.”
The music stopped. He could feel the weight of the collective sigh in the room.
He watched his mother as she uncrossed her legs and leaned over to the intercom. Talia’s voice clicked back with steel. “Then make it the moment. You in that booth, boy, not a graveyard.”
He peeled off the headphones and rubbed his temples. She was right; he had to push through it. He was a professional.
I’m holding the mic too tight; it’s tensing me up. The words are stuck in my throat. Damn it, I know that’s what she’s gonna say. Then she’s gonna tell Mack. Come on, P, just block out all of that shit out. You got this.
Talia didn’t budge from the control board.
At five-foot-five, she was compact but formidable, the kind of woman whose presence outweighed her height.
Her light-yellow skin glowed under the soft blue studio lights, gold hoop earrings catching every shift as she moved.
She wore a loose black silk blouse and tailored slacks, effortless and precise.
Sexy in the way that experience sharpens confidence, not softens it.
Her body carried the ease of someone who knew herself well and saw no reason to apologize for it.
Her face told its own story – high cheekbones, knowing eyes, a mouth that had learned when to smile and when not to waste one.
She looked like a woman who had survived the industry long enough to outlast its memory lapses, someone who never forgot how to command respect, even when the room tried to forget it owed her some.
But she was wearing down and it was noticeable.
Talia Cole had been in the game longer than some of the Billboard editors had been alive.
Back in the mid-90s, she was the lead singer of Honey Love, a funk and soul quartet that damn near broke out the deep south.
Their regional classic “Sip Slow” still spun at late-night cookouts and basement two-steps.
She'd written hooks for Zapp, laid scratch vocals on early Jodeci demos, and once slapped a DJ at Magic 102 for calling her “Whitney’s angry cousin from Houston”.
But the national spotlight never came, not really.
With the exception of her one hit Kiss in the Springtime off her self-titled solo project, she never saw the highs Preston had seen, primarily because of bad contracts.
She’d carved her career out of pure bone – no label, no man, just pitch-perfect instincts and a contact list she guarded like a weapon.
Using her gifts, she spent the next two decades turning her son into what she never got to be.
Now, she managed Preston with the kind of intensity that could either make you platinum or make you disappear.
Right now, he was doing the latter, and she was determined for that not to happen to him.
He nodded for the beat and closed his eyes. The loop played again, a melody he loved. He tried to follow the moment in the song he found his first note. Or did it pass? No, it’s definitely coming. It’s now. Say something, damn it!
He opened his mouth a fraction of a second too late.
Talia was already leaning towards the microphone in the engineer’s room. “Don’t hold it in your throat, Pres,” she said into the intercom. “You’re in your head and gripping the notes too tight. Just let it fall out your mouth like it’s something soft.”
Preston exhaled, slow and sharp. “Mama?—”
“Boy, don’t ‘Mama’ me. We both know you’re in your head, and I’m just trying to get you out of it.
I know what I’m talking about. Now, you’ve got six hours left in this session,” she said, not mean-spirited, just direct.
“You’re burning through it like your name still prints money.
We’re running it again – this time, do something instead of standing there. ”
He looked at her through the glass, jaw set. “I don’t feel this one,” he said finally.
She leaned into the mic like a challenge. “Then don’t feel it. Work it. Your feelings ain’t never paid a studio invoice.”
“Mama.”
“Boy, just get out of your head and sing the damn song!” That was it, the anger she’d been holding back. She’d been wanting to say it for twenty minutes now.
He pulled off the headphones, rubbed his face as he headed to the door.
Talia sighed and clicked off the track. “Where are you going?”
“Anywhere you aren’t.”
“Preston, you’ve got six hours left in this session,” she scowled. “You’re burning through it like your name still prints?—”
“Money. I heard you the first three times you said that. Look, I didn’t ask to come back right now. I’m only here because Mack said Cameron wanted to work on a song together. And neither one of them are here right now.”
“You didn’t ask? Preston, I don’t know if you realize this, but bills come every month, and people pay bills with money, and you make money by singing songs.”
“I’m out,” Preston said as he shrugged his jacket on. Talia was folding her arms as he walked past her.
“Back in my day, we couldn’t get tired – was no damn mental health days. It was sing the song or don’t get paid. You new kids are so damn soft.”
Preston rolled his eyes and continued his exit out of studio 6A. It wasn’t some Instagram pop-up lab with LED walls and fake plaques. This was Macknificent Townes Studios – a sacred room on the city’s south side with a history steeped in spilled liquor, spilled secrets, and classic records.
The walls were lined with foam panels dulled by time, cigarette ghosts, and sharpie signatures from the city’s past and present.
An old poster of UGK’s Ridin’ Dirty tour was crooked in the hallway, its frame cracked like a story no one wanted to fix.
Somewhere behind the back door, the ghost of DJ Screw still spun his syrupy echoes into the walls.
Preston passed a dusty organ in the corner, the one Bun B once cursed at mid-session, and gave a nod to the framed photo of Yolanda Adams in a gold-trimmed church robe. This was Houston at his finest – a bit of nostalgia and grit combined with hustle and talent.
Although he had a state of the art home studio, Preston would record here because this is where he made his first breakout hit Glances .
It’s also where he and Cameron would come to from time to time to daydream about getting their pictures on this wall.
He’d longed since passed that status, but he often wondered if they’d ever talk about his music the way they talk about the hometown heroes he’d just passed.
A white guy hovered near a vending machine, perched on a stool, like he’d been assigned there, laptop bag at his feet, phone in hand. The posture of someone who wanted to be seen as useful.
Outside the studio doors, a small crowd had already formed. Cameras, phones, two bloggers Preston recognized by face but not by name – the kind who made careers out of catching artists mid-step. The internet was always hungry.