26. Second bloom
SECOND BLOOM
A month into the documentary, and nothing felt solid yet.
Spring sat on the edge of the couch, laptop open, notes scattered, like she’d tried to outrun her own thoughts and failed. The footage was good – too good, maybe. Intimate. Honest. Quiet in a way executives didn’t trust.
Her phone buzzed for the third time in ten minutes.
Unknown number.
She ignored it.
Across the house, Preston’s voice carried from the kitchen. Low. Careful. The kind of tone when someone was breaking in front of you and you didn’t know where to put your hands. “I know,” he said softly. “I know, Ma.”
Spring closed the laptop halfway but didn’t stand. She wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, but grief had a way of pulling you toward familiar pain.
“I just thought—” his mother’s voice cracked. “I thought after all these years… after getting the masters back… we’d be breathing again.”
There was a long silence.
“I’ll fix it,” Preston said, certainty in his voice. “I promise.”
That scared Spring more than anything else.
She stood then, moving toward the window, giving them privacy the way she always did: by pretending she wasn’t listening.
The industry still wasn’t buying in.
The hiatus had made him “unpredictable”.
The legal cloud made him “high-risk”.
The documentary made people “nervous”.
Nobody wanted to say it outright, but Spring heard it between every line: He’s not marketable right now.
It was the same wall Mack had been hitting for weeks. Which was strange, considering Macknificent Townes was nowhere to be found.
No slick entrances. No perfectly timed reassurance. No jokes.
Spring’s phone buzzed again. This time she checked it.
Blocked number. Speak of the devil.
Mack.
She stared at the screen for a moment before answering. “Hey,” she said carefully.
“Miss Greene,” Mack’s voice came through smooth as ever, like he hadn’t been radio silent for weeks. “You miss me?”
She didn’t smile. “Where the hell have you been?”
“Uh, I see Ralph ran a loose ship when you was growing up, cause had I talked to an adult like that… well, that ain’t my ministry, I’ve been handling business, running into closed doors,” he replied lightly. “Turns out everybody loves a comeback, just not enough to pay for it.”
She glanced back toward the kitchen. Preston’s voice had gone quiet now. “So, what’s the plan?” she asked.
Mack chuckled. “Same as always. Bet on myself.” Mack continued before she could ask for clarification. “And before you ask – yes,” he added, “I know how that sounds. I’m still footing the bills, remember?”
Spring leaned against the window, eyes on the street below. “People are scared of the story.”
“Not people, the suits. The ones who make the safe decisions and sit in boardrooms, and honestly, they should be,” Mack said. “Truth don’t test well.” Another pause. Then, softer: “That documentary of yours? Might be the only thing keeping this honest. It’s our silver bullet.”
Her stomach tightened. “You disappearing didn’t help your case,” she said.
“Neither did your questions the other day, but here we are,” he replied. No edge. Just fact.
She filed that away.
“So,” Mack continued, voice brightening, “I’m back in town. Thought we should all talk. Clear the air. Reset the board. Come up with a new plan of attack.”
Spring exhaled slowly. This was the part she hated – the moment where instinct met responsibility. “Whatever I can do to help Team Preston, I’m here for.”
Mack laughed. “Smart. You always were.”
She ended the call without saying goodbye.
In the kitchen, Preston emerged, eyes tired but steady. She knew dealing with his mother weighted on him. All of it did.
“She okay?” Spring asked.
He nodded. “She will be.”
They stood there a second – two people holding too many things at once, not sure how to move forward.
“Mack called,” she said.
His expression faltered for half a second. “Figures.”
“He says he’s betting on himself.”
Preston gave a humorless smile. “That’s what scares me.”
Spring nodded. So did he.
The footage she was getting was good, but there was nothing to really form a direction with.
The money kept slipping. And somewhere between silence and pressure, the story was starting to choose its own shape, whether any of them were ready for it or not. Preston Cole: The fall of an R&B sensation .
She studied his six-foot-five frame, the white linen shirt he was wearing, still crisp – although he looked fatigued, the bristles in his 5 o’clock shadow slightly unkempt.
I can’t let this happen. Gotta turn it around.
Spring waited until the house settled again before she voiced an idea she’d had. “Would you be okay if I interviewed your mom?”
Preston looked up from his phone. “For the documentary?”
“Yes,” she said quickly. “And just so you know, I’ll be professional. Always. Whatever she shares, she controls.”
He studied her for a second, then nodded. “Yeah. She’ll want that. She likes being heard. Plus, this would be a good distraction. I say do it. Let me go tell her.”
She nodded as Preston went to tell his mother, moving to set the camera up. No lights were required beyond what was already in the room – she wanted the space to feel familiar, not staged.
When Talia entered the room, she moved to sit straight-backed on the couch, hands folded neatly in her lap like she was about to audition for something she’d already failed once. Preston moved to sit next to her.
They had never been close, but Spring respected her, especially as she’d aged and had to deal with her own industry woes. She could see how a woman could be hardened by the entertainment industry.
She decided to give Talia the space to speak freely instead of asking her questions. Spring eased in, voice calm. “I want to start with you. Not as Preston’s mom. As you . Talia Cole.”
The woman blinked. “Most folks don’t ask that. These days it’s all about Pressy… I mean, Preston.”
Spring smiled softly. “I know.”
There was a pause.
Talia lit a cigarette, took a drag and exhaled. Then the story came.
“I had the voice, you know,” she said quietly. “Everybody told me that. But nobody told me how the business worked. Or maybe they did, and I just didn’t want to hear it, because I wanted to be a star. Hell of a lot of good it did me.”
Spring sat quietly as Talia talked about being young and gifted and broke. About studios that smelled like cigarettes and promises. About contracts she didn’t understand and men who did. About thinking success meant survival – and realizing too late that survival wasn’t ownership.
Her voice cracked when she talked about the debt. The years. The way motherhood forced her to choose stability over stages.
Spring didn’t interrupt. She didn’t rescue the silence.
When tears came, Talia let them flow. “I gave everything to make sure my son didn’t have to fight the same fight,” she said. “And sometimes I wonder if I just moved the battlefield.”
Her pain was pure.
Spring leaned forward slightly. “Do you regret it?”
Talia shook her head immediately. “No. Never.” Then she laughed through the tears. “But I wish it hadn’t cost so damn much.” She wiped her face and looked directly into the lens. “Keep that part,” she said firmly. “All of it.”
Spring hesitated. “Are you sure?”
“When my baby drops this album,” she said, voice steady now, “I want people to understand what it took to get here. I want them to know this didn’t come out of nowhere. It took blood, sweat, and… tears.” She sat back, breath deepening. “And it’ll have been worth it.”
Spring adjusted the framing again, more out of nerves than necessity. “This next part,” she said gently, “I want to talk about your breakout solo hit ‘Kiss in the Springtime’ – but only if you’re comfortable.”
Talia smiled, a little distant. “That song follows me everywhere. Seen it send a lot of kids to college, and I didn’t get a dime.
” She settled back into the couch, eyes drifting somewhere behind the camera.
“I wrote it when I was young,” she said.
“Before I knew what the industry was. Before I knew how much love could cost.”
Spring nodded. “What inspired it?”
The woman laughed softly. “A boy, of course. Preston’s father, actually.”
Preston looked up, surprised. “You never told me that.”
“Because it wasn’t important then,” she said. “It is now.” She folded her hands together. “He wasn’t famous. Wasn’t rich. He just made me feel… chosen. Like I didn’t have to perform to be worthy of affection.”
Spring felt something weigh in her chest.
“We were sitting on the hood of his car,” the woman continued, smiling at the memory.
“Spring night. Warm air. Music leaking from somewhere we couldn’t see.
He leaned in like he was asking permission from the moment itself.
” Her voice softened. “That was the first time I understood how love could feel like safety.”
Spring took a deep breath. She glanced at Preston who was taking it all in. She wanted to cut to let him absorbed the words, but decided the documentary needed this level of honestly.
“And the song?” she asked.
“I wrote it the next morning,” she said. “Still wearing his shirt. Still feeling brave.”
The room went very still.
Spring didn’t look at Preston at first.
Then she did.
He was already looking at her. Remembering.
Her pulse kicked up – not from embarrassment, but recognition. She wondered if he remembered the song playing low in the background that night. If he remembered how she’d laughed afterward, breathless and unsure and suddenly older.
His eyes didn’t flinch.
He remembered.
His mother continued, unaware of the quiet current running between them.
“I didn’t know that song would follow me through life.
That people would still hear it decades later.
That my son would carry pieces of it in his voice.
” She glanced at Preston then, pride shining through the weariness.
“Sometimes I think that song was never really mine.”
Spring felt something shift in the air. Not desire. Not nostalgia.
Alignment.
Like past and present had briefly overlapped, just long enough to remind her that certain moments didn’t disappear – they just waited to be visited again.
She cleared her throat. “That’s beautiful.”
The woman smiled. “Love usually is. Even when it doesn’t last.”
Spring clicked the camera off. The silence that followed wasn’t awkward. It was reverent.
Talia stood, brushing her hands together. “You captured it,” she said. “That’s enough for today. Thank you for doing this.”
As she walked out of the room, Spring stayed seated, staring at the dark lens.
Preston lingered by the doorway. “You okay?” he asked quietly.
She nodded, though she wasn’t entirely sure what ‘okay’ meant anymore. “Yeah,” she said. “I just… forgot how much memory lives inside music.”
He smiled faintly. “It always has.”
Their eyes met again, this time softer, steadier. Something old had been named. Something new had been invited in. And neither of them said a word about it.
Before they could gather the courage to talk, Talia walked back in. “Are you guys okay?”
“We’re fine,” Preston chimed in. “I’m gonna go listen to a few tracks.”
As he left, Spring turned to the other woman. “Thank you,” she said. “For trusting me.”
Talia nodded. “You see things, always have. That’s why I said yes.”
From the doorway, Preston watched both of them – his mother finally unburdening something she’d carried for decades, and Spring holding the weight without flinching.
For the first time, the documentary didn’t feel like a risk.
It felt like a reckoning.