Chapter 11
ASHER
That unfinished chorus followed me back to Los Angeles.
It had two and a half lines. The final note hung there with nowhere to land.
I thought of it when I heard the windshield wipers keeping time in the car, and again when I walked into the studio and saw a blank lyric sheet.
In the past I only had to turn my head and Leah would pick up the next line.
In Evan’s studio, I’d almost turned my head.
The following morning I called the album project manager, my assistant, and my attorney into the same conference call.
“Pull that private demo from the project files entirely,” I said. “That includes the listening cache, the project recording backups, and any exported work lists. No copies may be kept and no adaptation may be discussed without Leah’s written permission.”
The project manager explained that the original duplication had come from a bulk migration and that no one had deliberately bypassed permissions. I had him put the explanation in the record, but I didn’t let the explanation change the outcome.
“Send deletion confirmations to Evan and the attorneys for both sides before the end of the day.”
“Do you need us to listen through first and confirm whether any segments were already used in other demos?”
“No. Run a file comparison against the originals. Do not play her file.”
After the call ended, I received the first deletion receipt.
The remaining ones arrived throughout the afternoon.
Not one of them needed to be forwarded to Leah, and there was no reason for me to tell her personally that I had completed something that should never have required her to chase it down in the first place.
I stayed in the studio and reopened the early file index Evan had given me.
Those songs had once felt like my own memory.
When an interviewer asked about a particular lyric, I could name the motel I’d been staying in, the show that had lost money, the old car that had broken down on the shoulder of the interstate.
The locations and the car were real; in the index, the voice that had actually turned them into lyrics was, again and again, not mine, and the timestamps left no room for ambiguity.
In one recording, I complained that the label had rejected the demo on the first pass, saying they needed a wound that was easier to remember.
My voice grew more irritable and finally went quiet.
Three minutes later, Leah began reciting a verse.
She didn’t echo my complaint. She wrote the part I was most afraid to admit—not that no one would give me a chance, but that I was afraid a chance might actually come and I still wouldn’t be good enough.
Later reviews called that verse “Asher Vale’s most naked confession.”
I rewound the recording and listened again. The younger me hadn’t said thank you. I’d only asked whether the chorus could be bigger.
I closed the recording. Beside the screen sat the old interview index the team had compiled.
Every headline attributed that precision to me: how I wrote failure, how I wrote hunger, how I turned years of obscurity into lines that tens of thousands of people could sing together.
The name on the screen was always mine; the voice that spoke first from the speakers was always Leah’s.
The two positions were separated by nothing more than a mixing board, and I had never set them side by side before.
The studio door opened at six in the evening. Sabrina walked in without a camera operator behind her and without a styling team. She took off her sunglasses and set them on the edge of the board. “You canceled my next two recording sessions.”
“Those were writing sessions for the new album, not featured-performer work you’d already completed.”
“I know the difference.” She noticed the archive index on the screen. “You’re listening to her every day now.”
“The singing you’ve already completed won’t be taken from you,” I said. “Your featured-performer credits stay on record, and your existing performance contracts will be handled according to your actual work.”
“I’m not here to ask you to acknowledge that I can sing.” Her chin lifted slightly. “I know what I’m worth on a stage. So do you. But you can’t spend an entire comeback campaign selling whatever exists between us and then, after she’s gone, pretend I’m just another name on a scheduling sheet.”
“I’m reviewing the catalog.”
“You always find a working title for it.”
She pulled out the chair beside me but didn’t sit down.
Over the past several months we had often stayed in the same studio after late-night rehearsals ended.
She would show me short videos she’d just clipped, reading me comments that said we were better matched than any real couple.
I knew which ones she liked, and I knew how long she could usually hold off before sending a second message after the first. I had been calling that familiarity a promotional campaign.
“Why did you come?” I asked.
“Because everyone is pretending we’ll keep working together according to the original plan, and you’ve already started removing my name from every future arrangement.” She paused. “Leah left. Have you filed for divorce?”
“She filed.”
“Will you sign?”
I didn’t answer.
Sabrina watched me for a few seconds, and her voice dropped. “The public already believes we’re something. And you haven’t always been performing.”
That line could have been a cue for denial.
But I remembered waiting for her to arrive first at meetings, remembered seeing her message at one in the morning and opening it immediately, remembered extending a session by forty minutes after rehearsal was already finished simply because she said one more take would be better.
I liked the way she looked at me without any doubt. I liked how, once the cameras put us together, I stopped looking like a thirty-eight-year-old man afraid of becoming irrelevant. I liked the version of myself in the comments—easy, free, still capable of exciting younger women.
“Not all of it was performing,” I said.
Sabrina took a step toward me. She was close enough that I could smell the familiar perfume on her jacket. There was no stage blocking, no photographer asking us to move closer. Her gaze dropped to my mouth and stayed there.
I stepped back before she touched me. My lower back caught the edge of the mixing board, and two faders slid down from the impact. The sound was quiet, but it put a clear distance between us again.
“No,” I said.
Sabrina didn’t move closer. “Because you’re afraid she’ll find out?”
“Because I don’t want it to happen.”
“But you thought about it.”
“Yes.”
We didn’t kiss. We had never kissed or had sex, not once. The two faders I’d knocked down sat there on the board, marking a distance too clear to blur; but not crossing that line didn’t make me a faithful husband again.
“I looked forward to your messages,” I said. “I liked that you admired me, and I liked the way people saw us as a pair. I knew what that content was doing, and I let it continue anyway. And I gave you a future position that was never yours to begin with.”
Sabrina’s expression cooled by degrees. “It wasn’t only a position. You gave me camera time, you gave me her song, you gave me everything that made people believe we were real. Now you want to step back and say the actual relationship can’t happen.”
“That’s right.”
“Because you still love her.”
“That’s right.”
She gave a short, flat laugh. “You loved her while you were doing all of it.”
A new email appeared in the lower right corner of the screen. The sender was the songwriting awards committee, and the subject line read: Nomination Certification — Final Confirmation Required.
Sabrina saw it too. She reached over and opened it. The candidate author field still listed our names side by side.
Asher Vale this time, there was no one to decide for me what I should say when the forty-eight hours were up.