Stay Right Here

chapter one

Frankie

The studio smelled like cedar and ambition.

The warm light poured from the vintage sconces and mismatched lamps, giving the whole room a golden glow like sunset trapped in a bottle.

The walls were lined with guitars—some vintage, some modern, all worn in just the right places.

Scars and fingerprints and stories embedded in the wood and strings.

Frankie Monroe was in the booth. Her signature purple hair—freshly dyed just two weeks ago—was thrown up into a messy knot on top of her head, loose curls sticking out at angles that would have looked chaotic on anyone else.

On her, it looked right. Like rebellion and softness wrapped into one.

She wore her faded denim overalls, one strap hanging down, over a daisy-print tank top.

Her favorite beat-up Doc Martens were scuffed at the toes, the left one doodled on in silver Sharpie, hearts and stars from some late-night moment of impulsive magic.

“Can you give me that bridge again?” Tevin asked, clicking something on the board. “And maybe hit that last note a little softer at the end of it? Let it fall away.”

“Got it,” Frankie said, her voice calm but buzzing with the edge of creation.

She settled onto the stool in front of the mic, exhaled once, rolled her neck, shook out her hands like she was about to walk into a boxing ring—and then she gave him a thumbs-up.

The track clicked into her headphones. The pulse of the song wrapped around her like her heartbeat. And then she sang.

“You say girlhood should be gentle,

but mine was wild and raw and real.

I built a home in aching hearts

And learned that love is how we heal.

So take your rules and your regret—

I’ve never been your silhouette.”

She let that final note hover—soft but deliberate, like breath on glass. There was a pause. Then Tevin’s voice, through the booth mic, “Good. Good… but.”

“But what?” she asked, eyes still closed, with a grin that said, I know you want to say more.

“It’s close, Frank. Just hit that very last line again. I want it to feel like a velvet knife. Gentle delivery. Sharp edge. The weight should live in the words.”

Frankie nodded slowly, grounding herself in the metaphor. “Yeah, okay. Velvet knife. I feel that.” She paused. “Let me try it again.”

She rewound the moment in her mind, back to where she had been when she wrote that line—the quiet after an argument, the too-loud silence of an empty apartment, the ache of being misunderstood by someone who never really saw her.

She let the hurt rise—but didn’t show it.

She kept it under the surface. Controlled. And sang just the final line.

“I’ve never been your silhouette.”

This time the sharpness didn’t come from volume, it came from honesty.

Silence stretched again, and then, “Jesus fucking Christ,” Tevin muttered, barely audible. “Yes. That was it. You just broke my whole fucking heart.”

Frankie opened her eyes, heartbeat in her throat. “That’s the goal,” she said with a smile.

“One more take,” he said, with adoration. “The intro, stripped. Just vocals. Think bedroom window. Think 2 a.m.”

She nodded. Pulled her headphones back on. “I’m doing it without the track,” she said. “I need it to feel like it’s just me.”

“Whenever you’re ready,” Tevin said, sitting back and crossing his arms.

She closed her eyes again and fell backward into memory—into the way the world felt when it was just her and that girl in a shared bed, mouths stained with wine, hearts fluttering like moths in a jar.

The way longing felt more real in the dark, the love sometimes made you forget how to breathe. And then she took in a breath and sang,

“I like girls who wear leather

over floral cotton skirts,

Girls who laugh too loud in diners

And say fuck when something hurts.

I like soft hands holding coffee,

Messy buns and lipstick stains—

Girls who smell like cedarwood

And wreck my quiet brain.”

When she opened her eyes, the room felt changed. Like something sacred had happened in the air.

Tevin just stared at her through the glass, his hand over his mouth. “God,” he said, his voice thick, “You’re going to fucking wreck people with this.”

“That is exactly what I want.” Frankie smiled, heart thudding in her chest, adrenaline mixing with pride.

“You’re a fucking genius, Frankie Monroe.” Tevin shook his head in awe.

She stepped out of the booth, glowing from the inside out. Tevin Rivers was her producer, but more than that—one of her best friends, chosen family, ride-or-die since her early open mic days.

“You’re not so bad yourself, Tevin Rivers.”

“We make a sick team,” he said.

They high-fived—sloppy and perfect. Like kids. Like artists. Like people who knew they had just made something that would withstand the test of time.

“Fuck yeah, we do!”

Tevin hit play. The track rolled. Her voice filled every corner of the studio with the echo of truth.

And Frankie Monroe—the loud, fearless, unapologetically queer, beautifully unfiltered force of nature—stood on the worn rug in the middle of her incense-soaked studio, hands curled into fists at her sides.

She had a rose quartz crystal clutched in her left hand and listened to the final piece of her debut album.

She smiled because she knew it, already.

She knew it was something good. That she had made something real. And it was hers.

Midway through the song, Kara Judd strolled in, giving them each a familiar nod, coming in like she owned the place—which, to be fair, she pretty much did.

She didn’t interrupt; she just slid onto the arm of the couch and listened.

As the last note faded out and Tevin leaned back with a satisfied grin, she let out a low whistle.

“That song—wow, so good,” she said, crossing one leg over the other. “I’m glad you guys decided to add it to the album, even if you did give me a goddamn aneurysm with how last minute it is.”

“What can I say?” Frankie laughed, dragging a hand through her wild, loose curls. “Chaos is part of the process.”

“Yeah, working with Frankie,” Tevin pointed at her like he was a man with battle scars. “I definitely gotta be on my toes. It’s a fucking rollercoaster—she will change the whole game at 3 a.m. and still expect me to mix it by breakfast. But at the end of the ride—it’s magic.”

Kara smirked. “I love it, though. It keeps me young.”

“Yeah—because 28 is old?” Frankie asked with a laugh.

“I feel like I’m 28 going on 34 after this album, Frank.” Kara shook her head, still laughing. She was three months older than Frankie, something she never let her forget.

The thing about Kara was, she wasn’t just Frankie’s manager. She was her entire operations team—publicist, booker, assistant, strategist, and occasional therapist all rolled into one. They’d been best friends since high school, bonded first by their shared music tastes and then by shared ambition

Kara had hustled her way from being a personal assistant to one of the biggest names in the business to carving out a behind-the-scenes empire of her own.

And when Frankie’s solo career started to take shape, Kara didn’t hesitate.

She dropped everything and got on board like she’d been waiting for the call her whole life.

By the time Frankie’s debut album was finally in the works, she wasn’t a nobody trying to break through.

She’d already dropped singles and EPs that built a cult following online, played festivals where word-of-mouth turned into long lines, and opened for bigger names where half the crowd left talking about her instead.

And that was in big part to Kara. Then, social media had only amplified it—her unapologetically queer lyrics and the raw, gut-punch honesty in her writing gave people something to hold onto, something that felt like theirs.

Frankie had plenty of reasons to be skeptical of the industry, but Kara wasn’t one of them. Kara didn’t just believe in her—she built Empires around her.

“So,” Kara said, shifting her weight on the couch arm, slipping into business mode, “I have some news. Real news. Big, glossy, career-changing type shit.”

Frankie raised a brow and grabbed her now-cold coffee. It tasted terrible—metallic and bitter but she drank it anyway. At this point, caffeine was a survival mechanism.

“Hit me.”

Kara straightened. “We’ve got a pretty fucking cool—and I’d say pretty major opportunity. Side B wants to send someone on the road with us for the first five weeks of the tour, seven stops. Full doc-style coverage. The whole thing would build toward get this… the cover of the print issue.”

“The printed issue?” Frankie blinked.

“Yep,” Kara confirmed, with a little sparkle in her eyes.

Side B was the music magazine. Legacy status. The kind of place that could make or break an artist if they wanted to. These days, they mostly lived online, but once every six months they printed a special issue. The kind of issue people saved. Framed. Talked about.

“Seriously, what? How?”

“I called in some favors,” Kara said.

Frankie sat back. “Damn. That’s kind of… huge.”

“It’s massive, Frank. Julian Lake himself is backing it. Once I put in the favor, he is the one who reached out to me. Thinks you’re the next hot thing and even used the word brilliant. Said he’s been following your rise since the Side Street Sessions.”

That meant something. Julian was notoriously picky. This wasn’t just filler—this was the cover, and it was legacy-building. Frankie’s excitement was immediate, but cautious. The kind of opportunity you dream about—but also the kind that comes with fine print, usually. And she could feel it coming.

She narrowed her eyes. “What’s the catch?”

Kara hesitated for just a breath too long. “Willa Archer is going to be the lead on the project. Writing the article, taking the photos—all of it.”

There it was. Like a needle to a balloon. Frankie went still. All the lightness in her posture vanished, replaced by something colder, sharper.

“No,” she said flatly, shaking her head like she could physically undo the words.

“Frankie—”

“No. No fucking way.”

“Come on,” Kara said, trying to stay calm. “I know you two have had history, but that was two years ago.”

“Yeah,” Frankie snapped, “and I still remember it like it was yesterday. She wrote that shitty review after the Lakeside Fest set—said I was all aesthetic and no depth. Like I was a poser who got lucky.”

“She didn’t say that exactly—”

“She said I was talentless. She said I wasn’t ‘doing anything new’ and that I lacked vocal control.” Frankie’s jaw tensed. “And when I called her to talk about it—to just, I don’t know, get her perspective?—she said I was forgettable and basically hung up.”

“Yikes,” Tevin winced, listening on and off as he worked on something on his laptop.

“Yeah, yikes is right.” Frankie grabbed her vape off the table and took a long drag, pacing now. “She’s on my shit list, Kara. You know who’s on that list? White boy producers who say I need to smile more, that one pop girl who told me to ‘tone down the gay,’ and Willa fucking Archer.”

Kara didn’t flinch. She’d seen Frankie like this plenty of times—righteous, and ready to go to war—but she stayed grounded.

“She’s a good journalist,” she said evenly.

Frankie exhaled a plume of vapor and didn’t answer.

“Look,” Kara pressed on, “I didn’t talk to her personally, but I did speak with Julian. He’s going to pitch it to her. And I think she’ll want to show a different side of you.”

Frankie scoffed. “Yeah, she’s probably going to try and bury me before this album even gets out.”

“They’re not going to put you on the cover to bury you, Frankie,” Kara said. “If they were, they’d do it from afar and put it in an article—not put you on the cover of the print issue.”

That landed. Frankie chewed her thumbnail for a second, still pacing. Her instincts were screaming no. But her ambition—it was whispering something else. Something harder to ignore.

“If I say yes,” she said slowly, “and she pulls any shit—any, I am walking. I don’t care how big the mag is.

“Understood,” Kara said.

Frankie sighed. “I’m going to fucking regret this,” she muttered, taking another drag from her vape.

But deep down, a different part of her—the artist, the Firestarter, was already curious.

Willa Archer. That name still made something twist in her stomach.

Not just anger. Something more dangerous.

She wanted to prove her wrong—and that made her feel anticipation.

* * *