7. Music and Mechanics
Music and Mechanics
Nora
Wednesday morning found Nora staring at a blank page in her songwriting journal, guitar balanced across her lap, surrounded by the detritus of two days’ worth of failed attempts at productivity.
Coffee cups in various stages of emptiness littered the hotel room’s surfaces, and she’d somehow managed to turn the perfectly adequate desk chair into a nest of notebooks, chord charts, and creative chaos.
She’d been trying to write for two hours, chasing melody fragments that dissolved the moment she tried to pin them down with actual words. The harder she pushed, the more elusive inspiration became.
Her phone buzzed on the nightstand.
Adrian
Saw on Instagram you’re back in Redwood Hollow. Didn’t know that was the plan. Call me when you get a chance. We need to talk.
Nora stared at the message, feeling a complicated knot tighten in her stomach.
Adrian Mercer had been her manager for four years—since the first EP started getting traction, since the bookings outgrew what she could handle on her own.
He was good at his job. Sharp, well-connected, relentless.
He’d built her trajectory, gig by gig, and for a long time that had felt like being taken care of.
These days, it felt like being managed.
Just visiting family. Taking some time to write.
The response came quickly:
Some time is fine. A plan is better. The tour fallout’s still fresh. We have a narrow window to reframe it before the story sets. Let me get ahead of it.
There it was. Adrian’s solution to everything: better positioning.
I think I need to step back for a bit.
Step back, sure. Just not too far. You know how this works - out of sight, out of mind. The industry moves fast. I’m looking out for you here. Call me.
Nora set the phone aside, feeling deflated.
The worst part was that Adrian wasn’t wrong.
He was never wrong about the industry. But every conversation with him lately felt like being a problem on a spreadsheet—a trajectory that had dipped and needed correcting—rather than a person who’d forgotten how to breathe through a chorus.
When had she stopped having people in her life and started having stakeholders?
She picked up her guitar and tried the chord progression she’d been working on, but it sounded hollow in a way she couldn’t diagnose—the notes were right, the progression was right, and it was still… nothing.
Her phone buzzed again. Instagram notification.
Don’t look, she told herself.
But her thumb moved before her brain could stop it, muscle memory overriding common sense.
Cam had posted a new photo. Studio session, headphones around her neck, caption reading: Sometimes you have to burn it all down to build something beautiful. New music coming soon.
The knife twisted. For almost two years it had felt like they were building something real—not just a relationship but a creative partnership, a shared vision.
Then Nora’s career had taken off, and what had been partnership became competition.
The attention, the pressure, Nora’s constant need for validation slowly consuming everything else until Cam’s jaw tightened every time Nora reached for her phone.
Cam had asked once, “Do you even know how to exist without an audience anymore?”
Those words still hurt.
She put the phone face-down and stared at her guitar, feeling the familiar tightness building in her chest. Static under her skin.
Four things she could see: guitar, coffee cup, her own trembling hands, water stain on ceiling.
Three things she could hear: traffic outside, her own breathing getting faster, the hum of the hotel AC. Two things she could touch—
Her phone rang, cutting through the spiral. Daniel’s name lit up the screen.
She almost didn’t answer. Almost let it go to voicemail like she’d been doing with everyone else. But Daniel was different.
“Hey,” she said, setting the guitar aside carefully.
“What are you doing?”
“Just… resting.”
“In your hotel room?”
Nora lay back on the bed, staring at the water-stained ceiling. The breathing exercises had worked. The panic had retreated. For now. “Yes.”
“Alone in a depressing hotel room. Sounds healthy.”
“Says the guy who works sixty-hour weeks and hasn’t taken a vacation in three years.”
“Deflection. Classic Nora.” She could hear him moving around—pacing his office the way he always did during phone calls. In the background, she could hear one of his favorite albums playing. “Look, I’m not trying to give you a hard time. I’m worried about you.”
The genuine concern in his voice made her chest tighten in a different way. “I know. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. Just… talk to me. What’s actually going on?”
Nora took a breath, trying to figure out where to even start. “I don’t know how to write anymore. Every time I try, it feels fake.”
“So take a break from it. You don’t have to write every day.”
“But what if I never figure it out again? What if the panic attack broke something permanently?”
Daniel was quiet for a moment. “You know what I think? I think you’re avoiding the real issue.”
“Which is?”
“The land. Gramps’ property.”
Nora sat up, defensive. “That’s not—”
“When’s the last time you were out there?”
She didn’t answer.
“Nora. When?”
“Three months before he died,” she said finally, voice small. “I came home for a weekend. Stayed for dinner. Had to leave early for a gig in Portland.”
“And you haven’t been back since.”
She swallowed. “I can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Does it matter?” The words came out sharper than she intended. “He’s gone, Danny. Going out there isn’t going to change that.”
“No, but it might help you stop running.” His voice softened. “You know Dad’s pushing the developer thing, right? He called me yesterday. Wanted me to talk sense into you about selling.”
Nora’s jaw tightened. “Of course he did. But with me, he could barely talk about it at all.”
“You know there’s all that history with Dad and Gramps,” Daniel said.
“Dad and Gramps and me, I know.”
“It wasn’t about you.”
“Yes, it was.”
Daniel sighed. “He still wants to help. He’s practical. You know how he is.”
“What I know is that deep down he thinks I should have gotten a real job and Gramps believing in me and telling me to go for it was the worst thing that could have happened to my chances of figuring that out.” She couldn’t keep the emotions out of her voice, because while her parents were supportive, it was always with that air of but it would be better if you just did what we wanted you to do…
“That’s not fair and you know it. He’s proud of you. He just—”
“Wants me to be more like you. Stable. Successful. Not a disaster.”
“You’re not a disaster,” Daniel said firmly. “You’re going through something hard.” He paused. “But you do have to make a decision about the land eventually.”
“I know.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know!” The words burst out, sharper than she meant them. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, okay? Keep it and prove Dad wrong but have no idea what to do with twenty acres I can’t even visit? Or sell it and betray Gramps? Those are my options, and they both suck.”
Daniel let her breathe for a moment. “You could start by going there.”
“I just told you, I can’t—”
“That’s exactly why you need to go, sunshine,” he said. “Face it. See what it feels like now, not what you’re afraid it will feel like.”
Nora closed her eyes, trying to imagine driving out to Gramps’ property.
The long driveway, the house with the wraparound porch where they used to sit with their guitars, the meadow humming softly with life in the background.
The thought made her chest tighten, familiar static creeping back under her skin.
“Not yet,” she said quietly. “I’m not ready yet.”
“Okay.” Daniel’s voice was gentle now. “But soon, yeah? Before Dad drives you crazy about it?”
“Yeah. Soon.”
They sat in comfortable silence for a moment, and then Daniel said, “So. Mom mentioned you’ve been spending time at an auto shop?”
Nora’s face heated. “I picked up my car. That’s not spending time.”
“She said you went back. On Monday. For coffee with the mechanic.”
Why had she told her mom about that? “It was just coffee.”
“Uh-huh. And does this mechanic have a name?”
“Morgan Livingston.”
“Morgan,” Daniel repeated, and she could hear the grin in his voice. “Tell me about her.”
“There’s nothing to tell. She fixed my car. We got coffee. That’s it.”
“Right. Because I usually get coffee with my mechanic.”
She grimaced, though he couldn’t see it. “It’s nothing.”
“You’re getting defensive.”
“I’m not defensive.”
“You absolutely are. Come on, tell me. What’s she like?”
Nora found herself smiling despite her irritation. “She’s… I don’t know. Quiet. Kind of blunt. Really good at her job. And she just… is.”
“And you like that.”
“I like that it’s different from everyone else.” Nora picked at the bedspread. “She’s just… easy to be around. Even when it’s awkward.”
“Awkward how?”
“Like she doesn’t really know how to do small talk, but she doesn’t pretend to. She’s just quiet and listens. Notices things.”
“So you like her.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.” There was a smile in his voice. “I know what you sound like when you like someone.”
Nora’s chest tightened, but it felt different from the panic. “We barely know each other. And I’m a mess. The last thing I need is to drag someone else into my disaster.”
“Or,” Daniel said carefully, “maybe what you need is someone who doesn’t know your view count. Who isn’t calculating anything. Who’s just… there. Which is what you’re describing, whether you realize it or not.”
The words hit harder than they should have. “I’m not ready for that.”
The smile was back in his voice, soft this time. “I’m not saying you have to date her, Nora. I’m saying maybe having a friend who isn’t your manager or Cam’s friends or some industry contact might be good for you. Someone real.”
“Morgan is very real,” Nora said quietly.