17. Senna
— ? —
Senna
The song won’t land.
I’ve been working on it for three days now - an old piece I started years ago, something I pulled from the drafts folder because the melody kept haunting me.
I thought maybe it could work for Matteo’s album, give him something unexpected, but the arrangement refuses to come together.
The bones are there, the structure is solid, but the vocal sits wrong against the instrumental, and no matter how many times I adjust the levels or tweak the reverb, something fundamental is off.
“Try it again,” I tell Matteo through the talkback. “But this time, don’t lean so hard into the chorus. Let it breathe.”
He nods behind the glass and runs through the section again. It’s better - he’s talented, genuinely talented - but it’s still not right. The song wants something his voice can’t quite give it, and I don’t know how to fix that without changing the entire arrangement.
“That was good,” I say, even though good isn’t the same as right. “Take five. I need to think.”
Matteo pulls off his headphones and stretches, and I lean back in my chair and stare at the waveform on the screen like it might reveal its secrets if I look hard enough.
My phone buzzes. A text from Rocco.
Rocco: I’m in the lobby. Brought lunch. Can I leave it with the desk or should I go?
He’s been doing this for weeks now - leaving food with the assistant, respecting the boundary I set, proving through small consistent actions that he can be trusted. It shouldn’t matter as much as it does. But it does.
Senna: Wait there. I’ll come get it.
I push back from the board and head out to the reception area, where Rocco is standing awkwardly by the front desk with a paper bag and the expression of someone who’s not sure if he’s about to be yelled at.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey.”
“I got you the thing from that place. The one you mentioned.”
“You remembered.”
“I remember everything you mention. I’m trying to be better about that.”
I take the bag from him, and our fingers brush, and I pretend not to notice the way my pulse jumps.
“Thank you,” I say. “For respecting the boundary. For not just walking in.”
“You asked me not to. So I don’t.”
“Some people would have tested it by now.”
“I’m not some people.” He shoves his hands in his pockets, a nervous gesture I remember from when we first started dating. “How’s the session going?”
“Terrible. I have this song that won’t cooperate, and I can’t figure out why.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“The vocal. It’s sitting wrong. The song needs something-” I pause, trying to articulate what I mean. “Something lower. Warmer. More breath. Matteo’s got a beautiful voice, but it’s not right for this particular piece.”
Rocco is quiet for a moment. Then: “I could try it.”
“What?”
“A scratch vocal. Just so you can hear how it might sound with a different texture. I won’t - I’m not trying to insert myself into your work. But if it would help you figure out the arrangement, I could do a quick pass.”
I should say no. I should thank him for the lunch and send him on his way and maintain the careful distance I’ve been building between us.
But the song has been driving me crazy for three days, and the truth is, his voice is exactly what I’ve been hearing in my head.
Lower. Warmer. The kind of rough-edged intimacy that would let the melody breathe.
“Okay,” I say. “Come on.”
***
Matteo looks up when we walk in, his eyebrows climbing toward his hairline.
“Matteo, this is Rocco. Rocco, Matteo.” I gesture vaguely between them. “Rocco’s going to do a scratch vocal so I can hear how the arrangement needs to change.”
“The Rocco?” Matteo asks, and there’s a knowing glint in his eye that I choose to ignore.
“Just Rocco is fine,” Rocco says, shaking his hand.
“Cool. I’ll get out of your way.” Matteo’s already reaching for his jacket. “I was going to grab coffee anyway. Text me when you need me back.”
“You don’t have to leave.”
“I really do. Trust me.” He grins at me on his way out. “Good luck with your… arrangement.”
The door closes behind him, and I’m alone with Rocco in the control room.
“He seems nice,” Rocco says.
“He’s a nightmare. But talented.” I pull up the track on the board. “Okay, here’s the song. It’s something I wrote years ago - never finished it, but the melody’s been stuck in my head lately. I thought maybe it could work for Matteo’s album, but the vocal keeps fighting the instrumental.”
“Can I hear what you have?”
I hit play and watch his face as the track unfolds. It’s strange, sharing something this personal with him after so long - this half-formed piece of myself that I never showed anyone, that I buried in a folder and forgot about until recently.
When it ends, he’s quiet for a moment.
“It’s beautiful,” he says. “The bridge especially. That key change is - unexpected.”
“Too unexpected?”
“No. Just right. It catches you off guard, but it makes sense once you’re in it.” He tilts his head. “What if the second verse dropped down instead of building? Let the vocal sit lower, then climb into the chorus?”
I consider it. “That might work. Can you show me what you mean?”
He takes the lyric sheet I hand him and studies it, humming softly under his breath. Then he sings the second verse the way he’s imagining it - lower, more restrained, building pressure instead of releasing it.
“Stop,” I say. “Right there. That thing you did with ‘underneath’ - can you do that again?”
He repeats the phrase, and I lean forward, listening hard.
“Less vibrato. Let the note sit flat for a second before you release it.”
He tries it. Better.
“Now the whole line, but breathe before ‘waiting.’ Don’t snatch the breath - let it be part of the phrase.”
He does it, and something clicks into place in my head.
“That’s it,” I say. “That’s what the song needs. The vocal can’t be pretty. It has to sound like it might break.”
“Fragile but controlled.”
“Exactly. Not falling apart - trying not to fall apart and failing.” I pull up a fresh track. “Get in the booth. Let’s record a scratch pass while it’s in your head.”
He pauses at the booth door. “Does the song have a title?”
“Not yet. I’ve been calling it ‘the unfinished one’ in my head for years.” I consider for a moment. “Something about returning. Coming back to a place you thought you’d lost.”
“‘Where I Left My Heart’?” he suggests.
“Maybe. Let’s see what the song tells us.”
***
The booth is small. Smaller than I remembered, now that we’re both standing in it.
I hand Rocco the headphones - a second pair I keep for exactly this kind of situation - and position him in front of the mic.
“I’ll run the track from out here,” I say, gesturing at the control room through the glass. “Just sing what you were singing. I’ll adjust the instrumental around it.”
“Got it.”
I turn to leave, but the door sticks. I push harder. Nothing.
“Problem?” Rocco asks.
“The humidity. It swells the wood sometimes.” I put my shoulder into it, and the door groans but doesn’t give. “It’s fine, it just needs-”
Rocco reaches past me and shoves the door hard. It pops open with a crack, the force of it sending him stumbling backward, and I catch his arm to steady him, which puts us suddenly very close together in this very small space.
“Thanks,” he says.
“Yeah.”
Neither of us moves.
“I should go run the track,” I say.
“You should.”
“Rocco.”
“I know.” He takes a deliberate step back, giving me room. “Go. I’ll be ready when you are.”
I make myself walk out of the booth and settle behind the board, and I tell myself that my hands aren’t shaking as I cue up the instrumental.
“Ready?” I ask through the talkback.
“Ready.”
I hit play.
He sings, and I close my eyes and listen.
His voice fills the small space, raw and unpolished and exactly what the song has been missing.
The way he sits inside the melody instead of on top of it, the way he lets the emotion live in the breath instead of the power - it’s everything I couldn’t articulate until I heard it.
“Hold on,” I say, stopping the track. “The line before the chorus - you’re pushing too hard. Back off. Let the vowels do the work.”
“Let the vowels do the work,” he repeats, half-smiling through the glass. “You sound like a voice teacher I had when I was sixteen.”
“Your voice teacher was right. Consonants are structure. Vowels are feeling. This song is all feeling.”
“Okay. Again?”
“Again.”
He sings it differently this time - softer, more vulnerable - and something in my chest tightens.
“Better,” I say. “Now the bridge. Don’t lift at the end of ‘remember.’ Let it fall.”
He tries it. It’s devastating.
“One more time. But hold the breath longer before the last line. Make me wait for it.”
He does, and when the final note fades, the silence in the booth feels thick with something I don’t want to name.
“Come listen to the playback,” I say. “Tell me if I’m crazy or if this is actually working.”
He comes out of the booth and stands beside me at the board, close enough that I can feel the warmth of him, and we listen to what we just made. The scratch vocal layered over the instrumental, rough but real, the bones of something that could be genuinely good.
“It’s working,” he says quietly. “That thing you added in the second verse - the counter-melody. Where did that come from?”
“I don’t know. I heard it while you were singing. Sometimes the arrangement just… tells you what it needs.”
“You’ve always had that. The ear. The instinct.” He’s looking at me now, not at the screen. “I forgot how good you are at this.”
“You never knew. You never asked.”
“I know.” He doesn’t flinch from it. “I’m asking now.”
The booth door is still open. Neither of us has closed it, and there’s nothing keeping me here except the choice to stay.
“We should do one more pass,” I say. “While it’s fresh. I want to try something with the ending.”
“Okay.”
We go back into the booth together this time - me to adjust the mic placement, him to warm up his voice - and the door swings half-closed behind us. The latch doesn’t catch. We both notice. Neither of us fixes it.