8 | Rough Track
The label called at nine the next morning, which gave me roughly four hours of sleep and no time to develop a convincing strategy for behaving normally around Leo.
All four of us sat in the studio while a conference speaker on the console carried the voices of three executives who sounded far too enthusiastic for people creating work before breakfast.
I had taken the chair closest to the laptop.
Wesley sat beside the drum kit with coffee held between both hands, his hair flattened on one side from sleep.
Kadir occupied the couch against the wall, dressed in black and looking irritatingly functional.
Leo leaned near the console close enough that I could see him without turning my head.
I had still managed not to look directly at him.
That required effort.
Less than ten hours earlier, his hand had been beneath my sweater and his thigh had been pressed between mine while I informed him I hated him. The argument remained unresolved. The attraction had become considerably less theoretical.
Leo appeared entirely comfortable.
His curls were tamed. His mouth no longer looked swollen, though I remembered exactly how it had felt against mine.
He listened to the label representative explain that several clips from the bar had begun circulating overnight, one hand wrapped around a coffee mug as though he had not spent part of the previous evening pinning his manager to a wall.
I disliked his composure.
I disliked my awareness of it more.
The label had apparently decided the unauthorized performance was “organic momentum.” The phrase appeared twice during the call. No one asked why Midnight Theory had played unreleased material in a bar without approval. No one mentioned the conditions Leo had ignored.
They liked the response.
People were sharing the unfinished track. Fans had begun asking when it would be released. The production team wanted a complete rough version while the attention remained useful.
They needed it by the end of the day.
The label praised the energy of the live arrangement, congratulated the band for reconnecting with its instincts, and then assigned me responsibility for turning three minutes of impulsive performance into a usable track before evening.
Leo looked at me when they called his decision bold.
I stared at the laptop.
He had broken an agreement. The label had converted the violation into proof of artistic intuition. Now I had a deadline because his intuition required files, structure, and someone willing to handle everything after the applause ended.
I understood why managers developed eye twitches.
When the call ended, the studio became quiet.
All three men waited.
I connected my phone to the console and opened the clearest clip from the bar.
The video had been filmed from the side of the room. People moved in front of the camera, the sound distorted whenever the crowd shouted, and Leo’s face disappeared behind someone’s raised arm during half the second verse.
The arrangement remained clear enough.
Kadir’s riff drove beneath the vocal without flattening itself to fit it. Wesley pushed into the chorus rather than waiting for Leo to pull him forward. Leo delayed his entrance and adjusted his phrasing around both of them.
The empty space did more than every layer in the original demo.
I played the clip twice.
“We’re rebuilding this version,” I said. “Not the demo.”
Leo folded his arms but didn’t verbally object.
That counted as progress.
They moved into position while I prepared the session. The first attempt lasted less than a minute.
Inside the bar, they had been forced to react. Inside the studio, every decision became available for discussion again.
Leo began directing almost immediately. He asked Wesley to hold back beneath the verse. Wesley adjusted. Kadir played the same riff he had used live, but with the roughest edges removed. Leo entered exactly where he had on the original demo.
The result sounded dead again.
I stopped the recording.
Wesley lowered his sticks. Kadir rested one hand across the bass strings. Leo turned toward the glass.
“What?”
“You’re waiting for him again.”
Wesley glanced toward Leo before he could stop himself.
That answered more clearly than anything I could have said.
“At the bar, you followed Kadir,” I told him. “Leo followed both of you. Now you’re all asking permission.”
Leo leaned toward the microphone. “I didn’t tell anyone to ask permission.”
He didn’t have to. The band had spent years learning where his approval lived.
I restarted the section.
The second attempt improved until Leo asked Wesley to simplify the transition into the chorus.
Wesley’s sticks went still.
Usually, he would have smiled and changed it. He would have made a joke about overplaying, then removed whatever had drawn attention to him before the disagreement could become uncomfortable.
This time, he looked toward the control room and then back at Leo.
“The push is why it works.”
Leo shifted near the microphone. “It crowds the vocal.”
“It moves the chorus.”
The disagreement lasted only a few seconds, but Wesley didn’t soften it. He knew better than to make an attempt to reassure Leo that either version was fine.
He wanted his rhythm.
I felt an embarrassing amount of pride.
“Record Wesley’s version,” I said.
Leo looked through the glass at me.
I kept my attention on the screen. Supporting Wesley’s idea after kissing Leo against a wall created professional optics I had no interest in examining. Fortunately, the bar recording supported the same choice.
They began again. Kadir’s riff came in heavier this time. Wesley entered beneath it, holding the rhythm until the chorus approached.
Leo opened his mouth, preparing to interrupt.
Then he stopped when Kadir looked at him.
The moment passed without correction.
Leo lifted one hand, signaling for them to continue.
Kadir’s next notes landed with more force.
Wesley followed, and the song finally moved.
Leo waited before entering. His first line came later than it had in the demo, rising out of the bass instead of landing over it. When Wesley changed the rhythm slightly beneath the second verse, Leo adjusted without stopping.
I kept recording.
The take was imperfect. Leo lost one lyric and replaced it with a rough vocal sound. Wesley struck one cymbal harder than he intended. Kadir changed the end of the riff during the final chorus without warning anyone.
The other two followed him.
For the first time inside the studio, a mistake became part of the song instead of evidence someone had failed.
When the last note faded, no one moved.
I played the take back.
Wesley leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. Kadir stood beside the console, studying the screen even though the waveform told him almost nothing about the music. Leo came in behind my chair.
His hand rested briefly against the back of it.
The contact was nowhere near my body. I still remembered the weight of that same hand around my neck.
I concentrated on the recording.
The second verse dragged slightly, and the final transition needed tightening. Those were fixable problems rather than structural failures.
Wesley suggested cutting part of the fill. Kadir offered a shorter variation beneath it. Leo listened before answering.
They recorded one more full take.
This time, the chorus arrived exactly where it needed to. Wesley held the momentum without rushing it. Kadir kept the bass line heavy and strange. Leo moved with them rather than dragging them toward something he had already chosen.
When they finished, I knew we had it.
I completed a basic export and attached the file to the message for the production team. The song wasn’t finished. Leo’s vocal was still a guide, and several sections would need rebuilding later.
It was complete.
One week into the retreat, Midnight Theory had created a rough track together.
I sent it before anyone could reconsider a part.
The confirmation appeared on the screen.
For several seconds, I stared at it.
The retreat finally had something measurable. I could tell the label we had completed a song rather than reporting that the band had eaten dinner without fighting and developed a complicated relationship with my personal boundaries.
Wesley reacted before the others. He came around the console and pulled me into a hug, lifting me far enough that my feet briefly left the floor.
I grabbed his shoulders.
“Put me down.”
“We finished a song.”
“You finished a rough track.”
“We finished most of a song.”
He lowered me but kept his hands at my waist. His face was close, his excitement open and bright in a way that made it difficult not to smile back.
“The rhythm held it together,” I said. “You were right to keep it.”
His expression changed.
Praise affected Wesley the most when it didn’t come wrapped in a joke. He absorbed it like he hadn’t expected anyone to notice the part of him beneath the easy smile.
His thumbs moved once against my waist before he released me.
Across the console, Leo watched us with an unreadable expression.
Kadir looked away a second after I caught him noticing.
Helping Midnight Theory behave like a band was finally becoming possible.
Keeping the three men separate in my head was becoming considerably less so.