30. Chapter Thirty #2
The producer looked at me. "We're thinking shared mic for the chorus, to capture the tension."
"No." The word came out before he finished smiling. Everyone looked at me. "We can do separate mics," I said.
The producer lifted his hands. "Sure. We can decide in the room. Engineers love options."
The engineer gave a tiny wave, which said, "Engineers love being left alone."
"Separate mics," I repeated.
The producer's expression flickered, then he smiled again, thinner. "Separate mics."
Lila didn't look at me. But her shoulders lowered by a fraction. That counted. Not as forgiveness, not even as thanks. Just proof that a smaller choice could matter.
The booth was smaller than my dressing room. Clean foam, thick air, two mic stands. Headphones on hooks. A stool in the corner that looked like it had heard too many secrets.
Lila walked to her mic and set her bag beside the stand. Her fingers moved through the setup on autopilot: adjust the height, check the pop filter, slip on the headphones. No wasted motion. I took my side of the room and did the same.
No eye contact. No jokes. No touching. No pretending this was easy by acting like it wasn't awful.
The producer's voice came through talkback, bright enough to sand paint. "Okay. You can hear me. We're rolling in a minute. Do you want to run it once?"
"I don't need to," Lila said.
"Same," I said.
He chuckled. "Of course you don't. Fine. We'll go for a take."
The engineer cut in, dry. "Levels first."
Bless him.
Technical work saved us for five minutes.
A line from her, a line from me. Her voice in my headphones was too close, too clean, stripped of crowd noise and stage armor.
Not the viral clip version, not the war version.
Just Lila, tired and brilliant, singing into a mic because the job demanded it and the song deserved it.
I looked at the floor. Connection was not repair. I repeated that to myself while the engineer adjusted levels. Connection was not repair. Chemistry was not consent. Harmony was not proof.
The producer said through the speaker, "Make it honest. You don't have to perform tension. You already have it."
Lila's hand tightened around the mic stand.
My mouth opened.
Grant beat me to it from the control room. "Talk less."
The engineer coughed into his fist. The producer cleared his throat. "Rolling."
The track started in my headphones. Stripped down, steady, intimate in a way that would have felt beautiful if it hadn't arrived wearing paperwork teeth.
Lila sang the first line.
My body forgot the room. That was the problem. It always did when she sang.
Her voice landed clean, warm, a little worn at the edges in the places only someone who knew her would hear. The mic caught everything: the breath before the second line, the roughness she tried to smooth out, the ache she turned into tone.
I came in on my verse. I didn't polish it, didn't show off, didn't reach for the version of my voice that made crowds feel chosen. I sang to the microphone. Not to her, not at her. That distinction mattered.
The pre-chorus approached. Her voice lifted. Mine slid under it, automatic, because my body knew where she would go before my mind caught up.
We fit. God, we fit.
It would have been easy to let that mean too much. A month ago, I would have. Maybe last week. Maybe yesterday, if I was being honest. I would have heard our voices blend and thought, see? This is real. This fixes something. This proves she should stay.
Now I heard it and thought: this is why I have to be careful. Because if something sounded that right, it could make you forget all the ways it was still wrong.
The chorus hit. The producer had wanted a shared mic. Instead, we stayed on separate stands. Still, both of us leaned a fraction toward the center on instinct, the space between our voices narrowing even while our bodies held position.
I felt it. So did she. Her fingers tightened around the stand. Mine did too. But she kept singing, and so did I.
One take. Of course it was one take. Not romantic, just damning. We could nail a song in a single shot and still trip over our own tongues trying to talk like actual humans.
The last chorus held. Her voice rose. Mine followed, then dropped back under hers where it belonged. Under, not over. I stayed there.
When the track ended, silence filled the headphones. For two seconds nobody spoke.
Then the producer burst through the talkback. "That's it."
Lila opened her eyes. I hadn't realized they'd been closed.
"One take," the engineer said, stunned.
The producer laughed. "Of course it's one take. You two are ridiculous."
Lila ripped off her headphones and hung them on the hook. Not violent. Controlled. That was worse.
I took mine off slowly, because if I moved too quickly, I might do something useless, like ask if she was okay, when she had spent the last week proving that question was too small.
The producer kept talking. "Okay. We might want a safety, but I don't want to mess with lightning. Give me thirty seconds to listen back. Don't go anywhere."
The talkback clicked off. The booth went quiet.
Lila stared at the mic stand, the cable, the floor. Anything except me.
"You don't need me to be great," I said.
Her gaze snapped up. The words had come out rougher than I intended. Good. Smooth would have been worse.
"You never did," I added.
Her throat moved. "Then why does it feel like I disappear next to you?"
There it was. The thing I had known. The thing I had not wanted to look at too closely because looking meant seeing my fingerprints all over it.
I stepped closer, then stopped before I crowded her space. "Because I helped make it feel that way."
Her eyes narrowed, defense first, always. "You didn't make me do anything."
"No," I said. "But I kept making moments big enough that you had to fight your way out of them."
Her mouth pressed together.
I kept going before I could lose nerve and turn it into a lyric.
"I don't know how to do this right. I keep thinking if I make the moment big enough, you'll believe me.
But that's the problem, isn't it? I keep making moments, I keep making noise, and you're the one who has to stand in the wreckage. "
Lila looked away. Not because it missed. Because it didn't.
The talkback clicked on. "Okay. We're good. That take is insane."
"Hold," I said.
The control room went quiet. The producer chuckled. "Hold what?"
"The credits."
Lila's head turned toward me.
I didn't look at her yet. If I did, I might make it about her reaction, and this was not supposed to be another move.
"Her name goes first," I said. "Or the duet doesn't happen."
Then the producer, slower: "Evan, that's not how this works."
"It is."
Grant's silhouette shifted behind the glass. Lila stood very still.
"She's the original artist," I said. "This started with her track. She's not featuring me. If the studio wants this version because it's viral, credit it correctly."
"The studio's going to push back."
"Then push me. I'll take the hit. Her name goes first."
The control room stayed quiet. The engineer said, ‘We can format it as Lila Russell & Cursive Crush and Evan Walker."
"Yes," I said. "In that order."
"I'll flag it. I can't promise," the producer said.
I leaned toward the mic. "If it's not that order, you don't have a duet. You can keep the one-take magic in your files and never release it."
Silence. Then, clipped: "Copy."
The talkback clicked off.
Only then did I look at Lila.
Her face was hard to read but not blank. Never blank. Her eyes were too bright. Her hand still held the mic stand, as if she might need it for balance or for assault.
"Why did you do that?" she asked.
"Because it's true."
"That doesn't answer the question."
"It does."
"No," she said. "It makes you sound noble, and I'm not in the mood."
Fair. "I'm done letting anyone treat you as an accessory."
Her chin lifted. "You don't get to decide that."
"I'm deciding what I'll tolerate in rooms where I'm standing."
That landed differently. I watched it hit the place in her that liked precise things: contracts, credits, choices with edges.
"They'll blame you," she said.
"Let them."
"You can't just be noble now."
The word cut. I probably deserved that too.
"I'm not trying to be noble."
"Then what?"
"Equal."
The word came out plain, no music under it, no audience to approve.
Her mouth opened, then closed again.
Before either of us could ruin it, the booth door opened. The engineer leaned in, eyebrows lifted. "I'm going to step out for a minute. Producer's on a call. Don't touch anything. Keep the mics where they are." He didn't wait for a response. The door shut again.
Quiet rushed in. No talkback, no voices. Just the hum of the booth and Lila close enough to ruin my common sense.
She noticed at the same time I did. Her eyes moved to the mics, then to me, then away.
I took one slow step closer. She didn't move back. I stopped anyway.
"Are you okay?" I asked.
Her face pinched, just a little. "I'm here."
"That's not what I asked."
"I'm not falling apart."
"You're stubborn."
"So are you."
My gaze dropped to her mouth before I could stop it. Idiot. I looked back up. She noticed.
"We can't," she said.
"I know."
Agreement did nothing to cool the room. If anything, it made the heat meaner. Her body leaned toward me a fraction before she caught herself. My hand lifted, then froze in midair. Not touching, not asking yet, not assuming.
"Can I?" I said.
Her eyes stayed on mine. "If you're asking to kiss me, I can't answer that right now."
My hand dropped immediately. "Okay."
The word was a leash I chose to hold on to. It bit.
"We're on a clock," she said.
"I know."
She took a step back on purpose. I did not follow. That was the whole lesson, wasn't it? Not every distance was abandonment. Not every pause was rejection. Sometimes space was the only reason a person could stay.