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Neal patted his head in sympathy. “Jules is right. It sounds really good, man. The way your voices mix. It makes the song sound, I don’t know, more emotional.”
“It adds something,” Axel said. “He’s singing the song about this woman, but she’s also singing the chorus in the background. Like she’s always present. Like she already knows how he feels. She knows it so well that she can sing along.”
“But that changes it,” Will said thoughtfully. He resembled Stone, except that Will was clean cut and well dressed, with lighter hair. Even when he wore a hoodie, like he did tonight, it was an expensive hoodie. “I’ve always heard ‘Starlight Woman’ as a lonely song. He’s far away from her, remote. That’s why she’s starlight.”
“That’s just it,” Neal said. “He thinks she’s far away, but she’s right there. She loves him back. He just has to listen.”
“Is he listening, though?” Axel asked. “He doesn’t know how close she is. He’s not paying attention. He thinks he’s all alone.”
“Shit, man,” Roy said. He was a big, burly guy with a thick, wiry beard. “Now I’m sad. I’ve never been this sad listening to this song before, and I’ve heard it a thousand times.”
Denver sighed dramatically into his folded arms. “Stop changing my song, all of you. It’s killing me.”
Neal patted his head again, but Stone said, “Get over yourself, Lord Byron.”
Then Stone turned to me. “Nice work, Barstow,” he said. “We’ll do it this way onstage in Seattle. Mr. Sad Nuts here will come around.”
“Fuck off, Stone,” Denver said.
“That’s it everyone,” Stone announced. “Time to go home. Everyone go get a fucking life.”
“I want to sing on more songs,” I said.
Stone gave me one of his more serious glares. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow. Don’t push your luck.”
After we wrapped, I sat in my car—my shitty, scratched, in-need-of-a-tuneup car—in the parking lot and felt like crying. What was wrong with me? I hadn’t cried in at least a decade, but lately I’d been on the verge too many times.
Instead of crying, I called Finn.
He answered, his words exhaled as if he was in bed. “Juliet. Hey.”
I remembered how late it was. “You were asleep,” I said.
“I’m awake enough.” The low rumble of his voice, so unlike daytime Finn, made me wish I was in the bed with him. I wished for that so hard I ached. I thought of Neal saying, She’s right there. He’s not paying attention. He thinks he’s all alone.
“Is something wrong?” Finn asked, because I was calling in the middle of the night.
“Nothing’s wrong,” I said. “We just finished at the studio, and something happened. Something really great.”
“Tell me,” he said, and my throat closed and my eyes stung, because I had never had this before. Someone who would pick up the phone at midnight, someone who would say tell me because he wanted to hear what I had to say. Someone who wanted to know the story spilling out of me, who didn’t expect anything back. A tear rolled down my cheek.
“Juliet?” Finn asked.
I told him everything, and he understood all of it. That it was a single song, a four-minute take, but it was important. He knew the guts it had taken for me to suggest it at all. He just knew.
When I told him about Denver’s reaction, Finn laughed softly. “He’s not happy with anyone messing with his vision,” he said. “But Stone’s right. If it makes the song better, he’ll come around.”
“I’m not trying to screw with his vision,” I said.
“Juliet, believe me—if he thought you were truly messing with it, he would have fought you a lot longer and harder than he did. And the rest of the band would have told you if it sucked. They aren’t in the business of being polite. If they said it was good, then it was good.”
I wiped a tear from my cheek. I hoped it didn’t sound like I was crying. Finn hadn’t said anything about it if it did. “The weekend is two days away,” I said. “I want to see you.”
“You do?” He sounded surprised, and so delighted that it made me smile.
“Yes, Finn. You. I want to see you.”
“Hold on, let me check my schedule.” He let dead air float between us, both of us breathing. “It seems I’m free.”
