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I’m at a loss for words for a moment. “What if I don’t want this anymore?” I say.

Is that true? The words hang so heavy in the air, we’re forced to sit with them and process. Jamie puts a hand on his hip, running the other hand over his face. What would it look like if I retired? Told everyone to write their own fucking music, shuttered the Nashville studio, and went the fuck somewhere else? It’d be headline news, and my phone would be ringing off the hook from production companies trying to convince me otherwise.

“Is that what you want?” Jamie asks, voice softening.

I shake my head. “I don’t know, man. I don’t know. But I do know I can’t keep doing what I did for the last decade and a half. There’s…there’s nothing left of me. If you asked me, hey, Coen, what do you do for fun, I wouldn’t have an answer. I don’t have anything outside of this…all this work. And I love it, I fucking do. I don’t want to never write again. But I can’t do this shit anymore, not like this.”

He lifts both hands. “I get it,” he says.

“Do you?” I take a step closer. “I know your shit is hard, but my shit is different.”

“I know. Creative shit is different.”

I do a loop of the hall again, mostly because I feel like a caged animal. “I can’t fucking keep squeezing my brain like a tube of fucking toothpaste every time someone puts a dollar in and asks for a song. There’s nothing in there, man. I got fucking nothing right now.”

He crosses the room, stopping my pacing. Up close, his eyes are serious.

“Hey, I hear you,” he says.

That strikes a chord. I don’t want him to say he understands. He doesn’t. I want him to hear what I’m trying to say. All I do is write endless words, and it still feels like nobody ever hears what I’m saying. I inhale, hold, and release, just like I was taught in therapy.

Jamie puts his hands on his hips and looks down at the floor, thinking.

“You don’t have nothing,” he says finally.

“What?”

“You have something really good. I read your shit for Mason. And for yourself.”

He doesn’t have to tell me that. I know, but I don’t know what that means for my future. It would be easier if nothing had come out of my head the entire trip. Then, I could throw in the towel and call myself a one hit wonder.

“You’re really fucking good,” Jamie says. “You have a talent, beyond anybody I’ve worked with, both before and after we met.”

I jerk my head. I’ve never been comfortable with compliments.

“And I think you should go on hiatus.”

What? I lift my head, unsure how to respond. I was expecting him to figure out any way he could to get me not to walk away for a while.

“Why?” I force out.

“Because,” he says, “you’re a really good writer. But you’re also my friend.”

Neither of us speak for a few minutes. Scattered on the floor around us are all the pieces of the last decade or so together. Sometimes, I wish we could go back to how we were back then. Young, dumb, and so hungry, it felt like seeing the sun rising in the dark to come to this city. I was on cloud nine. I was the shit back then. Hell, so was Jamie. And then, the reality, the pressure, locked in.

Now, here we are, older and tired.

I always told myself I wouldn’t let the industry get to me. In the end, it got me all the same.

And I need out. I need to get in my car or board a plane and go until I feel like a person again. If that takes me all the way to Wyoming, to her doorstep, then that’s where I’m meant to be.

Sabrina.

“Fuck,” I say, running a hand over my face. “I need to go.”

“I thought you might,” he says, reaching into his back pocket. He takes out a ticket. “I already booked the plane to New York for you. Go on, get your girl.”

I take it. There’s a lump in my throat. A weight lifts from my shoulders, and it leaves behind a great emptiness. But it’s not a bad emptiness. It’s like someone unhooked a heavy leash from around my neck, and suddenly, I’m free to go where I choose, to be anything I can imagine. The world feels the biggest it’s ever been.