Arianna Smith's Arc

Chapter 11 of 23

Arianna followed Kylie down to the studio. The room hummed with equipment and soft light. Kylie sat at the keyboard and slid over to make space. She wanted to write together now, not as a test. Arianna's heart pounded. This was real. She was here to make a song beside the woman she'd loved from far away for years. "Give me a first line," Kylie said. "Anything. We'll build from it." Arianna opened her mouth. Nothing came. She stared at the blank page in her notebook. Every song she'd ever written was about wanting Kylie across a huge distance. Waiting for a letter. Watching from behind a screen. But Kylie sat right next to her now. The longing she knew how to write had no place here. Her pen hovered. The page stayed empty. The silence stretched too long. "You froze," Kylie said. Not unkind. Just true. "I only know how to write from far away," Arianna said. "About missing you. I don't have that anymore. You're right here." Kylie's shoulders dropped. "So write that." "Write what?" "That you don't know what to do now that the distance is gone." Kylie tapped a key. One clear note. "That's a real feeling. That's a song." Arianna looked at her notebook. On the counter behind them sat a small brass bell with a feather stamped on it, tied with a ribbon. A fan had sent it, a little charm meant to shake a stuck writer loose. Arianna reached back and rang it once. The sound was bright and quick. It broke something open. She wrote the first line. "I built a bridge to reach you, now I'm standing on your side." Her hand didn't shake. Kylie read it over her shoulder. She smiled, wide this time. "Yes. That one. Keep going." They worked for two hours. Kylie found chords. Arianna found words. She stopped writing about a picture and started writing about the person breathing beside her. Kylie hummed a melody and Arianna matched it. When Kylie got a line wrong, Arianna said so. When Arianna reached too far, Kylie pulled her back. They fought over one word for ten minutes and laughed when they landed it. By the end they had a whole verse and a chorus. A song neither of them could have written alone. Kylie played it back. It sounded like two voices, not one longing for the other. Kylie set down her pen. "This is good enough to put out," she said. "Our names on it. Together." Arianna's stomach flipped. A released song meant the world would see them side by side. It meant Kylie was ready to be linked to her in public. But it also meant pressure. A real deadline. A real audience. The private thing they'd made would face the crowd. "You mean it?" Arianna asked. "I mean it," Kylie said. "Let's finish it and send it out."