Kylie Cantrall's Arc

Chapter 29 of 78

The next morning Kylie woke early and did the math in her head. The song had a release date. Their week had a countdown. The fifteenth was two days out now. She lay still and realized something the two of them had missed. They had finished a whole song together. They had never once stopped to mark it. The moment their work became real had slipped past them without a single word. She wanted to fix that before the world took the song. But she looked around the cabin and found nothing to fix it with. No cake. No candle. No card. She had left all the planning behind at the port. This was the price of no schedule. She had promised Arianna spontaneity, and now she had empty hands and a moment she wanted to hold. Arianna woke and stretched. "What's your want today?" she asked. Kylie almost lied and named something small. Then she told the truth. "I want to celebrate our song. Just us. Before it stops being only ours." She showed Arianna her empty hands. "But I've got nothing. No plan. That's the deal now." Arianna sat up. "So we use what's here." They left the cabin and walked the ship. The vast colored hull curved above and below them, all gold trim and stacked decks. Kylie found a quiet lounge with a piano in the corner. It was closed, roped off, dark. She ducked under the rope. Arianna followed. "We can't be in here," Arianna whispered. "We finished a song in a living room," Kylie said. "We can celebrate it on a broken piano." She sat and played the first line. The keys stuck a little. She kept going. Arianna leaned on the piano and came in low, under Kylie's notes, the way they had learned. Kylie layered her harmony on top. They sang the whole thing through, soft, no cake, no candle, no crowd. The last line landed the way it always did. The dog knew your coat before he knew your face. When they finished, the lounge was silent. Then two staff members clapped from the doorway. They had heard everything. One held a small tray of leftover dessert from a party, three plates, a lit candle from a cake nobody had finished. "We won't tell," one said, and set the tray on the piano. Kylie stared at the candle. She had wanted to make the moment. Instead they had made it together, and strangers had brought the light. Arianna blew out the candle. "To our song," she said. Kylie's phone buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out. Her mother. Then the label. Then a message with a photo. Someone had recorded them singing in the closed lounge and posted it. The song was out early. The fifteenth had come two days sooner. Their private week was over.