Kylie Cantrall's Arc

Chapter 77 of 78

The recording room sealed behind them with a soft click. The offer stayed on the piano down the hall. Kylie flipped on the studio monitors and pulled out the chair. She meant to play the private version and prove the executive wrong. But Arianna stood at the mixing desk, not moving. Kylie saw it now. Playing back an old recording wouldn't fix this. Arianna didn't need to hear what they already made. She needed to prove she made it. "Sit," Kylie said. She rolled the chair away from the desk. "Not you at the mic. Me." Arianna frowned. "What are you doing?" "You're going to produce me." Kylie pointed to the mixing board with its rows of sliders and knobs. "You call the takes. You tell me when it's flat. You fix the harmony. I sing what you say." "I don't know how to run all that." "You know the song better than anyone alive. You wrote half of it." Kylie stepped to the microphone and clipped on the pop filter. "That man said you got lucky. Lucky people can't do this. So do it." Arianna sat. Her hands hovered over the board. Then she pushed one fader up and leaned to the mic. "Sing the second verse. Just your line, no harmony." Kylie sang it. Arianna stopped her before the end. "You rushed the third word. It's slower than that. I heard it in my head for a year." She reset the take. "Again." Kylie sang it again, slower. Arianna nodded and marked something on the screen. They ran it four times. Each time Arianna heard a flaw Kylie missed. She caught a breath in the wrong place. She caught a note bending sharp. "There," Arianna said. "That one. Keep it." Kylie pulled off the headphones. "You just produced a vocal. Your vocal choices. On our song." Arianna stared at the board. Something in her face had changed. The fear was gone from her mouth. "I did, didn't I." "An executive can call you the fan all he wants." Kylie sat on the arm of the chair. "He can't run this room. He can't hear what you hear. You just did something he couldn't do in that meeting." Arianna played the take back. Her ear had built it. She had shaped Kylie's voice with her own hands. No headline, no stranger, no contract had touched it. "Save it," Kylie said. "Just for us. The one they can never move up." Arianna hit the button. The file wrote to the drive that only they owned. She turned to Kylie, and for the first time since the meeting, she smiled. "Play me your verse again," she said. "I want to fix your harmony next." Kylie laughed and put the headphones back on. The executive's words had finally lost their weight. Arianna wasn't a fan in this room. She was the one holding the board. And now she knew it.