As we reached the second to last song, I started to squirm.
“What? Do you have to pee or something?”
“No. I just, um…I didn’t tell you, but there’s a thirteenth track.”
“Oh, yeah? You decide to record the one with the waltzy chorus? You know I thought it was cool.”
“No, I—not exactly.”
“Okay, well, hush and let me listen.”
The last morning of recording the album, I’d sat bolt upright before dawn, but hadn’t been sure what woke me. I had stayed over at the apartment because I’d been up late working the night before. We’d recorded everything, and I had just planned to go back through and layer a couple of guitar parts, add a few lines of harmony. Small things. When I sent her home, I’d even told Samantha, my amazing producer, that I didn’t need her to come in that day, since I’d just be fiddling.
But when I’d woken up, I found myself drifting over to the piano and sitting down in the darkness. I started to play the song I’d played for Caleb the night he gave me the piano. For months, I’d heard it in my head, in pieces. But now, it fell together as completely and effortlessly as the last pieces in a puzzle. I couldn’t even play fast enough to keep up with what I heard in my head. And when I finished it, I played through it again and again and again, as the sun rose, illuminating the city outside my windows.
I hummed along with it, at first, then bits of the lyrics rearranged themselves, words hooking other words, catching at verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, and fitting themselves together as I played.
I switched on the mics and laid it down in one take. When I listened back, I couldn’t believe it. The track was raw and aching, and I could hear the love in my voice. The need. Then, about two-thirds of the way through, in the piano part between the bridge and the penultimate chorus, a mourning dove called out. They roosted in the eaves, and I often heard their cries in the morning. When I looked over, I saw two of them, sitting on the windowsill, still and ruffled in the sun.
I never did another take.
When the first notes of the track began, I held my breath. It was such a personal song, such a private song. At first I hadn’t even meant it to be part of the album. I’d thought I would just bring it home to Caleb. Surprise him with it in our bed. But then days had gone by, and I hadn’t played it for him yet. Then a week, and I hadn’t mentioned it. I’d uploaded it to be the final track on the album, and as I’d watched the bar load to completion, I’d felt a flutter in my stomach and known it was right.
With Riven, I’d had so much to hide behind. This…I wanted this to reveal something.
The track sounded different than the others, since it wasn’t produced. You could hear the bellows of the pedals as they were pressed and released, hear the slide of my fingers and the echo of the keys. As my voice came in, I saw Caleb’s eyes widen. I turned to him and watched him listen to the song I’d written for him. The song that had gathered inside me, that I’d held tight all these months and finally unspooled for him in the early morning light. The song that told him all the things he already knew, but in the language we both felt deeper than words.
I watched the appreciation in his face turn to awe, and then he looked at me, tears streaming down his face, looking happier than I had ever imagined he could. He grinned through tears and grabbed me, pulled me onto his lap, and squeezed me so hard I could barely move. I wrapped my arms around his neck and held him, face in his neck, as I felt him breathe deeply.
We held each other as my song—our song—played, and the album started all over again.