Chapter 11

　　“I like her. I really like her. The opera is a unique aspect, and she fits your aesthetic better. Okay, shall we run through it again, this time recording?”

　　“Yeah.” Owen released her and moved back to his microphone, picking up his guitar and slipping the strap over his head. Yes, Emily thought watching him, the girls were going to love him. Big, built, blue eyed, dark haired, with a face a poet would love, Owen was made to be leading man material.

　　They ran through the song several times, and then Owen, Emily and Seb stepped out so that James and Jeremy could go through the track with just drums and bass.

　　“Come on,” Owen caught Emily’s hand in his and led her into the control room.

　　It was a narrow space, with a couch pushed against the back wall, and a window looking into the main room. Before the window was set the mixing desk and a chair in which one man sat. Two other men in matching branded t-shirts supervised other equipment, talking between themselves, and adjusting the machinery. They nodded greeting without stopping what they were doing.

　　The sheer amount of machinery and electronics was overwhelming. As well as the hugely complicated looking mixing desk, there were monitors, devices mounted around the room, and positioned in ways that made no sense to her.

　　“We can sit on the couch and watch,” Owen said quietly. She was not sure if he had dropped his voice out of reverence for the machinery, or because they were supposed to be quiet.

　　“I might listen to the next track again,” she said keeping her voice low in case it was the latter. “Refresh my memory. If it won’t muck up anything.”

　　“Go for it,” Owen watched the men at the mixing desk as if he understood what they were doing.

　　Her laptop bag was on the couch. She took out Owen’s phone and put his ear buds in and started the track again. Owen sat beside her, close enough that his thigh met hers from hip to knee, and he put his arm along the back of the couch, so that his hand rested on her shoulder.

　　They had sat like that so many times she did not have a count, and she had never noticed the casual intimacy of it, until it was no longer casual or intimate. In the past, she might have rested her head on his shoulder, as they had watched a movie, sitting just this way. But they no longer watched movies together. She did not know if she could lean her head against his shoulder anymore, or if that would cross the line he had drawn through their relationship.

　　Her heart raced with her awareness of him, from the heat of his leg through the denim, the scent of his aftershave, the rise and fall of his chest against the fabric of his shirt, to the way the muscles of his arms bunched his rolled-up sleeves. His hair had grown, the dark curls turning up at the collar of his shirt now, and hiding the tips of his ears, begging her to sink her fingers into them.

　　A new man entered the control room, wearing an expensive suit but with the top button of the shirt below left undone, and no tie. Contrived Business Casual, she decided, in the same way the band were Contrived Casual. He was older, perhaps late forties by her assessment, and wore his hair styled back from his sharp boned but handsome face in a way that made her wonder if it were to disguise some thinning. His eyes were dark and clever, and his smile charming as he greeted Owen, who stood up from the couch in order to shake hands.

　　Emily removed the ear buds when both men looked at her.

　　“Emily,” Owen said. “This is our manager, Aaron.”

　　“Hi,” she said feeling inadequately prepared and gauche.

　　“Emily the soprano,” Aaron repeated with a grin, holding out a hand so that she had no choice but to stand and take it. He clasped hers between his rather than shake hers, an easier option she thought as she did not need to overthink pressure or grip, or length of handshake. Intimate and friendly, without crossing any lines, she decided, and though that Aaron was someone well-schooled in human nature and observant of people. “I heard you sing that little piece of L’ho perduta. Beautiful.”

　　She was impressed he knew the name of the aria, her opinion of him rising. “Thank you.”

　　“Thank you for stepping in today to help the guys out,” he replied warmly. “Ah,” he responded to a signal from the men in the matching t-shirts and released her hands. “They are ready. We need to sit and be quiet.”

　　They sat, with Emily between the men, and looked attentively towards the window. She put her earbuds back in and turned down the volume, so she could listen to the songs without causing any sound to interrupt the recording.

　　She ran through the tracks three times, before Owen rose. She took out the ear buds and raised her eyebrows at him in enquiry.

　　“I am going to go lay in the lead guitar,” he told her with a grin, buoyant and energized by the experience. Living his dream, she thought, pleased for him despite the sting that remained in her heart. “Stay here with Aaron. Vocals will be in a little while.”

　　“Okay.”

　　“You are learning their tracks?” Aaron asked her conversationally as Owen left the room.

　　“Yes,” she flushed under his scrutiny. “I haven’t sung with them before. Owen just sort of dragged me into it today.”

　　“You were engaged to get married? You and Owen?”

　　She flinched. “Yes.”

　　“I am sorry about that,” he sighed. “I have been married twice myself. Not inclined to do it again. You think getting married is the hard part until you are married, and then you think being married is hard, until you are getting divorced, and then you realise the whole institution is just f-ked up, until you fall in love again,” he grinned, and she understood how it was that he had come to be married twice.

　　“I am sorry,” she said, not sure if it were the appropriate response.

　　“It is good that you and Owen have remained friendly,” he added, comfortable and confident in his manner, his eyes on the action of the technicians before them. “Not many can do that. I have tried twice and failed.”

　　“I guess we have been friends since we were six years old,” she replied. “We both want to… I don’t know, to be honest. We want to find a way through this, I guess.” Even as she spoke it, she didn’t believe it entirely. She was speaking her hopes, she thought with pain. But Owen was less invested in finding a way through it.

　　“Hmm,” he glanced at her, and then to the window. “They are about to start again.”

　　She was starting to get a feel for the music, she thought. It was, after all, Owen’s compositions, and they had always played and practiced together, to the point that she thought she would know his lyrics and music anywhere.

　　She should let him go, she thought, tears pricking the back of her eyes. Whatever they had between them, ex-sex as Megan termed it, might work for Owen, with his sheaths of condoms in his glove box, but it was just going to lead to more heartbreak for her, because Owen was right. She hadn’t taken anyone else to bed since they had separated. Owen remained her one and only lover.

　　Aaron drew her attention, and she removed the ear buds. “Your turn,” he told her.

　　She went into the main room, and Owen passed her a set of headphones and brushed a kiss across her cheek. “Kill it,” he told her, as he left.

　　She put the headphones on and nodded to the window. The music began to play. When the song was finished, the speakers came on. “Aaron and Owen want you to sing the lead part too, if you don’t mind, Emily?” The voice of one of the technicians asked.

　　“Alright.” She did not know if it were an odd request or not, but she was there for Owen, so if he wanted her to do something, she would do it, she thought. The music began again and this time she sang the lead. They requested her to do it a second time, before the band entered the room to start the process for the second song.

　　“I had no idea,” she said to Owen as he joined her. “That this recording process was so involved.”

　　“Yeah, neither did I until I started looking into the technicalities,” he grinned, cheerfully. “You nailed that song, by the way. Aaron loved it. He reckons we should keep you as lead on it.”

　　“What?” She was taken aback, panicked by the suggestion. “I am not in the band, though, Owen.”

　　“It is fine, Em,” he assured her. “It is just, like, a guest appearance. Musicians do it all the time, have other singers come in and do a particular song. Not a big deal. You ready?”

　　The afternoon went in a blur, moving through the process for one song after another, with Emily alternating between singing each song as backup and lead. When their time was up and everyone was happy with the way it had gone, the band began to move all their equipment back into the van, with considerably less energy than they had moved it from the van into the studio.

　　Recording was exhausting work, Emily observed, relieved that she wasn’t expected to help move equipment back out. Over the course of the afternoon, the guys from Two Way Street had relaxed with her, joking and teasing her as they did each other, and with James draping his arm around her as he stole sips of her coke during a brief break, something, she saw, that caught Owen’s eye and had him leaving a conversation with Aaron to join them.

　　If she didn’t know better, she thought, she might have mistaken Owen’s behaviour for jealousy.

　　“That went well,” Aaron said to her as they watched the process of the guys taking the equipment from the side-lines. “It is handy that you are a more maturely aged band, and that you, Seb and Owen are classically trained. Younger bands can be train wrecks, no experience and underdeveloped technique. Much of the recording time is lost to artistic disputes, and they can be less flexible about switching up things. But this band is quite professional, so it is a smoother process.”

　　“Do you think they will have success?” She asked him, hesitantly, still shy with the manager that Owen had so many of his hopes tied up with impressing.

　　“I wouldn’t have taken on their management if I didn’t think they had a good shot at it. They have an interesting sound, Owen’s song writing skills really meld the band together well, and your vocals are astounding.”

　　“Oh,” she was taken aback. “I am not in the band, though, Aaron. I am just on loan for the day,” she explained hastily, not wanting to affect Owen’s chances at getting his dream fulfilled through a misunderstanding.

　　He laughed. “You make yourself sound like a rent-a-car, Emily,” he said. “You will make yourself available for another loan, maybe?” He suggested lightly.

　　“I guess, if Owen wants me to sing again,” she shrugged, and yawned. “Oh, sorry. I am exhausted.”

　　“Recording does that to you,” he agreed easily. “Well, rest up, Em. Hopefully, I will be seeing you again soon.”

　　“It was nice to meet you, Aaron.”

　　He went over to the band to say his farewells before getting into a dark blue Audi and pulling away.

　　“We are done here,” Owen unlocked the car. “I will take you back to your car, eh?”

　　“Yes, thanks,” she slid into the passenger seat and glanced at the time. “Six,” she said in surprise. “I didn’t realise it was so late.” She was so tired her brain was numb, slipping into nonsensical thoughts in the peaceful cabin of the car, happy to leave it to Owen to negotiate the peak hour traffic back to her work building.

　　“I owe you dinner,” he replied, his eyes on the rear-view mirror. “I will drop you off at your work, and swing by the Vietnamese store on the way home and pick us up some noodle bowls?”

　　“Yes, that sounds good, thanks,” she said. It sounded like the old times, and the old Owen, she thought, watching him from the corner of her eye as he navigated the traffic, her heart aching. It was getting dark, and the streetlights cast moving orange toned shadows across his face. Tomorrow, she would wake up and go to work, just like any other day, she thought, and maybe it would be a few days, or over a week, until she would see Owen again as anything more than a casual hello as they passed each other in their front gardens.

　　Maybe, if she was lucky, something would come up with the houses or the division of their property and accounts, and he might come over, and their interaction would lead to frantic, basic sex heavy on the lust and low on the emotions.