The Masked Truth

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Sixteen

Turning up at the studio after such an exciting few days feels rather depressing. With a long to-do list, my regular caramel latte isn't going to give me enough energy to tackle these tasks today. I'd rather be curled up in bed ignoring the world for a little longer, but Ava insisted that I needed to be in the studio.

"Hello," the receptionist calls as I walk into the door.

"Hey," I softly say, "I'm just going to fall asleep in the recording studio," I announce as I make a bee line to the elevator.

"Have fun." He chuckles back.

I get into the elevator and press some buttons to make the machine move. Within seconds the door has opened and I walk into the recording room. Since I've become a big and like my own space, I don't have people bugging me while I'm working on my material, which is nice.

Alex would make the occasional sneaky stops to check on me, and I managed to haul Archer's butt to the ground floor to make him wait for me there. I'm pretty sure he enjoyed the chase, it certainly beat sitting around watching me do nothing interesting.

Before I enter the room, I hit the record button then slip through the glass door and make my way over to the table. With my caramel latte and left over Chinese food, I start preparing myself for a long day in the studio.

Ten in the morning doesn't roll around any quicker than I would have liked. I call in my producer, James to have a look at the material I've been working on. It had taken me a while to trust him, but he's a preferred person who understand the direction I want to take with my work and he always seems to know how to get there.

"He Enna," he calls out.

"James, finally." I come running out the recording section to envelop him in a tight, friendly hug. "I've missed your guidance."

"I've missed you too." He squeezes me back.

When we part from our hug, I drag him inside the booth to show him my squiggles for lyrics. The pages is completely filled with different variations and line thoughts from where I've changed my mind. But at the end of the day, it's always good to have options and a finished song.

I sing through my new material and with a different coloured pen, he makes some different changes either to the beat of the wording so that the lines flow and is in sync together nicely.

"Read to record the vocals?" he asks.

"What about my music?" I ask.

"You can either sing it to something acoustic at this point, or I can mock something out on the instruments," he explains.

"But."

"It's just a demo to show higher up and a chance for me to play with the backing track more when you're away," says James.

"Fine, let's start recording." I grab the book off the table and walk towards the booth to record some vocals. "If I sound bad, just delete the track," I call out before stepping inside.

"You'll sound amazing, you always do."

I fix the room up and get myself prepared. Whenever I step inside, I always worry about how bad I might sound or what may happen and it sends my stomach lurching with nerves. I set up the stand and balance my book, then out of habit go to pick the earphones up, but leave them hanging off the stand.

I jump up and down, shake the wiggles out of my arms before giving James the thumbs up to let me start recording.

"You had me at hello, you have me at goodbye. I promised I'd never hurt you, yet your siting in the dark. I waited by the phone, you left me falling hard. I guess we'll never get past this. Hello, hello, where did you go? Goodbye, goodbye, don't come back. I hurt you, you hurt me," I sing before motioning James to stop recording.