Page 148 of Down Beat

My hands shake with such violence as I bring the letter up, that I drop it to my side again and focus on steadying my breathing. One, two… in and out. The page still rattles as I hold it, but at least the words aren’t a blur. I skim over it, absorbing the important details.

Song title: Another Time Around

Writers: Reymand James Thomas, Tabitha Sally Reeves

What. The. Fuck.

Royalties owed for first quarter sales/streams

No. Fucking. Way.

I can’t read any more.

The letter and check flutter to the ground as I narrowly avoid twisting an ankle in my haste to get to my phone. “Kendall!”

I holler her name again as I unlock the screen and punch through to the Spotify app. Come on, come on, come on. “Kendall!”

“I’m coming.” She skids into the living room, her shoulders dropping. “Jesus. I thought you’d hurt yourself.”

“I have.” My thumb slips and hits the wrong song. I growl and smack the right one.

My one.

The phone clatters to the coffee table as I fail to set it down properly, my hands shaking violently as the bars of music I wrote that last night in the hotel, the ones I trashed in a rage before I left the next day, play back at me.

Only, they’re not on a violin. They’re haunting in their melody, played on an electric guitar.

“Why are we listening to this?” Kendall whispers, edging closer.

Rey’s voice cuts in. I lose all hope of hearing this through from start to finish the first time without losing it. “Oh my God.”

“Tabitha.” Kendall snatches my phone, spinning it to face her. “Why are you playing their song? Ah! You stupid girl. What are you doing, babe? This is why you’ve avoided it. Shit. Why we’ve avoided it.”

“You know this song?” I blubber from the floor.

Her eyebrows peak. “Well, duh. It’s only as popular as that one they played us at the theater.”

“How would I fucking know?” I holler.

She shakes her head, lips flat. “True. Fuck, I’m sorry.” Kendall folds to her knees, kitted out in only her lingerie. “They added it as a bonus track to the new album. Why are you playing it though?”

I scramble across the floor on all fours, shuffling back to her on my knees with the letter and check. She looks them over as my chest tears apart listening to Rey sing, her eyes slowly inching wider and wider.

“Whoa.”

“Right?” I cry. “What the hell?”

“How did you not know you wrote a song? One of their songs?” She sets the papers on the table beside my phone.

I reach over and hit Pause, the song having moved on to the next one. “I wrote the music the day before I left, for myself. But I hated it. Told Rey I forced it, so I threw it away.”

“He salvaged it.”

“He had to have.”

“Isn’t that plagiarism or some shit?” She frowns.

“Only if he didn’t give me credit, but babe”—I shake the check at her—“he gave me credit.”