Chapter 7

The days passed with Jacob clinging carefully to his routines—morning guitar practice, exercise, work, evening painting—but with one notable difference. In quiet moments, his mind kept returning to the songs he’d shared with Jet, imagining how her voice might transform them. At night, he found himself jotting down additional notes, alternative bridges, counter-melodies that might complement her interpretations.

Wednesday arrived with a nervous energy that followed him throughout the day. At the fab shop, Jacob approached his supervisor during the morning break, a request he’d been rehearsing in his mind.

“George,” he said, standing straighter than usual. “I was wondering if I could leave an hour early today. I’ve got a ... music thing.”

Gaines, a barrel-chested man with thirty years of welding experience etched into the lines around his eyes, looked surprised. In the two years Jacob had worked there, he had never been late, never missed a day, never asked for special accommodation.

“A music thing, huh?” Gaines considered him for a moment. “You got all the repairs on the Billings order done?”

“Yes, sir. And I’ve already prepped tomorrow’s materials.”

Gaines nodded slowly. “Alright then.” He turned to head back to his office, then paused. “This music thing—that what you do on weekends down at the market?”

Jacob blinked, surprised. “You know about that?”

“Course I do. My wife drags me there most Saturdays.” Gaines shrugged. “You’re good. Different from what I usually listen to, but good.”

The unexpected compliment stayed with Jacob throughout the day, a reminder of how little he knew about his coworkers’ perceptions of him. Unbeknownst to him, he was considered a top hand. The other welders appreciated his precision, his focus, his willingness to learn. He was always eager to improve, never made the same mistake twice, and worked hard for the full eight hours he was there. His scars were simply part of him, like Martinez’s tattoos or Dawson’s limp—noted but irrelevant to the quality of his work.

At quarter past five, Jacob left the shop, stopping at home only long enough to shower away the day’s dust and change into clean clothes. He gathered his guitar, his notebook and the cassette recordings, then headed for the community college campus.

The arts building was smaller than he’d expected, a two-story brick structure set apart from the main campus. Student artwork and concert announcements livened inside walls,. Jacob followed Jet’s directions, finding Practice Room C at the end of a quiet hallway.

The room itself was modest but functional—about fifteen feet square, with thick acoustic panels on the walls, a baby grand piano dominating one corner, and various music stands scattered about. A small recording setup occupied a table against one wall: a cassette deck, microphones and a basic mixer.

Jet was already there, seated at the piano, working through what Jacob recognized as the bridge from “Hidden Light,” one of the songs he’d shared. She’d changed it slightly, adding jazz-influenced chord extensions that gave the melody a richer, more complex feel.

When she saw him in the doorway, she stopped playing and smiled. “Right on time,” she said, gesturing for him to enter. “What do you think of that variation?”

Jacob set down his guitar case and stepped closer to the piano. “Play it again?”

She did, this time singing softly along with the melody. Her voice brought the passage to life in a way his rough recording hadn’t captured, finding emotional nuances in the lyrics that he’d written but never fully expressed.

“That’s...” he searched for the right word, “ ... a lot better than what I wrote.”

“Different,” Jet corrected. “Not better. Just a different interpretation.”

For all his street smarts, Jacob was curiously innocent when it came to social interactions. Years of people avoiding his gaze had left him with little practice in the ordinary give-and-take of friendship. He didn’t want to make a mistake with Jet—not because he harbored romantic notions, but because he recognized her talent and genuinely wanted a friend who understood his music.

“I brought my notebook,” he said, pulling it from his bag. “Had some ideas about the arrangement—places where we could add harmonies, maybe an instrumental break after the second chorus.”

Jet’s eyes lit up. “I’ve been thinking about harmonies, too.” She patted the piano bench beside her. “Show me what you’re thinking.”

Jacob hesitated only briefly before sitting at the edge of the bench, leaving an appropriate space between them. He opened his notebook to the relevant page, where he’d sketched out a notation for vocal harmonies that would complement the main melody.

“Here,” he said, pointing to a particular passage. “If you take the melody, I could come in underneath with this harmony line. Kind of creates a conversation between the voices.”

Jet studied his notes, humming the line softly. “That works,” she said, nodding. “And here—” she played a chord with her left hand, “—if I add this underneath while we’re singing, it ties the whole section together.”

They worked like this for over an hour, moving between the piano and Jacob’s guitar, piecing together arrangements for the three songs. Jet’s formal musical training complemented Jacob’s intuitive approach; where he sometimes struggled to articulate why a particular change felt right, she could explain it in terms of music theory. Where she occasionally over thought a section, he could pull it back to its emotional core.