Taking Chances

In the morning, I woke up to a series of soft knocks at the door. “Come in,” I allowed, my voice thick and groggy with sleep.

I turned over, pushing my fluffy comforter away from my face, to see Rebecca standing in my doorway, a sheepish look on her face and a plate of food in her hands. “Hi,” she greeted quietly.

“Hey,” I responded. “What are you doing?”

“I…kind of made you breakfast,” she informed me, walking over and putting the plate on my night table. “I guessed that something bad happened last night that you couldn’t talk about, and I don’t want to weasel the information out of you, but I figured food would cheer you up.”

I looked over at the stack of waffles and sighed. They really did look good, and I definitely needed to eat something, considering I had a songwriting session at three.

“Thank you,” I granted with a small smile on my face. “I really appreciate it.”

She nodded before going to leave the room. “No, Rebecca, wait,” I called after her, sighing.

She poked her head back in, waiting for me to elaborate.

“I’m sorry that I came in like that. Zayn and I just had a pretty heated argument, and all I could think about was shutting myself up in my room to be alone with my thoughts.”

“It’s okay. I understand.” She looked at me again with concerned eyes. “Do you want to talk about it?”

My cheeks exploded with color as I averted my eyes to the plate on the night table. “Uh…you really don’t want to hear about it.”

Understanding me immediately, she blushed and laughed lightly to cover up how uncomfortable she was. “Ah, okay.” There was a short, awkward silence before she continued, “Well, I have to go get ready for class. Are you going to be okay?”

“I’ll be fine,” I assured her, checking the clock. 11:54. “I should start getting ready to head down to the studio, anyway.”

Rebecca nodded. “Good luck with your writing session.”

I nodded in thanks, and Rebecca disappeared, taking it as a dismissal.

Sighing, I put my head back against the wall and took in a deep breath. No matter how upset I was about my argument with Zayn, I couldn’t let it affect my work. I had to suck up my emotions and keep them from getting to me. The last thing I wanted to do was make myself look weak and unprofessional in front of the songwriters that Simon had hired to work with me.

And if word got to Simon that I couldn’t handle myself, then I'd have been booted from the label, and everything I’d done would have been for nothing.

Shaking my head to get rid of the dark thoughts, I pulled the plate of food onto my lap and started eating. The waffles tasted absolutely fantastic, and they were exactly what I needed to start my day off properly.

While I styled my hair in the mirror, putting it up in a sloppy braid, I practiced looking happy and recited a few greetings with a bubbly tone. For a few minutes, I tried to convince myself that I really did appear to be happy, but I knew deep down that I wouldn’t fool anyone.

I groaned and stuck a couple of bobby pins in the back of my hair to keep up the shorter layers, allowing the reality to sink in. Maybe if I just kept in mind to stay pleasant, Rick and Jennifer wouldn’t tell on me to Simon.

Taking a step back, I looked at my entire reflection in the mirror and smoothed down my patterned top so it hung better over my dark blue skinny jeans.

Soon enough, I walked into the conference room for the songwriting session. Even though I was five minutes early, Jennifer and Rick were already there, prepared to start the meeting without hesitation.

I settled down in the seat next to Jennifer, pasting a smile on my face out of habit. “Hey,” I greeted as I scooted myself up against the table. “So where are we starting?”

“Well,” Rick started, “before you came, we jotted down a couple of ideas about one of the love songs, and we want your approval on it.”

“Oh, sure,” I replied, feeling my heart sink into my stomach.

Rick slid the notepad across the glass table, and I could feel both of them watching me as my eyes scanned over the words.

They were perfect. They had taken what I said about how Zayn made me feel and put them into words that I never would have figured would have worked. But they encompassed the emotion flawlessly.

My eyes filled with tears as I thought back to the argument the night before, how he made me feel like shit, how I broke up with him. The words appealed to what I knew about how Zayn usually made me feel, but it seemed wrong to think about him that way while we were in whatever kind of relationship-limbo we were stuck in. Because, even though I'd broken up with him, it still didn't feel like we weren't a couple anymore.

“Bailey?” Jennifer’s soothing Scottish accent broke through my thoughts.

I looked up at her, reaching up to wipe the tears away from my face, thankful that I’d thought to use waterproof mascara.

“Oh, God. Were the lyrics that bad?” Rick joked.

I let out a gasp of laughter and shook my head. “No, it’s nothing like that. I’m sorry. The song is great so far. I love it.”

“What’s wrong, lass?” Jennifer questioned, her fair eyebrows pulling together in concern.

“I just…” I took a deep breath. “I had an argument with Zayn last night, and it got kind of intense.” I sniffled again and felt a tear fall down my cheek. Embarrassed, I reached up to wipe it away a millisecond too late; it had already fallen and made a dark spot on my jeans. “I’m just emotional about it.” I glanced up and caught them sharing a look. “I’m sorry. This is so unprofessional.”

“What are you talking about?” Jennifer burst out, taking the notepad from in front of me. “This isn’t unprofessional!”

“Wait, what?” I questioned, watching her pen fly across the page.

“Your crying isn’t unprofessional. It’s songwriting gold,” she corrected me. “Raw emotion is what makes the best songs in history so successful. If people can relate to you on that basic level, then you have a hit song on your hands.”

“So let’s get started,” Rick butted in.

And for the next hour and a half, we played ideas off each other. I added a line here and there, but mostly, I just provided how I felt during the argument and the fragile emotional state I was in at the time.

There were a lot of tears shed on my part, a lot of uncomfortable emotions unearthed, and a lot of papers crumpled up and recycled. But in the end, we came out with a song that I was so proud of, I wanted to record it right away.

“This is a hit,” Rick declared proudly, reading over the words again. “I just have to bring it to the sound guy so he can make the melody in my head a reality. But this is absolutely a hit.”

“He’s never wrong about these things,” Jennifer told me, winking and nudging me in the side.

I was surprised how much better I felt, expressing my emotions through writing, instead of keeping all of it bottled up inside. It almost felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders.

No wonder Taylor Swift wrote so many songs about her past relationships. It was way better than therapy.