Sasha.

The sun tapped violently against the giant living room bay-windows, the brunette huffed quietly, biting the tip of her number two pencil. Hastily, she began erasing the various scribbles within the tattered leather bound journal.

Her mind began to wonder out of boredom as her eyes traveled to the giant windows, that offered the only bit of light into the room. It had been raining three days straight, and Sasha loved it.

San Francisco in the winter was timeless. The fog covered the city in darkness and the strong winds brought chills all the way down to her bones, there was a mystery about the city that captivated Sasha, it was her home.

The 21 year old watched the rain fall mercilessly as she sat cuddled up on her grey sofa, wrapped in various blankets in a thick pink sweater, though it may not snow in Northern California, it was by no means exempt from the cold.

Her phone buzzed silently beside her, making Sasha jolt in surprise.

“Skype meeting tomorrow at 8:00am?”

“Sure”

“Good, talk to you then”

Sasha rolled her eyes, making a mental note to set her alarm for 7:00am. One of the great perks of being a song writer, was the ability to work remotely. Sasha was the epitome of a ‘homebody’, in fact, she was as quiet and shy as they came and the idea of having to live in a place like LA sent anxiety riddling through her body.

Sasha Black was a 21 year old, native San Franciscan, who was one of the most sought after ghost song writers in the industry.

In university she majored in literature with a minor in music composition, to earn a few extra dollars she began writing short poems and sending them to several different publishing companies, it wasn’t until she submitted a two page poem entitled ‘Willing to Lose’ that she was noticed.

A local music producer read the poem, that was featured in the San Francisco chronicle, and begged to meet with her over coffee. The man, Ian, was a struggling producer and artist in need of some constructive criticism on some of his lyrics.

After being bribed over a few cappuccino’s and a small blueberry muffin Sasha reluctantly agreed, spending the next five hours with him critiquing and correcting every song he had ever written.

Amazingly, Ian’s change in lyrical direction got him noticed by a record company in LA. When asked to recreate his work, he kindly credited Sasha and it wasn’t long before she herself was flown to LA and signed on as a contracted worker for Sony Records.

It wasn’t until Sasha graduated with her Bachelor’s degree that her two year contract with Sony Records was up and she was a free agent. During her contracted time with Sony, Sasha had managed to produce over 25 top 40 hits, 17 of which hitting the number one slot on the Billboard charts.

Word in the industry quickly spread about her raw talent, creating quite the waiting list of artists and produces pining to work with her. Amongst all the success Sasha hired a manger, Jordan Smith, to help sort through the hundreds of offers she received daily.

She was having a Skype meeting with that man tomorrow at 8:00am.

Through all her success Sasha managed to stay the same quite, shy and anxious girl she always had been. Preferring to stay in the sanctity of her home, telecommuting to her clients, staying as far away from the limelight as possible.

Sasha vowed she would aways be the girl behind the scenes, the one that remained nameless, the one that lived a private and modest life, alone.

Until she met him.

—

Martin threw his hands up in frustration, rubbing them roughly against his face.

Nothing was right, for the life of him, he could not figure out how to complete this song. It had been four straight days of him continuing to stare at the open Protools MP3 before him, nothing was working.

Two weeks ago he was nothing but confident about the song. He easily tracked the bass, found the tempo, shuffled through the meat of the melody and even configured the appropriate drop-but it still just wasn’t right.

There was something missing, the song felt incredibly incomplete, and for the life of him he had no idea why.

Groaning Martin rose from his rolling chair and grabbed his cell phone from his makeshift desk/midi station and paced his apartment in frustration, the anger surged through his body to the point of complete restlessness.

This had never happened to Martin before.

Sure, every song had its pit falls. Some came easier then others, but for the most part everything always found its place. There was a part of Martin that panicked at the thought of him reaching his peak success at 20 years old.

As much as he hated buying into the media’s pressure of being the most successful DJ for his age, he couldn’t help but wonder if the tabloids could be right, if he was burning out already?

Shaking the though he threw himself onto his couch, opening up his phone and scrolling through his various apps, settling on twitter he typed furiously.

‘There’s nothing worse then roadblocking on a song, slowly loosing inspiration’

Sighing he closed the app and laid the phone out on his chest, closing his heavy eyes and letting darkness slowly overtake him.

10:09 pm - 3 hours later

Martin winced slightly at the pressure below him, forcing his eyelids to slowly open. Groaning to himself he quickly recognized the darkness that flooded his sky rise apartment, realizing his nap ran later then expected.

Martin shut his eyes once again aimlessly reaching for his cell phone, wincing at the pain beneath him. Grunting, he lifted himself up slightly grabbing at the phone that had slipped underneath him, identifying the source of discomfort.

Over the course of three hours he had seven text messages.

Martin quickly glossed over his iMessages noting he had one from his sister, manager, and a few from his friend Julien. The rest of his messages were sent to his Whattsup app, which he frequently used for out of country texting.

Justin Bieber.

‘cryptic tweet man lol wuts up?’

Martin grinned slightly and began furiously typing, ‘i can’t finish this fucking song man it’s been like two weeks’

Martin placed his phone down and stretched slightly, getting up to turn on various lights throughout his apartment. Not even five minutes later a familiar ring tone filled his apartment.

Rushing back to the couch Martin grabbed at his phone, picking it up in a haste and mumbling a quick hello.

“Yo Martin! What’s up man?”

“Oh, hey Justin how are you?”

“I’m good man! Chilling in this beautiful LA winter, look, I saw your message…”

Martin ran a hand through his messy brown hair, chuckling sheepishly. As much as he hated asking others for help and admitting that he was in a rut, he didn’t see much of an option at this point. He relished in the fact that Justin was probably one of the only other people who would actually get it.

“Yeah, I just don’t know what to do you know? I need to get this song done, it’s suppose to be released in a month and its going absolutely nowhere” he mumbled quietly.

“I feel you man, I’ve been there before. I don't know what you’re working on bro, but I know when I was in a similar situation Scooter hooked up one of my tracks to this ghost writer, I don’t know her official title or anything, but within a few weeks she sent back the lyrics and and not even a week later we released Company”

Martin raised his eyebrows in surprise, Company was one of biggest hits in 2015, and although it wasn’t a lyrical masterpiece it fit the track perfectly, and because of that was astoundingly successful.

“A song writer huh? So you think I should put some vocals on it?”

“I don’t see how it can hurt, but I’d send her your stuff dude, or meet with her if you can. I don’t know but whoever she is, she’s a fucking genius, she just knows how to make a song work.”

Martin was quiet, he had never thought about hiring a song writer before but at this point he was beyond desperate and willing to try anything.

“Alright, I think I will, thanks dude!”