George spent the morning of her twenty-first birthday in the back of a taxi riding from her rented studio apartment in Kensington all the way out to the suburbs of South London, there to spend the morning at Willow Studios where it was tucked into the heart of a quiet little neighborhood.

George took this route almost every night, but going in the opposite direction. The studio where George had been interning for the last four months was an hour's commute via public transportation (the Tube only took her so far and there were two bus transfers to get to the stop nearest the studio). It was only a half-hour ride back by cab at three in the morning. George had never taken this route to the studio in broad daylight and so enjoyed looking out the window as the cab sped through the main thoroughfares and then into the quieter neighborhoods, watching the neat rows of houses decorated for the holiday season pass by.

While she watched as the skyscrapers turned into houses, George was struck by where exactly she was and how she had gotten there. It had been a long year of hard work, grit, and determination and somehow George had ended up exactly where she wanted to be.

George spent the first eight months of the year with a fire burning beneath her, propelling her forward. The fire sometimes took her gently by the hand and led her along but most of the time it pulled her headfirst against her will into the depths of what was quickly becoming her career.

Two things had stoked the flame underneath George. The first was Jayden's words at her mother's Christmas party coupled with the thought that there was no one like her in the music industry, no young female producer. That didn't sit right with George and everything in her wanted to be the first, wanted to make a space for herself at the table where there wasn't any.

The second thing? Vivian's insistence that it was George's turn to figure out her future, that college was George's next right step. Every path, every option her mother suggested to George only compelled George to dig her heels in deeper and plant her feet firmly on her dream of becoming a music producer.

George hadn't even been aware that this was her dream until she said it out loud to a complete stranger at her mother's Christmas party. But alas, once awake, her dream had yet to dim and the best George could do was hold on as the grit and determination she had inherited from her mother kicked in and kick-started George's next chapter in life.

George spent the first eight months of the year getting to know every single artist, manager, assistant, music producer, and sound engineer on tour, every single person on the talent side of things for every tour she worked with her dad. George convinced Julien to let her leave the sound booth at the start of the new year and let her become the runner for the talent, there to do anything and everything. Anything as long as it got her in the right rooms.

It worked. George was in the right rooms with the right people, meeting everyone, memorizing their names, doing her best to network and make herself known. It was simply a matter of genuinely getting to know everyone she interacted with. Just like she had when she worked sound, when she had worked lighting, instruments, and every other part of the tour, with every subset of the crew. George even got to know the talent's siblings, their parents, best friends, and significant others.

It came naturally to her, and she easily became part of their entourage, part of their team for the tour, someone they felt they could rely on, trust. All that just so that, when the moment came, when there was a rhyme they couldn't find during a late-night writing session in a hotel somewhere in Canada, George was there with a solution. When there was a melody for a bridge that didn't quite work, George was right there, offering up ideas. Most of the acts took her suggestions, surprisingly. About only half of those actually credited her for it. George did not care either way. She was doing the work.

And work she did. When her nebulous hours as talent runner offered her a break, George didn't stop working. She took the hobby she had been doing in secret, all the songs, all the musical tracks she had been working on for the last four years, and she started breaking them down, making them better, writing new songs, making new beats and tracks when she couldn't think of lyrics. George didn't stop for eight months. But it paid off.

When word made its way around the music community that Jon Mackenzie, legend and frontman of rock duo Mac & Tyre, was making music again for the first time in twenty years, word also got around that he was looking for young blood to help him do it. This was it, this was George's opportunity and she was ready. Her application to Mackenzie's program at Willow Studios in London was submitted by midnight the day she heard about the program, the best of her work attached, Julien completely ignorant of the major life decision George had just made on her own.

Sydney was with George when she got the email. She was taking a break, sitting in the upper seats along the wall of an arena somewhere in South America, watching the crew set up for soundcheck when her phone dinged. George jumped out of her seat, nearly jumping into Sydney's arms, screaming until Sydney demanded that she stop and tell her what was going on. George yelled, at the top of her lungs, for the entire crew to hear, "I GOT IN!"

The crew threw a party for her in catering that night, Julien toasting his daughter's massive achievement with a hint of something in his eyes that he did his best to keep hidden from George. That was where George's reverie faltered. It was easy to think about all the hard work she had put in over the last year, the sleepless nights she had given up to her art, her craft, her future. But when it came to Julien, the memories playing in her mind as she rode in the back of the cab caused her vision to blur. It was easier not to think about her dad. Not on Christmas Eve.

The cab stopped just as George pulled herself out of the past. She hopped out of the car with a tip and a "Merry Christmas" to the driver. Hal sat, as he usually did, in the little security cabin at the front gates, keeping watch, authorizing who came and went, master of the wide iron gates that kept out those that did not belong. George waved to him as she scanned her ID badge at the pedestrian gate and headed for the front glass doors that led into the studio. Hal was yawning as she passed by, his night shift almost over. If he thought it odd that George was arriving to work on Christmas Eve, his query never made it past his yawn.

The large atrium was empty, the front desk abandoned, everyone but the security staff given the next two days off to celebrate the holidays, the studio only remaining open for those who didn't have anywhere else to go. The early morning winter light shone through the two-story high wall of glass that made up the front of the building, the sun shining down in beams onto the thick green carpet underfoot. It was quiet in the building, George's soft whistling the only sound rising up to disturb the atmosphere. Her feet led her where she always went, to the place that had become a second home since she had arrived in London back in September, a place she frequented more than her little apartment in the city.

It was too quiet in her apartment all alone. London did not exist at the same volume as New York nor was it anything like a speeding tour bus or busy hotel. Her little apartment was an entirely new place to exist for George and four months into her internship, she was still not used to it. Something about its sameness got to her.

And so the studio had become her home. And not just Willow Studios, but studio #9, the smallest out of the long line of studios that ran down a dark hallway, off the main atrium of the building. The last one in the row, the littlest room, with just enough space for an old love seat, an engineering desk, two rolling chairs, and a recording booth that barely fit a standing microphone and a person. This had become George's safe space.

The studio was dark with low lighting but George didn't mind. She spent most of her time there at night anyway. She had quickly figured out a routine in London that worked for her. John Mackenzie (or Mac, as everyone called him) didn't show up to the studio until noon and so George showed up at eleven forty-five. Mac left the studio, every day, precisely at eight in the evening and so did the rest of the interns. George left then too but only to grab something to eat from the local pub down the street. After eating, she came right back, waved to Hal, got settled in, and worked until three in the morning, or whenever it was that her brain started to go fuzzy and her eyes started to feel heavy. It was then that she took a taxi back to her apartment, passed out, got up, showered, and started the same routine all over again. It worked for her.

The studio felt strange that Christmas Eve morning, the building absent of any sound or vibration, George being the only person there. She was used to this sensation at night but not during the day. She did her best to focus on her work, the reason why she had woken up at ten that morning, determined to get in at least a little bit of work done before heading to Felix's house for the evening. She was grateful when, even after jumping at the sound, she heard someone else arrive at the studio. She was already headed out to see who it was by the time they started calling out "Hello? Is anyone here?"

George found world-renowned music producer Anton Kaufman standing in the atrium, his head of curly black hair looking up to the second floor and then all around, calling out to see if there was someone, anyone, there. When George stepped out of the shadow of the hallway and into the light of the atrium, Anton's black round glasses found her and a crooked smile broke across his face as he breathed a sigh of relief.

"Perfect. Someone."

Anton crossed the room to meet George. Her steps had slowed once she released who was calling out for attention, the small part of her that still got star-struck suddenly growing three times. Anton's suitcase was left to sit patiently in the middle of the lobby, his messenger bag swinging in a counter-movement to the rest of his body as he hurried over.

"You must be the intern Mac sent."

He said it as a statement. George didn't open her mouth to correct him. Calvin, one of George's new peers, was the intern Mac had instructed the day before to show up early at the studio and wait for Anton. But the empty atrium when had George arrived spoke volumes in its silence, its emptiness, its lack of Calvin. George nodded.

"I'm helping Mac with a few songs on his new album. He said he'd have someone here to get them for me?"

His words came out rushed, as did the hard drive from his messenger bag as he thrust it in George's direction. George was finding her voice. Anton's hurried, frenzied energy was helping her bypass her awe and step into her professional reserves.

"Of course. Yes. That's me. I can do that for you."

George hated that she sounded like a robot but she took the hard drive and started up the stairs leading to the second floor and the main recording studio of the building. Anton was shorter than her, she had noticed almost immediately, but he kept up. He kept chatting in the same hurried way as they headed upstairs.

"I appreciate you showing up here on Christmas Eve. I've got a plane to catch in like an hour and I couldn't get here yesterday because of this other... thing... Anyway, thanks for helping out."

George nodded and let herself into the long, deep, dark studio that ran the length of the second floor. Beyond the long wall of windows that lay on the other side of the room sat the orchestra room, a recording studio two floors high and big enough to hold an orchestra. This was the studio where Mac had first set up camp back in September as it could hold all fifteen of his interns. George took the captain's chair as they all called it, Mac's big comfy rolling chair, and turned on the main computer.

The light from the screen lit up her face and she could feel Anton staring at her from the chair next to her. She didn't look his way. She knew the look of recognition that would read on his face and she didn't want to have that conversation, not now, not again. But have it she was destined to when Anton uttered those two words George had been bumping into, time and time again, ever since September.

"Burns, right?" he asked.

George couldn't blame him for asking. She was the younger, female version of her dad and Julien Burns had been recently nudged back into the minds of the public for the first time in decades when the televised broadcast of that year's Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame induction ceremony had been aired. Julien's band was inducted. George, her mother, and her sister had all sat front and center to cheer him on. It was the last thing they had done as a family before George left for London.

Mac had recognized her that first day. Despite George's best efforts to leave her parents, her heritage, and the reputation it carried with it behind (even going so far as to submit her application under the pseudonym George Briggs), John Mackenzie took one look at her and uttered those same two words. "Burns, right?"

George had corrected him once, telling him her name was Briggs but Mac took to calling her Burns and from that day forward, hadn't stopped. Her fellow interns soon caught on and realized who she was, who her parents were. As if they needed more reasons to look down on her, her being the youngest by two years and the only one who hadn't gone to college. Mac was the only one in the program who took her seriously.

"People usually just call me George," George finally replied after suppressing a sigh. She focused extra hard on the program before her as she pulled up the songs she had overheard Mac tell Calvin he wanted Anton to have.

"I'm a huge White Rabbit fan," Anton said.

George 'hmmed' and kept working.

"What's Mac teaching you guys here?" Anton asked, looking around, spinning in his rolling chair one full rotation.

"Songwriting, music production, sound engineering, mixing, mastering, vocal arrangement...."

Anton's laugh cut her off.

"Oh, yeah," he said. "Sure. You know, the basics."

George granted him a glance and found a contagious look of amusement in his eyes.

"Isn't that how you learned everything you know?" She asked.

"Music production from the ground up from one of the greatest musicians living? Yeah, no, not even close. Everything I know about music production I learned by trial and error. Same thing with vocal arrangement. Everything else I have to hire out."

George shrugged. "It won't hurt to know how to do everything in this industry."

"Are you planning on becoming a songwriter like Mac?"

"Music producer, actually."

George held her breath, waiting for his reply. She was the only girl in the program, the only girl who had applied. The name might have been a misdirect as it read George Briggs but no one at the studio sent her packing when she showed up that first day.

"Hmm... is that so?"

George glanced over. Anton was wearing a similar expression to the one Jayden'd had, seemingly trying to remember every music producer he had met, worked with, trying to see if any of them had been female and under forty.

"If there isn't a spot for you at the table," George said, straightening up in her seat, "Make one."

"You know Jayden," Anton replied. It wasn't a question.

George didn't say yes, she did know Jayden, that she had met him exactly one year ago today, that their weird fifteen-minute interaction had kicked started her ambition and drive and had led her here. She didn't say that she had only seen him once since then, that she had gotten into Mac's internship by then, that she could tell him with no lack of cockiness that she was making a space at the table, that his team then contacted her for three of her best songs to possibly be used on his newest album and that she hoped he did use them but that she hadn't heard anything since.

She didn't tell Anton any of that. Instead, she just said, "I know Jayden."

Their time was coming to an end. Anton seemed entertained enough by their conversation that his rush and anxiety to catch his flight had dissipated during their time together. George finished exporting Mac's songs and stored them away on Anton's hard drive, ejecting the device from the computer but holding it in her hands for an extra long moment, aware of Anton's hands extended out to her, waiting for her to give him back his hard drive.

George saw an opportunity. Or at least an opportunity to make an opportunity. She had spent fifteen minutes with Anton but she had a feeling he'd go for it. At least, she hoped he'd go for it. She wouldn't know unless she took her shot.

"I'll give this hard drive back to you," George said slowly, her confidence growing with each word, her arm retreating away from Anton. On instinct, his hand followed but he froze and met George's eye when she spoke. "I'll give this back to you, and to say thanks," (saying thanks sounded better than 'I'll only give this back to you if...'), "Since I took time out of my Christmas Eve to come help you out, to say thanks... you'll listen to my album."

The looks that crossed Anton's face went annoyance first, then frustration as he glanced at the clock on the wall, and then landed on that look of amusement again. He sighed and leaned back into the depths of his office chair, looking at George for a long moment, scrutinizing her, watching her breathe, waiting for her to flinch. It was a good thing George wasn't breathing.

"You're gonna go far in this industry, kid," he finally said, blinking first, breaking their moment of tense silence. "Yeah. Sure. Why not? I'll give your project a listen."

"Really?"

George's voice almost cracked on the word. Almost.

"Sure! You helped me out. I'll help you out."

Anton extended his hand towards her again. George's hand retreated. It was too easy. Anton couldn't be that amiable.

"You swear?" she asked.

Anton laughed. "You want me to pinky swear or something? Yes. I swear. If you give me your project, right now, before I leave, I swear I'll give it a listen. I'll even give you feedback."

George stared at him for a long moment, daring him to blink, to flinch, to retract his promise. He didn't do any of that. All she saw in his face was genuine honesty and George felt a strange feeling in her gut, a feeling that told her to trust him.

George's hand slowly advanced until it placed the hard drive back in his hand.

"I'll send you what I got," she said, her voice unsure.

"I look forward to it." He still sounded genuine. George kept looking for a hint of deception but couldn't find one.

"I'm guessing this is a solo project of yours?" He asked, getting up from his chair, stowing the hard drive away. "You're trying to make it as a singer-songwriter-producer type thing? That might help with the whole music producer thing if people also see you as a singer. It'll be easier to digest."

"It's not mine," George said, standing, speaking quickly as he was already leaving the room. "I'm producing it for a friend of mine."

Her words made it sound like she had more than one friend. Sydney might have counted but in London, Felix Ramirez was her only friend.

"For a friend of yours? So it's not yours?"

George shook her head.

"Who is this kid?" Anton asked. His retreat was put on pause temporarily as his interest was piqued.

"A busker. The busboy from the local pub. Felix Ramirez."

"Is he any good?"

George's mind flew to the first time she had seen Felix. He had been playing for no one out on the corner outside the studio. Just him and his guitar, his eyes closed and his voice belting, as if he was standing on a stage somewhere else in front of a crowd of thousands.

"Very good," was the best way George could think to describe him.

"Okay, then. Now, I'll definitely give it a listen." Anton nodded and restarted his retreat. He paused in the doorway, glancing back at her where she stood frozen in place.

"Keep up this kind of behavior," Anton said, lifting his hard drive to refer to what he was talking about, "And you'll soon be taking my job. I can't wait to see it."

His smile was wide, the light in his eyes laughing. George couldn't speak so Anton left her there speechless, returning to his suitcase downstairs, hurrying off to some plane he had to catch to go somewhere. His parting words landed heavy at George's feet. She didn't even know what to do with them. But she couldn't fight the smile that broke across her face. Those words, his promise to listen to her work, they were the best birthday presents George had ever gotten. She didn't think her day could get any better.

*

George's career-high didn't last long. The excitement of meeting Anton, getting to talk to him, getting him to listen to Felix's album, all of it served as a nice short-term distraction from why she was wide awake at six in the morning and couldn't turn her brain off. There was a reason George was at the studio, alone, on the morning of Christmas Eve, and it wasn't just because her little studio apartment was too quiet and she had nowhere else to go, nothing else to do.

No, George had some unresolved emotions that seemed to be growing thin on patience and were demanding they get resolved. All of George's distractions, her work on music, her interaction with Anton, the aftermath of her interaction with Anton, the replaying of every word she had said in front of the greatest producer of her generation, all of it melted away, minute by minute, in the back of the cab that drove her from one side of London to the other. George was heading to Felix's aunt's house to spend Christmas with him and his family and that was the problem. Felix was the problem.

George didn't know when it had happened, when the feeling down in her gut had shifted but trying to pin down dates and timelines would do her no good stuck in a cage of emotion and confusion when it came to Felix. Felix, her only friend in London. It was the worst-case scenario.

George would have sat in the back of the cab for an extra long moment, gathering up what courage she could find, staring up at the black-painted front door of Felix's aunt's house if her cab driver hadn't pulled her out of her reverie, demanding his fee.

The cold wind of the quiet street brought George back to reality as did the brusque manner of the cab driver. Too soon she was standing in front of her friend's house, about to spend Christmas with him and his family. She had to pull her brain out of this haze it kept wanting to escape into and put aside all the feelings that were begging to be recognized, named, acknowledged something! There was no room for them right now.

George ascended the narrow brick stairway, her backpack filled with her computer, pajamas, and a change of clothes for the next day, her hands full with a poinsettia in one hand and a box of European cookies in the other, both of which George had picked up the day before after a quick check-in phone call with Vivian. Vivian had heard her daughter's plans for her birthday and the day after and made sure George remembered her manners when going to someone's house for the first time as an invited guest. Vivian was six thousand miles away, George hadn't seen her mother in four months, they rarely talked, and yet somehow Vivian was trying to micro-manage George's life.

This specific instance of micro-management George was grateful for because it kept her hands occupied when Felix opened the front door.

"Georgie!" he cried. The only person other than Lily that George let call her that stood with his arms open wide, his body leaning for a hug. George's full hands kept that from happening (much to George's relief) and Felix dropped his arms to help her with her stuff.

"Come on in," he said, standing aside to let George enter.

If Felix was feeling the same turmoil of emotions in his chest that George currently felt rioting in hers, the unease of being around someone she wasn't sure how she felt about, the nervousness of being in a stranger's house, the trepidation of stepping into a social situation she had never been in before, all of it whipping itself up into a frenzy, pounding in George's chest, Felix didn't let any of these possible feelings dampen his smile. George had found few things in the four months of knowing Felix that ever did.

George knew he looked just like he had the first time she had spotted him, her first day at Willow, him busking outside on the street corner, her standing across the street, watching. George knew that. It had only been four months. It wasn't like his eyes had morphed into a darker shade of green, or he had grown a few inches taller, being already taller than George. The most that could've happened in the last four months was the length of his light brown curls growing longer, hanging further over his forehead, his unconscious habit of shaking his head to get them out of his eyes and then pushing them up when that didn't work, only getting more frequent. That was the only logical change that George could think of and yet Felix felt different to George. Again, that was the problem.

Felix led George into the house, showing her where they'd be camping out for the night (a warm, welcoming living room with a large L-shaped couch positioned in front of a real wood-burning fireplace and two walls of books, overseen by a large evergreen, neatly decorated, standing in the front window). He then showed her the dining room where four place settings were perfectly arranged (to such a level of excellence George was hard-pressed to find a single flaw Vivian would have been able to pick out), taking her to the kitchen at the back of the townhouse where a beautiful woman who looked to be in her early forties was standing at an island, chopping potatoes. Felix introduced George to his aunt, Carmella, and his aunt to George, calling her, for the first time since they had met, Georgiana.

Carmella was quick to get both of them to work on the meal for the evening, handing out commands with ease, setting George up to help her chop, and putting Felix on dish duty. The last thing George had expected when she had first approached Felix back in September was that she would be standing in his aunt's kitchen, helping her make tamales for dinner, with plans to spend the night and all of Christmas day there. George's original intention in approaching Felix with the idea of working together was simply to beat out Calvin and his ego.

Everyone in the internship program knew who Felix was. Not only did he busk, every day, outside the studio, playing a mix of covers and his own original music, but he was also a busboy at the pub down the street where all the interns regularly went for dinner.

The other interns were inseparable, George was the only outsider, her age and heritage making her so. When they all headed to Andre's Place down the street every night after getting off of work, the other interns took up two booths and a table in the corner of the room while George sat at the bar, overly aware that she was not welcomed at their table.

Andre's was a small neighborhood establishment run by Andre Brocker and his much younger, sister, Benjamina. Benjamina knew all the interns and even made sure to get to know George. She seemed to know everyone and everything. Andre's pub wasn't all that big, just one room with enough space for a couple of tables, a row of booths in the back, and a bar that ran the length of the wall opposite. Andre's was small enough that everything happening across the room, George could hear from the bar.

So, when she heard Calvin call Felix over early on their first few weeks at the studio, heard Calvin start to chat with Felix, get to know him, and ask him about his music, George knew she had to do something. She knew exactly what Calvin was doing and she knew exactly the kind of guy he was.

Mac had encouraged all of the interns to take advantage of the studio while they had it all to themselves. He encouraged each of them to find talent in the local London music scene and start helping local musicians produce their music. He had the entire place booked out for the internship and was letting the interns have a run of the place. In her two weeks there, George had noticed she was the only one going back to the studio at night after work to get in some solo studio time. And hearing Calvin talk up Felix set off a million and one warning bells in her brain.

All she could see in Calvin were the guys she had toured with that year, the ones who had heard her suggestions when they were stuck looking for a rhyme, used it, and then pretended like they had come up with it on their own. The guys George had toured with her whole life, who bossed around the crew and left green rooms a complete mess. Calvin was just another one of them and George wasn't going to let him anywhere near Felix and his untapped well of incredible talent.

The first words George ever spoke to Felix were the very next day. Lunch was provided at the studio but George used her half an hour off to walk down to Andre's, aware enough of Felix's schedule to know that he only busked until two p.m. and then headed to work from there. She found him setting up tables in the lowlight and spoke without introducing herself, without even waiting for him to look up.

"Don't work with Calvin."

Felix looked up. He didn't say anything, he simply stared her down, silently daring her to explain further.

"Don't work with Calvin," She said again. "Work with me instead."

"Why you?"

It wasn't a condescending question. It sounded nothing like the words and phrases that played on repeat in George's head when she thought about her future and talking to artists and label managers, the conversations she knew she was one day going to have to have to get anywhere in this industry. Felix's two words were neutral, curious.

"Because you have an incredible talent with the guitar, a remarkable voice and you're not a bad songwriter. That sort of talent shouldn't be wasted on someone like Calvin. For talent like that, you need the best."

"And you're the best..." Felix replied.

"No," George said. Her honesty seemed to confuse Felix, his eyebrows pulling together underneath his mess of curly hair.

"I'm not the best," George continued. "But I will be."

Their five-minute conversation ended with a handshake and an agreement to meet up at the studio when Felix got off work. That first studio session led to nightly studio sessions for the next three months, filled with endless arguments over lyric choices and producing ideas, ending ultimately in a friendship. A friendship first, but now, maybe, something deeper, George feared.

Felix and George vibed. There was no other way George could describe their relationship to Julien during one of their infrequent phone calls. They rarely agreed but that didn't seem to matter that much. She knew everything about rock, alternative rock, classic rock, and the foundations that made up what music was now. Felix knew everything there was to know about pop and folk from the last twenty years. They argued over which genres were the best, which eras, which artists. They were able to agree that they had to listen to each other's suggestions as George argued that the mix of their styles could be what was going to make his album good, maybe even great.

The only artist they did agree on was Wes Keats and the Faded Relics.

George had never met someone like Felix, she realized unconsciously, watching him as he helped his aunt, as he sat across from her during dinner, as he laughed the loudest during their round of games in the living room after dessert, as coffee was served. George couldn't help watching him. Everything about him felt so unfamiliar and confusing o and yet comforting and safe. Their friendship, the one that had bloomed during endless late nights, in that dark little studio, when the two of them were so tired they started laughing at everything, when they fought over vocal arrangements, when they stood in the recording booth at various angles to the microphone to record what they hoped would sound like a choir, all of it was the best thing George had experienced in her life so far. And she had seen the Faded Relics live multiple times.

Meeting Felix's aunt that day, meeting his uncle when he came home from work (the accounting world didn't account for the holidays was the joke he made when he shook George's hand), eating the best food George'd had in a long while, eating a home-cooked meal for the first time since moving to London, playing games, enjoying the Christmas music that played on a constant loop, admiring the row of stockings hanging from the fireplace and feeling touched that there was one hanging there just for her, all of this helped distract George just enough that she could forget the unresolved tension that had been living in her chest for the past few weeks.

George had noticed the tension building in her chest for the first time when she started listening to her and Felix's unfinished tracks, what they had so far, on her commutes to the studio each morning. They had accumulated enough that she felt the need to start getting an idea of the album as a whole. This weird new feeling grew every time she could pick out her voice and Felix's harmonizing in the background vocals, every time she heard the same song produced two different ways as a way to settle an argument to see whose idea was better. The feeling grew to the point where it felt like someone had placed a huge weight on George's chest and never was that weight heavier than it was late that Christmas Eve night.

Carmella and her husband, Jeff, had gone upstairs, the food and games having tired everyone out. George and Felix were left to do dishes and make their beds on the L-shaped couch. Felix offered George the arm that faced the fireplace but she claimed instead the arm that faced Felix. The only light in the room was the warm glow from the Christmas tree wrapped up in red, green, yellow, and white lights. The fire had died down to a deep red and black. The Christmas music still played softly in the room and as George lay in a stranger's house, facing her best friend, she found she couldn't breathe. Felix whispered into the night, offering up yet another distraction from her feelings. He seemed reluctant to go to bed just yet, even as the clock inched closer and closer to midnight.

"How's your dad doing?" He asked in a whisper.

Here was the problem with Felix, George realized. He cared. He cared about her. He cared about her relationship with her father, he cared about the weight of her newfound ambition, about her hopes, her dreams, about the mountain that felt insurmountable that she was going to have to climb to get to where she wanted to go. He cared about all of it.

Laying there, on his aunt's couch, watching Felix as he watched the fire, George felt at peace. It was like they were back in their little studio at Willow, the lights low because they were never that bright to begin with, the two of them swapping stories, sharing their feelings, baring their souls to one another to get the best material possible for the song they were working on.

But there was no song to work on that night. And yet, Felix still wanted to know.

"He's...alright." Those two words came out with such hesitancy because George realized as she said them that she didn't know how Julien was doing. Not really. She hadn't seen him in four months which was the longest they had gone without seeing each other since she was a kid and Julien started working on tours.

"He called me this morning," she said.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

George felt a well of emotion start to rise in her throat and travel to her eyes. Gosh, her feelings were a mess.

"He took the job," she said into the low light.

"Oh."

In that one simple, single-syllable word, George knew Felix understood exactly what George was feeling.

Julien hadn't done well alone on tour without George. He had never said it outright but when George called him, the loneliness in his tone was hard to miss, even with all the enthusiasm he piled on top of it, all of the excitement over George's new chapter in life he tried to force into his voice. George could hear it, underneath everything else, she knew it was there.

She didn't know about the job in LA for a long time. Julien purposefully didn't tell her. When he had reconnected with his bandmates back in August at the Rock'N'Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, the lead singer had offered him a job at the record label he had started. It was a desk job, mostly. Artist management was how Julien described it. And it was in LA.

He was already in contract negotiations when he told George. George hadn't known what to say then and she still didn't know what to say that morning when Julien called her to say they had finalized the deal. He was moving out to LA after the New Year.

"Yeah," George said again, still at a loss for words but not a loss for emotion.

"Did I ever tell you about my Abuela?" Felix asked after an appropriate period of time had passed.

Felix had told George about his abuela. He had told her everything about his family. How he was an only child, second-generation American, how he grew up in the Bronx, a city kid just like George. He even told her how his grandparents had immigrated to America from Mexico when they were first married, how they had started a restaurant in Queens that his mom and dad now ran with the help of all his cousins. He had told her how guilty he felt for pursuing music, spending family money taking piano lessons and guitar lessons in the city, how he felt guilty about moving to London to try and find a break somewhere, somehow, instead of helping out at the restaurant, continuing on his grandparent's legacy. George had heard it all and yet she wanted to hear it all again.

"I think so," George answered. "But tell me again."

And so Felix did. He talked about growing up in the Bronx, about life with a million cousins that were always around, about the Saturdays he spent on the subway riding into the city for music lessons while all his friends had soccer games. He talked about New York a lot, how he missed his old neighborhood, his childhood home, his friends, his family. But he also talked about how he felt it was all worth it. Because if he hadn't come to London, he wouldn't have met George, and he wouldn't have gotten the chance to actually make music.

The low burning embers from the fire glowed in his eyes as he talked and George couldn't help but stare. When she had first met Felix, first seen him from across the street, outside the studio, she couldn't help but think how young he looked. Only twenty then, twenty-one now, he felt so much younger than Jayden, younger than the musicians George had toured with. He was her age, sure, but still, he felt so much younger.

Lying there, on his aunt's couch, watching him talk about his family, his friends, his life, George was struck by three things.

The first being that he wasn't a kid. The way he talked, about the hardships his parents faced, the hardships his grandparents faced, even the troubles he had gone through in his own life, there before George was a grown man, not a kid. Not even close.

The second thing that struck George about Felix in that moment was how lucky she was to have found him, that he found her, that they had each other. Even if just as friends, as much as it pained George to even think about it, both imagining someday maybe being more or maybe just staying friends, as long as Felix was in her life, George counted herself lucky.

And the third thing that struck George? As the clock on the mantlepiece chimed the hour and midnight landed, bringing with it Christmas Day, as George's eyes started to close, her brain being lulled to sleep by the sound of Felix's soft warm voice, George felt at peace, comfortable, for the first time since moving to London.

The third thing struck as she lay there on that couch, with Felix right next to her. George felt at home. Felix felt like home.

A/N:

Okay! Chapter two! What are we thinking so far??

You guys know me and formats (I mean, you would if you've read my books Five Years of Fame, I'll See You Soon and Love Like the Movies, all of which I highly recommend). What do we think about this format?

George is a character I came up with back in 2017! Yes! That long ago!

I stumbled across George while I was struggling to write the first draft of Five Years (Reeve and George are my main pop girlies, for sure, as you'll come to see). George was a way to still have fun writing while struggling with Reeve. The first draft of George (which will never see the light of day, I am sorry) was long and easy and emotional and I just fell in love with this character.

However, due to life and health reasons, George had to be put on hold for awhile. Seven years, to be exact.

Over the last seven years, I have tried to write George six different times, in six different ways. None of them worked. They all only made it so far and just sat on my computer (at least, they did until now.....but I don't want to spoil anything quite yet. Stay tuned.)

Finally last fall I came up for a format and storyline for George that would be so easy to write, it would have been like falling off a log.

And my initial response to this idea? 'Nah, too easy!'

Yeah, Maria! That means that's the one you should write!

When I finally came to my senses and realized just how easy it would be to write this new version of George, I got right to work. This version took me four weeks to write and nine months to edit (it's been...a year.)

And here we are! I'm so excited to finally be able to share my Georgie girl with you!