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‘See that?’ We’re out of Taré’s earshot, but, still, he lowers his voice as he points to my face playing back on the screen. I swallow and focus on my image. There’s a deep crease in between my freshly threaded brows, and my glossed lips are pressed together tightly, eyes narrowed. I look pissed.

I shrug and straighten up. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. All I see is my new skincare regimen working. I look radiant.’

‘Yeah, Kiki, you’re a beautiful woman– that isn’t the point,’ Malakai says brusquely, and there’s a wing flap in my belly that jerks my attention. It’s a feeling that has hibernated for so long I thought it was dead. That’s concerning. The only thing to do with resurrected warmth is to bury it. ‘I know your face. You lookannoyed, Kiki,’ he whispers. ‘We can’t have the warm, empathetic conduit between Taré and our audience look irritated—’

‘Are you trying to police my expression of emotion?’ It’s a complete reach, of course, but he’s right and I hate that. It’s worth a try.

Malakai’s unmoved, blinking at me flatly. ‘Say that again like you don’t believe it’s bullshit.’

I tip my chin up and entertain trying it again, but don’t have the energy and I don’t really remember why or what I’m arguing for. I grudgingly concede with a roll of my eyes. ‘Fine.Fine.I hear you.’I fold my arms across my black baby tee.

Malakai’s brow pops up and he places the back of his hand against my head, his face assuming a look of feigned concern. ‘You got a fever? Because there ain’t no way Kiki Banjo’s conceding defeat to me so easy.’

We haven’t touched– on purpose– since the night we slept together, and the sensation jolts through my form. We’d been working relatively well together in the planning stages since theusof it all was easy to avoid. We were just two co-workers focused on schedule, logistics and direction with very little time for angst or awkwardness. We both meant it when we said we weren’t playing about this job. Now, though, our bodies are forced to confront each other’s presence holistically, with Malakai having to literally look at my face on a screen and judge whether I’m doing a good job or not. I was mentally prepared for the reality of this intimacy, but, physically, my body is on high alert, my cells disorientated, confused by the bordered proximity with a man that used to raise goosebumps from my skin with a single look. Can you use ‘used to’ if the last time that happened was a mere two months ago? Or two hours ago? Or two seconds ago? Or right now, right fucking now.

I tilt my head away from his touch with a light swat. ‘If I have a fever, it’s because I’m having a bad reaction to your micromanagement.’

‘Look.’ Malakai puts his hands together in gentle pleading. ‘All I’m asking is for you to listen to the answer of the question without looking like you want to throttle someone.’

I peer at my face again. It’s unmistakable. I look like I’m fuming. ‘That doesn’t even make sense. Why would Taré’s answer to my question make me angry?’

‘You tell me.’ The way he looks at me is sharp enough to slice through my sinews, creating tracks of hot liquid gold like I’m a kintsugi piece.No really. Tell me.I brace against the exposure and rub my forehead as if I can force my cracks to close and push his searing gaze out. ‘You know what? I just have a lot on my mind today, and we’ve been doing this for hours.’

Malakai’s gaze flicks across me, and I see his director-mode glitch again as he articulates the question I already read in him. ‘What’s on your mind?’

‘It’s personal. We don’t do personal.’ I’m too emotionally disarmed to knit my nonchalance together tightly, and I see Malakai latch on to something that slips through, too fast for me to catch. He steps closer, his heat licking at my goosebumps before they hatch.

‘Scotch—’ He coughs, like the nickname was a tickle in his throat. ‘Kiki. I’m asking you as a colleague.’ He darts a look at Taré, who is still engrossed in her phone. ‘Whatever’s bothering you bothers me. I know what you’re like normally. You’re good at what you do– you’re usually locked in– but you went back to the restaurant for the managerial shift earlier today and ever since you’ve been back you’ve been off.’ The easy, silken incisiveness makes me shiver.

‘It’s fine. I’m fine. I just. . . You’re right. I’m off my game. I’ll snap out of it.’ I roll my shoulders as if shaking my previous grouchiness off, and leave for the sofa, because Malakai’s eyes were softening, the sheen of professionalism dulling, and I can’t afford to sink into quicksand right now or ever.

‘Hey, sorry about that,’ I say to Taré, whose eyes raise lazily from her phone screen.

She waves a hand. ‘Oh, it’s fine. You guys got it. Sorry. I’m just texting my producer about Track 2– there’s some shit missing, right? What is it? Strings? It’s supposed to be sparse, not hollow. . .’ she mutters, before saying out loud, into the speaker of her phone, leaving a voice note, ‘SPARSE, NOT HOLLOW? VIOLA? NOT DAVIS. INSTRUMENT, BUT ACTUALLY WITH HER EMOTIONAL GAMBIT, YOU KNOW?’

I very quickly learned that Taré was meticulous in ensuring Malakai and I care about the project as much as she does, because she needs people to trust whilst she loses herself in the music-making process. She doesn’t want to have to micromanage or think about what we’re doing. She’s heavily involved in the doc to a point, but in the name of energy preservation she has hard boundaries, knowing when to step back and let us do our thing with our own creative process. A heavy sense of awe pushes at my trepidation. I’mhere.Part of this moment. I get to help make it into what it is supposed to be. I allow myself to vanish into that reality. Taré’s designed the studio to be almost an exact replica of the room in which I saw her performance, and I realise that it’s her default custom personalisation– colour, warmth, peace, insularity between the connectedness. Candles are dotted around on every available surface and the air is hued amber and fused with tuberose and jasmine. We sit in front of the vocal booth and control deck, sites from which I’ve witnessed Taré conjure magic in the past fortnight. I breathe the space in, shut the noise in my mind out and home in on Taré. She’s devoid of make-up– having done a six-hour recording session– but her skin is glowing, even more beautiful, in what I realise is her recording uniform of silk pyjamas.

I’ve figured out that they’re kind of like a mood ring, reflecting her temperament of the day. Today they’re a baby pink, so she’s relatively calm, but feeling playful, which means I can go a little deeper, probe more.

Malakai’s read my ease, I know, because I hear him say, ‘Action.’

I lean back into the sofa, tucking my legs beneath me. ‘So you say you want this song– “Lost Boys”– to feel more sparse than hollow, but to me I already get this sense. It feels like a hazy dream. It’s sensual, hedonistic, and listening to it feels like you’re high. It somehow separates psyche from body. What was your headspace when coming up with the feel?’

A mischievous smile sneaks out from Taré. ‘Man, my headspace washigh.That’s how I felt. Disembodied from who I was and who I wanted to be and who people thought I was.’ She almost speaks in a spoken-word cadence, words running into each other and suddenly pulling back.DisembodiedfromwhoIWASand. . . who I wanted to BE. . . andwhopeoplethought I was.

It’s hypnotic, and she lulls me into her space as she adjusts herself so she’s facing me, sitting cross-legged, like we’re at a sleepover.

‘When I made my first album, I was working primarily from a place ofhunger,you know? I wanted to get my voice out there. I had shit to say. I wanted to show the world all my soul because I didn’t know if I would get another chance to. I was fearless because I had nothing to lose. And then when it was successful. . . there’s, like, a funny thing that happens when you achieve your dreams. All the fears you didn’t have come rushing through. You’re, like, stuck in anxiety. You second guess your instincts. Music is what I do, who I am, but you now have all these voices, this audience who is, like, screaming at you through their screens to do this or not do that. It’s out of love, mostly, but at some point it doesn’t matter what it’s from. It’s just noise. And you have all these other people to now answer to other than yourself because so many more people are invested in your success, which at some point has become nothing to do with you and everything to do with them. Theirstakein you. A return of their investment. And you don’t want to be ungrateful, because so many people would kill for this position, so you tell yourself to appreciate the noise, to. . . to acknowledge it. And then you’re justterrifiedabout disappointing people and then you end up incapacitated—’

Taré’s gaze blurs as she goes back to where she was, at the time, no longer looking at me, but looking at herself. I nod, not wanting to break her out of where she is, but wanting to unravel the threads a little more. I venture in gently. ‘So it sounds like you felt as if you were losing yourself. And you have all these different identities warring– which you can hear in the music. . . There are places where you modulate voice– you’re whispering and then you’re belting and in the end it sounds like you’re almost taking control of the chaos. Sexy, sultry. You’re seducing it. It feels triumphant, but also incomplete in a deliberate way. Like this situation is good for now. The answer for now. You’re subduing it, not stopping it.’

Taré smiles and props an elbow on the back of the sofa, resting her chin on her palm. ‘That’s exactly it. And so the song is reflective of a period where I decided to take control of the lack of control. Lean into the inhibition. Sex. Drugs. Drinking. I did whatever till those expectations felt obliterated. Everything was about id. I won’t lie– it felt really good for a while. I wasn’tme;I was just my senses. And one day I just started humming this tune, while I was in a fog, and it became “Lost Boys”. So I was in LA around two years ago, spent a couple of weeks locked in a hotel room with a cute boy who felt just as lost as me. An artist like me finding his way. It was nice having company without having to talk. It wasn’t romantic in the traditional sense, but it was. . . special. This, like. . . unspoken mutual understanding. We were connected in this way of. . .’ Taré pauses and looks into the high vaulted ceiling, looking for an explanation. . . ‘needing to be anywhere else but where we were– and I don’t want anyone to getgassed,like he wasn’t my muse or nothing like that, but that moment just pinpointed a feeling I’dbeenhaving.’

I can’t look at the camera– the interviews are supposed to feel organic, real– and so I can’t see Malakai’s expression, but I feel it. It sinks into my belly like something leaden. Taré hums the melody to herself, eyes closed, swaying with some contentment, before she looks at me, eyes glimmering. ‘So, yeah, this song is about disembodied bodies finding each other, being lost together. It can’t feel hollow. It would defeat the purpose. There was no salvation in it, no, but there was some solace—Fuck.’

Taré’s phone buzzes with a message. ‘Sorry, my girl is on my dick about going to this party that I really am not on. I’m so tired, man– HEY, BABE, WHAT’S THE VIBE? I’M NOT DOING NO PRIVATE MEMBERS SHIT TONIGHT,’ she shouts into the speaker of her phone, presumably sending a voice note to her friend.

Malakai cuts and I look at him to see his eyes slightly glazed, stunned, like he’s being pulled elsewhere from inside himself. Something is askew, and I begin to care too much before I can stop it. When he notices me looking in his direction, he seems to be yanked back out, his face breaking open in a smile so genuine it sends a rush of hot honey through me as he mouths, ‘That was perfect,’ and it shouldn’t feel so good, so satisfying, but it does, and I decide to keep it a secret from myself. I can relish this feeling and not acknowledge the source.