Updated Mar 28, 2026 • ~7 min read
Chapter 23: Portland
The meeting was in a conference room at the hotel — the kind of space that existed in every upscale hotel in every mid-size city, with its round table and its credenza with a coffee service no one had touched and its window with an aggressively neutral view of the parking structure next door.
Camille Foster had come from New York.
That was the first thing Petra told Maya when she knocked on her door at nine that morning: “There’s a Meridian rep here from New York. She came specifically. She wants a meeting this afternoon.”
Maya had been sitting at the desk in her pajamas working on a melody fragment that had woken her up at six, and she’d written down the shape of it in her notebook before it dissolved. She looked at Petra. “Meridian.”
“The A&R director. Her name is Camille Foster. She’s been in the building since eight, which means she took a red-eye, which means this isn’t a casual conversation.”
Maya put her pen down.
Camille Foster was thirty-four and looked like someone who had been underestimated in meeting rooms for ten years and had developed a particular economy of manner as a result. She dressed well in the kind of well that involved no visible effort, and she had the handshake of someone who was making a point of not making a point. She poured herself coffee before she began, which Maya recognized as a power move — the performance of ease, the message being: *I’m not nervous. Are you?*
“You’ve been one of the unexpected stories of this tour,” Camille said. “I don’t mean unexpected as a slight. I mean unexpected as a data story. Your streams have tripled since Philadelphia. ‘Borrowed Light’ is sitting at fourteen on adult alternative this week. There are videos of you from Boston and Chicago circulating that have nothing to do with your label’s promo budget — just people filming from the audience because they wanted to.”
“I know,” Maya said.
“Good. Then you understand that what I’m offering you is timed. Not manipulatively timed. Just — timed. There’s a window in which ‘Camille Foster flew from New York to meet you personally’ is a story about momentum, and a window in which it’s just a meeting. I’d like to be in the first one.”
She slid a document folder across the table.
Maya opened it without picking it up.
The deal was, on paper, excellent. The advance was a number she had genuinely never seen with her name attached to it, the kind of number that would clear her student loans and her parents’ small restaurant debt and still have something left. Distribution guarantees. Marketing commitment. Tour support provisions that would cover costs she’d been covering herself.
She read past the summary page.
“The co-writing clause,” she said.
“Standard language.”
“It says the label approves all co-writers on any album recorded under this contract.”
Camille didn’t blink. “We’ve found it leads to better outcomes. It protects against — let’s call it interference from parties whose interests don’t align with the artist’s long-term profile.”
“Or it means you decide who I write with.”
“It means we’re a collaborator in that conversation, yes.”
Maya turned a page. “And production approval.”
“Right of first refusal on production choices. You have full creative input. We just—”
“Have final say.”
“We have alignment rights,” Camille said, with the practiced patience of someone who had had this particular conversation many times and knew exactly which word to use to make it more palatable. *Alignment.* As though a veto were just a conversation.
Maya closed the folder.
She didn’t say yes. She didn’t say no. She said she needed a few days.
Camille said that was understandable, and handed her a card, and the meeting ended.
She found Dash on the bus, sitting in the lounge section with his feet up on the seat across from him, reading something on his phone that he put away when she appeared.
She sat down across from him. Pushed the folder across the narrow table.
He opened it. He read faster than she expected, moving through the pages without speaking, and she watched his face and tried not to interpret the small changes in it. The line between his brows when he hit the co-writing clause. The way his jaw shifted, barely, when he got to the production approval section.
He closed the folder.
“Don’t sign it,” he said.
She looked at him.
“The co-writing clause gives them a veto on everything creative that goes into making a record. That’s not just a business term — it means if they decide a collaborator is a liability for any reason, you can’t work with them. The production approval means they can hand your songs to producers you’ve never met and tell you it’s an alignment choice.” He pushed the folder back. “It’s a good advance for a bad deal.”
“The advance is significant,” she said. “To me, specifically. It’s not abstract.”
“I know.”
“The platform is real. The marketing commitment—”
“Is a commitment until it isn’t, and there’s no penalty if they don’t execute it. Read clause fourteen. Meridian’s ‘best efforts’ is language that doesn’t mean anything in court and you wouldn’t have the money to be in court anyway.”
She sat with that.
“You’ve done this before,” she said.
“I’ve been on the other side of it.”
“That’s not the same.”
“No,” he said. “It’s not.” He met her eyes. “I’m telling you what I see in that document. You can do what you want with it.”
She pulled the folder back toward herself and looked at the cover. Meridian Records. The logo was clean and understated, the kind of branding that communicated *we have been around long enough not to need to shout.*
She thought: he’s right about the clauses. She’d known they were bad before he said it.
She thought: but he’s also the person who would benefit from her staying small enough to reach.
The thought arrived without announcement and sat there, uncomfortable. She didn’t say it out loud. She wasn’t sure it was fair and she was even less sure it was wrong.
“You don’t want me locked into a label that can block my co-writers,” she said slowly.
“No,” he said.
“Because of the music.”
“Yes.”
“And for no other reason.”
He looked at her steadily. “What are you asking me?”
“I’m asking if there’s another reason.”
He didn’t answer immediately, which was an answer of its own kind. He looked out the bus window at the Portland loading dock, gray and unremarkable, and she watched the side of his face and waited.
“I told you what I see in the contract,” he said finally. “It’s genuine. The clause is bad for any artist — for you specifically, right now, when your voice is still becoming itself, it’s worse. That’s not a personal position. That’s just true.”
“Okay,” she said.
“But.” He looked back at her. “I’m not a disinterested party.”
The acknowledgment sat between them.
She appreciated that he gave it to her — didn’t smooth it over, didn’t pretend. She also didn’t know quite what to do with it, because caring about someone’s interests and having interests of your own could be the same thing and different things at the same time, and she was not sure which this was.
She picked up the folder.
“I’m not signing anything today,” she said.
“That’s good,” he said.
“That’s not me agreeing with you.”
“I know,” he said. “I’ll be here if you want to talk about it more.”
She took the folder back to her bunk and sat with it and the window and the gray Portland afternoon, thinking about the difference between someone protecting you and someone protecting a version of you that was convenient for them to protect.
She didn’t have an answer yet.
She pulled out her notebook and wrote the melody fragment down in proper notation. Then she wrote underneath it, in small handwriting:
*What do you do when the right advice comes from the wrong mouth?*
She didn’t know. She stared at the question for a while.
Then she started working on the melody again. The work was always there. That was the one thing nobody could clause away.
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