When My Ex Handed My Songs to His Mistress

The studio smelled like cold coffee and the faint burn of overworked electronics. I sat at the piano bench in our Malibu house, fingers resting on keys I'd played a thousand times. The demo had taken me three weeks to finish. Not because the melody was hard. Because every line felt like peeling skin.

I hit play.

The track filled the room. Acoustic guitar. My voice layered soft over the top. The lyrics were about the night Chase and I met—back when he was nobody, before the stadiums and the billboards. When he'd walked me to my car in the rain and kissed me under a broken streetlight like we were the only two people alive.

I watched him listen. He sat on the leather couch with his phone face-down for once. His eyes were closed. When the last note faded, he opened them and smiled.

"Beautiful," he said.

My chest loosened. "Yeah?"

"Really beautiful." He stood and stretched, rolling his shoulders. "I'm thinking we get Paloma to punch up the lyrics a bit before we record it. Make it more universal, you know?"

I went still.

"What?"

He was already walking toward the desk where I'd left the flash drive. "She's got a good ear for what connects with people. This is great, babe, but it's a little—" He waved a hand. "Personal. We need it to land for everyone."

I stared at his back. "That's the point. It's supposed to be personal."

"Sure, but—" He picked up the drive and turned it over in his palm like it was a set of car keys. "Paloma can keep the heart and just make it more accessible. She did great work on the last single."

The last single. The one where she'd rewritten my bridge into something that rhymed "fire" with "desire" and got dragged on Twitter for a week.

"Chase." My voice came out flat. "That song is about us. It's not for Paloma."

He sighed. The sigh of a man who's had this conversation too many times. "Naomi. Come on. Don't be like this."

"Like what?"

"Territorial." He shoved the flash drive into his pocket. "You write the music. Other people collaborate. That's how this works. You know that."

I stood. The piano bench scraped against the floor. "I've asked you not to give her my demos. I've asked you ten times."

"And I've told you ten times that you're overreacting." His jaw tightened. "Paloma's talented. She's hungry. She's—"

"She's twenty-four and she can't write a decent hook to save her life."

His face changed. Something cold moved behind his eyes. "That's unfair."

"What's unfair is you handing her everything I make and pretending it's collaboration."

"Jesus, Naomi." He laughed, sharp and mean. "Are you seriously jealous of a kid?"

I looked at him. At the man I'd spent seven years building. The man whose first album I'd written in a fever dream of love and ambition. Whose second album I'd financed when the label hesitated. Whose face was on a billboard in Times Square above my melody, my words, my heartbeat.

"If you walk out that door with my music," I said quietly, "we're done. I mean it this time."

He stared at me. For three seconds, maybe four, I thought he might stay. Might set the drive down. Might choose me.

Then he shook his head. "You're being dramatic."

He walked out.

I stood in the center of the studio and waited for something to break inside me. For tears. For rage. For the impulse to chase him down the hallway and beg him to understand.

Nothing came.

I sat back down at the piano. My hands were steady. I played a single chord, let it ring out into the empty room, then stopped.

Ten minutes passed. Maybe more. I wasn't counting.

Then I stood, walked to the desk, and opened my laptop. The resignation letter took four sentences. I didn't apologize. Didn't explain. I attached it to an email to Keegan Black, the label CEO, and hit send before I could second-guess.

After that, it was easy.

I pulled my notebooks off the shelf. Three years of ideas, fragments, unfinished verses. I took the photo of my grandmother from the windowsill. The piano bench cushion I'd bought because the original one hurt my back. The throw blanket I kept over the couch. My favorite coffee mug.

I moved through the house like I was dismantling a stage set. Every item I touched was something I'd brought here, paid for, chosen. Chase had picked nothing. He'd just moved in and let me build the life around him.

Two hours later, my car was packed. I stood in the doorway and looked back one last time. The house looked like a showroom. Clean. Expensive. Empty.

I got in the car and drove to a hotel in Silver Lake. I didn't look back.

Chase came home two days later. I know because he texted me at 11 p.m.: *Where are you? This is childish.*

I stared at the message. Then I turned my phone face-down and went to sleep.

He called the next morning. I let it go to voicemail. He called again an hour later. Then again.

I deleted every notification without listening.

He'd come back eventually. He always assumed I would.

But I was already gone.