Miss Americana and The Hearbreak Princess

Chapter Thirteen - Ours

Rawee ended up staying in a hotel after that first week, and Becca felt like she could breathe a little easier, without feeling like she was doing something wrong just for existing in the same space as her.

Still, she was in a strange mood over the following days, happy with how things were with Freen, but feeling like there was suddenly a wall between her and her mother.

She'd always been able to tell Rawee everything, but now she had secrets from her - big secrets - and she was starting to regret letting her anger get the better of her because somehow, her honesty didn't make her feel better.

That didn't stop her from seeing her mother though, going out for late dinners at fancy restaurants, trying to diffuse the tension between them as they made stunted conversation about Becca's upcoming album, about how she was liking the city and how Richard was thinking about going to Berlin for his birthday.

She never mentioned Freen, and she was happy to keep sneaking around at night, keeping her a secret from her family as well as the world, but the secrets weighed down heavily on her.

As happy and in love as she was, Becca wished that she could share that part of her life with her mum.

When she spoke to Richard on the phone she wanted to be able to tell him about Freen, and she wanted to tell everyone the truth in her songs. Becca wanted to introduce Freen to her parents, fretting that they'd dislike her because she wore the wrong sort of dress or was too overly American, even for her American mother, not because she was a woman.

She wanted a lot of things that she was too afraid to do, and this was one instance where being fearless despite her fears wasn't quite within reach.

So she stayed silent and told herself that she was taking baby steps, letting her family adjust to the idea of her loving women before she showed up with one on her arm and caused an even bigger rift between the splintering remains of her parents' ruined marriage.

She'd thought that everything had settled down for the most part though, her mother just taking her time to come to terms with the news, while Becca took some time to get used to her parents separation, but on Thursday morning, she was playing a few notes at her upright piano out in the open living room when her phone buzzed on the kitchen table.

Climbing to her feet, she covered the keys with the fallboard, closed her journal and padded across the room, hoping that it was Freen messaging her in between takes.

Her hopes sank slightly as she looked down at the message from Chen, and she quickly read over the contents of the text, calling her to a meeting at Chen Records' headquarters in an hour.

Biting back a sigh, she wondered what pressing album matters couldn't wait and walked towards her bedroom to fetch her things.

It would take her nearly an hour to make it to the office building in the congested inner city traffic, and she wasn't dressed to leave the apartment.

Rushing to change her clothes, she jammed her feet into a pair of sandals, grabbed her bag and a light denim Henget, and was out of the door a short while later.

Sitting behind the wheel of her Porsche, she hummed out a vague tune and set her phone to record, making memos as she tried to piece together the music for her latest song.

Over the past few days, she'd written four songs, and one showed real promise as a potential candidate for the album, which was nearly finished and just needed a few more tracks and some final polishing.

The album shoot was scheduled for two weeks' time, her and Chen had already had three different arguments about the album title - she'd wanted to call it Enchanted, for the night she'd met Freen, but he thought it wasn't meaningful enough and she couldn't tell him why it was so she'd settled on Speak Now - and she was stubbornly insisting that she would be able to finish off the album herself in the next couple of months.