Chapter 3: Family Reunion
The studio on Sunset Boulevard smelled the same as it had twenty years ago—a peculiar cocktail of ozone from old electronics, stale coffee, and the faint, sweet tang of desperation masked by expensive air freshener. Matthew stood in the hallway outside Studio B, his hand on the cool metal door handle. He could hear muffled voices inside, a peal of feminine laughter he recognized instantly as Sara’s. His stomach performed a slow, unpleasant roll.
He’d chosen his clothes with the care of a general preparing for battle: dark, tailored trousers, a simple grey cashmere sweater, shoes that were expensive but understated. Armor. He took a breath, pushed the door open, and stepped into the past.
The studio’s live room was spacious, dotted with music stands and microphones. A worn leather sofa sat against one wall. Sara saw him first. “Matt!” She launched herself from the sofa, a whirlwind of floral print and embracing arms. She smelled of baby wipes and vanilla perfume. “Oh my god, look at you! You haven’t aged a day, you bastard.” Her warmth was genuine, a direct line back to the girl who’d shared bunk beds with him on tour buses, the one who’d held his head over a toilet in Hamburg after he’d drunk too much Jägermeister.
“Neither have you,” he said, hugging her back, and for a moment, it was almost easy.
“Liar. I have five kids. I’ve aged in dog years.” She beamed, holding him at arm’s length. “I’m so glad you’re doing this.”
Before he could answer, a cooler voice cut in. “The prodigal producer returns.” Marie stood by the grand piano, one manicured hand resting on its lid. She was as stunning as ever, blonde hair in a perfect, sleek bob, dressed in athleisure wear that probably cost more than his monthly car payment. Her smile was camera-ready, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “We were beginning to think you’d hired a stand-in.”
“Traffic on the 101 is a biblical punishment,” Matthew said, falling back on professional ease. He crossed the room and gave her a brief, one-armed hug, a careful negotiation between old familiarity and new distance. “You look incredible, Marie.”
“Well, maintenance is a full-time job,” she said, her gaze already flicking past him to the door.
That’s when Matthew felt it—a shift in the room’s atmosphere, a change in pressure. He turned.
Ryan stood in the doorway. He wasn’t alone. A man, tall and broadly built with a pleasant, open face, stood just behind him, a hand resting casually on Ryan’s shoulder.
Time didn’t stop. It did something worse: it folded. The nineteen-year-old Ryan—bleach-blond tips, a shy, lopsided grin, wearing a hoodie two sizes too big—superimposed itself over the man in front of him. This Ryan was older, his hair a more natural, sun-streaked gold, his body filled out with the deliberate muscle of a gym regimen. He wore a simple white t-shirt and jeans. He looked like a soap opera doctor, which, Matthew reminded himself sharply, he was.
Their eyes met. Ryan’s blue eyes, the exact shade that had once inspired a terribly earnest, chart-topping pop song, widened a fraction. There was a flash of something in them—panic? surprise?—before it was shuttered behind a polite, professional smile.
“Matthew,” Ryan said. His voice. God, his voice. Slightly deeper now, but with the same raspy texture that used to whisper secrets in the dark. “Hi.”
“Ryan.” Matthew hoped his own voice sounded normal. He couldn’t feel his fingers.
Ryan stepped fully into the room, gesturing to the man beside him. “Everyone, this is Jonathan. He, uh, he wanted to see the studio. I hope that’s okay.”
Jonathan stepped forward with the easy confidence of a man used to being looked at. He had a handshake that was firm, lingering just a second too long. “Jonathan Andring. Huge fan of the old Fusion4 stuff,” he said, his smile white and even. “Really cool to meet you all.”
Matthew shook his hand. The grip was strong, the skin calloused. A climber? A fitness instructor? An aspiring actor with a fitness-focused social media following. The dossier in his mind supplied the fact coldly. Jonathan was handsome in a generic, carved-from-oak way. He was also, quite clearly, marking his territory.
“Welcome, Jonathan,” Marie said, her tone switching to gracious hostess. “We’re just about to get into the boring logistics.”
Sara gave a little wave. “Hi! I’m Sara. The one who wasn’t on the posters as much.”
The group settled uneasily. Sara and Matthew on one end of the sofa, Marie in a chair she’d pulled to be central, Ryan on the other end of the sofa, a careful two feet of empty cushion between him and Matthew. Jonathan took a seat on a stool by the door, a silent, watchful spectator.
Kelly, Matthew’s agent, bustled in with a producer from the show, a young woman named Chloe with a headset and an iPad. They discussed schedules, camera blocking, the flow of the first live show. Matthew contributed where necessary, his producer’s brain on autopilot. He was hyper-aware of Ryan’s presence, of the way he nodded along, of the faint scent of his laundry detergent—something clean and citrusy, different from the cheap cologne he’d worn at nineteen.
They got to the setlist. “We’re thinking ‘Upside Down’ as the obvious opener,” Chloe said brightly. “Full group number, big energy.”
Matthew’s jaw tightened. He felt Ryan shift beside him.
“Actually,” Marie said, leaning forward. “I’ve been thinking about the narrative. The show loves a story, right? My solo career had the highest peaks after Fusion4. I think there’s a stronger story if I come out first, do a medley of my hits—‘Heartquake,’ ‘Electrify’—then the group reunites on stage for ‘Upside Down.’ It builds anticipation.”
The room went very quiet.
Sara blinked. “You want to open the Fusion4 reunion… with your solo songs?”
“It’s about giving the audience a journey,” Marie said smoothly, her eyes on Chloe. “They see me now, as I am, a successful artist in my own right. Then we go back in time, together. It’s more dynamic television.”
Matthew could feel the old dynamic reasserting itself, the subtle pull of gravitational forces he’d forgotten. Marie, always angling for the spotlight. Sara, dismissed. Ryan, silent. And himself, the peacemaker.
But he wasn’t twenty anymore.
“The show is called Reunion,” Matthew said, his voice calm but firm. “The story is the four of us. Opening with your solo work undercuts the premise. It looks like you’re doing us a favor.”
Marie’s polished smile didn’t slip, but her eyes cooled. “I’m thinking of ratings, Matthew. My name has recognition. Sara’s been baking cookies for a decade, and you’re a ghost in the control booth. No offense.” She waved a hand at Sara, who flushed.
“My cookies have a million followers,” Sara muttered, crossing her arms.
“The point is,” Marie continued, “we need a hook. I’m the hook.”
Ryan finally spoke, his voice quiet. “We were a group, Marie. It should be equal.”
“Equal?” Marie’s laugh was a sharp, brittle thing. “Nothing was ever equal, Ryan. You and Matthew wrote the songs. Sara got the cute girl-next-door lines. I carried the vocals on every single chorus. I carried this group. And the second we disbanded, what happened? My single went to number three. What did you do, Ryan? A straight-to-streaming movie where you played a gay nurse?”
The air left the room. Jonathan stiffened on his stool. Ryan’s face went pale.
A hot spike of anger, old and protective, shot through Matthew. “That’s enough, Marie.”
“Is it?” She turned her gaze on him, all pretense of camaraderie gone. “You disappeared into your studio world. You left us. You left him.” Her eyes cut to Ryan and back, the accusation hanging in the ozone-scented air. “You don’t get to waltz back in now and play the noble peacekeeper about what’s fair.”
The unspoken history in the room thickened, suffocating. Sara looked at her hands. Ryan was staring at a point on the carpet, his jaw working.
Matthew stood up. The movement felt slow, deliberate. “I didn’t write the rules for this circus, Kelly and the network did. But I know a bad arrangement when I hear one. You open with your solo songs, and you undermine the very thing people are tuning in to see. It reads as desperate. It reads as you needing this more than the rest of us.”
Marie shot to her feet. “I am desperate!” The words burst out of her, raw and shocking. “You think I want to be here? Doing this? The streaming numbers are a joke, the algorithms are for teenagers, and my last single sank without a trace. This reunion isn’t my hook, Matthew. It’s my life raft. And I will not let you or anyone else sink it because you’re too busy nursing an ancient grudge to see what this actually is!”
She was breathing heavily, a strand of perfect hair falling from her bob. The silence that followed was broken only by the hum of the studio’s HVAC.
It was Ryan who spoke into the wreckage, his voice hollow. “You always knew how to hit where it hurts, Marie.”
“We all do,” she shot back, sinking into her chair, suddenly looking every one of her thirty-eight years. “It’s the only thing we ever really learned how to do together.”
Chloe, the show’s producer, looked like she’d just witnessed a car crash and was calculating the ratings potential. Kelly pinched the bridge of her nose.
Jonathan stood up, clearing his throat. “Maybe I should give you guys some space.” He looked at Ryan, a question in his eyes. Ryan gave a tiny, almost imperceptible nod, his gaze still fixed on the floor.
As Jonathan passed Matthew on his way to the door, he paused. He didn’t say anything. Just offered a small, tight smile that didn’t reach his eyes—a smile of shared, baffled endurance. See what I deal with? it seemed to say. Then he was gone, closing the door softly behind him.
The click of the latch seemed to release the tension by a single notch.
“We open with ‘Upside Down,’ as a group,” Matthew said, his tone leaving no room for argument. “That’s the non-negotiable point. After that, we can discuss solos, medleys, and narrative journeys.”
Marie looked at him, then at Sara, then at Ryan. The fight had gone out of her, leaving behind a weary resignation. She gave a single, curt nod.
The meeting limped to a conclusion after that, all business, the earlier explosion carefully swept into a corner. As they gathered their things, Ryan approached Matthew. He stopped a few feet away, a safe distance.
“Hey,” Ryan said, shoving his hands in his pockets. “About Jonathan… I should have texted. It was a last-minute thing. He had a free morning.”
Matthew slung his bag over his shoulder. The casual intimacy of Ryan having his boyfriend’s schedule memorized was a small, sharp sting. “It’s your reunion, too. Bring whoever you want.”
“It’s not… he’s not a statement. He’s just my boyfriend.”
Matthew looked at him then, really looked. He saw the fine lines at the corners of those famous blue eyes, the faint shadow of stubble, a tiny scar on his chin he didn’t remember. He was a stranger. He was the most familiar person in the world.
“I know what he is, Ryan,” Matthew said quietly. He remembered Robert’s words: a footnote. Looking at the nervous, beautiful man in front of him, he knew with absolute clarity that Robert was wrong. Footnotes didn’t have this power. “See you at blocking rehearsal.”
He walked out into the Sunset Boulevard sun, the argument still ringing in his ears. But it wasn’t Marie’s words about desperation that echoed loudest. It was his own, thrown back at him. You left him.
The problem was, he’d never known why. And now, twenty years later, standing in the parking lot, the ghost of a pop song haunting him, he realized the question had just become infinitely more complicated. He wasn't just facing a memory. He was facing a man with a boyfriend, a career, and a life built in the shadow of a choice Matthew still didn't understand. And for the first time, the careful story he'd told himself—of first love, clean heartbreak, and moving on—began to crack at the seams.
And for the first time, the careful story he'd told himself—of first love, clean heartbreak, and moving on—began to crack at the seams.
The Hollywood sun felt predatory, pressing down on the back of his neck as he stood in the studio parking lot. He watched Ryan’s car, a sensible silver SUV, pull out onto Sunset and merge into the stream of anonymous traffic. Jonathan was in the passenger seat. Matthew turned on his heel, the asphalt hot under his shoes, and marched back into the building’s sterile, air-conditioned belly.
He found Kelly in the control room, tapping notes into her phone. She looked up, her expression shifting from professional focus to wary assessment in a half-second. “That was a shit-show. Good television, though. Chloe’s thrilled.”
“I can’t do this, Kelly.” The words came out flat, stripped of negotiation.
She put her phone down slowly. “Define ‘can’t.’ Do you have a terminal illness? Has a doctor forbidden you from harmonizing on national television?”
“You know what I mean. It’s a bad idea. It’s corrosive.” He leaned against the mixing console, the cool metal a shock against his palms. “I’m walking away. Buy me out. Fine them. I don’t care.”
Kelly sighed, a long-suffering exhalation. She leaned back, crossing her arms. “Matthew. Look at me. Your signature is on page seventeen, clause four, subsection B. You breach, they sue for production delays, loss of advertising revenue, and general existential despair. It’s a seven-figure number. You are not walking away.”
“It’s a technicality—”
“It’s a business!” Her voice sharpened, cutting through the plush silence of the room. “You are being childish. This isn’t some indie passion project where you get to follow your muse into the sunset. This is a job. A very well-paid job to sing three pop songs you already know with people you used to know. Do the job. Collect the paycheck. Go back to your beautiful house and your rock star boyfriend and your perfectly curated life.” She paused, letting the outline of his own privilege hang in the air between them. “Marie’s right, you know. You did leave. Now you can at least have the decency to clean up the mess you helped make.”
Her words landed like physical blows. He had no rebuttal that wouldn’t sound petulant. He pushed off the console and walked out, leaving her in the dim light.
Outside, he fumbled for his phone. The screen blurred for a second before he found Robert’s name. It rang twice, then connected to a burst of chaotic noise—jangling guitar, laughter, the clatter of what sounded like a cafeteria.
“Matt! Hold on—” The noise muffled, then faded as Robert presumably moved somewhere quieter. “There. Better. In a café. The band is being creatively loud. What’s up, darling? How’s the reunion from hell?”
Hearing his voice, that familiar London cadence wrapped around an endearment, loosened something tight in Matthew’s chest. “It’s worse than hell. Hell has better management. I just tried to quit. Kelly informed me I’d be sued into the Stone Age.”
Robert’s laugh was warm and crackling down the line. “Of course you would be. You signed the thing. I told you to let me look at it.”
“I know, I know.”
“So you’re stuck. Brilliant. Look, Montenegro doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the US, you know. Just saying. I’ve got a mate with a villa there. We could hole up. Live off Indigo Twilight residuals and cheap local wine.”
A real smile, the first all day, touched Matthew’s lips. “Tempting. A life on the lam.”
“Exactly. Very rock and roll. Until then, my love, you are a professional. So be professional. Sing the insipid songs. Nod and smile at the ex. Let the pretty one have her solo. It’s a few weeks of your life for a staggering amount of money. Then you come home, we spend it on something terribly decadent, and we never speak of Fusion4 again.” Robert’s tone softened, the tease bleeding into something more solid. “You’re the strongest person I know. This is just noise. Glittery, poorly-managed, mid-tempo noise.”
Matthew closed his eyes, leaning his head against the sun-warmed stucco of the building. He could see Robert in some chaotic, vibrant room, the world bending around his chaotic energy, making space for him. He wanted, violently, to be in that space with him. Not here, in this calculated past.
“You’re right,” Matthew said, the fight leaving him in a slow rush. “It’s just a job.”
“There’s my pragmatic man. Now go. Rehearse. And for god’s sake, don’t shag the ex. The tabloids would have a field day, and my ego is fragile.”
Matthew snorted. “Not a chance. His boyfriend looks like he wrestles bears for fun.”
“Even better. I like my competition non-lethal. Call me after. Love you.”
The line went dead. Matthew stood for another minute, the phone warm in his hand, absorbing the city’s relentless hum. Robert’s logic was, as always, infuriatingly simple. It reduced the tangled knot of history to a transaction. Do the job. Get the paycheck. He could do that. He was, after all, a man who built his life on control, on composure, on finishing what he started.
He took a deep breath, filling his lungs with smog and possibility. Then he pushed the heavy door open and walked back into the studio’s twilight.
The live room was set up differently now. Music stands were in place, microphones stood sentinel, cables snaked across the floor in orderly patterns. Sara was sipping water, chatting quietly with a sound engineer. Marie stood by the piano, scrolling her phone, her posture rigid. Ryan was alone, tuning an acoustic guitar, his head bent in concentration.
He looked up as Matthew entered. Their eyes met across the space. No boyfriend now. No audience. Just the two of them and twenty years of silent history in a room built for sound.
The rehearsal producer, a cheerful man with a headset, clapped his hands. “Alright, Fusion4! Let’s take it from the top of ‘Upside Down.’ Remember, we’re just blocking, no pressure. Find your marks.”
Matthew picked up his chart. He walked to his designated microphone, the floor mark a small ‘X’ of gaffer tape. He adjusted the stand, his movements automatic. Ryan stood to his left, Sara to his right, Marie slightly ahead. The opening chords from the keyboard player rang out, tinny through the monitor speakers.
It was the same sequence, the same four-count intro they’d performed a thousand times in youth. His body remembered it before his mind did. Matthew leaned into the microphone, the first lyric forming on his lips—a confession written for the boy now tuning a guitar beside him. The words felt foreign, ancient, and terrifyingly specific.
He began to sing.
His voice, a serviceable baritone trained for harmony, not heroics, cracked on the first sustain. The sound that left the monitors was thin, reedy. He cleared his throat, tried again. The notes were technically correct, mechanically delivered. He sounded like a competent session singer, not a man singing a confession. To his left, Ryan’s voice, softer now but infinitely more natural, wove around his, a ghost of their old blend.
“Okay, good, good,” the rehearsal producer called, his cheer undimmed. “Now, let’s add the choreo. Just the basic eight-count for the first chorus. Remember the box step?”
A young, impossibly supple choreographer named Leo bounded into the center of the room. “From the top, with the beat! It’s simple. Step-together-side, pivot, arm up, smile!”
Matthew’s mind, usually a precise instrument for dissecting rhythm, went blank. The simple pattern Leo demonstrated seemed to involve a disconcerting number of independent limb movements. Production meetings, contract law, harmonic arrangements—these were puzzles he could solve. This was public, physical fallibility.
The music started. Sara moved with a loose, cheerful grace. Marie performed the steps with razor-sharp, disdainful precision, as if deigning to execute a menial task. Ryan moved awkwardly but with a self-deprecating shrug, his eyes often flicking to Leo to copy the next move.
Matthew’s body froze. His step was late. His pivot was stiff, more a military turn than a pop glide. His arm came up a beat after everyone else’s, a jerky, unnatural motion. He felt like a marionette with tangled strings.
“Let’s go again,” Leo chirped. “Matthew, try to relax into it. It’s a pulse, not a math problem.”
But it was a math problem. And he was failing it. Sweat pricked at the back of his neck, unrelated to the studio’s cool air. On the third attempt, he misjudged the space, stepping backward directly into Ryan’s path. They collided, Ryan’s shoulder knocking into his. Ryan steadied him with a hand on his arm, a touch that burned through the cashmere.
“Sorry,” Ryan murmured.
“My fault,” Matthew gritted out, wrenching his arm away.
The producer stopped the track. “Okay, maybe we simplify. Matthew, just the side-step and arm raise for now. We’ll build.”
Humiliation, hot and thick, rose in his throat. He saw Marie exchange a glance with Sara. It wasn’t malicious, just a tired confirmation: See? He was the gears and levers behind the curtain, never meant for the spotlight’s glare. The pristine control he wielded in every other facet of his life was useless here. His body betrayed him, clumsy and uncooperative.
“Again,” Leo said.
The synth intro blared. Matthew forced his foot to move. Step. His leg was a lead weight. Together. He stumbled. Side. The smile Leo demanded felt like a rictus grin, a death mask. The pivot. He lost his balance, catching himself heavily on the microphone stand. The metallic thunk echoed in the sudden silence as someone stopped the music.
Every eye was on him. The sound engineer looked puzzled. Sara’s face was etched with pity. Marie examined a flawless manicure.
That was the spark. The carefully maintained composure, already fractured by the morning’s argument, finally shattered. He saw not concern in their looks, but confirmation of his deepest, oldest insecurity: he was the spare part, the writer, the brain. Not a performer. Never a performer.
“I need air,” he muttered, his voice dangerously low.
He didn’t wait for a response. He turned and stalked toward the door, his movements sharp with fury—at Leo, at the steps, at his own betraying limbs. Most of all, at the entire pathetic spectacle. He shoved the heavy studio door open, the bang of it against the stop echoing down the hallway like a gunshot.
The hallway was quiet, lined with gold and platinum records from other, more competent artists. He walked, his dress shoes clicking a rapid, angry tempo on the linoleum. He didn’t stop until he pushed through the exterior door into a bland, concrete loading area at the back of the building. Graffiti stained one wall. The air smelled of dried asphalt and stale garbage from a nearby dumpster.
He braced his hands on his knees, head down, sucking in ragged breaths that had nothing to do with physical exertion.
The door hinges creaked softly behind him. He didn’t need to look.
“Go away, Ryan.”
Footsteps approached, tentative on the gritty concrete. “Matt.”
“I mean it. Go back inside. Tell them to work around the defective component. Use a hologram. I don’t care.”
Ryan’s shadow fell across the ground beside him. “You’re not a defective component. You’re just rusty.”
Matthew straightened up, turning to face him. The raw anger was a live wire. “Rusty implies I was ever shiny. I was never this. The dancing, the smiling… that was always you and Marie. Sara could fake it. I just… I stood there. I sang my lines and I stood there. And I was happy to do it.” He raked a hand through his hair. “They’d be better off without me. They should just be a trio. The narrative is cleaner. The ex-boyfriend who can’t dance exits stage left. It’s perfect.”
Ryan just looked at him, his expression unreadable. The sunlight caught the faint flecks of grey in his blond hair. “That’s bullshit,” he said, his voice quiet but firm.
“It’s practical.”
“It’s cowardly.” Ryan took a half-step closer. “And it ignores the facts. You wrote ‘Upside Down.’ You wrote ‘Second Star.’ You arranged the harmonies that made us sound like a group instead of four people shouting.”
“That’s production. That’s not performance.”
“It’s the heart of it!” Ryan’s composure broke, just for a second. His voice rose. “Don’t you get it? Marie had the voice, I had the… I don’t know, the cheekbones. Sara had the charm. You had the soul. You were the one who cared if it meant something. You were the heart of Fusion4. We all knew it. Even when you were just standing there, you were the thing we were all orbiting.”
The words landed, not with a melodramatic crash, but with a slow, seismic shift. They bypassed Matthew’s anger and struck the buried core of his younger self. He remembered late nights in tour bus bunks, whispering with Ryan about chord progressions and lyrical truths, about their secret fear that none of it mattered. He remembered the specific gravity of Ryan’s attention in those moments, a validation more potent than any scream from a crowd.
A wave of emotion, sharp and bittersweet, washed over him. It wasn’t just nostalgia for a band. It was a piercing longing for that specific, lost intimacy—the ability to talk to Ryan about anything, from the profound to the mundane, without the minefield of their history, without the silent, watchful presence of a Jonathan.
The defensiveness seeped out of him, leaving behind a weary emptiness. He looked away, at the rolling graffiti tag. “My heart doesn’t know the box step, Ryan.”
He heard Ryan sigh, a soft release of air. “So learn it. It’s eight counts. It’s not neurosurgery.”
“You saw me in there. I’m a lost cause.”
A beat of silence passed, filled with the distant whine of a siren on Sunset. When Ryan spoke again, his tone had changed. It was practical, stripped of the past’s weight. “Leo’s methods… aren’t for everyone. Look, I’m staying in town for this. We could… I could run the steps with you. After hours. One on one. No audience. No pressure.”
Matthew turned his head to look at him. Ryan’s offer was clean, unadorned. A solution, not a sentiment. Yet, the prospect of being alone with him in a studio, his body guided by those familiar hands, sent a treacherous current through his veins. It was a terrible idea. It was the only idea.
Robert’s voice echoed in his head: Just do the job. This was just mechanics. Learning the steps was part of the job.
He nodded once, a short, reluctant dip of his chin. “Alright. Fine.”
“Tomorrow night? Seven? This studio should be free.”
“Tomorrow. Seven.” Matthew pushed off the wall, the decision made. The momentum of the anger was gone, replaced by a nervous, low hum of anticipation. He walked past Ryan back toward the door, pausing with his hand on the handle. He didn’t look back. “Don’t be late.”