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He pushed back from the desk, the legs of his chair scraping softly against the hardwood floor. The "work" space, with its blinking cursors and glowing spreadsheets, suddenly felt toxic, the air too thin to breathe. He needed to ground himself. He walked over to his bedroom window and looked out at the familiar, quiet street below.
A car drove past. A neighbor was watering their lawn. The late afternoon sun cast long, peaceful shadows across the pavement. It was a scene of such profound, mundane normalcy that it felt like an anchor. This was the real world. His desk, with its global analytics and impossible numbers, was the ghost world. He stood there for a long moment, just breathing, letting the simple reality of the view pull him back into his own skin.
Then, he unlocked his phone.
His thumb scrolled through his contacts, a vertical timeline of his fractured life. The names were a map of his obligations and affections. Billie.Finneas.Claire (Publicist).Dad. Each one represented a different gravitational pull, a different version of himself. He scrolled past them all until his thumb stopped on one name.
Mrs. Martinez.
He stared at the name. This call had become a quiet, private ritual, a ceremony he performed without fail whenever the noise of the song's success became too loud, whenever the victory felt too hollow. It was a secret penance, a way of recalibrating his own internal compass.
He took a deep, steadying breath and hit dial.
It rang twice, each tone a small, anxious beat in the quiet room. Then she answered.
"Hello?" Her voice was warm, instantly recognizable, but it carried a permanent undertone of weariness now, a faint, fragile quality that hadn't been there a year ago.
Alex kept his own voice soft, deliberately stripping it of the CEO's authority and the ghost's detachment. He was just the neighborhood kid, the one who used to track mud across her kitchen floor. "Hey, Mrs. Martinez. It's Alex. I was just thinking of you. Wanted to see how you were doing."
There was a slight pause, then he heard the gentle shift in her voice as she recognized him, a warmth that was both genuine and tinged with the memory of their shared tragedy. "Alex. It's so good to hear your voice, mijo. I'm okay. Just puttering around. The rose bushes out front are trying to take over the world, I think. They need a good pruning."
He listened as she spoke, her conversation a lifeline back to the real world. She didn't talk about the crushing weight of grief. She talked about the quiet, sad, and relentless reality of life continuing. She mentioned a funny, rambling story her sister had told her on the phone that morning. She talked about trying a new recipe for chicken soup that hadn't turned out quite right. It was this grounding in the mundane, the everyday, that Alex needed so desperately. It was a language he could understand, a reality that didn't feel like it was built on a foundation of ghosts and numbers.
After a few minutes, she was the one to bring Leo into the room, not with a sudden shift in tone, but as a natural, integrated part of her present.
"The yellow roses are finally blooming," she said, and he could hear the faint, sad smile in her voice. "Leo always complained about having to help me with them. Said he was allergic to thorns. The drama that boy could create just to get out of ten minutes of yard work."
She chuckled, a soft, watery sound. And just like that, Leo wasn't a tragic figure from a news report or the subject of a sad song. He was just a boy who hated gardening, a memory brought to life in the space between them, natural and human and achingly real.
Alex's role in these calls was to listen. He never offered empty platitudes or forced reassurances. He knew better. Instead, he offered a memory in return, a small, quiet gift.
"He once tried to convince me that if you watered a plant with soda, it would grow faster because of the sugar," Alex said, a small, genuine smile touching his own lips. "He said it was 'plant adrenaline.' We killed your ferns that summer."
She laughed again, a little stronger this time. "Oh God, I forgot about that. I thought the cat had been getting into them."
They talked for a few more minutes, sharing these small, specific snapshots, rebuilding a mosaic of the boy they both missed, not with tears, but with the quiet, fond truth of his vibrant, goofy personality.
They never discussed the numbers. The billion streams, the Grammy nominations, the magazine covers—those things didn't exist in the sacred space of these calls. But she always acknowledged the song itself, the unspoken reason for their strange, new bond.
"I heard it on the radio yesterday while I was driving," she said softly, her voice growing quiet again. "It was playing at the grocery store last week, in the produce aisle. It's a beautiful song, Alex." She paused, and he could hear the catch in her throat. "He would have… he would have loved it. Thank you."
The two words, so simple, landed with a profound weight. Thank you. It wasn't praise for his talent. It was gratitude for his remembrance. This was the only validation that mattered to him. It was a clean, sharp pain, but it was true.
"Of course," he whispered.
After they said their goodbyes and he hung up, Alex stood at the window for a long time, the phone still in his hand. The setting sun painted the sky in soft shades of orange and purple.
The billion streams no longer felt like a hollow, abstract number. The call had reconnected the success to its source, grounding the incomprehensible data in a real, human emotion. The song wasn't a trophy for him; it was a memorial for Leo. This ritual, this quiet, private phone call, was his penance and his promise. It was his way of ensuring that no matter how big the song got, no matter how many awards it won or how much money it made, its soul would remain forever tied to a boy who hated yard work and believed in soda-fueled plant adrenaline.
He turned from the window and looked at the platinum plaque hanging on his wall. He could finally look at it now, not with pride, and not just with guilt, but with a somber, unwavering sense of purpose. It was a heavy crown, but he was finally learning how to bear its weight.