The night air whispered across the rooftop of Electric Lady Studios, carrying with it the distant symphony of Manhattan traffic. Beyoncé stood at the parapet, her silhouette carved against the violet haze of city lights, while I nursed a lukewarm coffee that tasted of 3 AM decisions.
"Tell me something," she said, turning to face me. "How did you know?"
"Know what?" The cup trembled slightly in my hand, though whether from caffeine or anxiety, I couldn't tell.
"That bridge section – the exact key change I was thinking about. You had it programmed before I even mentioned it." Her eyes, bright with curiosity and something else – something that reminded me of our first dance at our wedding that hadn't happened yet – fixed on mine. "It's like you're reading my mind, Marcus."
I set down the coffee and moved to the vintage Wurlitzer electric piano someone had inexplicably placed on the rooftop. My fingers found Em9, the chord that had haunted me through two lifetimes:
*Time is a circle drawn in sand
Waves crash, then draw away
Everything I understand
Slips further day by day*
She moved closer, drawn by the melody. The hem of her designer jeans brushed against the weathered wooden floor, and for a moment, I was transported to 2022, watching her accept her fifteenth Grammy in a gown that cost more than this entire building. But that was another life, another story.
"That's beautiful," she whispered. "Is it new?"
"It's... complicated." I let the chord progression resolve, each note a careful step through the minefield of temporal paradox. "Sometimes I think everything's already written. We're just remembering it bit by bit."
She settled beside me on the piano bench, our shoulders touching. In my previous life, this moment never existed. We were both too busy, too famous, too caught in the machinery of success to share quiet rooftop revelations.
"Play it again," she said. "I want to try something."
Her voice, when it joined the melody, transformed my clumsy philosophical meandering into pure gold:
*Every secret that we keep
Every promise that we break
Plants a garden in our sleep
For tomorrow's soul to wake*
The verse spilled from her lips as if she'd known it all along, as if it had been waiting in some dusty corner of the universe for this exact moment. I remembered – or would remember – her singing this to our daughter on quiet Sunday mornings, but that future now hung in the balance, as delicate as the harmony line she was weaving.
"You're different," she said suddenly, her fingers trailing across the piano keys. "From everyone else in the industry. It's like you've seen how this all ends."
The irony caught in my throat. Below us, Rico was probably still in the control room, mapping out release strategies and tour dates, building a future I'd already lived through once. But this version felt purer somehow, unstained by the mistakes I'd spent a lifetime learning from.
"Maybe I just believe in what's possible," I said, the half-truth tasting bitter on my tongue.
She turned to face me fully, and in that moment, I saw both versions of her – the young artist on the verge of redefining an industry, and the legendary icon she would become. Both equally real, equally present.
"Then let's make the impossible," she said, reaching for her phone to record. "From the top?"
The city lights blurred into stars as we worked through the night, crafting something that existed outside of time. Each note was both memory and prophecy, each lyric a bridge between what was and what could be.
In my previous life, I'd learned that success was a lonely road. But here, on a rooftop in 2006, with the woman who would change music twice, I was discovering that destiny worked best when shared.
The last chord faded into the pre-dawn air, carrying with it the weight of unspoken futures and unwritten songs. Sometimes, I realized, the greatest gift of knowing tomorrow is the chance to make today matter more.