December 24th [COMPLETED]

Part One: Retirement

Six months into retirement, George was bored. She hated admitting it but it was true. She couldn't avoid this depressing fact any longer.

Her career, as she had known it, was over. She had come to terms with this new reality and instead of focusing on what she had lost, at the start of the year, George had been determined to focus on the good. A new chapter was a new beginning, a new way of living, of being. A completely new way of simply existing. George just hadn't thought this new way of being was going to be so difficult.

George and Felix got three months together in New York. A miracle. George had nothing to do and Felix made time for her, determined to make their second chance as a couple work.

He helped her buy furniture and new decor and together, they started making her childhood apartment a home. No longer were the walls of the New York apartment Vivian's clean and minimal white, the decorations and furniture soulless. George and Felix spent the winter rummaging through thrift stores and antique shops, picking out paint colors, and finding treasures to fill George's new home with. And little by little, piece by piece, a home was built by the two of them. Together.

George's contract with Concept was done. It ran up December 31st and George celebrated this fact by forgetting it existed altogether and ringing in the New Year with Felix, Sydney, and Julien. But Concept wasn't finished with her. Not yet.

The problem was Felix's contract with Concept wasn't over yet. His deal was different than hers. They had signed them on the same day all those years ago but they hadn't signed the same deal.

George walked out of Madison Square Garden on Christmas Eve finally free from a burden that had tied her down for too long, knowing Concept no longer held her hostage.

Felix's contract, however, wasn't over just yet. His ended when his world tour did. In November. And after everything that had happened with George, Felix had no intention of resigning. A Concept Records without George Briggs was not a label worth signing with.

And so, in early March, as Felix prepared to head out on tour, George and Felix were faced with a choice. They could split up again and try long distance, again. But this wasn't an option for either of them, not one they seriously considered. They had been apart long enough, they had done the long-distance thing. They weren't interested in separating, not when they had finally found each other again.

No, there was really only one real option. George would go on tour with Felix. Wherever he went, she would go. It wasn't like she had anything else to do. She was retired.

And so, for the first time in years, George and Felix were touring together. Things were as they should be. That's what George was sure of. That's at least what George hoped for. It took George one day on tour to realize that everything about the way she used to tour had changed the second she had let her contract with Concept run out.

Here was the catch: Felix's tour was run by Concept. That meant Concept took care of the staff and the buses and the catering as well as the financials and the booking and the insurance along with everything else in between. Since she was no longer an employee of Concept, George was no longer insured under their policy. Therefore, George could not work sound, she could not work lighting, not even catering. Nothing, she was allowed to do nothing. She was not even allowed to walk out on stage without the tour manager's permission.

But that wasn't all of it. No, it got worse. There was the thing with the music. George could not legally work on music with Felix while on the road. Not in the tour bus, between shows, in hotel rooms late at night, nothing.

Anything they created together, even just a single phrase or chord progression, everything they might have created while on the road belonged to Concept. All of it. While Felix was still signed to Concept, all of his music, all of his ideas, they all belonged to Concept. And George refused to give them even a single note of music. Not ever again.