4. Senna
— ? —
Senna
Three weeks into the collaboration, and Rocco is a different person.
Not the person he was before the slump - that version of him is gone, I think, worn away by eighteen months of silence and shame.
But he’s alive again in a way I’d forgotten was possible, humming in the shower, staying up late scribbling notes, laughing at things that aren’t funny just because the world has color again.
I should be happy for him. I keep telling myself to be happy for him.
But happiness is hard to manufacture when you’re standing three feet away from someone who’s looking right through you.
I’m in the kitchen on a Tuesday afternoon, pretending to read a cookbook I’ve already memorized, when the studio door opens and Fiorella emerges.
She’s flushed and bright-eyed, practically glowing with the particular satisfaction of someone who knows they’re winning at something.
And she’s wearing a silk blouse I recognize immediately - a dusty rose thing I bought in Paris three years ago, back when Rocco and I still took trips together, back when he used to notice what I wore and tell me I was beautiful.
“Senna!” She spots me and smiles that smile, the one that looks warm if you don’t know her, the one that’s actually just teeth. “I hope you don’t mind - I borrowed this. I spilled coffee on my shirt this morning and this was hanging in the guest closet.”
“That was in the guest closet?”
“Mm-hmm. Tucked in the back. It’s gorgeous, where did you get it?”
“Paris. A few years ago.”
“It suits me, don’t you think?” She smooths the fabric over her hips, turning slightly like she’s modeling it for an invisible camera. “I might have to steal it permanently. You don’t wear it anymore anyway, do you?”
I don’t. I stopped wearing it after Rocco stopped noticing what I wore at all. But hearing Fiorella say it out loud, so casual, so certain - it hits differently. Like she’s already catalogued everything in my life and decided what belongs to her.
“Keep it,” I hear myself say. “It looks better on you.”
“You’re the best.” She beams like I’ve given her a gift instead of a surrender, and I feel something cold settle in my stomach.
“Rocco and I are heading to the label studio this afternoon - they want to hear some of what we’ve been working on.
They’re going to lose their minds, Senna. This is the best work he’s ever done.”
“That’s great.”
“Are you okay? You look tired.”
“I’m fine.”
“You should get out more. Do something for yourself while we’re at the studio. Go shopping, get a massage. Treat yourself.” She says it like she’s being generous, like she’s not the reason I need to escape my own house. “Self-care is so important when you’re in a support role.”
A support role. That’s what I am now. That’s what she sees when she looks at me.
“I’ll think about it,” I manage.
She disappears back into the studio to finish whatever she and Rocco were doing, and I stand there in my kitchen holding a cookbook about Italian cuisine, wondering when exactly I became a guest in my own life.
***
After they leave for the label, the house settles into that particular silence I’ve grown to dread - not peaceful, just empty.
I wander through the rooms like a ghost, straightening things that don’t need straightening, trying to shake the image of Fiorella in my blouse, the casual way she’d claimed it like everything else she’s claimed since she arrived.
I end up in Rocco’s home studio, which is technically our studio, though I haven’t touched the piano in months. The afternoon light slants through the windows, catching dust motes in the air, and I stand in the doorway for a long moment before making myself walk in.
The piano bench is where I always kept my songbook.
The old one, from before - before Rocco, before I stopped writing, before I convinced myself that my music didn’t matter as much as his.
I wrote in it constantly when I was younger, filling pages with melodies and fragments and the kind of raw emotional excavation you can only do when you’re twenty-two and still believe your feelings are important.
I look for it now, suddenly desperate to hold it, to remember who I used to be.
It’s not there.
I check the bench twice, then the shelf where I sometimes move it when I’m cleaning, then the drawer of the desk where old papers accumulate. Nothing. I’m thorough about it, methodical, but the methodical approach keeps failing because the songbook isn’t where it should be. It isn’t anywhere.
I must have moved it. I reorganized this room a few weeks ago, trying to make space for Fiorella’s equipment, and I probably put it somewhere and forgot.
That’s the only explanation that makes sense.
I’ve been distracted, exhausted, running on autopilot while my marriage disintegrates around me. Of course I’d misplace something.
But the absence nags at me as I search, a low-grade anxiety I can’t quite name.
That notebook has followed me for over a decade.
I’ve never lost track of it before, not even during the worst of the chaos when I was touring, when everything I owned fit in two suitcases and I still always knew exactly where the notebook was.
I must have moved it. I must have.
I give up the search and sit down at the piano instead, letting my fingers find the keys by memory. It’s been so long since I played for myself - not accompanying Rocco, not offering suggestions from the doorway, but actually playing. Making my own sounds. Taking up space with my own music.
The first notes come out hesitant, rusty.
My hands have forgotten some of what they used to know.
But muscle memory is a stubborn thing, and after a few minutes the stiffness starts to ease, and I find myself playing a melody I don’t quite recognize - something new, born from the specific ache of this moment.
It’s not pretty. It’s not polished. But it’s mine.
I play it again, slower, listening to what it wants to become.
And then I have an idea.
A surprise for Rocco. Something to prove I’m still here, still capable, still the woman who used to help him shape songs in the middle of the night. If Fiorella can bring him back to life, so can I. I just need to remind him what we used to be.
I pull out my phone and open the voice memo app.
“Okay,” I mutter to myself. “Let’s see if I remember how to do this.”
The melody comes easier the third time through, and I add words - rough ones, placeholder lines that capture the feeling without pinning it down too precisely.
The lyrics aren’t from the missing notebook.
They’re new. They’re about right now, about standing in a room that used to feel like home and wondering when it stopped.
I record three takes before I get one I don’t hate. My voice is rusty too, unpracticed, but there’s something honest in the roughness that I actually like. This isn’t a polished demo. This is me, stripped down, trying to say something true.
When I finish, I play it back and listen with my eyes closed.
It’s good. Not perfect, not finished, but good. The kind of good that could become something if someone believed in it.
I save the file and sit with my phone in my hands, feeling something I haven’t felt in months.
Hope, maybe. Or at least the memory of hope.
The possibility that I could still make something that matters, could still be someone beyond the woman who manages Rocco’s calendar and arranges flowers for his events.
“I’ll play this for him,” I say to the empty room. “When he gets home. I’ll show him what I can do.”
The words hang in the air, a promise to myself.
I’m still holding onto that promise when I hear the front door open hours later - Rocco’s voice bright with excitement, Fiorella’s answering laugh, the particular energy of two people who’ve just accomplished something together.
“ - and Marco said the label hasn’t been this excited about anything in years,” Rocco is saying as they come down the hall. “He’s talking about a major push. The whole team is aligned.”
“You deserve it,” Fiorella says. “This is exactly what you needed. What we both needed.”
“I couldn’t have done it without you. Seriously, Fiorella. You saved my career.”
“That’s what collaborators are for.”
I slip out of the studio through the side door before they see me, my phone heavy in my pocket with its secret recording.
Tomorrow, I tell myself. I’ll play it for him tomorrow when Fiorella isn’t here.
But tomorrow comes and Fiorella is there, and the day after she’s there again, and somehow the demo stays on my phone, unheard, while I wait for a moment that keeps not arriving.
***
Three days later, I catch Rocco alone in the kitchen.
He’s pouring coffee with the distracted energy of someone whose mind is already somewhere else, probably in the studio, probably on whatever he and Fiorella are building. But he’s here, physically present, and Fiorella won’t arrive for another hour. This is my chance.
“Morning,” I say, trying to sound casual. “You’re up early.”
“Couldn’t sleep. Too many ideas.” He takes a sip of coffee, barely looking at me. “Fiorella and I are going to the label studio again today. We want to lay down some rough tracks while the momentum’s still there.”
“That’s great.” I take a breath. “Actually, I wanted to show you something. I’ve been working on a little project of my own.”
“Yeah?” He glances up, but his eyes are still somewhere else. “That’s good. You should do more of that.”
“I recorded a demo. A song I’ve been working on.” I pull out my phone, heart hammering. “I thought maybe you’d want to hear it.”
“Sure, yeah. Definitely.” He checks his own phone - a text, probably from Fiorella. “Not right now, though. We have a full day and I need to prep. Maybe tonight?”
“Maybe tonight,” I repeat.
“Great.” He kisses my forehead on his way past me, a gesture so automatic it barely registers as contact. “I’ll see you later, okay? Love you.”
“Love you too.”
He’s out the door before I can say anything else.
I stand in the kitchen with my phone in my hand, the demo queued up and ready, playing for no one.
Maybe tonight.
But tonight he comes home late and exhausted. And the next night there’s a dinner with label executives. And the night after that Fiorella has ideas she needs to discuss. And somehow the days slip past like water through my fingers while my song stays trapped in my phone, waiting.
***
A week later, I’ve stopped asking.
Not because I’ve given up - not yet - but because the asking has started to feel like begging, and I refuse to beg my own husband to listen to three minutes of music. The demo is still there, saved in a folder I’ve labeled “someday,” which feels increasingly like a word that means “never.”
I’m lying in bed unable to sleep, Rocco’s breathing steady beside me, when I make a decision.
If he won’t make time to listen at home, I’ll bring the music to him.
Tomorrow, I’m going to the label studio. I’m going to find him between sessions or meetings or whatever else fills his days now, and I’m going to make him hear what I made. Not ask. Make.
I’m done waiting for permission to exist.
The decision settles something in my chest, hardens into resolve. I roll over and stare at the ceiling, already planning the words I’ll say, the way I’ll frame it, the argument I’ll make if he tries to put me off again.
I’m not furniture. I’m not a support role. I’m a musician too, and it’s time I started acting like it.
Tomorrow.
The word feels different now - less like a prayer and more like a threat.