15. Rocco
— ? —
Rocco
The morning after Senna tells me the truth about the song, I wake up in a house that feels different. Still empty, still quiet, but the silence isn’t just absence anymore - it’s space. Space to think and understand and figure out how catastrophically I failed and what I’m going to do about it.
Fiorella stole Senna’s song. She took my wife’s music - work from before we even met, private pages I’d never been shown - and handed it to me like it was a gift.
I was so desperate to feel something again that I never once questioned where it came from.
I couldn’t have recognized a song Senna had never played for me, but I should have been curious. I should have asked why something Fiorella brought in felt so much more intimate, so much more alive, than anything we’d built before.
But I was so lost in my own failure that I accepted the answer in front of me because I needed it to be true.
Not anymore.
I bring her lunch that day - the same panini she likes, the same sparkling water - and I leave it with the assistant without pushing, without asking to see her.
The next day, I do the same thing. By the end of the week, the assistant just nods when she sees me coming and hands me a small slip of paper in return.
Senna’s handwriting. Just one line: The strings you sent are perfect. Thank you.
I’d included a set of guitar strings in yesterday’s delivery - the brand she used to prefer, the ones she told me once felt like silk under her fingers at that terrible open mic in Siena, before we were even dating. Nine years ago. I remembered.
That evening, my phone rings. Not a text. An actual call.
“Hey,” I say, trying not to sound as desperate as I feel.
“Hey.” Her voice is tired but warm. Warmer than I deserve. “I wanted to thank you properly. For the strings. For remembering.”
“You don’t have to thank me for remembering things about my own wife.”
“I do, actually. Because you forgot for a while there.” There’s no accusation in it, just truth. “But you’re remembering now. That matters.”
I sink onto the couch, pressing the phone closer to my ear like I can somehow get closer to her through sheer will. “I’m trying. I know it’s not enough yet.”
“It’s something. Something is more than nothing.” She pauses, and I hear her moving around - the creak of a chair, the soft click of a lamp. “I’ve been thinking about what you asked. About proof.”
“Senna, you don’t have to-”
“I want to. That’s the thing, Rocco. I actually want to.” She laughs, and it sounds surprised. “I didn’t expect that. I expected to hoard this, keep it to myself, use it as ammunition. But I don’t want to fight you anymore. I want to fight her. And I can’t do that alone.”
“You’re not alone.”
“I’m starting to believe that.” Another pause. “I have old emails. From years ago - 2015, 2016. I used to send myself photos of my notebook pages as backups. The email headers have the original dates. Not just the photos, but the actual mail records from when I sent them.”
My heart is pounding. “You’d share those with me?”
“I’m forwarding them now. Check your inbox.”
I pull the phone away from my ear long enough to see the notifications appearing - email after email, each one containing image attachments.
I open the first one while she’s still on the line, and there it is: a photograph of a handwritten page, Senna’s familiar looping script filling the margins, and above it the email header showing the date it was sent. November 2015.
Years before Fiorella ever walked into my studio.
“I can see your handwriting,” I say quietly.
“I know this handwriting. I’ve seen it on grocery lists and birthday cards and - God, Senna, I’ve known you wrote music, but I never asked to hear your old work.
Never once in seven years did I sit down and say, ‘Show me what you made before we met.’ And then this song showed up, and I was so desperate I didn’t even wonder where it came from. ”
“You weren’t looking for it. Why would you be? Your collaborator brought you a song. You had no reason to think it was stolen.”
“I had every reason. I just didn’t want to see them.”
She’s quiet for a moment. Then: “That’s probably the most honest thing you’ve said to me in months.”
“I’m trying to be honest now. Even when it makes me look like an idiot.”
“You’re not an idiot. You were desperate and she exploited that.” I hear her take a breath. “The coffee stain on page forty-three - do you see it? Third email down, I think.”
I scroll through until I find it. The stain is exactly where she said it would be, a brown ring marking the corner of a page filled with lyrics I now recognize from the showcase. The song that broke my block. The song that was never Fiorella’s to give.
“I see it.”
“I made that stain the night I finished the bridge. I was twenty-two. I stayed up until four in the morning because the melody wouldn’t let me sleep, and then I knocked over my coffee celebrating when I finally got the key change right.
” Her voice goes soft. “That was my favorite song. The one I was proudest of. And she just - took it.”
“We’re going to get it back.”
“How? It’s already out there with her name on it. The showcase happened. People heard her sing it.”
“The emails have dates, Senna. Real dates, from years before the collaboration. The headers, the timestamps - it’s strong corroboration. Hard to dismiss. If we can find someone at the label willing to listen, someone who’ll look at the evidence-”
“And what? Accuse Fiorella publicly? She’ll deny everything. She’ll say I faked the emails, or that she wrote the song first and I stole it from her. It’ll be her word against mine, and she’s been building relationships in this industry for years while I’ve been invisible.”
“You’re not invisible anymore.”
“No,” she agrees quietly. “I’m not. But I’m also not ready for a public war. Not yet. I need to finish what I’m building with Matteo first. I need to prove I can stand on my own before I start tearing down what she’s built on my foundation.”
I want to argue. I want to charge into battle for her, slay the dragon, prove I can be the hero she deserves. But that’s the old Rocco - the one who made everything about his own needs, his own narrative.
“Okay,” I say instead. “We wait. We gather more evidence. And when you’re ready, we do this your way.”
“You mean that?”
“I mean it.”
She’s quiet for so long I think the call might have dropped. Then: “I played one of my old songs today. In the studio, after Matteo left. Just to see if I could.”
“How did it feel?”
“Terrifying. Good. Like putting on clothes that used to fit and finding out they still do, mostly.” She laughs a little. “I’m rusty. But it’s still there. The thing I thought I’d lost - it was just waiting.”
“I’d like to hear it someday. If you ever want to share.”
“Maybe. Not yet. But maybe.”
“Whenever you’re ready. I’ll wait.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because I mean it. I’ll wait as long as you need.”
Another long pause. I can hear her breathing, can almost picture her in that small apartment across the river, curled up somewhere with her phone pressed to her ear.
“I should go,” she says finally. “Early session tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
“Rocco?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you. For the strings. For the food. For-” She stops. “For trying. I know I haven’t made it easy.”
“You shouldn’t make it easy. I don’t deserve easy.”
“No. But you might deserve a chance.” Her voice is so soft I almost miss the next part. “I haven’t decided yet. But you might.”
She hangs up before I can respond, and I sit there in the dark living room with my phone in my hand and something that feels dangerously like hope blooming in my chest.
***
The next morning, Elena calls.
“She overdid it yesterday,” she says without preamble. “Played for six hours straight after Matteo left. Her fingers are raw.”
“Is she okay?”
“She’s fine. Just sore. She called me this morning complaining that she couldn’t grip her coffee cup properly.” Elena sighs. “She’s always been like this. When she decides to do something, she does it until she breaks. Someone needs to remind her that she’s allowed to pace herself.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Bandages. Antibiotic ointment - the good kind, not the cheap stuff that stings. And maybe a note reminding her that her hands are kind of important for the whole music career she’s building.”
I’m already grabbing my keys. “I’ll drop it off this afternoon.”
“Leave it with the assistant. Don’t push.”
“I know. I won’t.”
“Good.” Elena pauses. “She told me about the emails. About sharing them with you.”
“She did?”
“She trusts you. Or she’s starting to. Don’t make her regret it.”
“I won’t.”
“You’d better not. Because if you hurt her again, Rocco, I will personally make your life very unpleasant. And I know people.”
I believe her.
***
I drop off the care package that afternoon - bandages, ointment, and a note that says: Elena told me about your fingers. Please take care of yourself. Your hands matter. You matter.
Then I go home and pull out the page I found in the collaboration materials - the one with Senna’s familiar handwriting, the fragment that Fiorella passed off as part of her song.
I lay it next to the photos from Senna’s emails and compare them.
The match is undeniable. Same loops, same spacing, same distinctive way she crosses her T’s.
I think about Delia, Fiorella’s assistant.
The way she looked uncomfortable outside Marco’s office that day, clutching that envelope with cash visible at the edge.
The way she never quite met my eyes during the collaboration sessions.
Whatever that transaction was, Delia knows something she’s not saying.
I pick up my phone and find her number.
Rocco: Hi Delia, this is Rocco. I hope you’re doing well. I had some questions about the collaboration - just trying to understand a few things better. Would you be willing to meet for coffee sometime this week? No pressure.
I send it before I can overthink it. Then I set down the phone and pick up my guitar.
If I’m going to earn Senna back, I need to become someone worth coming back to. That means showing up. That means paying attention. That means proving, day after day, that I can see her now - really see her - even when she’s not standing right in front of me.
The melody that emerges is something new. Something unformed. But underneath it, I can hear the shape of what it might become - a song about watching someone you love rebuild themselves, about learning to be proud of their strength instead of threatened by it.
I play until my fingers ache.
And I hope, wherever she is, that Senna’s hands are healing.