Chapter 25
DO YOU THINK IT’S OKAY?
My house is slightly cold, despite this afternoon’s sun. I wonder if maybe we left one of the spare room windows open, letting a night breeze cool down the air. Maybe autumn is already setting in.
Luc and I are trying to keep our private time secret, while still keeping up appearances to keep Mimi happy.
I don’t want to tell her yet about the true success of her plan.
We don’t want to put more pressure on what we have.
More pressure than is already there. I need to take it slow, even though that’s the last thing I want to do.
It’s been ten years in the making. I want him there every morning when I wake up, cooking me dinner every night.
‘Do you want to hear something cool?’ I ask, pulling a CD out of a gift bag on the kitchen island. ‘Because I have a present for you.’
‘It’s not my birthday anymore, Sienna.’ He places his hand on my cheek. ‘What is it?’ I turn the cold plastic of the disc between my fingers before putting it in the CD player in the kitchen.
‘Sienna Martin, did you make me a mixtape?’
‘Sh, listen,’ I scold. The tinny sound of the demo rings through the kitchen. ‘I finished recording it at the studio last week. Couldn’t wait for you to hear it.’
I buzz around the kitchen, distracting myself from how Luc is listening to an early version of my song.
I make us hot drinks – Luc an instant coffee, me a honey and lemon tea – and we lean against the counter, the music washing over us.
He holds his beverage to his lip, not drinking while he continues to listen, but lets the heat from the cup steam up his glasses.
I gaze out the window and into the darkened back garden.
The song ends and he clicks play again, and I cringe when his mug clatters against the marble worktop. He spins me around so I’m facing him and wraps his arms around me, swaying to the sound of our song, our story, in the background.
‘The working title is Runner’s World, but that will probably change,’ I explain. ‘The runner is both you and me. Your job when we met versus…’
‘Your personality for the entire time we’ve known each other,’ he finishes.
‘The personality I’m fighting against.’
We let the song float around our heads and fill our ears. He kisses my forehead, and my body melts into his embrace.
The song ends again, and we are met with silence. We don’t move. We hold ourselves where we are, wrapped up within each other, only lit by the lighting under the cabinets.
I’ve opened myself up to something beyond my control.
The walls are down, and I’ve let someone in.
Someone who could hurt me. Someone who I’m still fairly sure at some point will get sick of living without any privacy, of seeing photos of himself online every time he so much as opens his door for the postman.
Of people waiting to meet him outside his house every day.
Men with long lenses taking photos of his side profile on holiday.
‘I can practically smell the steam coming out of your ears while you panic there,’ Luc mumbles into my hair.
My head jerks off his shoulder. ‘How can you do that? How can you tell?’
‘Your breathing does this thing. I don’t know, I can just tell.’ He runs his hand through the back of my hair. ‘What’s up, sweetheart?’
I lean my head back on his shoulder, and we sway in silence. ‘Do you ever wonder what would have happened if things between us… didn’t end?’ I mumble. ‘All those years ago?’
‘There’s no point thinking like that, because we did end.’ Luc runs his hand down my back.
‘No, but would I have retired to spend more time with my family by now? Or would I still be touring just as much?’ I swallow. ‘It could have changed the entire trajectory of our lives.’
‘It probably would have done,’ Luc admits. ‘We could be married by now.’
A chill snakes down my spine. I was so close to losing him forever.
‘Exactly,’ I croak. ‘I know there’s nothing we can do to get that time back we missed.
’ I lift my head again and search his eyes.
‘I guess by asking myself these hypothetical questions, I’m reaffirming what my life could look like if– if I don’t run this time.
’ I pause. ‘Putting myself in the shoes of me in another decade.’
Luc doesn’t say anything, and my words land like hailstones in the silence.
‘I’ve never imagined myself touring the world at forty-one, but I’ve never imagined myself doing much else either.’
I’ve never really looked at my life as a whole. Only the here and now. What I need to make it to the next step.
‘I’ve never imagined myself not doing music in some way, but it has to end at some point…
’ My voice quivers, chin wobbling. ‘I can’t name any women who have kept their success as they got older.
Only one or two who haven’t been put on the shelf and left to rot when they turn thirty.
’ I pause. ‘And my voice. Will I even be able to come back? Do I still have time? There are so many questions in my brain no one can answer.’
‘I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: you’re Sienna Martin,’ Luc points out. ‘You can do whatever you want to do.’
‘I thought I’d keep myself on this pedestal, spinning and performing for everyone for the rest of my life.’ A deep breath. ‘Even a few months ago, if I was asked, I would’ve said there was no life after music.’
‘I think you should follow whatever you want to do,’ Luc tells me. ‘Fuck what other people want. What do you want?’
I lift my head, but I don’t meet his eye.
I sweep a shaking hand across my forehead and close my eyes.
‘I’m exhausted. From choreography… my voice not coping well with singing despite the advice from my vocal therapist.’ I sigh.
‘This thought has been ringing in my head. I know I need a break… but do I need to retire?’ The words are gummy in my mouth.
He pulls me closer and kisses my mouth, my salty tears lining the connection between our lips. ‘Honestly, I think a break is a good idea, but I didn’t think you’d ever want a life after music.’ I rest my head on his shoulder. ‘What do you want your life to look like?’ he asks.
‘I feel like I’ve forgotten how to be happy.’ My voice is quiet. Part of me doesn’t want him to hear it. That my admission will be for me and for me alone. ‘It’s not that I don’t love music, but it’s so routine to me now, so necessary. Almost a compulsion, not a choice.’
I try to swallow the lump in my throat, but it doesn’t move.
The guilt of what I’m saying after everything I’ve been given is overwhelming.
‘I feel like I’m missing out on things I’d otherwise want if I wasn’t a musician.
’ A thought kickstarted when Jess asked whether I’d want to be with Luc if I lead a different life.
‘It feels inevitable to me now that there has to be a time after music. That I have to give it up and incorporate it into my life in a different way.’ I take a deep breath.
My life without music sounds like a world so unfathomable to me.
I’ve been at the peak of my career for so long now that it feels like failure is around the corner at any minute.
That I’m standing at the top of a cliff, waiting for someone to push me over the edge.
It was close after the tryst with Benji, or leaving Tulip House in Alex Pauls’s jacket.
We pulled it around in time, but at what cost?
Luc presses a kiss into my hair and runs his thumb over my back rhythmically.
‘I don’t want to outstay my welcome and then be remembered for a great career but “oh my god, her last few albums flopped bad, right?”’ I continue.
‘I understand.’
‘I want to go out with a bang. Release an album that wins big at all the major award shows and then announce I’m stepping away to focus on other projects.’ I pause.
‘I think you can be involved in music in some way,’ he says. ‘You could write songs for other people, you could nurture young talent, be a mentor.’
I lift my head and look at him, his face blurred by the tears in my eyes.
‘What about Ruby Rain?’ Luc offers. ‘She’s said in interviews that she’s a huge fan of yours and you’re a massive inspiration to her.’
I smile. ‘That’s not a bad idea.’
‘God knows you’ve been through enough shit in this industry to be a really helpful sounding board.’
‘It’ll be enough to know that all those horrible times were worth it to be able to help someone else through their career.’
‘I think you’d be brilliant at it, Sienna.’
He uses his index finger to guide my chin towards him, brushing his lips against mine. I exhale a smile.
It doesn’t escape me that things with Luc would be much easier if I was more stagnant.
That a life without me touring and constantly in the studio would make things easier between us.
That if I wasn’t in the public eye, the media would sooner or later lose interest in me and we could live a normal life, more like the one Luc is used to.
But he doesn’t seem to want to have his opinions in this conversation.
He doesn’t want to show me that he’s leaning more towards me staying in music or taking a break to pursue different things.
I appreciate that he’s letting me make such an important decision based completely on what I want.
A rogue worry that Luc puts too much emphasis on what I want and not what he wants passes through my brain.
Luc is still in bed the next morning when I slip out of the bedroom after hearing Jess’s key in the lock. I’m still tying my dressing gown around my waist when I fly down the stairs, just in time to see her drop her key back in the bottom of her bag and smile up at me.
‘Morning, sunshine,’ she smiles.