1. Lucille #3
But right now, in the quiet dark, with his music wrapping around us like a blanket, I let myself pretend.
I let myself pretend that this is what our marriage could be. That the man playing love songs at midnight is the same one I’ll find in the morning. That the warmth in his voice when he says my name isn’t a prize I have to earn over and over and over again.
For one night, I let the guard down.
Just tonight.
Tomorrow I’ll pick it back up, because I have to, because it’s the only thing that’s ever kept me standing.
Hugo falls asleep before I do, his body finally surrendering to two weeks of exhaustion.
I watch his face in the low lamplight, the clean line of his jaw, the dark sweep of his lashes, the way his mouth softens when he’s not guarding it, and I feel that familiar ache settle behind my ribs.
His performance jacket is draped over the chair in the corner where he tossed it when he came home, and even from here I can see the seam pulling at the left shoulder. It’s been bothering me for days, ever since I noticed it in a photo from his Austin show.
I slip out of bed carefully, quietly, and pad across the room to retrieve it.
The jacket is well-made but well-worn, the kind of piece that molds to its wearer over time.
I’ve fixed this jacket three times now, reinforced the lining, taken in the cuffs, adjusted the hem when his weight shifted after a grueling tour schedule.
He’s never noticed. He just comments sometimes that his clothes fit better than they used to, and I smile and say nothing.
This is how I love him. In secret. In silence. In the invisible stitches that hold him together.
I carry the jacket to my sewing corner and thread a needle in the dark, my fingers finding the familiar rhythm.
The shoulder seam requires careful work, small stitches, evenly spaced, tight enough to hold but invisible from the outside.
I bend close and let my hands move without thought, muscle memory from years of watching my mother do the same thing.
She would have understood this, I think. The love that shows itself in service. The care that doesn’t ask to be seen, only to exist. She altered my father’s suits for twenty years and he never once thanked her for it, but she did it anyway, night after night, because that was her language.
Maybe that’s my problem. Maybe I’m speaking a language Hugo doesn’t understand.
Or maybe, the thought is harder to hold, maybe I’m hiding behind it. Maybe it’s easier to love him in ways he’ll never notice than to risk loving him in ways he might reject.
I finish the seam and hold the jacket up to check my work. Perfect. Invisible. Mine.
I’m hanging it back on the chair when my phone buzzes on the nightstand.
I freeze, glancing at Hugo, but he doesn’t stir. The screen glows in the darkness, a tabloid alert, the kind I keep meaning to turn off but never do. Probably another piece about his tour, some gossip about which celebrity attended which show.
I pick up the phone and swipe.
The headline hits me like ice water.
UNEARTHED: Hugo Kensington’s Lost Love Song, The Duet Fans Never Knew Existed
Below it, a photo I’ve never seen. Hugo, younger, college-aged, maybe, his arm slung around a girl with a guitar. They’re both laughing, heads thrown back, caught mid-joy. The kind of unguarded happiness I’ve never seen from him. Not once in two years.
The girl has wild red hair and a smile like a challenge, and the caption identifies her as Ginny Davies, songwriter and Kensington’s former collaborator.
I scroll down, my fingers numb.
A leaked demo has set the internet ablaze, a raw, intimate duet between Kensington and Davies, written during their time together at the Nashville Conservatory. Fans are calling it “the love song of the decade” and demanding an official release. The chemistry is undeniable…
There’s an audio clip embedded. I shouldn’t play it. I shouldn’t…
I press play.
Hugo’s voice fills the room, younger and rougher but unmistakably his, and there’s a woman’s voice twining with it, harmonizing in ways that feel almost indecent. The lyrics are about first love, about being known, about the terror and the joy of letting someone see you completely.
You’re the only one who ever learned my language, they sing together, the only one who ever read between my lines.
I stand there in the dark, in my husband’s shirt, in the room where he just made love to me, and listen to him sing about another woman like she’s his whole world.
The song ends. My phone buzzes again, another article, another headline, another photo of Hugo and this girl I’ve never heard of, laughing like they share a secret.
In the bed, Hugo shifts, murmurs in his sleep.
I turn the phone face-down and crawl back under the covers, careful not to touch him.
It doesn’t mean anything, I tell myself. It was college. It was years ago. People have pasts.
But I can still hear his voice in my head, singing about being known, being seen, being learned, all the things I’ve spent two years desperate for and never received.
And I’ve never seen him laugh like that.
Not once.
Not with me.