3. Hugo #2
“And this is business.” He leans forward, elbows on the table.
“Look, Hugo, I understand this is uncomfortable. But the song is already viral. The fans are already invested. All we’re asking you to do is capitalize on momentum that exists whether you participate or not.
Would you rather let someone else control the story? ”
I want to say yes. I want to tell him I don’t care about the story, I don’t care about the momentum, I don’t care about any of it.
But the truth is, I do care. The album I’ve been working on for three years is sitting on a server somewhere, waiting for a release date, and if I don’t play their game, it dies there.
“The video concept needs to change,” I say finally. “No fake romance. No recreated moments. If we’re doing this, it’s professional, two musicians revisiting an old collaboration. That’s it.”
The executive exchanges a glance with someone down the table.
“We can discuss adjustments.”
“It’s not a discussion. It’s a condition.”
“Noted.” His smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “Is there anything else?”
I think about asking who leaked the song. I think about voicing the suspicion that’s been crawling up my spine since Derek first showed me the trending notifications, that this whole situation benefits exactly one person, and it’s not me.
But I have no proof. Just a feeling, and feelings don’t hold up in conference rooms.
“No,” I say. “Just send me the schedule.”
I make the call from my car, parked in the label’s garage with the engine off and the silence pressing in.
Ginny’s number is still in my phone, buried in contacts I never deleted, filed under a name I haven’t spoken aloud in years. My thumb hovers over the call button for a full minute before I finally press it.
She answers on the second ring.
“Hugo Kensington.” Her voice is warm, familiar, carrying the same honeyed sweetness I remember from a hundred late-night conversations in her cramped apartment. “I was wondering when you’d call.”
“Were you.”
“I figured you’d want to discuss things directly. You were always more of a face-to-face person.” She laughs softly. “Or voice-to-voice, at least. How are you?”
“I’ve been better.” I stare through the windshield at the concrete wall in front of me. “Do you want to tell me how our college demo ended up on the internet?”
“I wish I knew.” Her tone shifts, concerned and earnest. “I was as surprised as you were, Hugo. One of my friends sent me the link at 2 a.m. and I thought it was a joke. I had no idea anyone even had a copy of that recording.”
“Someone did.”
“Well, it wasn’t me. I lost most of my college files in a laptop crash years ago.” She sighs. “Honestly, I think it was probably someone at the conservatory. They keep archives of student work, don’t they? It could have been a professor, a tech assistant, anyone with access.”
It’s plausible. It’s reasonable. It’s also exactly what someone would say if they were lying.
But I can’t prove anything, and accusing her without evidence would only make me look paranoid.
“The label wants us to re-record it,” I say instead.
“I know. They reached out to me last week.” Her voice brightens. “I think it could be wonderful, Hugo. That song was some of our best work. Don’t you want to see what it sounds like with real production behind it?”
“Not particularly.”
“Oh, come on.” She laughs again, teasing. “It’ll be fun. Like old times.”
A chill moves through me.
“We didn’t have old times, Ginny.” My voice is flat. “We had a semester and one song. And then you moved on to my roommate before it was even properly over. There’s nothing here to reunite.”
Silence on the other end.
“That was seven years ago,” she says finally, the warmth cooling by several degrees. “I was young. I was stupid. I’ve grown up since then.”
“Good for you.”
“Hugo…”
“I’ll see you at the studio on Monday.” I pull the phone away from my ear. “Don’t contact me before then.”
I hang up before she can respond.
My hands are shaking. I grip the steering wheel until my knuckles go white, until the trembling stops, until I can breathe without feeling like someone is standing on my chest.
She’s lying. I know she’s lying. The leak is too convenient, the timing too perfect, the way she had answers ready for every question I asked. She engineered this, somehow, found the old recording, put it in the right hands, waited for the chaos to unfold.
And now she gets exactly what she wanted: access, exposure, a second chance at hitching her wagon to my star.
I just can’t prove it.
I start the car and drive home, feeling like I’ve stepped into a trap I can’t see the edges of.
***
The house is dark when I pull into the driveway, except for one light.
Lucille’s studio. Third floor. The glow spills through the window like a beacon, and I sit in my car for a long moment, staring up at it.
It’s after 11 p.m. I’ve been gone for fourteen hours, the meeting that bled into more meetings, the calls that bled into more calls, the whole machinery of the industry grinding forward while I scrambled to keep my footing. I texted Lucille twice: once to say I’d be late, once to say I was sorry.
She didn’t respond to either.
I let myself into the house and move through the darkness, not bothering with lights. The stairs creak under my feet as I climb to the third floor, to the room Lucille claimed as her workspace the week after our wedding.
The door is slightly ajar. I push it open and stop.
She’s asleep at her drafting table, head pillowed on her arms, surrounded by fabric swatches and sketches and the detritus of creation.
Her hair has fallen loose from its clip, dark waves spreading across the white paper beneath her cheek.
One hand still holds a pencil, loose in her fingers, like she fell asleep mid-stroke.
She looks exhausted. She looks beautiful. She looks like someone who has been carrying a weight I never noticed.
I cross the room quietly and pull a blanket from the small couch in the corner, the one she uses for long nights when she can’t stop working. I drape it over her shoulders, careful not to wake her, and I’m about to leave when my eye catches the sketch beneath her cheek.
It’s a wedding dress.
Not for a client. I know her client work, the clean lines and practical elegance she designs for other people’s happy days. This is different. This is elaborate and romantic and utterly impractical, a gown of lace and silk that looks like it belongs in a fairytale.
At the bottom of the page, in her careful handwriting, I read: For me, someday. When it matters.
The words hit me like a fist to the chest.
I sink into the chair beside her drafting table and stare at that sketch, at those words, and I feel a crack open inside me.
Our wedding was efficient. It was beautiful, by objective standards.
My mother made sure of that. The flowers were expensive, the venue was impressive, the guest list was curated to perfection.
But I didn’t care about any of it. I showed up because I was supposed to.
I said the vows because they were written for me.
I put the ring on her finger because that was the next item on the agenda.
I never asked what she wanted. I never asked if she had dreams about her wedding day, if she’d imagined a different version, if walking down the aisle toward a stranger in a church full of business associates was the moment she’d hoped for.
I never made it matter.
So she’s still dreaming. Still sketching wedding dresses for a someday that hasn’t come yet. Still waiting for a moment that feels real, that feels like it counts, that feels like someone chose her because they wanted to and not because their father told them to.
I reach out and brush a strand of hair from her face, and she stirs slightly, murmuring words I can’t quite hear.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, though she’s not awake to hear it. “I’m so sorry.”
I’ve spent two years treating her like an obligation instead of a gift. Two years maintaining distance because it felt safer than vulnerability. Two years letting her exist in my peripheral vision instead of at the center of my focus.
And now I’m about to spend weeks pretending to reconnect with another woman, performing a romance that never really existed, while my wife watches from the sidelines and wonders if any of it is real.
She deserves the dress in this sketch. She deserves a wedding that matters, a husband who shows up, a life that isn’t defined by my failures.
I don’t know if I can give her that.
But sitting here in the dark, watching her sleep, reading the hope written in her own handwriting, I know I have to try.
I just don’t know if trying will be enough.