4. Lucille #2
I watch him for a long moment, my husband, the man I married two years ago, the man who promised me last night that this was almost over, and I realize that I don’t know how to reach him anymore.
He’s somewhere I can’t follow, lost in a world of lights and cameras and manufactured emotion, and I’m just a visitor with an authorized badge.
“Mrs. Kensington?”
I turn. A production assistant with a clipboard is looking at me expectantly.
“Can I get you anything? Water? Coffee? Mr. Kensington should be on break in about twenty minutes if you’d like to wait in the green room.”
“That’s very kind.” I smile, and it feels like cracking plaster. “I’ll just watch for a moment.”
The PA nods and disappears into the chaos, and I find a spot against the wall where I can see without being seen.
They reset the scene. Hugo at the piano, Ginny approaching from behind, the whole choreographed dance beginning again.
This time I watch with a designer’s eye, cataloging details: the way her dress is cut to show off her figure without being obvious, the way his jacket sits perfectly on his shoulders, because I made it sit perfectly, because I adjusted those seams myself.
He’s wearing my work. And he’s wearing it for her.
“Action!”
Ginny approaches. Her hand touches his shoulder. He turns, looks up at her, and there it is again, that expression of soft focus, of complete attention.
The expression I’ve been waiting two years to see.
“Lucille?”
I turn at the sound of my name and find Ginny standing beside me, somehow having materialized without my noticing. She must have slipped away during the setup for the next shot. Her smile is warm, concerned, utterly sincere.
I don’t trust a single molecule of it.
“Ginny,” I say, keeping my voice neutral. “I didn’t realize you’d spotted me.”
“I’d recognize you anywhere. Hugo keeps your photo in his wallet, you know.” She tilts her head, sympathy dripping from every pore. “It must be so hard, being married to someone who creates with his whole soul when you’re not part of that world.”
The knife slides in so gently I almost don’t feel it.
Almost.
“I don’t feel outside at all,” I say, meeting her eyes. “I just don’t need to perform my place in his life for an audience.”
Surprise flickers behind her carefully crafted mask, or maybe annoyance that I didn’t crumble the way she expected.
“Of course not.” She recovers quickly, her smile widening.
“I didn’t mean to imply… it’s just that this world can be so consuming, you know?
The music, the collaboration, the creative connection.
It’s like nothing else exists when you’re in it together.
” She glances toward the set, where Hugo is reviewing a playback on a monitor.
“He’s exactly the way I remember him. Completely immersed. Completely unreachable.”
“Is that how you remember him?”
“Isn’t that how you know him?”
The question lands like a punch to the solar plexus, and the worst part is that she’s right. She’s absolutely right. Hugo unreachable, Hugo immersed, Hugo lost in his work while the rest of the world fades to background noise, that’s exactly how I know him.
But I’ll be damned if I let her see me bleed.
“I know my husband,” I say quietly. “And I know the difference between performance and reality. Whatever you’re doing here…” I gesture toward the set, toward the piano, toward the whole manufactured narrative. “It’s a job. When it’s over, he comes home to me.”
“Does he?” Her voice is sweet, curious. “How often, lately?”
I don’t answer. I don’t have to.
Ginny reads my silence and her smile turns almost gentle, which is somehow worse than cruelty.
“I’m not trying to steal your husband, Lucille. I don’t need to.” She leans closer, dropping her voice to a confidential murmur. “He’s already somewhere I can reach and you can’t. He always was. Some people are meant to make music together. The rest are just… audience.”
She pats my arm, a friendly, dismissive gesture, and walks back toward the set, where someone is calling her name for the next shot.
I stand there against the wall, watching her go, and I feel a shift inside me. The part that’s been holding on, reaching out, hoping for change, it goes quiet. It goes cold.
I don’t wait for Hugo’s break. I don’t go to the green room. I don’t say goodbye.
I just turn and walk out, past the production assistants and the security guard and the parking lot full of expensive cars, and I get in my own car and drive home through traffic that blurs in front of my eyes because I’m not crying, I refuse to cry, but a wound is leaking out of me anyway.
By the time I pull into the driveway, I’ve made a decision.
I’m done reaching.
***
Hugo comes home at 11 p.m.
I hear the front door open, hear his keys land in the bowl by the entrance, hear his footsteps moving through the house with the caution of someone who knows they’re in trouble but isn’t sure why.
I’m in the living room, curled in the corner of the sectional with a glass of wine I’m not really drinking and a book I’m not really reading. The TV is off. The house is silent. I’ve been sitting here for hours, waiting without wanting to admit I’m waiting.
“Lucille?” His voice comes from the doorway. “You’re still up.”
“I’m still up.”
He crosses the room and sinks onto the opposite end of the sectional, keeping space between us the way he always does, the way I used to try to close and have now stopped trying.
“I heard you came by the set today,” he says carefully. “One of the PAs mentioned it. Why didn’t you come say hello?”
“You were busy.”
“I would have made time.”
“Would you?” I set down my wine glass. “The way you’ve made time for the past two weeks? The way you’ve made time for our entire marriage?”
Hugo flinches slightly, but he doesn’t retreat into defensiveness the way I expect.
“You’re right,” he says instead. “I’ve been absent. The recording schedule has been brutal, and the label keeps adding commitments, and I know that’s not an excuse but it’s the truth. I’m sorry.”
“You’re always sorry.”
“I know.” He shifts closer, tentative. “But after tomorrow, it’s done. The final interview airs next week, and then I’m finished with all of it. No more Ginny, no more promotional events, no more label obligations until the album release. I can focus on us.”
I’ve heard this before. Different words, same promise.
“I’m doing this for us,” Hugo continues, and he reaches across the space between us to catch my hand. His fingers are warm, familiar, and I hate how much I still want to lean into his touch. “One song, one video, and then I’ll make more time. I swear.”
“You keep saying that.” My voice comes out flat, emptied of the emotion I’ve been carrying all day. “I keep waiting.”
“Lucille…”
“I went to the set today because your mother convinced me I should show my face. Remind everyone whose ring is on your finger.” I look at him finally, meeting his eyes in the dim light. “Do you know what I saw?”
His hand tightens on mine. “It was a performance. It wasn’t real.”
“I know it wasn’t real. That’s not the point.” I pull my hand back, gently but deliberately, and watch his face fall at the withdrawal. “The point is that you looked at her, Hugo. You looked at her like she was the only person in the room. Like she mattered. Like you were actually present.”
“That’s called acting.”
“Is it? Because I’ve been married to you for two years and you’ve never once looked at me like that.” The words come out quiet, almost curious, as if I’m observing the facts of my own life from a distance. “You’ve never been that focused on me. That attentive. That… there.”
Hugo’s face goes pale.
“That’s not true.”
“It is true. And the worst part is, I don’t even blame you anymore.
” I stand up, leaving my wine glass on the end table, leaving him on the couch.
“You can’t give what you don’t have. I’ve been waiting for you to become someone different, someone who shows up, someone who sees me.
But you’re not going to become that person, are you?
You’re just going to keep disappearing into your work and apologizing afterward and promising things will change. ”
“They will change. I’m trying…”
“I know you’re trying.” I stop at the doorway and look back at him. “But I’m tired of being the thing you try to get back to. I’m tired of being the waiting room you pass through on your way somewhere more important.”
He doesn’t move. He doesn’t follow.
“What do you want me to do?” His voice cracks slightly. “Tell me what you want and I’ll do it.”
“I want you to want to be here. Not because I asked. Not because you feel guilty. Because being here with me is better than being anywhere else.” I grip the doorframe, steadying myself.
“But I can’t make you want that. I can’t love you into wanting that.
I’ve tried for two years and it doesn’t work. ”
I turn and walk toward the stairs, my footsteps steady on the hardwood.
“Lucille, wait…”
“I’m not storming out,” I say without turning around. “I’m not fighting with you. I’m just done pretending that this is working when we both know it isn’t.”
I climb the stairs to our bedroom, his bedroom, really, I’ve always felt like a guest in it, and close the door behind me.
Then I sit on the edge of the bed in the dark and wait for the tears to come.
They don’t.
The part of me that used to reach has gone cold, has stopped trying, has finally accepted what I should have accepted months ago: you cannot make someone love you by loving them harder. You cannot earn presence through patience. You cannot wait someone into wanting you.
I lie back on the bed and stare at the ceiling and listen to Hugo moving around downstairs, not coming up, not following, not choosing me even now.
And I think about the wedding dress sketch still sitting on my drafting table, the one that says For me, someday. When it matters.
I’m starting to wonder if someday will ever come.