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 somepoint 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’reSienna 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 whateveryouwant 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 lifeaftermusic.’ 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 lovemusic, 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.
