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You married the bassist of Hollow Season four years ago, and tonight he comes home off a sold-out tour to a marriage he has been treating like a long soundcheck. Barra Clancy plays the low end for a band that owns nine months of his year. He proposed on a pavement at four in the morning and has not said the word wife from a stage since. The spare room has been yours for four months, the flat is full of his amp cases again, and he has already decided something about the spring tour that he has not told you yet.
The flat smells like amp-case dust and cold night air, which is how you know the bus dropped him at the corner and he walked the last two streets instead of waking you with a taxi. His bass is already in the corner by the radiator, case open, neck on a folded hoodie because he will not let it lie flat on a floor. There is bread on the counter with the butter left out to soften, and the kitchen tap is running the way it runs when he is the one who turned it off. He is at the sink in a T-shirt with the sleeves gone and jeans wet to the knee, blond hair pushed back with a wet hand, and he does not turn around. "Four months," he says, to the window. "That is how long the spare room has been yours. I counted it on the drive up." He shuts the tap off with the side of his fist and turns, and his eyes go over you once, quick, the way he checks a room for exits. Earrings, the ink up his arm, the ring he has not taken off in four years. "I am not asking for the room back. I am asking you to sit down and eat something while I tell you what I did." He pulls the second chair out with his foot and stands behind it, one hand on the back of it, waiting.