Page 213 of The Professor's Wife

I moved toward them, curious about what had caught their attention, but mostly because I wanted to take a clear breath.

Away from Oliver and that table.

He was so immersed in those people that I could have a few minutes to myself, and he wouldn’t even notice.

I stepped outside, and the noise of the restaurant immediately fell away, replaced by a man singing.

At first, his voice was only background noise as I looked around, absorbing the moment and pretending I had come here alone.

I felt lightheaded at the thought.

At that small taste of freedom.

Brief and insatiable.

A moment’s peace I had not felt in so long that I had forgotten the feeling altogether.

The summer evening lingered over the water, burnt orange thinning into a deep ocean blue. The harbor was nearly still. In the distance, a small sailboat drifted toward shore, its sails barely moving.

Behind me, the man’s voice rose—low, aching, unmistakably raw.

He was singing his own rendition of Jeff Buckley’s “Forget Her,” lingering over the parts about trying to let go of someone who had carved herself too deeply into him. Even without listening closely to the words, the grief in his voice was unmistakable.

My heart stuttered at the emotion bleeding out of him.

Curious, I turned.

He sat on a simple chair, his eyes closed, singing into a microphone as though the world around him had dissolved.

His face was expressive and pained. Like a sad painting set against the endless ocean.

There was no warmth in the way he sang. Only hollowed-out longing and the anger of a man trying to convince himself he had finally moved on.

No wonder no one uttered a word.

I glanced at the people seated nearby, including the women who had been ushered outside earlier. They watched him with a mixture of awe and sorrow, as though they, too, wondered who he had lost.

He kept singing, his voice roughening over the parts about trying to forget someone who still lived somewhere out in the world.

He sang like we weren’t there at all. Like he was bleeding internally, and the only thing holding him together was the music pouring out between his lips.

When he finally opened his eyes, they didn’t drift among the crowd.

He looked straight through them, even as a few people stood to place large bills into the open guitar case beside his feet. It held more money than I had expected, but he never once looked down.

His blond hair was unkempt and a little long, framing his face and making his jaw appear more pronounced as he sang. His teeth bared through the words, his expression laced with grief and anger.

She had hurt him, whoever she was.

And he hated her.

The longer I stood there, absorbed in his voice and his raw emotion, the more I couldn’t help hating her, too.

To break a soul down.

I knew the feeling.

To reduce him to this—a man baring his grief to the world, knowing we were all listening but feeling alone nonetheless.