Elara had never scored a play before.


At first, the idea intimidated her—how to translate dialogue and stage movement into melody, mood, and silence. But Michael made it feel like collaboration, not pressure. He sent her the script in scenes, sometimes annotated with notes like “Think rain, but inside the chest” or “This line should sound like a memory.”


She loved how his words challenged her music.


The play was titled “La Promesse de Minuit”—The Promise of Midnight—a quiet, aching story about two people meeting in a train station over and over again, never at the right time. It was beautiful, tender, and full of things Elara understood too well: timing, longing, absence.


Each time she composed, Michael would come sit beside her at the piano, legs crossed, eyes closed, listening as though the notes were telling him something he hadn’t written yet.


“Do you ever feel like we’re writing the same thing in different languages?” he asked one night.


She smiled. “I think we’re saying the same thing. Just at different volumes.”


The premiere was set for late summer in a small black box theater in Montmartre. The cast was young, the set simple—but the emotion ran deep. They poured their hearts into it.


And the night of the performance, when the lights dimmed and Elara’s score began to play, she felt something shift inside her. Not the nerves she used to fight, not even pride. It was… peace.


Like her music had finally found its place in the world.




After the show, the cast gathered at a small café to celebrate. Someone brought out cheap champagne and sang off-key. Michael pulled her aside to the alley behind the café where it was quiet.


“I know it’s early,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck, “but I think I’m falling in—well. You probably know.”


She didn’t make him finish. She reached for his hand and said the thing she hadn’t said to anyone in a very long time:


“I’m falling too.”


Then they stood there, forehead to forehead, two artists with messy hearts and steady hands, letting the city spin without them for a moment.




Weeks passed, then months.


Their names appeared together on small playbills and review columns. They lived in a rhythm of rehearsals, dinners, kisses, and art. And when Elara finally invited him to come home with her for the holidays—to meet Marcus and Liana—Michael didn’t hesitate.


“I want to know where you come from,” he said. “Because wherever you go next, I want to go too.”