1972- The bar smelled like old velvet and rain-soaked coats. The haze of cigarette smoke curled around amber lights, casting everything in the warmth of a fading dream.

John sat in the back with Yoko, nursing a scotch he hadn’t touched. He wasn’t really listening to her talk. Wasn’t really listening to anything at all. Just letting the room settle around him.

Until you walked barefoot onto the stage.

He looked up casually—then didn’t look away.

Your curls bounced freely over your shoulders, thick and wild. A sheer, loose blouse hung off one side of your frame, a string of wooden beads trailing down your chest. Pit hair soft and unapologetic beneath bare arms, bracelets clinking as you adjusted the mic. You were all earth and freedom. A girl who probably talked to trees and smoked clove cigarettes behind train stations.

The band behind you was a crew of seasoned players—men who’d seen acid highs and divorce lows, now quietly tuning their instruments like the past didn’t touch them anymore. But they played for you. You didn’t lead them with force. You pulled them with gravity.

Then the guitar began—slow, picked carefully. Familiar. No.

You didn’t— But you did.

“And I Love Her.”

John didn’t move. Couldn’t.

You sang it slower. Soft. Each word brushed with tenderness but never hesitation. You weren’t singing to the room. You weren’t even singing to someone. You were just singing it because it was true.

And that’s what wrecked him.

He felt his arm slide off Yoko’s shoulders again. Felt her glance sideways. Felt the shift in the air.

But he couldn’t look away.

You sang the way he meant it when he first wrote it—quiet, aching, simple. Before the noise. Before the fame swallowed the softness.

“Bright are the stars that shine…”

You tilted your head up slightly on that line, like the words didn’t just live in your mouth—they lived in the back of your throat, in the base of your spine.

John’s eyes burned. His fingers twitched. He remembered writing it in a hotel room, trying to sound sure of something he wasn’t.

You made it sound uncomplicated. No ego. No poetry. Just feeling.

Yoko’s voice came low, clipped. “You’re in love with her.”

He finally turned, eyes glassy but steady. “No,” he said softly. “I’m in love with the way she sees what I forgot was there.”

Yoko said nothing. But her jaw tensed. She felt the loss. She always felt it before he did.

Back on stage, you hummed the last lines, then let the silence carry the rest. No bow. No drama. Just presence.

You stepped back, barefoot, fading into the amber fog behind the curtain.

And John— John Lennon, who once thought he invented the sound of love— Sat still in the dark, quietly falling into it for the first time all over again.