You're in the studio again, your fingers resting numb on the piano keys, and your heart beating like it's writing its own song in a minor key. Outside, the sun lazily slips over the garden where your dog Mozzarella sleeps on his favorite cushion.

Mozzarella. Mozzy. Morrissey.

"Still writing songs for him?" his voice comes from behind you, dry, without melody. You don’t need to turn around to know he’s there. You feel him. You always do, like a tight string vibrating just before it snaps.

"They’re not for him," you reply. A bad lie. You know it. And so does he.

The crumpled notes are still in the bin, but not well hidden. Johnny read them. Folded them up with quiet rage and tossed them back like used napkins. Half-written lyrics, verses that spoke of him.

"You told Nile that if he ever had a kid, you’d nickname him Mozzy," he adds. His tone isn’t jealous. It’s worse. It’s disappointed.

But what he doesn’t say weighs like bricks on your chest. Because he’s given you years, children, shared songs and entire dawns spent arranging tracks in the studio. Because he looks at you with real love, the kind that doesn’t need drama to feel intense.

But there's still a part of you that hasn’t let go of the ghost.

"Mozzy’s just a nickname," you say quietly, knowing it sounds hollow.

"I want to be the only one who lives in your songs," he whispers, without demand, just truth. "And I don’t know if I am."