Neither of them have ever been musically inclined, and so she stands outside the apartment for a while and listens curiously to the guitar sounds coming from within.
It stops when she turns the lock. The music stops and she opens the door and he's standing in the middle of the living room until the moment she walks inside, drops her bag, and then he's kissing her, hugging her, and she's burying her face in his neck, and there's blood in her hair and blood on her face and the mysterious music is forgotten, the guitar tossed aside on the couch.
It takes a moment for her to recover, for them to recover, just like it always does because she's been gone for two months and for a moment she thinks he's crying, kissing her neck, and maybe she's crying too because she always forget how much she's missed him until this moment. Then he comments, makes a joke, on the insane amount of blood and dirt matted into her curls, and he takes her hand and leads her into their room, into the bathroom, pulls a clean towel out from the cabinet and finds her some pajama pants, one of his sweatshirts, and then the water is on and steaming up the room.
She remembers the music when she's wrapped up in the warmth, and she can hear him clunking around the kitchen when she asks where the guitar came from, where he learned to play it.
"I met this guy down at Franny's," he says, "who plays in a band, and he and his girlfriend run a music store across town and he said he would teach me."
He wanders into the bedroom and she can see him through the cracked open door, and then the music starts, the same as before.
"Hey there Delilah, what's it like in New York City," he starts to sing and then decides against that and just continues the notes because they both know the song. He sang it to her over the phone the first time they were apart, right after the honeymoon, when she didn't really want to be alone in a hotel in Rio.
She turns off the shower, wraps the towel around, pads into the bedroom, and he strums a few more chords before gently dropping the instrument on the bed.
"Oh, it's what you do to me," he continues the song, running his thumb across the gash across her cheek that has thankfully stopped bleeding, and she closes her eyes because his voice is actually pretty beautiful.
"I missed you, love," he says and he kisses her again, on the forehead and the cheek and the lips. "I'm so happy you're home."
"I'm sorry," she says and he's still humming, and she's sorry she's always gone, sorry it was long enough for him to learn a new hobby, sorry she's always leaving and he has to sit and wait. Something in that profession of guilt breaks her down and she's crying into his t-shirt because she missed him too and he wouldn't mind if he was able to stand with his arms around her forever.
Later that night, they're lying in bed and he's wrapping her curls around his fingers, watching her fall asleep, and he says next time he'll play her a love song that isn't so sad.