Twenty-Two
Now
The room behind the main bar was packed and smelled like old beer. The afterparty was loud. A woman with a digital recorder and a lanyard that said Music Mag was cornering Ashley near the fire exit.
Karen had texted Molly ten minutes ago: Sorted an interview. Make it look natural.
Molly swallowed the rest of her warm white wine and put the empty plastic cup on a ledge behind a radiator. This was the first night of the tour, and she had spent the last two hours sitting in the dressing room downstairs by herself while the gig happened upstairs.
She had told Ashley that she had a headache from the bus ride.
She wasn’t going to tell her the real reason, which was that she couldn’t face standing in the wings watching Ashley play.
She didn’t want to think about why that made her feel sick.
The lack of VIP venue at this gig simplified it somewhat. There was nowhere for her to be seen.
But there was no avoiding the afterparty.
She pushed through a group of men in heavy coats who were arguing about the bass mix.
Her skin felt hot. Standing next to Ashley was becoming difficult because every time they were close, Molly felt a specific irritation she couldn’t name.
Molly was sure Ashley felt the same. But neither of them had talked about it.
They had both fallen into a pattern of behaving like coworkers, just two people doing a job for Simon and Karen.
‘Oh, here she is,’ Ashley said when Molly finally reached her.
Ashley pressed herself lightly against Molly’s shoulder in a way that suggested contact visually but made little actual impact on Ashley. She smelled like the stage smoke from upstairs.
‘Hi,’ Molly said to the journalist. ‘I’m Molly.’
‘Great to meet you,’ the journalist said. She had a smudge of blue ink on her thumb and shifted her recorder an inch closer to Molly’s face. ‘We were just talking about the tour kick-off. Ashley says the energy upstairs tonight was unbelievable. What was your favourite moment from the set, Molly?’
That was a tricky question considering Molly hadn’t seen a single fucking second of it. But she could improv.
‘Oh, the whole thing was brilliant,’ Molly said smoothly. ‘Just seamless from start to finish. Incredible flow.’
The journalist blinked. ‘Seamless? Even... during the third song?’
‘Especially the third song,’ Molly declared, nodding with deep, artistic appreciation.
Beside her, Ashley made a strange, choking sound in her throat. Her whole body was trembling slightly.
‘Flawless?’ the journalist repeated, looking down at her notepad in absolute bewilderment. ‘A rogue stage pyrotechnic set the main velvet curtain on fire, and three security guards had to beat it out with a fire blanket while Ashley was doing an acoustic guitar solo.’
Molly’s smile froze. Her stomach dropped into her shoes.
‘Right!’ Molly squeaked, her voice jumping an octave. ‘The... flaming curtain incident! Which was... handled so seamlessly! You’d barely know the stage was on fire, really. Pure professionalism.’
‘A man dropped from the rafters with an extinguisher, Molly,’ Ashley muttered out of the corner of her mouth.
‘It added to the ambience!’ Molly shot back, digging her heels in. ‘Very rock and roll. Loved it.’
The journalist stared at her for two solid seconds, clearly trying to figure out if Molly was concussed or just extremely eccentric. She slowly clicked her pen.
‘Right. Well... Ashley, there are several love songs on the new album. A lot of people are saying they’re about Molly. Is that true?’
Ashley cleared her throat. Molly found herself leaning in ever so slightly for the answer.
‘Yeah,’ Ashley said.
She stopped there. Molly waited, but Ashley didn’t say anything else. She just stood there, looking at the journalist. Her jaw looked very tight.
The silence went on for three seconds too long. Molly cleared her throat and tried to save her. ‘I know she’s confident on stage, but sometimes she can be a bit shy offstage, can’t you?’
Ashley nodded. ‘Yes.’
Molly thought she might say a bit more, but no, that was it.
‘Lucky she has you to jump in for her,’ the journalist said, looking between them.
‘I’m definitely the talker,’ Molly said sincerely.
Something about the way the journo looked at them made Molly suddenly nervous.
She reached out and took Ashley’s hand, lacing their fingers together.
Her palm was sweating. She squeezed Ashley’s fingers too hard, a clumsy, messy movement.
Ashley didn’t pull away, though. She squeezed back, tighter, and held Molly’s hand flat against her thigh.
‘Well, it’s a great start to the tour—fires notwithstanding,’ the journalist said, clicking her recorder off. ‘Okay, just need a quick shot.’ She took out her iPhone and held it up.
Molly smiled, Ashley smiled.
The iPhone went down. ‘Thanks for the five minutes. Have a good night.’ The woman turned around and walked back into the crowd toward the bar.
Molly dropped Ashley’s hand immediately. Her palm felt cold where the sweat was drying. ‘A curtain was on fire?!’
‘It was six feet tall, Molly!’ Ashley buried her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking with quiet, suppressed laughter. ‘The entire crowd was screaming! How did you miss a smoke alarm?’
‘I was listening to a meditation app on my noise-cancellers!’ Molly threw her hands up defensively, her face burning. ‘You could have warned me!’
‘I didn’t think I needed to brief you on the venue catching fire!’ Ashley shoved both hands into her jacket pockets, though her eyes were brighter than they’d been all night, the heavy awkwardness between them temporarily shattered by the absurd lie. ‘“Seamless,” Molly? Really?’
‘I covered really well!’ Molly declared.
Then she realised that she was smiling at Ashley and Ashley was smiling at her. And no one was taking their picture.
Molly threw her eyes towards a poster for a beer brand on the wall. ‘I’m going to find some water. My mouth is dry.’
‘The bar is packed,’ Ashley said. ‘Toby and Jax are over there. They’re arguing about a lost drumstick, so avoid them if you can, because they have a habit of pulling third parties into their spats,’ Ashley said, shifting her feet.
Her boot clipped Molly’s shoe by accident, a sharp crack of leather.
Both of them moved back a six-inch step at the same time. ‘Sorry.’
‘It’s fine,’ Molly said.
They stood another few seconds without speaking. The noise from the party was very loud behind them.
‘I’m thirsty. I’ll risk it,’ Molly said and walked quickly away.
Five Years Ago
The bright, artificial lights of the set beat down on Molly.
Around her, stagehands were shifting a sofa, the director was barking notes about a missed comedic cue, and her co-star (Dara Cane, first on the call sheet) was loudly complaining about the lukewarm catering.
It was the exact kind of professional chaos Molly had spent years praying for.
She had a steady television gig, a dressing room with her name on the door, and a script in her hand.
She should have been ecstatic. Instead, she was staring blankly at her phone screen during a five-minute lighting reset.
The text she’d sent Ashley thirty-six hours ago sat there, stark and humiliating against the grey background: ‘Good luck with the LA radio interviews today x. Call me when you can, miss you.’
No reply. Not even a read receipt.
Molly’s thumb hovered over the screen, the familiar sting of rejection blooming in her chest. Ever since that disastrous, abrupt phone call a week ago—where Ashley had snapped at her about a production runner bringing her a bloody coffee—the silence had been deafening.
The rational part of Molly’s brain tried to argue. She’s across a time difference, doing press, probably running on too little sleep. But the rational part of her brain was losing the battle against a deeply rooted, ever louder insecurity.
Five weeks. That was the reality of what they’d had.
They had known each other for just five weeks before Ashley packed her guitar and flew away.
It was nothing. A drop in the ocean. How could five weeks of a dingy London romance possibly compete with the glittering universe Ashley was currently occupying?
Out there, Ashley was loved by huge audiences on a nightly basis.
She’s forgetting you, the voice whispered. You were just a temporary comfort before she got what she actually wanted.
Molly gripped the plastic edge of her phone, her breathing shallow. She hated how easily her mind drifted to the worst-case scenario. But she knew exactly where that rot had started.
Molly’s mother was a woman who would vanish for days on end, leaving little Molly to scavenge through empty kitchen cupboards, wondering what she had done wrong to be left behind.
It had taught her early that people’s attention was fickle, that if you didn’t constantly fight to keep yourself visible, you simply ceased to exist to the people who were supposed to love you.
And Ashley had never even said that. Neither had Molly.
She’d kind of hoped Ashley would break that ice.
Right up to the airport goodbye, she’d prayed to hear it.
But no.
Molly had foolishly let herself hope she might be safe. She had put on a brave face, smiled through her heartbreak, and told Ashley to conquer the world because she didn’t want to be a burden. She had promised she’d be waiting.
But as she stared at the unread text, a devastating realisation washed over her. It didn’t matter if she was waiting. If Ashley didn’t want to look back, Molly was just a ghost an ocean away, slowly fading into the background.
‘Molly, we’re ready for you on the marks!’ the first assistant director shouted, clapping his hands.
Molly swallowed hard, blinking back the sudden prickle of tears in her eyes. She quickly locked her phone, shoved it into the pocket of her costume wardrobe, and forced her face into the bright, cheerful expression of a girl who didn’t have a care in the world.
‘Coming!’ she called out, stepping back into the lights to play her part.