Chapter Nineteen
Iona made a sound against her mouth, something between surprise and relief, and her hands came up to grip the front of Maeve's jacket like she was afraid Maeve might evaporate.
Which, historically speaking, was a reasonable concern.
Maeve pulled back. Not far. Just enough to see Iona's face, flushed and startled and so painfully hopeful that Maeve's chest wanted to explode.
Her brain wanted to explode.
This was all… a lot.
She cleared her throat. "I have to go."
The hope on Iona’s face flickered. "What?"
"Not like last time." The words came out rougher than she'd intended. "I'm not leaving. I'm not disappearing to Scotland. I just… I just need to go back to my hotel before I do something we're both going to regret."
Iona's hands were still holding her jacket. "What if I don't regret it?"
"Then one of us should have some sense, and we both know it's not going to be you."
That got a small laugh, which was something. Iona loosened her grip, smoothing the fabric she'd wrinkled like that would somehow undo the last five minutes. "You're coming to rehearsal tomorrow?"
"I said I would."
"You've said a lot of things over the years."
Fair point. Maeve couldn't argue with it, so she didn't try. She stepped back, putting distance between them that felt both necessary and deeply stupid. "Tomorrow. I'll be there."
She left before she could change her mind. The night air hit her like a slap, cool and clarifying, and she walked back to her hotel with her hands shoved in her pockets and her brain running in circles like a dog chasing its own tail.
She'd kissed Iona Faith. Again. On purpose. While sober.
She was an idiot.
THE HOTEL ROOM looked exactly like it had when she'd left: beige, impersonal, aggressively inoffensive. The kind of room designed to be forgotten the moment you checked out. Maeve had been staying here for weeks now, and she still couldn't have picked it out of a lineup.
She sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the wall.
The kiss had been a mistake. Obviously. She'd spent fifteen years building walls, learning how to be alone, convincing herself that she didn't need anyone.
And then Iona had stood there with tears on her face, talking about naming her daughter after a woman she couldn't forget, and Maeve had thrown all of that careful construction out the window like it was last week's newspaper.
Brilliant. Fantastic. Really excellent decision-making from someone who was supposed to be in recovery.
She thought about calling Glinna, but it was late, and Glinna had six children and a farm and didn't need Maeve's romantic disasters dumped on her at eleven o'clock at night. So she took off her boots, lay down on the bed, and stared at the ceiling until sleep finally dragged her under.
She dreamed about sheep. It was not restful.
REHEARSAL THE NEXT morning was a disaster waiting to happen, and Maeve was determined to be the one causing it.
She arrived at nine sharp, which was already a problem because Cam wasn't there yet and Ellie was doing something complicated with her bass that required concentration.
Iona was tuning her guitar in the corner, and when she looked up at Maeve, her smile was hesitant and hopeful and entirely too much to deal with before coffee.
So Maeve didn't deal with it. She nodded once, curtly, and went to adjust her microphone stand even though there was nothing wrong with it. And she didn’t know what to do, how to be, so she reverted to her default settings.
"Good morning," Iona said.
"Is it?"
Iona's smile faltered. Maeve watched it happen and felt like the world's biggest arsehole, which she probably was, but that didn't mean she knew how to stop.
Cam arrived twelve minutes late, trailing apologies and the faint smell of an expensive perfume that definitely wasn't hers. She dropped into her seat behind the drums with a clatter and immediately checked her phone, thumbs moving over the screen.
"Are we doing this or not?" Maeve said.
"Good morning to you too, sunshine," Cam said without looking up. Her phone buzzed and she smiled at whatever she saw, a private little expression that vanished the moment she noticed Maeve watching.
"I'm not here to make small talk. I'm here to work."
Ellie and Iona exchanged a look. Maeve saw it and felt her shoulders tighten. They were doing that thing again, the silent communication that came from years of friendship, the kind of shorthand that Maeve didn’t feel like she had a right to be part of anymore.
"Right," Ellie said slowly. "Let's run through the set list, then."
They played. It was fine. The notes were in the right places, the timing was correct, and there was absolutely no spark to any of it because Maeve was delivering every lyric like she was reading from a legal document.
"Can we try that again?" Iona asked after the third song. "I think if we—"
"It's fine."
"It didn't sound fine, it sounded flat."
"I said it's fine."
Silence. Cam's drumstick tapped against her thigh in an agitated rhythm. Ellie was very carefully not looking at anyone.
"Okay," Cam said brightly. "So we're doing whatever this is today. Cool. Love that for us."
Maeve's jaw clenched. "Whatever what is?"
"This." Cam gestured vaguely at Maeve's entire person. "The whole 'I'm going to bite everyone's head off for no reason' vibe. Very nostalgic. Really takes me back to 2008."
"Cam," Ellie said quietly.
"What? I'm just saying, if we're going to have drama, I'd at least like to know what the drama is about. Did someone kick your sheep? Insult your hair? Use the wrong kind of milk in your—"
"Can we just play the music?" Maeve's voice came out sharper than she'd intended. "Is that too much to ask? Or do we all need to have a group therapy session first?"
Another silence. This one had teeth.
"Fine," Cam said. "Music. Great. Let's do music."
They did music. It was awful. And Maeve knew it was her fault.
MAEVE'S PHONE VIbrATED during the break. She pulled it out expecting Glinna, or probably a notification from the stupid meditation app she'd downloaded and never used, but instead there was a text from an unknown number.
hi this is mo. mum gave me your number. hope thats okay. thought you might like this song
Attached was a link to something by an artist Maeve had never heard of.
She stared at it for a moment, feeling something twist in her chest. Mo had been thinking about her.
Had wanted to share something with her. Had bothered to track down her number and send a message that was, by teenage standards, practically a declaration of friendship.
And Maeve's immediate instinct was to be angry about it, because being angry was easier than being touched.
Being angry was always easiest. It was the one emotion she knew how to do, how to name, and, god help her, it was the one that overtook her when she was scared. Terrified.
She looked up to find Iona watching her nervously from across the room.
"You gave her my number," Maeve said.
Iona didn’t ask who, but had the grace to look slightly guilty. "She asked for it."
"And you just handed out my personal information to a fourteen-year-old?"
"She's my daughter. And she wanted to talk to you about music. I didn't think you'd mind."
"No, you didn't."
"Maeve—"
"I'm not a resource," Maeve said, and even as the words left her mouth, she knew she was being unreasonable.
Mo wasn't some random teenager. Mo was Iona's daughter, named after her, apparently interested in songwriting, and completely innocent in whatever mess Maeve had made of her own life.
But the anger felt safer than everything else.
"You can't just give people access to me whenever you feel like it. "
Iona's expression shifted from guilty to something harder. "I was trying to help."
"By deciding what I want without asking me?"
"By letting my daughter connect with someone she admires. But clearly that was a terrible mistake."
They stared at each other. Cam was making a visible effort to pretend she wasn't listening while simultaneously texting furiously. Ellie had developed a sudden intense interest in her bass strings.
Maeve broke first. "I'm calling it. Rehearsal's done."
"We've only been here an hour," Ellie said.
"And it's been a tremendously productive hour, hasn't it?" Maeve grabbed her jacket from the back of a chair. "I'll see you all tomorrow. Try not to give out my address while I'm gone."
She walked out before anyone could respond.
THE WALK TO nowhere in particular took about twenty minutes before Maeve admitted to herself that she was being a coward and an arse. She found a bench in a small park, sat down between two pigeons who seemed deeply unimpressed with her presence, and called Glinna.
"Maeve." Glinna's voice was warm and slightly breathless. "Perfect timing. I've just finished wrestling a fence post into the ground and I need someone to complain to."
"I kissed Iona."
There was a pause. In the background, Maeve could hear one of the children yelling something about a bucket. "Right," Glinna said. "Well, that's more interesting than fence posts. When did this happen?"
"Last night. And then I panicked and left, and this morning I went to rehearsal and was horrible to everyone, and now I'm sitting on a bench in London being stared at by pigeons. Oh, and I’m an arse."
"Are they judgmental pigeons?"
"Deeply. One of them keeps looking at me like I put its mother in a pie."
"I see." Glinna made a sound that might have been a laugh. "So you kissed her, you panicked, and then you punished everyone else for your feelings. That's very on-brand for you."
"I don't need sarcasm right now."
"What do you need?"
Maeve didn't have an answer for that. She watched a pigeon waddle closer, cocking its head like it was waiting for her to say something profound. "I don't know. Someone to tell me I didn't just make a massive mistake."
"Did you want to kiss her?"
"Yes."
"Did she want you to kiss her?"
"I think so. Yes."
"Then it wasn't a mistake." Glinna's voice softened. "It was honest. And I know honesty terrifies you, because you've spent fifteen years hiding from anything that might actually matter. But you can't undo it now. Once you've been honest, you have to keep being honest. That's how it works."
"That sounds awful."
"Most of the important things are. You know that better than anyone.
" There was a crash in the background, followed by shrieking.
"Charity, put that down! Maeve, I have to go, but call me later, will you?
And stop being horrible to people who care about you.
It's not a good look, and you're better than that, even if you don't believe it. "
She hung up. Maeve sat on the bench for another few minutes, letting Glinna's words settle. You can't undo it. Once you've been honest, you have to keep being honest.
Terrible advice. True, probably, but terrible.
Her phone buzzed again. This time it was a name she recognized.
Can we talk? Not at rehearsal. Just us. I'll come to you if that's easier.
Iona.
Maeve stared at the message for a long moment. The pigeons stared at her. Somewhere in the distance, a siren wailed.