Chapter Twenty-Six
The hotel room was too beige. Maeve had been staring at the walls for about an hour now and she still couldn't decide if they were meant to be calming or if someone had simply given up halfway through choosing a color. If beige was a color. Maybe it was just the absence of color.
The carpet was the same non-committal shade. The curtains. The bedspread. Even the stupid bridge painting had too much beige.
She was sitting cross-legged on the bed with her guitar, a notebook open beside her, working on something she had no intention of showing anyone.
And she was looking at beige to ground herself. She knew this song was something special and… and it became too much sometimes. She needed a breath.
The melody had been stuck in her head for weeks.
She'd caught herself humming it while doing Iona's dishes, which was weird, and then again in the shower, which was less weird but still annoying.
It wasn't finished. It might never be finished.
But she kept picking at it anyway, like a scab she knew she shouldn't touch.
She played the chords again, softer this time, and tried a new line. Wrote it down. Crossed it out. Wrote something worse. Crossed that out too.
This was the problem with writing something that actually mattered.
When she wrote for other people, she could be clever.
Detached. She could craft a perfect pop hook about heartbreak without feeling a thing, because it wasn't her heartbreak.
It was a product. A service. Words arranged in a pleasing order for someone else to sell.
This was different. This was hers, and it was terrible and brilliant or terribly brilliant, and she couldn't stop working on it.
She set the guitar aside and flopped back against the excessive number of decorative pillows. The ceiling was also beige. Of course it was.
She had a problem. For the first time in fifteen years, she was allowing herself to imagine a future.
It was a dangerous thing to do. She knew that.
Futures had a way of not happening, especially when you wanted them too badly.
But lying here in this aggressively neutral room, she couldn't help it.
She thought about the cottage, about Glinna's chaos and Charity's sticky hugs and Eejit the sheep who still held a grudge.
She thought about going back there eventually, but not alone. Not hiding.
She thought about Iona.
About weekends. About Iona driving up to Scotland in that ridiculous car of hers, complaining about the roads and the weather and the complete lack of decent coffee, and Maeve pretending to be annoyed about it.
About waking up to someone else's breathing.
About having a reason to cook something more complicated than toast.
She thought about touring. Actually touring, not just writing songs in a cottage and sending them off to be sung by strangers.
Being on stage again. Being seen. It had terrified her for so long that she'd forgotten it could be anything else.
But at the open mic in Manchester, and in rehearsals, she'd remembered.
The high of it. The way a crowd could feel like a conversation.
The way her voice could fill a room and mean something.
She wasn't anonymous anymore. She was Maeve Maureen MacDonnell again, and she was going to play Lakeside, and maybe that was alright. Maybe that was how things should be.
Her phone buzzed. Glinna's name on the screen.
"You're not dead, then," Glinna said when Maeve answered.
"Not yet. Give it time."
"I'll give it nothing. I've got six children trying to kill each other over whose turn it is on the computer and a husband who thinks the solution is to buy another computer, as if that wouldn't just give them more weapons. How's London?"
"Beige."
"Right. Okay. Um, listen, I've got news. The cottage is finished."
Maeve sat up. "Finished finished? Water and everything?"
"Water, electric, walls, roof, the lot. They even fixed that draft in the bathroom you kept complaining about. You can come back whenever you want."
The words settled over her like something she'd been waiting to hear for months. Her cottage. Her hiding place. Her small, safe corner of the world where nothing could touch her. "That's brilliant," she said.
"Is it?" Glinna's voice was carefully neutral. A beige voice. "Because, well, you don't sound as excited as I thought you would."
"I am excited."
"Maeve."
"I am. It's just…" She looked around the beige room.
At the guitar on the bed. At the notebook full of crossed-out lines.
And she blew out a long breath. "It’s just…
I think it might be a while before I can come back.
We've got Lakeside in a few weeks, and there's still rehearsals, and… " She ran out of excuses.
"And?" Because Glinna could sniff out an excuse from inside a full wetsuit and scuba mask.
Maeve exhaled. "And… I’m not sure, I mean, I don’t know, but maybe… Maybe it might not be forever. When I do come back, I mean. It might be. I don’t know. But it might not. If… if that’s something you think I could do. Something I might be ready for."
There was a pause. Then Glinna laughed, bright and delighted.
"Well, thank Christ for that. I was starting to think you'd die in that cottage and Eejit would eat you and I’d have to have uncomfortable conversations with the local Bobby and then no one would ever rent it again because, well, because you’d have sunk into the bones of the place, I suppose. "
"Charming," Maeve said, her heart beating hard. She was nervous about this conversation. Glinna’s opinion meant a lot to her. More than anyone else’s, almost.
"My love, you have nothing to worry about. You know who you are, you know what you can do, and you’re stronger than you’ve ever been before." Her voice softened. "I'm glad, Maeve. Glad for you."
Maeve felt her throat tighten. "I think I can do this," she said. "All of it. The band, the tour, the being a person again. I think that maybe I can actually do it."
"Of course you can. I've been telling you that for years."
"I know. I should have listened sooner."
"Yes, you should have. But you're listening now, and that's what matters." There was a crash in the background and the sound of children shouting. "Right, I need to go before someone loses an eye. Call me. You’re not alone, Maeve. You’re never alone. I’m always right here."
"I will. And Glinna? Thank you. For all of it. For pushing me."
"Someone had to. Now go be a rock star or whatever it is you're doing."
She hung up, and Maeve sat there for a moment, phone in hand, feeling lighter than she had in years.
REHEARSAL THAT AFTERNOON was chaos, and Maeve loved every second of it.
They'd nailed down the final setlist for Lakeside over the past week, arguing over song order and tempo and whether they could get away with playing the bridge of "Midnight Girls" twice because Cam liked the drum fill.
They couldn't. Cam sulked for approximately four minutes before getting distracted by her phone, which had been buzzing constantly all day.
"If you check that thing one more time," Ellie said from her spot on the amp, "I'm going to throw it in the Thames."
"You wouldn't."
"I absolutely would. I've got three children. I've thrown worse things in worse places."
Cam clutched her phone protectively. "It's important."
"It's Elijah," Iona said, grinning. "Again. You've got it bad."
"I don't have anything bad. I have a healthy and mature relationship with a very nice man who happens to text a lot."
"You said 'relationship,'" Maeve observed. "Out loud. In front of witnesses."
Cam went slightly pink. "I said no such thing."
"You definitely did," Ellie said. "I heard it. Iona heard it. The walls of this rehearsal space heard it."
"The walls don't have ears."
"In this place? I wouldn't be so sure."
They ran through the setlist twice, and it sounded good.
Better than good. It sounded like they actually knew what they were doing, which was frankly alarming after so many years of not doing anything at all.
Ellie looked tired, dark circles under her eyes that hadn't been there a few weeks ago, but she played like she always did.
Solid. Reliable. The foundation they built everything else on.
Cam was drumming with the manic energy of someone who'd had too much coffee and not enough sleep.
Iona kept catching Maeve's eye and smiling, small private smiles that made Maeve's chest do inconvenient things. And made Maeve’s brain go to inconvenient places, like Iona’s bedroom where she was staying every other night, whenever Mo was with Shepherd.
But she was laughing. Actually laughing, at Cam's terrible jokes and Ellie's dry commentary and the sheer absurdity of being here, in this moment, doing this thing she'd been afraid of for fifteen years.
Life was good. Life was bizarrely, improbably good, and she was going to enjoy it for as long as it lasted.
They were debating whether to add a cover to the encore when the door slammed open. Maeve stopped mid-word, the mic echoing a squeal until Iona hit the switch to turn it off.
Shepherd stood in the doorway, face like thunder, tablet clutched in his hand. He crossed the room in three strides and threw the tablet down on the nearest amp. "What," he said, "the hell is this?"
They all looked. The screen showed a news site, one that they all immediately recognized.
And there, splashed across the front page, were Maeve and Iona.
A photo from somewhere, probably paparazzi, the two of them walking close together on a London street.
The headline screamed about secret romances and band reunions and the return of The Stage Girls.
Maeve’s heart beat harder again and she was mad but also…
also a little relieved, also a little proud.
Her and Iona. Iona and her. A couple. Just like that.
"I told you to stay low," Shepherd said. His voice was controlled, but only just. "I told you to work, to keep out of the limelight until we were ready. Until Lakeside. Until we had something to show them."
"Shepherd," Iona started.
"This isn't just gossip. This is a full article. Sources, quotes, speculation about the album, about the tour, about everything we've been trying to keep quiet." He jabbed a finger at the screen. "Someone talked. Someone gave them this."
Ellie leaned in, peering at the article. Her face went very still. "The byline," she said quietly.
"What about it?"
"Elijah Stone." Ellie looked up at Cam. "Elijah?"
All the color drained from Cam's face.
Maeve stared at her. The phone. The texts. The secrecy. The "he wants to keep things quiet."
"Elijah Stone is the man you've been seeing?" Maeve's voice was flat. "The journalist?"
Cam nodded and looked like she might be sick.