Twenty-One
Now
The Scottish countryside outside the bus window was green and flat.
Ashley looked down at her notebook. She’d been staring at it for three hours.
There was nothing on the page. Ashley didn’t really expect there to be.
Other than a brief incident after bumping into Molly, her recent writer’s block was still very much operational.
She wasn’t really trying to write anyway.
She just needed somewhere to point her eyes that wasn’t at Molly.
The back of the bus was completely quiet. Molly sat in the corner booth wearing a big grey jumper. She had headphones on and looked at her phone screen. She had only exchanged the briefest of morning greetings with Ashley so far today.
The door to the back bunks opened, and Toby, Elena, and Jax came out into the small kitchen area.
‘I’m just saying,’ Elena said, sitting down right next to Molly but addressing Toby. ‘It was distracting.’
‘What was?’ Toby asked.
‘You know what. You eyeballing me during the bridge.’
Toby grabbed a bag of kettle chips from a cupboard and popped them open irritably. ‘Wasn’t.’
‘You were glaring at her, I saw it,’ Jax said, grabbing a chip from Toby’s bag and tossing it into their mouth. ‘You were just mad because Elena changed the synth key patches to an inverted chord progression on the third verse and didn’t bother telling the guy holding the drumsticks.’
‘It creates a floating harmonic tension!’ Elena interjected, entirely unbothered.
‘It threw my entire tempo count off!’ Toby snapped. ‘I’m playing on four, and suddenly her pad sounds like it’s sinking into an ocean.’ He went pink. ‘But I wasn’t glaring. But if I was, it was about the structure,’ Toby said. ‘Some parts need to stay the same.’
‘Like the bunk assignments?’ Elena asked slyly.
Jax took another chip out of the bag in Toby’s hand. They looked between Elena and Toby quickly. ‘We just needed a chat.’
‘We were talking about the setlist,’ Toby said. He looked at Jax, then at Elena. He looked stressed. ‘And the new bassline. Which sucks.’
That set Jax off on a rant that Ashley checked out of.
This had been going on since the last tour. The three of them, arguing with each other about music constantly. But it was never really about the music.
She knew they were all sexually/romantically entangled in every possible combination except the obvious. Every single pairing had its own secret thing going on, but they never did it all together as a group. It was just a shifting mess of couples.
Ashley didn’t understand why they didn’t just throuple. Though she was buggered if she was going to ask that question out loud. They’d have loved it too much, the bloody drama queens.
The row got a bit loud, and Molly got up from the booth and walked over to Ashley, slumping down beside her. ‘I can’t sit next to that mess.’
Ashley kept her eyes fixed on the page, doodling meaningless musical notes just to look busy. ‘Yeah, sorry,’ Ashley said. ‘I don’t get involved in it.’
Molly stared off into the distance. ‘It reminds me of some of my old flatmates from that shithole I used to live in. Remember the tube violinist and the YouTube crafter?’
‘Deacon? And… Thingy? They were together?’ Ashley asked.
‘Yup. Constantly walking in on them in a state of advanced foreplay was bad enough. But then Deacon started banging the nurse. He thought he’d get away with it because the nurse was on night shifts, so she and the YouTuber never saw each other.
And then the nurse got moved to days and boom, untenable living situation.
I had to get a travel kettle for my room to avoid walking into tension.
’ She rubbed the back of her neck under her hair.
‘But it did force me to make the switch to oat milk because it doesn’t need to be refrigerated. So that was a silver lining.’
Ashley looked up from her page, making eye contact she wasn’t totally prepared for. ‘How about cereal? Didn’t you hate room-temperature milk on your Cheerios?’
‘It stays cool if you keep it on the windowsill,’ Molly said. ‘And it’s better than listening to a crying violinist begging you to understand that it’s possible to fall in love with two people while you’re trying to make toast.’
‘I don’t remember any of that.’
‘It started…’ She paused. ‘Not long after you left to go on tour. I guess you missed it.’
‘Yeah. I guess I did.’
Five Years Ago
The fluorescent lighting of the dressing room in Cleveland, Ohio buzzed with a low, aggravating hum.
Ashley sat on a folding chair, her head in her hands, listening to the agonisingly long ring. It was two in the morning local time, which meant it was seven in the morning in London.
‘Molly, pick up,’ she muttered.
Their relationship had become an endless, frustrating game of phone tag played across a time difference. When Ashley was wired and full of adrenaline after a stadium show, Molly was fast asleep. When Molly was awake and wanting to chat, Ashley was comatose from a gruelling shoot schedule.
‘Hello?’
Molly’s voice finally cut through. She sounded utterly exhausted.
‘Hey,’ Ashley said, her chest tightening instantly with a mixture of relief and anxiety she’d come to associate with these chats. ‘Did I wake you? I know it’s early.’
‘No, no, I’m up,’ Molly mumbled. ‘I’m already on set. Just trying to get my brain online. How was the show tonight?’
‘Good. Huge,’ Ashley said, though the words felt hollow.
She didn’t want to talk about the screaming crowds.
She wanted to talk about Molly’s flatmates, or what Molly had eaten for dinner, or anything that felt real.
‘The label executives were there. They want me to fly to LA next week for some radio interviews on our only day off.’
There was a heavy pause on the other end of the line. ‘Oh. Right. So... you won’t be able to do our FaceTime date on Tuesday then?’
‘I’m sorry, Mol. I don’t really get a say in it,’ Ashley said, her tone sharper than she intended.
The relentless pressure of the tour was wearing her thin.
‘I know,’ Molly sighed, her voice tight. ‘I get it. It’s just... It’s been weeks since we’ve managed anything but a ten-minute call, Ashley. I just miss you.’
Before Ashley could answer, a female voice echoed in the background on Molly’s end of the line.
‘Hey. Brought you a proper coffee. You look like you need it.’
Molly chuckled. ‘Oh my god, you lifesaver. I could kiss you right now.’
Ashley’s grip on her phone tightened. A hot, toxic flash of jealousy flared up in her. She was thousands of miles away, completely miserable in an American dressing room, while Molly was flirting casually on set at seven in the morning.
‘Who’s that?’ Ashley demanded, her voice dropping into an icy register she barely recognised.
‘What? Oh, that’s just a runner. Look, Ash, I’ve got to run. I’m getting looks. Can we talk about this later?’
‘No, it’s fine,’ Ashley snapped. ‘Go. Don’t let me keep you from your lifesaver.’
‘What—’
‘I have to go too,’ Ashley lied smoothly, her throat aching with a sudden, violent urge to cry. ‘Have a great day on set, Molly.’
Without waiting for a response, Ashley slammed her thumb against the end-call button, severing the connection. She threw the phone onto the makeup table, where it skittered and hit the wall.
Tucking her knees up to her chest, Ashley stared at her reflection in the mirror. The glittering pop star staring back looked entirely unrecognisable.
Four months had sounded like a blink of an eye in London. But two months in, and Ashley didn’t know what was happening. If Molly actually liked her all that much anymore. If she was already moving on.