Chapter Thirty-Four
The backstage area at Lakeside was approximately the size of a small aircraft hangar and about twice as chaotic.
Roadies shouted over the thrum of distant bass.
Someone was looking for a missing microphone stand, and someone else was yelling about amp settings.
A man in a headset ran past carrying what appeared to be an enormous stuffed flamingo, and Iona decided it was best just not to ask.
And her heart was beating so hard in her chest that it might break out and she didn’t care. This was it. This was what she wanted, what she’d waited fifteen years for, even if she hadn’t realized at the time.
"This is mental," Cam said, her leg bouncing so fast it was practically vibrating. "This is properly mental. We're actually doing this."
"We're actually doing this," Ellie agreed. She was leaning against a road case, arms folded, impossibly calm. Like she was waiting for a bus. Like they weren't about to walk out in front of forty thousand people.
Iona envied her the composure. Her own hands hadn't stopped shaking since they'd arrived at the festival site. Her stomach had given up trying to process food somewhere around lunchtime and was now just sitting there, sulking.
"Has anyone seen my pick?" Cam asked. "The lucky one. The blue one."
"You're a drummer," Maeve said. "You don't use picks."
"I know. It's for luck. I've had it since I was sixteen."
"Left pocket," Ellie said without looking up.
Cam checked. "Oh. Thanks."
"What would you do without me?" Ellie grinned.
"Lose more things, probably," said Cam.
A tech squeezed past them, wheeling an amp that looked older than Iona. Somewhere outside, the previous act was finishing their set, the bass vibrating through the concrete floor. A woman with a clipboard appeared, frowned at something on her phone, and disappeared again.
And then there was Maeve, standing slightly apart from the rest of them, arms crossed.
She looked terrifying. Genuinely terrifying.
Tall and fierce and radiating an energy that suggested anyone who got in her way might regret it.
But Iona knew her now. Knew that the fierceness was armor, and the silence was fear, and the woman underneath it all was someone worth every moment of chaos it had taken to get here.
"Ten minutes," said someone with a clipboard, sticking their head around the door. "Places in ten."
Ten minutes. Iona's stomach clenched. "Right," she said, more to herself than anyone else. "Right. Okay."
"Inspirational speech time," Cam muttered. "Really feeling the leadership."
"Shut up," Ellie said, but kindly.
"Make me."
They grinned at each other, and for a second Iona felt something settle. They were still them. Still ridiculous. Still completely unprepared for any of this. Just like the first time.
Except it wasn't like the first time. They were older. Wiser, possibly, though Cam's continued existence suggested wisdom wasn't evenly distributed. They'd survived marriages and divorces and diagnoses and fifteen years of not speaking, and they were still here. Still together.
Iona thought about how far they'd come. The restaurant in Soho where Cam had confessed to being broke. The cottage in Scotland where Maeve had slammed a door in her face. The rehearsal rooms and the arguments and the moments where it had all felt impossible.
And now here they were. About to walk onto the main stage at Lakeside.
"My mum's out there somewhere," Cam said suddenly. "She called earlier. Said she'd brought her opera glasses." She paused. "I didn't even know she owned opera glasses."
"That's sweet," Ellie said.
"It's terrifying. She's going to have opinions. You know how she gets."
"Your mum loves you," Iona said. "She's allowed to have opinions."
"She's going to tell me my drumming was 'energetic.' That's what she says when she thinks I was too fast."
"You are too fast," Maeve said. "You've always been too fast."
"See, that's different. That's just rude. Rude I can handle."
Maeve caught Iona's eye.
Something passed between them. Not a conversation, exactly. More like an acknowledgment. An ‘I know and a me too and a here we go’, all in a single glance. Iona wanted to say something, but there were no words for this. For being here, together, after everything.
She settled for nodding slightly. Maeve nodded back.
"Five minutes."
They gathered their things. Cam bounced on her heels like she might actually achieve liftoff. Ellie straightened from the road case with careful precision. Maeve uncrossed her arms and rolled her shoulders, and Iona saw her jaw set in that way it did when she was steeling herself for something.
"Places, please. You're on in two."
The walk to the stage felt both endless and far too short. The noise from the crowd was already deafening, a wall of sound that hit Iona's chest like a physical thing. She could see the edge of the stage, the lights beyond, the mass of people stretching back into the afternoon sun.
Forty thousand people.
She was going to be sick. She was definitely going to be sick. Or pass out. Possibly both.
"Iona." She turned. Maeve was right behind her, close enough to touch. "Don't fall over," Maeve said.
"Thanks. Very helpful."
"I mean it. I'm right behind you. If you fall, I'm going to trip over you, and then we're both going to look like idiots."
It shouldn't have been funny. But it was funny. Iona laughed, startled, and some of the tension in her chest loosened. "I'll try my best."
"That's all I ask." There was a heartbeat of silence. "It’s all I’ll ever ask."
But there was no time to digest that. A stage tech was waving at them. Time to go.
Iona walked out first. The lights hit her like a wall, blinding and brilliant, and the roar of the crowd was so loud it seemed to have a texture. She found the microphone stand by muscle memory, wrapped her fingers around the cool metal, and waited for the others to take their places.
Cam settled behind the drums with a grin that was slightly manic. Ellie found her spot with the bass, steady and calm. And Maeve, Maeve walked to center stage like she owned it, like she'd never left, like fifteen years in a Scottish cottage had just been a particularly long intermission.
Iona leaned into the microphone. "Hello, Lakeside."
The crowd screamed. She waited for it to subside into something resembling quiet. "We're The Stage Women." Not The Stage Girls.
She hadn't discussed it with anyone. Hadn't asked permission. But it felt right. They weren't who they used to be. They'd grown. They'd survived. They were different now.
She looked directly at Maeve as she said it.
Maeve's expression didn't change. But something in her eyes did.
They began to play.
???
Something was happening.
Maeve had played hundreds of gigs in her life. She knew what a good crowd felt like, what it meant when the energy shifted from polite interest to genuine engagement to something electric and alive.
This was something else entirely.
The crowd was with them. Not just listening, but responding. Moving. Singing along to songs that had been released before half of them were born, and singing along to new ones they'd never heard before. Singing because the music made them want to.
Three songs in, she'd stopped being afraid. Four songs in, she'd started enjoying herself. By the sixth song, she was grinning, actually grinning, which probably ruined the terrifying image she'd been cultivating for the past fifteen years.
She didn't care.
Cam was in her element, drumming like she'd been possessed. Ellie was steady and solid, the bassline anchoring everything else. And Iona was radiant, lit up from within, her guitar weaving through Maeve's like it had always belonged there.
They were good. Not just competent, not just adequate. Genuinely, properly good.
Maeve felt it in her bones, in her chest, in the spaces between her ribs. The pure, clean high of performing, better than anything she'd ever tried to drown herself in. This was what she'd been running from for fifteen years. This was what she'd been terrified of.
It was also, she realized, exactly where she was supposed to be.
They finished their second-to-last song, and the crowd noise swelled to fill the gap.
Maeve looked at Ellie, who was smiling her small, tired smile.
At Cam, who was sweating and beaming and looked like she might actually explode with joy.
At Iona, whose face was flushed and beautiful and turned toward her like a sunflower toward the sun.
Right. It was now or never.
She hadn't told anyone about this. Not Cam, not Ellie, definitely not Iona. She'd brought her acoustic guitar, told them she wanted it for one of the slower numbers, and they'd believed her because why wouldn't they?
So she traded her electric for the acoustic. Her hands were steady, which surprised her.
Then she stepped back up to the microphone.
"I've got one more," she said. "Something the band hasn't heard."
She felt Iona's attention sharpen. Felt Cam's head come up. Didn't look at any of them. Couldn't look at any of them. If she looked, she'd lose her nerve, and she was barely holding it together as it was.
The crowd went quiet. Waiting.
She closed her eyes and began to play.
She'd been writing songs for other people for fifteen years.
Safe songs. Songs that could mean anything, sung by voices that weren't hers, attached to stories that had nothing to do with her own.
She'd made good money. She'd won awards that sat in a drawer in her cottage.
She'd hidden behind other people's names and other people's faces and told herself it was enough.
This wasn't one of those songs.
This song was specific. This song was undeniable.
This song was about a woman with dark hair and blue eyes who laughed too loud and loved too easily and had somehow spent fifteen years carrying a torch for someone who didn't deserve it. This song was the one she’d been working on since she’d come back, the one she’d hummed accidentally in Iona’s kitchen, the one she hadn’t been able to write when she went back to Scotland.
This song was about Iona, and anyone listening would know it.
She kept her eyes closed. Her fingers finding the chords automatically, muscle memory and desperation working together. She sang the words she'd been too afraid to say out loud.
She'd spent fifteen years hiding. Protecting herself. Building walls so high that even she couldn't climb them. Convincing herself that she was safer alone, that love was dangerous, that wanting things too much would only end in destruction.
And now here she was tearing those walls down in front of forty thousand people.
It was the most terrifying thing she'd ever done.
More terrifying than the first time she'd stepped on a stage.
More terrifying than the day she'd gotten sober.
More terrifying than walking back into a room full of people she'd abandoned.
She was choosing to be seen. Choosing to be known. Choosing to say, out loud and in public, that she loved someone and wasn't going to run from it anymore.
The last chord faded into the air.
Silence.
She kept her eyes closed. Her heart was hammering so hard she thought the mic might pick it up. She couldn't move. Couldn't look. Couldn't do anything except stand there with her guitar and wait for the world to end, or begin, or do whatever it was going to do.
Movement. Someone stepping closer. The creak of the stage boards under someone's feet.
She opened her eyes.
Iona was right there. Right in front of her. Close enough that Maeve could see the tears on her face, the impossible brightness of her smile, the way her whole body was tilted toward Maeve like gravity had shifted.
"You idiot," Iona said, soft enough that only Maeve could hear. "You absolute idiot."
And then Iona kissed her.
Not a tentative kiss. Not a gentle kiss. A proper kiss, the kind that made a statement, the kind that said this is mine and I'm not hiding it anymore and I've been waiting fifteen years for you to figure it out.
The crowd erupted.