Page 9 of Two Hit Wonder

Fifteen years. Fifteen bloody years of silence, of distance, of very carefully not thinking about certain things, and now Iona Faith was standing in her garden, bleeding on her stepping stones, and looking up at the cottage like she wasn't sure if she'd come to the right place.

Maeve sat very still.

Memories crashed over her without permission. Secondary school corridors that smelled of floor polish and steamed cabbage. Two girls huddled over a notebook, writing lyrics that they thought were profound and were probably terrible. Mrs. Edwards, their drama teacher, throwing her hands up after yet another disruption: You two should be on the stage, not in my classroom. They'd thought it was hilarious. They'd made it their whole identity.

The Stage Girls.

And the name had meant something good.

Back when Maeve had been young and stupid and convinced that talent was enough, that having a voice meant she deserved to use it, that the burning in her chest whenever Iona smiled at her was just adrenaline from performing and not something far more dangerous.

One kiss. One single, terrifying kiss that had changed everything and nothing and sent Maeve spiraling so hard she'd—

A knock at the door.

Maeve pressed her lips together.

Through the window, she could see Iona looking at her. Their eyes met. Iona's hand was still bleeding. She held it up with an expression that clearly said, well?

Maeve considered, very seriously, not answering.

She could pretend she hadn't been sitting right there in the window, staring out like some character in a gothic novel. She could stay perfectly still until Iona gave up and went away. She could avoid this conversation for another fifteen years, which frankly seemed like the sensible option.

She could pretend to be a statue of herself, perhaps. Or just… or just close her eyes and pretend that what she couldn’t see couldn’t see her back. Like Glinna’s Jack had used to do when he was small.

Iona raised her bleeding hand higher and pointed at it with her other hand, eyebrows climbing toward her hairline.

And she was just as… just as she used to be. The sharp chin, the determined face, those deep blue eyes and dark hair and…

And Maeve sighed.

She set aside the guitar, the useless notebook, the comfortable numbness she'd cultivated for over a decade. And she went to answer the door.

✽✽✽

There was an image of Maeve stamped in Iona’s mind, a fifteen-year-old image that made her heart beat funny and her breath catch in her throat. And there was a world where that image opened the door of a small, Scottish cottage and Iona poured out her real feelings, or said something smooth and suave or… something.

But when Iona opened her mouth as Maeve opened the door, what she actually said was, "Your sheep bit me."

Maeve seemed to consider that. Maeve with her red hair and her green eyes and her look of yesterday. Then she nodded. "Yes," she said. "She does that."

A pause. Neither of them spoke. Just in case, Iona thought, they might break something.

Then Maeve added, "And she's not my sheep."

Iona stared at her.

She'd had a plan coming here. She'd rehearsed what she was going to say on the entire train journey up from London, then again on the bus to the village, and then a final time during the long walk up the track to this improbably remote cottage. She'd had sensible, measured words prepared. An appeal to professionalism. A calm explanation of the situation.

What she had not prepared for was standing on a doorstep in the middle of nowhere, bleeding onto ancient stone, while Maeve Maureen MacDonnell looked at her like she was a particularly inconvenient parcel that had been delivered to the wrong address.

Fifteen years.

She'd changed. Of course she'd changed, people changed in fifteen years. Her hair was longer, falling past her shoulders in the same impossible red that had always made Iona think of autumn leaves and warning signs. There were lines at the corners of her eyes that hadn't been there before. She was wearing an oversized jumper that looked like it had been washed four hundred times, and she was barefoot despite the cold, and she looked like she'd been living at the edge of the world on purpose.

But her eyes were the same. That particular shade of green that Iona had never been able to adequately describe, not even in the privacy of her own head, the green of deep water and growing things and trouble.

The first day of secondary school. Iona had been small and terrified and completely overwhelmed by the massive building full of massive older students, and then she'd seen Maeve MacDonnell stalking down the corridor like she owned the place, like she wasn't afraid of anything, like the world owed her an explanation and she was going to get it.