Page 36 of Two Hit Wonder

But something had shifted. The tension that had been sitting in the room all week had cracked. Ellie was smiling. Cam was grinning. Even Iona looked lighter, like she'd put down something heavy.

"Pick up your instruments," Maeve said. "Let's try again."

They ran through one of the new songs. Maeve's song, but she held back, tried not to control every element. Let the others find their own way into it.

Cam came in slightly wrong on the second verse. Too early. Ellie followed her instead of correcting, adjusted her bass line to match the shifted rhythm. Iona heard it, changed her picking pattern.

It sounded different. Unexpected. Better.

They all stopped playing and stared at each other.

"That was an accident," Cam said.

"I know."

"But it sounded…"

"I know."

Maeve wanted to say it was wrong. Wanted to point out that the timing was off, the structure was compromised, her carefully crafted arrangement had been violated. She could feel the correction sitting on her tongue, ready to launch. But it had sounded good. It had sounded alive. For the first time all week, it had sounded like music instead of homework.

"Do it again," she said, and the words felt like pulling teeth.

They did. And it worked. The mistake became a feature, the happy accident became intentional. The song opened up in ways Maeve hadn't imagined. This was how they used to work. Together. Building on each other's ideas, following each other's instincts. Not four solo acts, but one thing made of four parts.

"We're going to be ready for Manchester," Cam said when they finally stopped.

Maeve didn't answer. Manchester meant a stage. A real stage, with real people watching. She'd thought she was ready for that. She'd told herself she was ready for that.

But what if she choked? What if she got up there and her voice wouldn't come out and she stood frozen in front of an audience while everything she'd built in the last fifteen years crumbled around her?

She was still thinking about it when they started packing up. Still thinking about it when Iona said goodbye. Iona put a hand on her shoulder. Just briefly. Just a touch, warm through the fabric of Maeve's cardigan.

"You sounded good today," Iona said. "Better than good."

Then she was gone, and Maeve was left standing there with her shoulder burning and her heart doing something inexplicable.

Hot. That was the word. She felt hot.

She was probably coming down with something.

Chapter Thirteen

The venue smell was all spilled beer and sweat and teenage excitement. Iona loved it immediately.

"The Banner Club" proclaimed the sign outside, though half the letters had given up and gone dark. Inside, the floor stuck to her shoes with every step, the lighting was the color of old mustard, and the stage was approximately the size of a dining table. Someone had taped a string of fairy lights across the back wall. They flickered ominously.

"Perfect," Cam said, bouncing on her heels. "This is perfect. This is exactly the kind of dive we used to play."

"We never played dives this small," Ellie said, checking her bass for the third time.

Due to lack of official dressing rooms, they were in the least-dark corner of the club. Iona had insisted that their handbags be put behind the bar. She got the feeling that most bands didn’t have handbags.

"We played that place in Leeds where the ceiling was so low I had to duck," Cam said.

"That was a basement. This is…" Ellie looked around. "This is a basement that someone put a bar in."

Iona surveyed the room. Twenty chairs, maybe thirty if you pushed them close. A bar that ran along one wall, manned by a woman who looked like she'd seen everything and was deeply unimpressed by all of it. Through the grimy window, she could see Manchester drizzling quietly onto the pavement outside.