Page 74 of The Ex Factor

Standing in the centre of an empty land.

Standing in the dark behind the sound desk, watching Ashley sing those sparkling, bittersweet words, Molly didn’t want it to be a mystery anymore. She found herself hoping with everything in her that it was about her. She wanted to be the ghost.

Molly let out a small, shaky breath. Her jeans felt too tight around her waist. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, her skin feeling hot and itchy. She wanted the gig to end so she could breathe properly, but she also wanted Ashley to stay up there under the lights forever, where she looked completely untouchable and entirely alluring at the same time. It was an annoying, stupid contradiction, and it was making her stomach turn.

Five Years Ago

Molly stared at the blank screen of her phone, her thumb hovering over the glass for only a fraction of a second before she tapped through to Ashley’s contact and hit block. She did it with clinical precision, though her hands were shaking so violently she nearly dropped the phone.

When she finally set the phone face-down on the bed, the silence of her shithole bedroom seemed to collapse in on her.

It was freezing. The radiator in the corner gave its familiar, pathetic hiss, doing nothing to cut through the damp chill that had settled into the bricks and into Molly’s bones. She pulled her jumper tighter around herself, burying her chin in the collar, but there was no warmth left in it.

I’m trying not to fall apart because I love you.

Molly had held back those three words for months, guarding them, waiting for the right moment. And then she’d spilt them out in an ugly burst over a FaceTime screen.

Only for Ashley to freeze. To stand there, staring back at her with a blank face. She hadn’t even tried to fake it.

The shame of it was a physical weight pressing down on Molly’s chest. She had laid herself completely open, exposing a vulnerability she didn’t even know was there until Ashley.

A mistake that lasted five weeks.

That’s what Molly had said. Except it wasn’t true, was it? Not for Molly. For Molly, those five weeks had been an entire lifetime. They had been the axis around which her whole world spun. She had poured every spare ounce of her hope into a girl who could trade her away for four more months of applause without a second thought.

More tears threatened, but she forced them down. She was done crying over a girl who was currently sitting in a hotel room on the other side of the world, probably already rationalising why this was for the best.

Ashley hadn’t even hesitated to take the tour extension. Not really. There had been a performative flicker of guilt, sure, but beneath it, the choice had already been made the moment the label executive dangled an album in front of her. Ashley loved the music, loved the lights, loved the trajectory.

And Molly? Molly was just baggage that couldn’t fit into a tour suitcase.

It was a humiliating, degrading clarity. To realise you were entirely disposable to the person who meant everything to you. And to know you’d begged them for love while they just looked at you.

Molly walked over to her small window, pressing her forehead against the cool glass and looked down at the grubby street.

Never again, she promised herself. Never fucking ever.

Twenty-Five

Now

Ashley unstrapped her guitar and handed it to a guitar tech backstage. Her shirt was soaked through the back. She glanced toward the sound desk, but Molly was gone.

The afterparty was in a basement bar two streets away. Simon had texted to say the photographer from earlier was done, so they didn’t have to sit near any windows. Ashley found Molly sitting at a table by a fruit machine. She had a gin and tonic in one hand, and the six pages of her script rolled up like a baton in the other.

‘You stayed,’ Ashley said, wiping her face with the back of her hand.

‘Yep,’ Molly said. She didn’t look at Ashley’s face. She looked at her shoulder. ‘Your third song was too loud. My left ear is whistling.’

‘That’s Jax,’ Ashley said. ‘They cranked their amp as soon as the house lights went down. It’s a bassist thing. They live in terror of getting overlooked.’

She sat down at the table without asking. She didn’t quite know how that was gonna land, if Molly might just say, ‘Well, see you at the bus,’ and scarper.

Molly took a sip of her drink. ‘You were good. You look ridiculous when you hold your pick in your mouth between songs, though.’

‘It’s practical,’ Ashley said.

‘I kept thinking you were gonna choke on it,’ Molly said.