It would make sense. I got the feeling she tried to blend into the background when she was downstairs with us while we worked. But when it came to her, blending into the background was impossible. She drew my thoughts to her like the destination of a long pilgrimage. A beautiful, far away thing that I couldn’t help but crave.
“Here.” She turned her laptop and held it out to me. “Take a look.”
I didn’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this. The shots were gorgeous and artistic. They somehow managed to capture the intangible magic of what happened in that dinky basement. I laughed at a great photo of Kaz being uncharacteristically animated while we debated something about a song. My laugh fell away at the next shot. My bandmate and I, deep in our process, or faces marked with intensity. That’s how we got when we made music together. Sometimes it felt as if we lived through the spectrum of emotions in the span of a few minutes.
“Molly, these don’t belong on our social media,” I said after a while. “They belong straight in a gallery. And not because Kaz and I are good models. It’s all you.”
Her expression wavered between happiness over my praise and something more bittersweet. “Hyperion owns the right to all of the photos. It’s not up to me what they do with them.”
“I’m sure you can find clients of your own if you wanted to. You don’t need Hyperion.”
She gave me a startled look before laughing softly. “Has Kaz gotten into your ear? You have the wrong idea. This stuff isn’t even part of my job description. It’s a one-off thing Trinity tasked me with because it’s what Last Rites needs at the moment.”
“What do you normally do then?”
“A lot of paperwork for bands in her roster. I prepare her for meetings. PowerPoint presentations and spreadsheets. Random errands and tasks, like going to that party with you guys.”
The party where one look at Molly had been enough to make my head spin and my heart ache.
“Why do you do all that stuff if photography is clearly what you want to be doing?”
I could see her defensive shell click in place. “I never said that. Again, you’ve been listening to Kaz too much.”
“Is he wrong?”
She clicked her laptop shut and picked up her coffee. “It doesn’t really matter. Not everyone gets the chance to be a professional artist, Mase. It’s a privilege. Surely, you know that.”
Shouldn’t seeing Adeline do it have helped Molly acknowledge it as a real possibility for herself? “You sound like Adeline back when she was still in denial about having a career as a musician. As if she wasn’t born for it.”
“Yeah, well,Idefinitely wasn’t. I didn’t even pick up a camera—phone excluded—until my first year at college.”
“So?”
She sighed. “So I’m not going to give up on a job where I might be getting promoted soon on a whim. Not everyone has a safety net like you, Mason. I can’t afford to live in LA if I don’t have a stable job. Ade did enough for me by working as hard as she did to send me to college. I’m not going to waste my education or take a massive risk on her dime. It’s not fair to her, and it’s not fair to me. Do you think it feels good to be a burden on someone I love?”
The air around us stilled under the weight of her words.
No wonder she thought I was lucky. That’s what she said to me back then, wasn’t it? She didn’t know my father disowned me over dropping out. Of course not. How would she? I’d never said anything to her, and Kaz knew better than to air out my dirty laundry. Molly must think my parents were funding my career.
I felt anything but lucky being at Northeastern. I’d been forced to go. But to her, it must have looked like I was ungrateful for the opportunities I’d been served on a silver platter. The same ones she’d gotten only because of how much Ade had sacrificed to her.
“Is that why you worked so hard back in college?” I asked, trying to put all the pieces together even as I sensed I wasn’t going to like what I found. It didn’t paint me in a great light. “You graduated in three years so that you could get out there and become independent?”
She rubbed her palms on her thighs and looked toward the ceiling. “I just wanted to start my own life as quickly as possible. To make money, have my own place to live, find a career. I know I acted stuck up.” Her gaze dropped back to me meet mine. “But I was only laser focused on my goals.”
I swiped my palm over my mouth.
“I’m sorry for how we said goodbye, Mase” she said in a lowered voice. “I was…angry. I lashed out at you, and I’ve regretted it ever since. Saying you were bringing my average down, calling you stupid… I wish I could take it all back. There was never anything wrong with you, you know? I was hurt you were leaving so suddenly without giving me a heads-up, and I said things I didn’t mean.”
I took a deep breath. Then another. What could I say to that? I’d been so consumed with my own anger about how she’d dismissed me, telling I was an idiot for chasing after my dream, that I hadn’t even considered her perspective. We were friends at first. We’d drifted apart when I couldn’t face the prospect of telling her the truth about me. And then I left. Abruptly and without a proper explanation.
Yeah. Maybe I didn’t handle it all that well.
Here we were, three years later. Could I honestly say I’d grown out of my selfish mentality? Apparently not, because I’d missed all the signs of my best friend going through something big.
“I think I should be the one apologizing,” I muttered. “I never tried to see anything from your perspective. And I’m sorry for how I’ve been acting since we’ve started to work together.”
Her lips parted, relief unfurling across her face. “Apology accepted.”
