Page 11 of Noah
But we had another week of that before we packed up. What the hell was Molly doing with a suitcase?
I must have made a sound because she turned at that moment, her green gaze meeting mine without hesitation. This time they were closed and distant. No soul-gazing for me.
“Going somewhere?” I asked, my voice sharper than I intended. “What are you doing with a suitcase?”
I knew I sounded abrupt and confrontational, but I didn’t care. I hadn’t heard about a change to the itinerary and I didn’t like surprises. Particularly when they came from the girl I counted on to be my anchor.
She tipped her chin up, breathed out slowly, and then said one word: “Leaving.”
The word got into my brain and froze something in there. Leaving? What? Leaving to where? And why?
An eternity later, I finally managed to ask the first question that came to mind. “What?”
I know. Shakespeare I was not.
I watched her face crumble, just for a second, but then she got herself back together. “I’m leaving. You know that magazine I applied to? Tempest? Turns out they liked my stuff. A lot. They offered me a position, and I took it. I start on Monday.”
This time my brain froze for real. I felt like she’d started speaking Greek or something, for all the sense that made. The magazine? Sure, I remembered pushing her to submit her stuff,but I hadn’t thought... I mean she was a great photographer. Everyone knew it. Good enough that I bought her the most expensive camera I could find and talked Taylor into letting her be our road photographer. Her eye was unreal, and the way she could pull emotion out of something as simple as a leaf she wanted to photograph...
She was better than anyone I’d ever met.
But I hadn’t thought the magazine would call her back. She didn’t have any real training or a resumé, other than the one she’d cultivated on the road with us. Tempest was a big deal, and I hadn’t thought...
I hadn’t thought they’d take her away from me.
“You start on Monday?” I whispered, knowing I sounded crazy. I should have been jumping up and down with excitement, scooping her up and whirling her around in congratulations. If I was a decent person, I would have been telling her how lucky that magazine was and how I’d never doubted her for a moment. Instead, I felt like my world was crumbling under my feet, the ground falling away and leaving nothing but emptiness underneath me.
Her face quivered for a moment like she’d heard me, but then she nodded quickly. “Monday. I’m flying out tonight so I have some time to find an apartment and get settled in. I already talked to the managers and let them know I’m leaving, and they’re assigning one of the other roadies to your equipment. Don’t worry. They’ve got you covered.”
“Covered. Right.”
They didn’t, and I didn’t want another roadie watching after my equipment. I didn’t want anyone else eventouchingmy stuff. But the words were all stuck in my throat and I couldn’t seem to get any of them out. I also didn’t know how you said you didn’t want someone else’s hands on your things because you were used to having one set of hands at your beck and call.
Molly glanced at the elevator as it dinged, and when she turned back to me her heart was in her eyes. “You’ll do fine, Noah. I bet you’ll barely notice I’m gone. And I’ll fly back and see you as soon as I have a break. The new tour is going to be great. I know it.”
She turned and stepped into the elevator like she was just going downstairs for a coffee, and then the doors were closing and it was leaving, heading down to the lobby.
Taking my Girl Friday with it.
I put a hand to my mouth and fought the urge to run for the stairs and get there before her. Head her off at the pass and ask her what the fuck she thought she was doing, acting like this was no big deal. We hadn’t been apart since we were kids, and I’d never gone on tour without her. Hell, I’d barely evenplayedwithout her. She was there when I picked up my first drumstick, and on the nights when I wasn’t feeling great about being onstage, she was the one I found in the audience and played to.
She was my rock. The wind in my wings, if I’d been prone to saying things like that.
News flash: I wasn’t.
But if I was, I would have said that about her. And now she was... gone? Walking out of my life like I would be completely fine without her?
Another news flash: I wasn’t.
6
NOAH
By the time I got back to my room, I’d worked myself into an actual rage. How the hell could she just up and leave like that, without telling me where she was going or when she’d be back? She hadn’t even left a fucking forwarding address. Not that I knew what I’d do with it if she had. I couldn’t exactly call up the tour managers and let them know I was taking a leave of absence. This could be the most important tour of our lives and I had record labels and execs to meet with. New music to write. A band to hold together.
Honestly, I didn’t even have time to think about what Molly was doing–or care. So she’d picked up and left for LA with barely any notice. Who the fuck cared? I didn’t actually need her, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to miss her. I had plenty of things to take care of that had nothing to do with her or her career.
A tiny voice in my head said I was being unreasonable and unfair. Molly was the smartest of the five of us and deserved the best life she could get. She’d always been too good to stick around with us, playing roadie when she should have been out in the world doing bigger things. She deserved every opportunity,and Tempest was the luckiest magazine in the world to have landed her. I believed that with every piece of my heart.
