"I love you," he tries again.

"No, I heard you the first time. Don't – don't do that. You don't mean that," she frowns. He means it and the pressure of his ribcage against his lungs comes suddenly. "Fix your hair," sounds like a reprimand but she smooths his hair to the side herself, stretching on tiptoe for better reach. "Just let him do the talking and don't – I really need you to not fuck this up." When the laughs, he can feel everyone's eyes on them and then the shift in the air as they all try to pretend that they weren't watching them.

As she lands on the flats of her feet, she doesn't seem satisfied with her work, pivoting desperately to Marc. "Do something? It's –" there's a pause as she addresses the other two, but he can feel that it's really for him, frowning behind her back. "It's only your entire career on the line. We're lucky Murph put me in touch with this guy after–."

The unspoken thoughts cut deeper than a declaration of events, allowing the gaps to be filled in using his plethora of missteps. The most likely candidate for Thing Unsaid was after you tanked the last meeting, as though he'd intentionally committed to that particular series of defiances and not simply deployed them in response to the terrible deal they had been offered.

He can make a game of guessing the assumptions they make today: Alan thinks it's to do with his response to the other band doing a cover of one of their songs at a gig; Simon thinks (correctly, in truth) he thinks two guitar bands on the same label won't be allowed to stand on their own; Marc knows that in the secret and petty parts of his heart, he wouldn't want to have to credit someone else's ex-whatever they had been with his success.

She follows him as he tries to walk away. "I'm gonna fix my hair. Relax," he dismisses, pushing her hands away at the same time that he pushes open the door to the public toilet.

When he exits before the meeting, his hair is the same, and his smile looks too wide for his mouth.

"You look bored," Marc says, offering him his drink. Before he turns, he considers both lying and honesty, inhaling from his cigarette once more. It leaves his lips and he flicks it onto the ground in a long arc, watching as the tiny red light falls towards the pavement. Before he can shrug, the offer "We can leave," is made, switching the gesture into a head shake.

It seems an unreasonable ask, and though he is part tyrant, he is not so unbenevolent that he can't see how clearly his best friend seems to enjoy the ease with which he moves through the crowd, at home with each and every superficial conversation that he seems to find himself pulled into. He takes the drink to wash down the melancholy, a remedy quick and comforting, and proof that he is committed to being entertaining.

"You like Max, though." Marc sounds unconvinced, sitting beside him in the large window frame. "I told you he was cool." What he doesn't know in that moment is that their relationship will forever be felt as an extension of this initial one, Max and Andy's friendship reflecting back on the third party responsible for their introduction. When they fight, it will be his duty to restore the peace, maintaining closeness with each of them.

"Yeah, he's alright," he concedes, downplaying the extent to which he is impressed with his friend's friend's wealth of musical knowledge. If nothing else, this is an important resource to cultivate. He's bored but not stupid.

Taking a win where it can be found, Marc latches onto this, hoping to grow the seed he's planted. "And some of his friends are alright…" The way he trails off at the end makes it clear this is a leading statement, but silence hits them as the bait isn't taken. As he rattled off the list of names of faces they've spoken to, they blur together in their meaninglessness. "The birthday girl," he says somewhere.

"Harlowe Montauk. She writes her own music."

"What's your favourite song?" His pen hovers above the signature line - first to arrive, last to sign. He sets it down to a collective groan, this meeting dragged out as the others had been. Those who would have been intimidated by the legalese were not children raised by Daphne Sutcliffe, and the fight had gone line by line, paragraph by paragraph until no sentence had gone untouched by Andy's criticism. Any deal to sign their lives away had to allow him - them - to maintain creative control, and every other label had balked at the idea of letting a handful of teenagers have so much power.

Doug looks surprised, and he senses a moment of triumph. They'll say I Bet That You Look Good On the Dancefloor because that's what they always say, reciting the name of their inarguably most popular tune. He likes it, likes all of his (their) songs, but it reveals a failure in understanding. Say it, he chants internally, say it and fail.

Alan picks up the pen and tries to place it back into his hands, unsuccessful at doing anything but scribbling a line into his palm. This is the end of the line, and they need him more than he needs them when there is no reality in which he can return to Bowdon with his tail between his legs. The sudden desperation in the room is palpable even when it doesn't come off of him.

Each of them watches Doug watch Andy watch him think. "102," he says finally. "It reminds me of – of the first time that I loved someone who didn't know that I loved them, but I couldn't tell them." The silence could read as disapproval, but he takes it as a sign to continue, leaning back in his chair slightly, it turns with a shift of his weight and he faces both them and the window simultaneously, speaking to them but perhaps also to someone outside. "So I just sat there for ages contemplating what to do with myself."

The page is wet with ink before he twists back towards them.

"If you find out she OD'ed tomorrow, would it have been worth it? Knowing it would be your fucking fault?"

Knowing it would be your fucking fault?

He first catches the thing in his eye, a wave of black passing across one iris and then the other before it disappears.

Knowing it would be your fucking fault?

He touches his cheek, anticipating the ripple as it moves through him, no part of him untouched.

Knowing it would be your fucking fault?

He doesn't think he needs a Jiminy Cricket on his shoulder to keep him on course, to keep him from lying, to encourage him to do the right thing, but he's always there. Max is gentler than Jamie, whose patience ran out in 1997, but more willing to be honest than Amy who serves as his shield against their extended family.

Knowing it would be your fucking fault?

He hears the lines between the sentences, unsaid but ever implied.

Remember when you promised Sam that you wouldn't let Harlowe do anything bad? That night in the kitchen in Tampa when he caught you. You promised, you liar, and when something happens, it'll be your fucking fault.

There's a rot inside him that he feels spreading. It tears its way through his chest, up his throat and as he opens his mouth in the mirror, he swears that he can see its tendrils trying to climb their way out. He thinks of it as contagious – it must be – the thing that got his mother got him and now it'll get that baby too.

Or Harlowe will die and it'll be your fucking fault. Bad children can't have nice things.

The dryer beside him goes off as someone places their hands beneath it, and he resists the urge to look, knowing they'll see the thing and know his secret. Somewhere beyond the hum, he hears first Alan, then Doug. The first voice says that he's been in the toilets for ages and they've got to catch their cab. The second assures the first that his bags were left in Nashville, leaving no opportunity for extracurricular activities. A third man attributes to him more cleverness than he knows himself capable of, floating the idea of finding a sympathetic stranger to assist him.

They all know about the rot. He first wonders how long, but suspects that it's been longer than he could have imagined. Perhaps Alan smelt it on him that first day, on the bus, and pity pushed him into friendship. Dead leaves and petrichor follow him.

But this will not be his fucking fault.

He pulls the dispenser of paper hand towels from the wall, in awe at how easy it seems. He and it are destined for this moment. The glass mirror only splinters the first time he makes contact, distorting his face. The black cracks that distort his face remind him of the rot, and it only takes a few slams before it shatters. This rain is less thrilling, a few chunks peeling down from the wall and falling onto the sink top below. Andy picks one up and watches rather than feels as the jagged edge draws blood.

You promised Sam. It's your fucking fault.

But not if the rot is gone.

"It's a solid but unchallenging album that takes a step towards nowhere in particular," he recites, shoving the magazine towards the middle of the table. Alan winces sympathetically, not looking down as he pushes it onto the floor. The pang of guilt that hits him encourages a clean up, and he bends over to retrieve it, burying it beneath the empty metal napkin holder that he places on its side, blocking Simon's face from smiling up at them from the centrefold.

There's a game often played by friends and family of Andrew Sutcliffe, a targeted calculation of the messenger least likely to be shot. Where Marc delivers personal news, Alan proves himself best at professional, their symbiotic relationship meaning that he's trusted implicitly. If Alan says something sounds bad, it sounds bad, with the same holding true for the opposite. A translator between Andy and he label, or between Andy and anything musical, he understands why he's been chosen for this brunch even before it begins.

Simon folds his hands together on the table, just below the plate. The pink salmon on his bagel stares up at him, and he seems to focus on it entirely, blocking out the clink of forks against china as the other patrons consume their meal. He can feel his friend's eyes burning a hole in his forehead. They share a long silence, one silently begging the other to interrupt and the other not willing to make the first move.

"Tell him I want to come back."

This is a conversation he's anticipated since the day that Simon left, leaping at the promise of success on his own after the years spent in Andy's shadow. There's only one lead singer, one frontman, one face of Paper Sea, and the competition between the two of them served first as motivation to pen better music, then as a wedge pulling them towards an inevitable break. Knowing his wisdom – in true Piscean fashion – would come too early for unprepared ears, he told Doug along, enjoying no I told you sos as they finally made their break.

"Ian Foster's a cunt. They'll never last in the same band. You and I both saw it when–"

He pinches together the opposite ends of his lemon as he squeezes it into the cup of tea. Slowly, he picks up the spoon to stir, each clink against the sides only amplifying the awkwardness of their situation. He taps the spoon on the rim of the cup and sets it beside the saucer. "No."

"You were actually pretty good," he says finally, tossing his cigarette towards the pavement. It makes an arc through the air on its journey to the wet ground outside the awning under which they're stood. "Really good," he corrects himself, his voice growing louder. "Really fucking good and it's--it's a pity things are the way they are. He doesn't need to put thoughts to words to describe the roadblock ahead - it's there in the flesh, just beyond the closed doors behind them, waiting for him to come back inside so they can laugh at the audacity Ian Foster had to turn up at their open audition.

The history that benefits him (being from Manchester) also hurts him, and they sigh in unison as they stare at the rain. Their voices overlap in the twilight:

"Can't you -"

"I can -"

"Sorry, I was-"

"Sorry, no, yeah, you go ahead."

"He knows you're good," he says, knowing that, if anything, it makes the sting worse, but it feels like the right thing to tell someone that you are destined to disappoint. He knows that Ian knows that Andy knows how well they'd blended together, much more easily than anyone else who had turned up, and even: "Better than Simon," he adds. They had all watched the expression on his face go from amused to annoyed to angry before the abrupt ending, the remaining auditions cancelled.

Andy knew he was good, and he hated it.

He smiles thinly. "Thanks." It's little consolation after a regrettable end to a spectacular performance, but he knows that Marc means it sincerely. "I, ah, played it differently to what we rehearsed though. Simon's way-"

"--makes the song drag." Once again an emotion is expressed together, a unanimous sentiment within the group itself, but not one to which outsiders are privy. As Ian had sped up the baseline, it had pushed both guitar and bass to do the same as compensation, forcing Andy to do the same with his own.

"Yeah, we know. Andy fucking knows but -"

" - he doesn't like that I know. Of course not." Ian rolls his eyes, unaware that this will become his most frequent gesture.

"If Andy could handle constructive criticism, he wouldn't be our Andy," Marc says. It's a cutting comment but he means it kindly and the words are spoken with a sort of fondness for this glaring flaw.

The silence that falls between them feels like an ending. Paper Sea threatens to fall apart just as they near the cusp of success, the second half of a six month tour cancelled if they're unable to find that missing piece.

"I'll talk to him," he offers quietly. "He won't say no if it means going back Manchester." Andy remains the most vocal about his refusal to go back home and be a nobody, but for each of them, this is a final hope - be famous or be nothing. Together or not at all.

"You've already done loads." Getting him on the list, drilling him on their discography, introducing him to Doug, getting buy-in from Alan. "He's just still sore about -" he turns to Marc, pressing his index finger into his chest as he points at himself. "I never even fucking said anything to anyone about it, but he acts like I must be a snitch cos of who my dad is."

The only response is a pair of eyes narrowing in confusion. There is little about his best friend that Marc Hindley does not know, things he would perhaps preferred not to know included, the line between being open books and having no boundaries eternally blurry.

"You know, the-" Ian swipes his finger across the apple of his cheek, just beneath his eye.

"With his cousins?"

"Cousins?" he repeats, intentionally changing his tone. He sees no signs of recognition as he scans Marc's face a second and third time, exhaling as he drops the thread of conversation. Ian smiles instead, the sincerity not quite reaching his eyes. "You'll talk to him. He won't say no if it means going back home."

stop peeking!!

stop peeking!!