Somehow, Nora let herself get talked into approaching Kinsley by none other than Porter himself.

She wasn't sure what it meant that he succeeded at something so many others before him tried and failed to do. And truthfully, she didn't know why he had bothered in the first place. He gained nothing from trying to wedge two lost puzzle pieces back together, but he did it anyway, and the smile that appeared on his face once she agreed to do it was the biggest she had ever seen on him, at least around her.

Nothing scared Nora more than Kinsley St. Clair, and she had pissed off Marty Johnson on multiple occasions. Hell, she once joked to Stevie and Maverick that neither of them was fit to play Elphaba. At the time, nothing was more horrifying than that. (They hadn't talked to her for weeks after, even though she had profusely apologized and said she would never make such a tasteless joke again.)

Everything left unsaid seemed to compound into one monstrous weight on her chest as she walked toward the dressing room Kinsley was sitting down inside. Her makeup artist had just walked out, and Porter was due to run into her and ask a million questions, totally a coincidence and not at all planned.

Some songs existed inside a vacuum. Any other songs that tried to come close to it and mimic that magic it exuded, were sucked away into a black hole, never to be heard from again unless it was out of pity. Those songs that everyone wanted to replicate? They were untouchable. They reached inside your chest until it hit a wall and turned it to rubble, leaving everything to ash in its wake. Overnight Rush and Escape Velocity were a lot like that to Nora. It was why she fell in love with MARS in the first place, why they would always be her number one forever.

People were like that too. No matter who came before or who dared to come after, they were all black and white compared to the screaming color of that one person in the world who made sense. The one person who could turn any blank canvas into a work of art because they were the magic that made it possible.

To Nora, that was Kinsley St. Clair.

There wasn't a before or after; there was only Kinsley. And no matter how much she had come to hate Nora and look at her as if she wanted to spit on her shoes just for daring to walk in the footprints she left behind, Nora's heart would always pulse just a little offbeat knowing how much she had hurt her.

It was as if they were still in sync even after all those months, because as soon as Nora was in spitting distance, her footsteps growing hauntingly close with the hushed nature of a ghost, Kinsley glanced up to monitor her as she crept toward the dressing room. Nora couldn't look her in the eyes, afraid she wouldn't see the person she had grown up with but a stranger instead. Was it possible for a person to become a ghost? Could someone shrink so far into themselves that all that would be left behind was a shell of their former selves? A blank sheet that looked more pathetic than it did frightening? That was how Nora felt, despite the confidence with which she had walked into that building.

Kinsley, on the other hand, looked angelic. The fluorescent lights that made Nora's skin look sallow gave Kinsley a ring of luminescence. She was so beautiful she could have been cut from marble, dropped into the Louvre, and displayed next to the Venus de Milo, and Kinsley still would have been the more beautiful of the two. Paris always looked better when it was graced with Kinsley's presence.

"Hey."

"Hey?" Kinsley scoffed. "Nice."

"I'm trying." She sounded weak and pathetic. A bleeding heart that hurled itself down on the floor in front of her but had only gotten stomped on instead of bandaged. Was she just being a pushover by accepting that reception as something she deserved? Or would she stand to gain more by demanding to be given a shot? Nora couldn't decide, so she shut her mouth instead.

"I have to take my final shots soon and then I'm leaving," Kinsley announced. "Whatever you need to say, say it now."

Being presented with the opportunity to speak was terrifying. Nora would have almost preferred to have to chase after her like two estranged lovers, one standing at the gate and the other racing through the airport to find them before the flight departed. At least then, she could have used that dizzying adrenaline to propel the words out of her mouth. Now, she had too much of a chance to sit there and think it through, wondering if she was making a fool of herself. (She was.) (Nobody needed to tell her that.)

She couldn't find the words to convey how she felt because she had no idea what her feelings meant in the first place. The Scrabble tiles were thrown onto the hardwood floor, and Nora was scrambling to piece something together before her last chance to speak slipped between her fingers. But how did she make up for the hurt she caused? How did she repair the damage of singlehandedly ripping Roslyn apart so she could be the sole star left in the galaxy?

"Did you tell Porter what happened?"

Nora shook her head.

"Huh." Kinsley found that amusing and laughed once. "Neither did I. Kind of feels like we're letting them win if we do, right?"

She couldn't disagree with that. Speaking what had happened into an existence where others could pick it apart felt like a cheap trick meant to feed vultures. What did it matter what happened to people who weren't involved? They would only share their irrelevant opinions with ears that didn't want to hear them. They lacked the context needed to understand the entire story. The Cliff Notes version wasn't going to help. They only knew half the story, and the other half would forever remain within Roslyn.

But that also felt like an excuse to let Nora get away with murder.

"I don't care about what others think of how I hurt you," Nora said. "All that matters is how you feel."

"How do I feel?" Kinsley's voice grew stronger, more powerful. A hurricane ready to rip through Nora's barren wasteland. She was just grateful there was barely anything left of her to ruin. "It's been a whole damn year since I kicked you out of the house and you're now going to ask me how I feel? As if I haven't made it abundantly clear. Do you even want to know at this point?"

Yes, Nora wanted to scream. She desperately wanted to know how badly she had screwed up and whether they were beyond the point of redemption or doomed to perish in tragic despair. If the greatest love story she had ever known was over now, she wanted to know so she could close the book with some semblance of peace.

She didn't deserve the chance to explain herself, and confronting her about it during a photoshoot on the eve of the end of Roslyn was a shit move. Nora did have an entire year to make amends, but she chose not to. Kinsley had every right to be mad and throw her out the door and slam it in her face.

"Of course I do."

"Why?" Kinsley tore her gaze away with a swiftness that could only have ruptured from pain. "What's the point anymore? It's over. We're over."

"Can you just let me—" If there was any way to salvage what was left of their friendship, Nora had to find it, no matter what it took, even if it meant demanding something from Kinsley she didn't quite deserve in the first place. "Look, I'm sorry. It'll never be enough and I understand that, but I am sorry. For everything. I was selfish and reckless and played too many games for someone who had so much to lose, and I'm sorry you suffered because of it. I'm sorry I tried to take away your chance at success, and I'm sorry it took me so long to try to right all of my wrongs. I'm just... sorry."

Finally, Nora looked up at her and found her heart shattering in the process. What she didn't expect to find were tears streaming down Kinsley's flawless face without a single care of how much it could ruin her makeup.

"You think the issue was me losing my record deal? No, it was because my friend, my best friend, stabbed me in the back to get it. You could have told me the truth, You could have told me you wanted to do something on your own. I would have supported you. I would have been your number one fan like I always have been. What did you think was going to happen, huh? Did you think none of us were going to find out that we just one day didn't have a band anymore? We'd show up at the studio and find ourselves locked out while you got to write the next number-one hit." She shook her head in disappointment. "We could have had it all, Nora. Roslyn could have been everything, but you had to throw it all away because of your damn need to self-destruct. You can't believe for one second that something is good, actually good, so you do everything you can to destroy it yourself. And I'm done being collateral damage."

Kinsley rose from her seat and tried to bolt outside past Nora, but before she could walk away, Nora grabbed her arm before pulling away like she had touched hot coals. With a doorway between them, Nora had never felt more suffocated in her life. Each wall slowly caved in on her, squishing her insides until she was ready to rupture. The more she tried to breathe, the less she could, and she felt even worse when she saw the concern stitched into Kinsley's features. Even when she was begging for her forgiveness, and doing a poor job at that, Kinsley remained the more human of the two.

"I can make this right," Nora wept. "I promise, I can make this right. Just give me another chance, please. I'll do whatever you want, just don't... don't leave me. I can't lose you."

"I'm not the only—"

"I don't care about them," she said and then shook her head. "I mean, I do care about them. I care about Roslyn. But it's been you, Kins. You and me against the world since we were babies. I know I fucked up but I can't do anything without you. And I can't go the rest of my life without making it up to you because you deserve everything good in this world, and I told you once that I would be damned if I couldn't be the one to give it to you."

This time, Kinsley spun around completely, but she didn't walk away. She stood there staring up at the ceiling, trying to blink the tears away. But if there was anything Nora had learned in her thirty-odd years, it was that her heart beat along the same wavelength as Kinsley's. If Nora couldn't stop them, neither could she.

"You can't ask me to just forgive you in a day for something that took years to build," Kinsley said. "I spent an entire year waiting to hear from you. A year of waiting for you to show up on my doorstep, but you didn't show up. You didn't show up during one of the biggest times I needed you. We always show up for each other, Nora. You and I always show up for one another when we need us."

"I know." Nora winced. "I know, and I'm sorry. I'll say it as many times as you need me to, and I'll do whatever I need to, to prove that I mean it. I'm not asking you to forgive me right now. I just... I want to know if there's any chance you could someday if I earn it. If I put in the work and earn back your trust, can we ever rebuild this again?"

It was a hard ask, and Nora wasn't sure if Kinsley was going to even give her an answer. She stepped forward just an inch, ready to put an ocean of space between them once again, but she couldn't finish it off.

And there was that dangerous, treacherous, reckless thing called hope, clinging to a once-in-a-lifetime chance of coming back from something that should have splintered them apart forever.

"I don't... I don't know. I'm—I'm sorry, but I have to go."

Just like that, Kinsley was gone, and Nora stood there by herself, asking herself if any of it was worth this heartache. (It wasn't.) (But she had to live with that.)