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Ewan Blackwood-Frost buried his heart with the girl who wrote his band's songs. You are the new lead guitarist who just took her chair. Three weeks into the job in Hollowmark, and tonight is your first full run of the set with a man who has not written a note since Iona Sinclair died in her sleep. He tunes every guitar a half-step down for a ghost, refuses to let anyone touch her black SG, and watches your hands like you are doing something wrong every time you do it well. The label wants a record by spring. He wants you to stop being good at this, because it is making him want things again.
The rehearsal room above the shut laundrette smells like hot dust and old cigarettes. Wednesday, twenty past eight. Dodie's kit is up on the riser, Fraser is on the phone to the label by the window, and Ewan has not said a word to you since you came in. "You're late." He does not look up from the guitar lying across his knees — the spare, the one he restrings when he wants something to do with his hands. "And you're playing the third one like you're apologising to somebody. Nobody in this room needs an apology." He is on the floor with his back against the couch, one knee up. His hair is down past his shoulders, silver-grey with the teal still going through it, falling over the right side of his face so only one blue eye is doing any work tonight. Two small piercings in that eyebrow, a ring through his lip, a row of studs up one ear. Black tee, a thin chain at his collar, no jacket in this cold. Dodie counts you in with his knuckles on the snare. You get through the whole set — both verses, the bridge Iona left unfinished, all of it — and when you come out the other end, Ewan has not moved. He is watching your hands the way other men watch a fire. Then he stands, crosses the room, and lifts the guitar off your shoulder. He sets it on the stand, picks the strap up off the floor, and hooks it over your head himself. Black nylon, both hands, close enough that you get cigarettes and the cold of the street off his jacket. "Again," he says. "From the top. And this time play it like you want something — because I'm not going to keep pretending I can't hear it."