35 ᴍᴍ ꜰɪʟᴍ ᴀɴᴅ ᴀ ʙʟᴀᴄᴋ ᴄᴏꜰꜰᴇᴇ I 🎀 𝒢𝓇𝒶𝒸𝒾𝑒 𝒜𝒷𝓇𝒶𝓂𝓈 [𝑔𝓍𝑔] 🎀

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐅𝐨𝐮𝐫: 𝐁𝐥𝐮𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐆𝐫𝐞𝐲 [𝐓𝐖]

ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ ꜰᴏᴜʀ [ᴛᴡ]

The weeks blurred together for Charlie-Wren, a relentless stream of classes, assignments, and shifts at the Red Lantern. She moved through her days like clockwork—waking up early, rushing to lectures, playing gigs with Rachel and Jackson, then pulling long hours at the pub. Every spare moment was filled with rehearsals, writing sessions, or studying as if she was determined to keep her mind too busy to focus on anything else. But underneath it all, there was a knot of tension that never fully loosened.

It started small—a text notification lighting up her phone while she was behind the bar, wiping down glasses during a lull in customers. She glanced at it, seeing Gracie's name flash across the screen before she quickly pocketed the phone, pretending she hadn't noticed. Then another message, a missed call late at night when she was on her way back from a gig. She stared at her phone, her thumb hovering over the screen, but never responded.

Gracie's texts were short, casual—"Hey, I hope you're doing okay" or "Just checking in"—but they lingered in Charlie's mind long after she ignored them. It wasn't like she had anything against Gracie. In fact, that was the problem. There was something about Gracie that had shaken her, made her feel exposed, and the idea of dealing with that on top of everything else in her life was too much. So she shut it out. She shoved Gracie into the same corner of her mind where she kept all the things she didn't have time to process.

Rachel and Jackson began to notice, of course. It was hard not to.

One night, after a particularly packed gig at the Red Lantern, Charlie sat on a bar stool, exhausted, her fingers aching from playing, while Rachel counted the night's tips. Jackson leaned on the counter beside her, frowning.

"You've been off lately," he said, his voice cautious. "What's going on?" worried as he stared at his friend. Charlie shrugged, taking a sip of her water. "I'm just busy. You know how it is—second year of uni is brutal. Plus work. I'm just tired."

Rachel glanced up from the cash, her eyes narrowing. "It's more than that. You've been running yourself ragged. We hardly see you outside of gigs or work. And even then, it's like you're somewhere else." It was true; recently, Charlie-Wren did not spend time with both Rachel and Jackson. She would only show her face briefly before leaving to go to work or just disappear.

"I'm here," Charlie muttered, though the words felt hollow even as she said them. She just needed to say something, anything, to get them off of her back.

Jackson exchanged a glance with Rachel before turning back to Charlie. "We're your friends, Charlie. If something's going on, you can talk to us. You don't have to handle everything on your own."

Charlie forced a smile, though it didn't reach her eyes. "I'm fine. Really." 

But she wasn't fine, and they all knew it. Still, Rachel and Jackson didn't push, at least not that night. They let it slide, and Charlie was grateful for that. She wasn't ready to talk about what was really bothering her, mostly because she didn't fully understand it herself. As the days passed, the texts from Gracie kept coming, sporadic but persistent. Sometimes Charlie would stare at her phone, feeling the urge to reply, to at least acknowledge the messages, but every time, she shoved the thought away. She couldn't afford to get caught up in that right now.

Her life was already spiralling. Between her two jobs, constant rehearsals, and the endless workload of university, Charlie barely had a moment to breathe. Her calendar was filled with reminders—lecture deadlines, shifts at the pub, rehearsals for upcoming gigs, acting auditions she barely had time to prepare for. When she wasn't running around campus or performing at the Red Lantern, she was writing music, scribbling lyrics in a notepad late at night when she couldn't sleep. It felt like she was always moving, always on the edge of collapse, but she refused to slow down. Slowing down meant thinking, and thinking meant dealing with everything she'd buried.