I was right. I was fucking right with my first guess, the one I made hungover and half-drunk. I was fucking right when I burned her phone number at my kitchen table, right when I deleted her number from my phone after calling her a thousand and one times, calling until I had glass embedded in my face.

She went back to him. She fucked me once and then went back to him, went through with the wedding. The gold wedding band on her finger curving against the glass like an ugly smile, mocking me in the sunlight.

I ought to demand a pint for free. Christ, what was I thinking?

The rest of the cocktail hour is a blur. I’ve got half a mind to drink Gavin right out of Scotch, go back to Frankie and give her a piece of my mind, tell her that I called again and again, I went to New York to look for her, and the whole time it was already over and finished because she wouldn’t answer her phone and didn’t call me back.

I want to get absolutely smashed to forget the time I spent heartbroken. Because it wasn’t fucking worth it, getting fired from the pub and getting completely sober. The two months I’ve spent without a drink, even when I’ve really fucking wanted one haven’t been worth it.

I wish she’d just told me. That morning. Shaken me awake and said that was fun but I think I’m going to work things out with Alistair.

I’d have gotten wrecked still, but I’d not have spent months doing it. I’d not have gone to fucking New York to wander around like a pathetic lost puppy, looking for her. Christ.

But I don’t get smashed. I walk all the way across the lawn and behind the building to the other bar so I can avoid her, but I order more club soda, because I think I might have finally fucking learned that I never make anything better when I’m drunk.

Besides, I’m getting on with the band again. Gavin’s the happiest I’ve ever seen him, and I think even Darcy’s forgiven me.

Somehow, I know I shouldn’t spoil that yet. Somehow, after years and years of crawling into a needle or a bottle or a pipe or whatever the fuck happens to be around, I might have learned that it’s no way at all to deal with problems.

That, and there’s a liquor store next door to my motel. If I get through this sober I can always head there afterward.

So I mingle. I turn down tequila shots. I spend a while talking to the band’s producer, debate whether or not drum machines are making a comeback with one of the members of Death Memento, even chat for a bit with Marisol’s fifteen-year-old cousin who wants to be a rock star.

I’m an adult, in other words. I’m wearing a suit and making good choices and it’s not what I want to do at all but maybe it’s about time that I did.

During dinner, I’m seated near the back of the room, at a table separate from the rest of the band, with a few other old friends of ours. I’m sure that Gavin and Marisol thought that by now I’d be totally shitfaced and probably no longer wearing trousers, so I can’t blame them for putting me back here even if I’m tempted to simply go ahead and do what everyone thinks I will.

After we’re served salad on very nice plates, we’re treated to ages and ages of toasts. Gavin’s brother goes up, as does Nigel, as does what feels like every single member of Marisol’s family. There’s her parents, her sister, her aunt and uncle, someone she grew up down the street from.

They drone on. I’m sure it’s all true and Marisol is absolutely lovely, but I’m not listening. My mind’s wandered back to Frankie, the look on her face at the bar. The ugly circle of gold around her finger, my gut tightening whenever I think about it.

That makes it not my fault, I think. It was decided before I ever tried to call her, before I ever smashed my phone, before I ever got rid of her number.

It doesn’t make me feel better, only worse. Worse because I fell for it, because after probably dozens of one-night-stands in varying states of sobriety and never ever calling again, I let it happen to me like a fucking idiot.

I concentrate for a moment on the flower arrangement in the center of the table, vines crawling around roses.

Why’s she working bartending at a wedding if she married the future Earl of Downhamshire-on-Kyne?

Before I can answer that particular question, I notice a figure in black walking along the side of the room. She deposits two wine bottles on a table, then heads for the door again, her curly hair bouncing just a little with every step.

“Even though we’ve known Marisol since she was a little girl, we’d never have possibly imagined...”

Christ, this is never-ending. I murmur some excuse to my table mates, stand, and walk through the nearest door. I keep walking until I’m outside, heading in the direction where Frankie disappeared.

I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to say. I’m not sure it’s going to do any good, because even though it’s occurred to me that she might not be married to the Little Lord, she’s married to someone and that’s what matters, right?

But I’ve got to talk to her. I can’t just find her again, after all this effort, and let her go without talking to her.

New Liam can’t, at least, and Old Liam is gone so he doesn’t matter anymore.

I round a corner, in a lovely little side yard lined with bougainvillea, and there she is, walking away the next corner.

“Oi!” I call before I can chicken out.

She stops. She turns, and even from here I can tell that every muscle in her body is tensed, her lips pressed together, her eyes wide. She shoves one hand through her hair: the left one, ring glinting in the receding sunlight.

“Hey,” she says, her voice tight.

“I didn’t get a chance to properly say hello,” I tell her, shoving my hands into my trouser pockets. “I guess congratulations are in order.”

My stomach is a tight, churning ball. Frankie just blinks in the sunlight, making me wonder if we’ve ever seen each other somewhere this bright before. I don’t think Shelton has ever been this sunny in the full length of its existence, but she’s just as fucking beautiful in the sun as she is in the dim light of the pub.

“Thanks?” she says, sounding a little puzzled.

There’s a brief pause, both of us just looking at the other.

“I’m not really sure what you’re congratulating me for,” Frankie finally says.

“On your marriage,” I say, the words like spitting acid.

“I broke it off,” she says, her voice rigid. “I told you that, how drunk were you?”

“Drunk enough to get my hopes up,” I tell her, and point at her left hand.

Frankie misses the intention and looks at the wall behind her, then back at me.

“What is going—”

“You’re wearing a wedding ring,” I say flatly.

She holds her hand out, looks down like she’s seeing it for the first time.

“Oh!” she exclaims. “It’s not real.”

My heart kicks at my ribcage.

“I mean, it’s a real ring,” she goes on, pulling it off and holding it up between two fingers. “But it’s just costume jewelry that the other bartender let me borrow because last week a bunch of guys got super drunk at this wedding and would not stop hitting on me, and she said that this would work like a charm, so I figured I’d try it.”

“Has it?”

“Haven’t gotten hit on yet.”

She holds it in her palm, hand flat, and I feel as if something’s been lifted from me. I feel jubilantly, excessively, triumphantly pleased that right now I’m dead fucking sober, that I was only a slight prick to Frankie just now because if I weren’t, I imagine security would be escorting me off the premises.

Frankie closes her hand around it.

“How have you been?” she asks.

“I burned your note and deleted your number from my mobile,” I tell her.

I can’t hesitate. I can’t stop. I’m afraid that if I do I’ll never get through it, and I need to. Not that she’s ever going to want me again anyway, but to her and her alone, I feel beholden.

Frankie raises both eyebrows.

“I woke up and you were gone and I thought you’d changed your mind,” I say, the words just pouring out of me. “And that problem I fixed with a bottle of whiskey, until I finally saw your note on the table.”

My mouth is dry, my heart thumping wildly. I’ve never done any of this before: been so heartbroken about a girl, tried so hard to get someone back.

Most of all, I’ve never admitted it to anyone. It feels like I’m tearing my heart from my chest and holding it out for Frankie to examine.

She just watches me, her face unreadable.

“I called you,” I say, my voice suddenly quiet. “And I was absolutely legless by then, and it rang for ages and you never did answer. So I found a bottle of shit gin under the sink and drank that and kept calling, but by then you’d turned your phone off.”

Her eyes are wide, her cheeks flushed. I’m not sure she’s breathing, her hands knotted in front of her.

“My phone died because I forgot to charge it,” she whispers. “And then I was on an airplane, and you have to turn your phone off when you fly, and...”

An airplane. She was on a fucking airplane, back to New York. She left England and went home, exactly like she said she was going to, but instead I assumed the worst of her.

“So I got drunker and lit your note on fire and apparently I deleted your number from my mobile as well,” I admit. “And then I got even drunker and...”

She waits expectantly.

“I drove to the Winstead Manor, crashed my car into a garden wall and tried to assault Alistair,” I admit.

Her eyes go wide, and she looks at me for a long, long time.

“Did it work?” she finally asks.

“I don’t remember. I think it may have,” I say.

“Dude, do you know where the cake is?” a voice says from just around the corner. “Like, I’ve got the cutting thing for it? But I don’t know where the actual cake is?”

“Shit,” Frankie mutters, then glances around. “C’mon.”

“It’s called a knife, Roderick, and the cake is in the kitchen where it’s supposed to be,” a woman’s voice answers.

Frankie ducks around another corner, into the shadows next to another massive bougainvillea bush, and I follow.

“I’m sorry,” she says, looking up at me with big hazel eyes. “I should have said goodbye or something, it was a total asshole move to just leave a note like that and I didn’t even think about the fact that my phone would be off for like nine hours...”

She takes a deep breath.

“It’s not your fault,” I start.

“I just wanted to go home,” she says, her eyes down, her voice quiet. “I swear it wasn’t you, but I’d just called off a wedding and felt like I was flushing three years of my life down the drain, and then I’d gone and had sex with someone new immediately after and I’ve never done anything like that before, and it was all just... it was a lot. And I just wanted to go home where things at least kind of made sense, and I probably should have woken you up but I was afraid that if I did I’d stay in England longer and things would only get weirder, so I just left while I felt like I could get away with it.”

I just shake my head.

“I handled it the way I’ve handled everything for years, by getting shitfaced and destroying everything I could get my hands on,” I say, taking a step in. “If I hadn’t done that, I could have called the next day and we’d have talked.”

“It was still a shitty thi—”

I reach out and put one thumb over her mouth. I do it without thinking, without really meaning to, but the motion feels like lightning strikes. All I’ve wanted for two months is to touch her.

“I called every costume shop in New York City to look for you,” I say. “I’m banned from Facebook because I contacted every Françoise Strauss I could find, so now I’m probably on some sort of FBI list. I spent two weeks in Brooklyn because I thought I might run into you. This is my mess, Frankie, don’t fucking start trying to take responsibility for it.”

Her lips move under my thumb, so I slide it off slowly, my fingers brushing along her chin.

I’m going to kiss her again. I am. Whatever the fuck she says or does, I’m at least going to do that.

“You were in Brooklyn?” she asks.

I nod.

“For what?”

“I just told you. Trying to find you.”

Frankie just looks at me like I’m slightly mad. To be fair, she’s not wrong.

“That’s all?”

“You could act like it’s terribly romantic and not simply daft.”

I’ve got one hand nestled in her hair, my thumb still on her jaw, and I rest my other on the wall next to her head. Finally, finally, her eyes spark, the corners just barely crinkling.

It’s what I’ve been waiting for. I didn’t know until right now, but it was.

“What if I act like it’s both?” Frankie asks.

I kiss her again.

Two months of yearning and longing and searching and now she’s here, her lips under mine, warm and yielding as she snakes a hand around my neck and pulls me in.

It’s an earthquake, a tidal wave, a lightning storm. It’s a better high than anything else I’ve ever tried, every nerve in my body pure fucking euphoria right now.

I open my mouth against hers. Frankie grunts softly, a barely-there noise, and I can’t help but curl my fingers against her neck, press my body against hers until she’s firmly against the wall.

She moans again, so softly I can barely hear it, and she runs her hands down my torso, her fingers sliding between the buttons on my shirt. I’m hard as a fucking railroad spike now, despite every effort.

I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that if I put my hand down her trousers right now her knickers would be dripping wet, that I’d stroke her delicious clit once and make her gasp, see her eyelids flutter the way they do.

“I admit I tried to forget you,” I murmur into her ear.

She pulls at my shirt, gently.

“Same,” she whispers, teasing me.

“You know what I didn’t forget?”

“Something G-rated, I’m sure.”

I slide my hand down her back and squeeze her ass for that comment, and Frankie just laughs breathlessly in my ear.

“How easy it was to make you come,” I tell her.

I swear her breathing gets faster, her heartbeat quickens. I dip one single finger below the waistband of her black work pants, the temptation to slide my hand between her legs and make her come again right here, right now almost overwhelming.

Even though we’re in public. Even though she’s at work.

“Right now,” I say. “Sixty seconds, give or take. No one around. If you can be quiet enough maybe even twice, since I’ve got a feeling your frustrations are all pent up and your vibrator’s worn out at the moment.”

“Cocky prick,” she breathes.

“Fucking right. How about it?”

I slide another finger underneath her waistband.

“How long did you say?” she teases.

“One minute, just ab—”

“Hey, have you seen Frankie?” says a voice around the corner, not ten feet away.

Frankie jumps and gasps, trying to back away from me against the wall.

“Who?” asks a guy’s voice.

“Frankie, I swear she was here and just vanished.”

I kiss her again, hard, for one last second before pulling away.