I’ve never told anyone this story before, not like this, and that means I don’t know how to tell it, so I do it badly. I start in Yorkshire, that very first time, but before I know it I’m telling Frankie about our London flat, the one that we both lived in along with our junkie ex-girlfriends, when Lucid Dream suddenly hit big.

Once I opened the oven and found a rat staring back at me. It was a shithole, but I have oddly fond memories.

But then somehow, I’m back to my childhood for a moment, a dirty house littered with bottles. No father to speak of and hardly any mother, Gavin the most family I’ve ever really had, but then I skip all the way ahead to the Lucid Dream tour, to wandering streets at night in Italy and Germany, finding heroin despite the language barrier.

It’s a mess. I alternate between telling Frankie facts and trying to explain what it’s like, how the plunger going into your arm can feel like infatuation, how it makes a shit hovel feel like a palace when you close your eyes.

What it’s like to try to get off the stuff, the feeling of needle-tipped spiders crawling over your skin.

Finally, I get to the night in Seattle. She hasn’t said anything this whole time, just listened, and so I plunge on ahead because Christ knows I can’t stop now.

I’m the one who scored it that night. We traded off, but that night it was my turn, and I remember wanting to celebrate being back in the U.S., somewhere that I at least spoke the language. We were closing in on the end of the tour, and no matter how much I love playing and touring, it’s exhausting.

I was looking forward to coming home, to the penthouse flat I’d bought in Los Angeles. To taking a few days to do absolutely nothing but get high without needing to go on stage afterward.

The stuff was stronger than I thought it would be. I knew it the second it hit my veins, but even then, I didn’t realize how much stronger. I remember saying something to Allen and Gavin, Gavin saying something back.

I woke up two days later. Gavin was alive, but Allen wasn’t. He hadn’t even removed the needle from his arm. Trent had had to break in the door when we hadn’t shown up for the show, Darcy with him. She’s the one who realized Allen wasn’t breathing.

“I’m afraid I don’t remember most of it,” I admit. “Being in a coma will do that. But Gavin and I went to rehab for a month after that, and...”

“And he made it and you didn’t?”

I don’t answer because the waiter comes back, finally, sets the sundae and milkshake in front of us.

“Anything else?” he asks, already walking away.

We don’t answer, just watch him leave. I pick up a spoon.

“I admit that the terrible service reminds me of home,” I say.

“You mean reminds you of the level of service you provided?”

I chew a bite of waffle brownie sundae — they cook brownie batter in a waffle iron and it’s divine — mulling over my response.

“You didn’t complain.”

“Only because I thought you were cute.”

I raise one eyebrow at her, take another bite.

“So does that mean you’d like to hear the rest of my heroin tale?”

Frankie scoops sundae into her mouth, looks at me.

“That was the first try at rehab,” I say. “Afterward I got kicked from the band, crashed two separate cars, tried to assault Gavin, and set fire to a law school textbook of Marisol’s, and then Gavin let me stay with him anyway and I wrecked his house, lied about him to his girlfriend, and made him relapse.”

She just watches me steadily, spooning ice cream into her mouth.

“Oh, and nearly burned down an entire apartment building,” I say, because I honestly forgot I’d done that, too. “Anyway, I moved back to my hometown and tried rehab again. I didn’t light anything on fire after that time, but it was a week before I was using again and two months before a pretty girl stopped me from jumping in front of a train.”

I snag some whipped cream from the top, put it into my mouth.

“Third time’s the charm, though, and after that stint I sold everything I could to move clear across England to a shit village where I didn’t know anyone apart from my NA sponsor, to whom I lied incessantly about my drinking and my general attitude on everything.”

“And that was Shelton.”

“Right. And not knowing anyone or anything for a hundred miles around finally worked, because there was no one to ask if I wanted to get high and even when I wanted to, I didn’t know where to get anything,” I say.

“Until I came along and got you drunk.”

I snort.

“I’m an addict who thought it was a brilliant idea to take a job in a pub,” I tell her. “I’m perfectly capable of turning down drinks and perfectly capable of not drinking bottles of vodka to solve my problems. It’s not your fault I did neither of those things.”

Silence. The sounds of eating.

“Have I frightened you off yet?” I ask.

I should have. I know I should have, because anyone even slightly sane who hears the list of shit I’ve done and problems I’ve caused ought to be halfway across the city by now, running as fast as possible.

And yet she’s not. She’s still here in this booth, scraping melted ice cream from the plate. It’s enough to give me a glimmer of hope that I know might be stupid, because Frankie is smarter than this. She could do a thousand times better than me, and both of us know it.

“You want to know something weird?” she finally asks.

“Obviously.”

“I spent a month telling myself that it was no big deal that you’d never called me,” she said. “People have flings and one-night stands all the time, you know? And just because I never really had before didn’t mean I couldn’t now, so I talked myself out of trying to find you. Until finally I couldn’t anymore, and I looked you up.”

My heart skips a beat. I’ve not been brave enough to look myself up on the internet in a long time, but I’ve a good idea of what she found.

“And the weird thing is, even after I saw a video of you and Gavin throwing shit into a pool, pictures of you naked and strung out taken by some woman you’d just fucked, after I realized when we’d really met...”

She trails off, her big hazel eyes looking at me. There’s something naked and open in them, something that makes me feel like right now I could drown in gold-brown moss. I’ve got a vise around my heart as she pauses, ice cream from my spoon dripping onto the Formica table.

“I was still disappointed you never called me,” she says, and looks away. “I should have felt like I dodged a bullet.”

I can’t argue with that.

“But I saw all that shit and still wished you’d called me.”

I exhale, swallow. The vise tightens around my heart, because I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve this.

Wait, I do know: nothing. I’ve done fucking nothing.

“You’ve got shit taste in men,” I tell her.

“I know.”

“You should go on some dating site and find someone who runs a nonprofit rescuing llamas from llama factories and the two of you could have a lovely life together,” I go on, somehow unable to shut up.

“Probably,” she says.

“Buy a house with a picket fence, have some kids, go on vacation to Paris...”

“Are you done suggesting things I’m not going to do?”

My heart thuds off-beat.

“Give me a week,” I say.

“A week to what?” she asks, but her eyes soften.

“A week to fuck this up. Or not. A week to see you after work and take you to dinner and charm you into thinking I might be worth keeping.”

I feel like there’s a hand mixer in my stomach, scrambling my insides. I hadn’t quite dared to hope for this, and yet.

“A week for me to apologize that I never told you.”

“You’re not flying back?”

“Not in a week.”

Not anymore, at least. Flights can be changed. It’s just logistics.

“Are you going to torch my number again?”

“I wasn’t thinking to. Are you planning to leave my bed without saying goodbye again?” I ask.

It gets a smile out of her.

“Sorry about that,” she says.

“It’s already forgotten.”

There’s a long pause, like she’s thinking. But her cards are already on the table. She’s just nervous to say yes, to admit once more that what she wants isn’t what she should want.

“Frankie,” I say, leaning over the table.

“I’m mulling it over,” she says, leaning forward as well.

“Stop mulling it and just say yes like we both know you’re going to,” I tell her, keeping my voice low. Her eyes flick up, that dangerous look in them, the one that propels me on. “At the very least I know how to you like to be properly fucked.”

There it is, the lovely pink in her cheeks.

“Shouldn’t you be begging me right now?” she teases. “I could stand to see you on one knee, pleading for my favor.”

She puts her hand over mine, tracing tendons past track marks, and I nearly laugh.

“Christ, are we going to hold hands like we’re in some Paris cafe sharing a bottle of wine and staring into each other’s eyes?” I ask.

“You’re killing my dreams of a proper English romance,” she deadpans.

I grin, turn my hand over, tangle our fingers together.

“If you wanted some bullshit courtly romance with flowers and poetry you’d be miles away from me of all people,” I say, knowing I’m right. “Fucking say yes already. Seven days. If you hate me by Saturday, we’re done.”

She just laughs, reaches her spoon for the last bite of waffle brownie, and I catch her wrist.

“Say yes first.”

“I’m a hostage now?”

Her eyes are dancing but there’s a sudden desperation in the center of my chest, the need to hear her say it, to put an end to these two miserable months I’ve spent knowing what I want and totally unable to get it.

“Come on, Frankie,” I say.

Her face changes, softens.

“All right,” she says, her voice soft. “A week.”

It’s all I wanted to hear. I didn’t know it until now but it’s what I’ve been craving for months, the assurance that Frankie’s not gone. That I’ll see her again tomorrow, and after that, and that I’ve got some sort of place in her future and by some miracle didn’t burn it all to hell like I always do.

“Thank you,” I say, and before I know it I’m leaning over the table again, kissing her, not giving a single shit that we’re in the middle of a crowded restaurant.

* * *

Saturday comes. It starts with me telling her good morning and her squinting at me, pillow lines on her face, like she’s slightly confused at everything before she tells me good morning back. I’ve learned not to ask her anything important — all right, I’ve learned not to ask anything — before she’s showered and had coffee.

Her roommate, Chloe, is in the kitchen and drinking something green from a tall glass. She doesn’t like me, and I don’t know why, but it isn’t as if she and Frankie are particular friends, so I don’t really give a shit.

Instead I grab pancake mix out of the cabinet and eggs out of the fridge.

“Would you like some?” I ask, as I have for the past six mornings.

She tucks her blonde hair behind her ear and tries not to wrinkle her nose, her entire willowy body emanating disgust.

“No, thank you,” she says, her voice technically polite.

I toss one egg in the air and then catch it, just to annoy her.

“Your loss,” I say, because Chloe definitely doesn’t eat carbs. I’m not quite sure what she eats, aside from green juice, but Los Angeles is full of tall, thin blonds who seem to subsist on kale and sunlight, so Chloe’s not my problem.

I cook pancakes. Frankie gets out of the shower, still toweling off her curls with an old t-shirt, comes into the kitchen wearing jeans and a t-shirt.

“Smells good,” she says.

“That’s because it is,” I say, and give her a kiss now that she’s awake.

We eat pancakes. We talk about nothing, about things that should be boring and mundane, except it’s her and that fact makes everything shine and sparkle.

She tells me what she’s been working on — the past few days, she’s been putting the embroidered finishing touches on a table runner that will be onscreen for about two full minutes, even though that’s technically the props department, not costume.

“Don’t tell the union,” she says, laughing.

“Your embroidery secrets are safe with me,” I say.

Yesterday I jumped the gun and moved all my things from the Motel 6 where I was staying to an extraordinarily cheap by-the-week bachelor apartment. It’s miles away, deep in the valley, and it takes me over an hour to take the city bus in each direction.

But it’s boring and shoddy instead of sordid. The other people staying there work at the Budweiser plant nearby, or they’re gardeners or repairmen just trying to string together a living.

Los Angeles is full of places with quite low weekly and monthly rental fees. Many of them are closer to Frankie, and I’ve been there. I usually left with heroin in my pocket. I’ll take two hours on a city bus.

It’s been nearly a year. That first time I met Frankie I’d already relapsed for the second time, gone ahead and accepted that I knew what was going to kill me, so I may as well hurry up the process.

Only I met her instead. I thought of her pretty face the next time I had a needle in my arm, and the time after that, and then I thought of her face when I entered rehab for the third time a week later.

That evening I take her to my favorite taco place. It’s a shack in the parking lot of a grocery store in Silverlake, the only seating is folding chairs set up around a card table, and it’s fucking delicious.

“Maria texted me,” she says through a mouthful. “She went in today to find something and apparently there’s a giant pile of socks waiting. I think hand-finishing those is gonna to be my day tomorrow.”

Maria’s her coworker, the other assistant costume designer on The Spinster’s Panorama, a title I still don’t entirely understand. Though for that matter, neither does Frankie.

“How does one hand-finish a sock?” I ask.

“You know how fancy little girls’ socks sometimes have that embroidered scalloping along the top?”

I just stare at Frankie blankly, taco juice dripping onto my paper plate, and she laughs, dousing hers with more red sauce.

“Right. Well, fancy girls’ socks have that, so my day Monday is gonna be putting that on.”

That sounds like hours of sheer hell to me, but I’m well aware that it’s Frankie’s dream, so I just eat some more taco. When we finish we take a walk through the hip part of the neighborhood, holding hands past the bars, coffee shops, vintage stores, up through the hills and past the houses until we’ve got a view of downtown Los Angeles.

Then we walk down again, still hand-in-hand, debating the acting merits of Patrick Swayze vs. Kurt Russell, and we go back to her apartment, and we go to sleep in her bed.

The week ends. I don’t say anything about it, and neither does she.

I just wake up Sunday morning with her in my arms and go make her pancakes.

* * *

A week later, my phone rings. I’m at a bus stop in Hollywood, where I’ve been applying for work as a studio drummer with Nigel’s help, and someone finally called back today.

It’s Darcy. I brace myself for a barrage of something, and answer.

“You’re banging the bartender,” she says.

“You’re banging the guitarist.”

“Nigel just told me,” she says, ignoring me. “I think he’s told everyone, by the way, I hope that wasn’t a secret. But you already knew Nigel’s a fucking gossip, so...”

“It’s not a secret,” I tell her. “The bartender’s name is Frankie, and she’s quite lovely.”

“Probably too lovely for you,” Darcy says. She’s teasing, but there’s a slight edge to her voice.

“Probably,” I agree. “But she’s not run screaming yet, and believe it or not I’ve been on quite good behavior.”

I don’t point out that I didn’t have a single drink at Gavin’s wedding, despite the free bar, because I know she knows. I know that’s what the pause is all about.

“Do you and Frankie the bartender want to get dinner tonight with me and Trent?” she finally asks.

“Darcy, are you asking me on a double date?”

“Why do you say it like that?”

“Because you’re going to have to record Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune and watch them later, and I don’t know if—”

“Oh, shut the fuck up and let us meet this magical fucking creature who’s apparently made you slightly less of a degenerate,” Darcy says.

I start laughing.

“Jeopardy, what am I, fifty-thr—oh,” she says, and I just laugh harder. “That was the joke, I’m middle-aged because I asked you on a double date.”

“Don’t ever change,” I tell her.

“At least when you were blitzed out of your mind you usually fell asleep before you could be an asshole to me.”

“You did miss me.”

She sighs into the phone.

“Meet us at the Copper Soliloquy on Franklin at seven-thirty?” she says. “It’s swanky, we’ll treat you since I know you haven’t got a job.”

“Darcy, I can—”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she says, and hangs up.

I grin at my phone’s home screen, because Darcy is exactly like I remember her: all sweetness and heart, surrounded by dozens and dozens of sharp spikes. The only person she ever really let in was Trent, though after a while Gavin and I were both close enough that we didn’t always get stabbed.