I walk in our front door, only for it to hit something on the inside when it’s about a foot open. Frowning, I poke my head in and discover that it’s a stack of boxes, sitting next to another stack of boxes, surrounded by boxes piled at least five feet high.

I push the door open carefully, just enough to get through, and toss my leather messenger bag on the couch.

“Are we moving and you haven’t told me?” I call.

“Well, you do keep telling me how beautiful the Greek Isles are,” she calls from the bedroom.

I lift a box off the top of a pile. It’s surprisingly light, almost like there’s nothing in it, and I spin it around in my fingers.

“Maybe I ought to start singing the praises of Los Angeles instead,” I say. “Is there something actually in these?”

“Tulle. It’s a whole long story,” she says, and then she comes out of the bedroom, still putting an earring in one ear.

Both my eyebrows shoot up, and I grin, because she’s wearing a shiny gold dress that wouldn’t look out of place on one of those buxom starlets from the 1950s, Marilyn Monroe or some such. It’s tight in some places and drapey in others, and Frankie somehow looks both perfectly proper and like walking sex.

“I think I got stuck with the world’s dumbest UPS guy, because he couldn’t figure out where the costume shop was, and he kept insisting that it was a block away from where the address points, and then when I finally was on the phone with him trying to talk him around so he could drop off ten thousand boxes at the right place, he somehow got confused again and wound up three miles away at the studio in Burbank so I just had all that delivered here.”

“Right. Turn around?”

Frankie spins, looking over her shoulder at me.

“It’ll all be out of here Monday, but they were making noise about returning it to the vendor, and so I... is there something on my dress?”

“Keep turning?”

“What is it?”

“Nothing, I’m just staring at your ass. Turn again?”

Frankie just laughs, rolls her eyes, and flips me off all at once, so I walk over and grab her ass with both hands and kiss her lightly on the lips, since I can tell she’s already wearing lipstick.

“You approve?” she asks, looking up at me through her lashes.

The fabric of her dress is warm with her body heat, made of something slinky and slippery, and I slide my hands down to the tops of her thighs, up to her lower back, fingers sinking into her curves.

Even though we live together, and even though I see her naked more or less every day, I have to fight the blood rushing to my cock. It’s a losing battle.

“Hmm,” I say, like I’m thinking about it, and keep sliding my hands over her hips, up her torso, over her breasts as her eyelashes flutter. “It’s all right, but what does it look like crumpled on the floor?”

“Car’s coming in thirty minutes,” she says, batting her eyelashes, her eyes crinkling around the corners. “And since you’re not wearing that to this party, you’re gonna have to spend that time putting on something that doesn’t embarrass me.”

“It’s a five-minute task,” I say, my hands back on her ass. “And since I bet I can have you shouting my name within four minutes, that still gives me a full twenty —”

She covers my mouth with one hand, the thin metal band on her finger against my lips.

“Go. Get. Ready,” she says.

“Vvvmmblyyy—”

“That didn’t sound like you’re right, Frankie, I’d hate to be wildly underdressed and incite speculation again about whether I’ve relapsed,” she teases.

“Mmmmmmmph.”

She takes her hand off of my mouth.

“It’s not my fault that tabloids are monstrous just because I was wearing ripped jeans and hadn’t slept well,” I protest.

She points at our apartment’s one bedroom, trying not to smile.

I do as she says and head back, but I smack her ass on the way.

* * *

The release party is at a huge rented mansion in the Pacific Palisades, up in the hills by the ocean. If it were day time we’d have a spectacular view of the ocean, but it’s night so the view is of Los Angeles, the city below us spread out like a puddle of lights.

I look at it as the hired car winds up the narrow road, and while there’s a thousand things on my mind — behaving myself at this release party, whether the new Dirtshine record will do well, the months-long tour we’re about to embark on, how the fuck one even begins to plan a wedding — what I’m really thinking of is a sleepy pub in a sleepy village, of Frankie telling me that she didn’t think I belonged there.

And how even though we were strangers then, she was right. She already knew me better than I knew myself.

The car pulls up in front of the house, and I take her hand. Our label put this all on, meaning it’s a whole fucking production: there’s decorations, cameras, and for fuck’s sake there’s even a miniature red carpet.

“You ready?” I ask, taking her hand in mine and kissing the back.

Frankie wrinkles her nose, then sighs.

“Yeah,” she says.

I get out, turn, offer her my hand. She’s wearing tall heels, so she’s only half a foot shorter than me, and she wobbles a bit as she exits, hand tightly on my arm as we walk down the stupid red carpet and into the house.

* * *

Just inside the door is another enormous photo, this one the four of us looking rock and roll as fuck, and the whole night I keep catching myself looking at the thing.

There’s a part of me that refuses to believe this is real, that after all those lows they’ve really taken me back, but there I am. Standing next to Gavin, head turned, staring off into the distance like I’m too cool to be bothered looking into the camera.

I also know that no matter what the publicity photos make it look like, it’s been no fucking fairy tale. There’s been blood and sweat and tears and other bodily fluids, tragedies and fights and shouting matches. For fuck’s sake, Gavin and I got into it last week over whether we should do club or arena shows in Glasgow on this tour.

“You still staring at your pretty face?” Gavin’s voice says behind me, and I blink.

I was talking to some overweight, middle-aged man about how he allegedly almost played guitar for Springsteen but then decided to go to law school instead, but it seems the topic’s changed and I’m not paying any attention.

“I have got wonderful bone structure,” I tell him, and he laughs.

“Cheers to that, you broody motherfucker,” he says, and we clink glasses. “You do look loads better in that spot than Eddie did.”

“I heard he left you for a jam band,” I say, taking a sip of ginger ale.

“Something like that,” Gavin says. “Darcy’s still angry about it.”

I laugh, because I know Darcy’s still angry about it, even though she didn’t really like Eddie in the first place. She just doesn’t like being left, I think.

Gavin leans one elbow on my shoulder, takes a sip of his own drink.

“Smile,” he says. “We’re being photographed again.”

“Christ, you’d think everyone had seen enough by now,” I mutter.

“You always were a basket of sunshine, mate,” Gavin teases, and I can’t help but laugh.

* * *

After the party finally ends, we find ourselves at Darcy and Trent’s loft. Even though Gavin’s got a much bigger house, for some reason, we’ve always come here to hang out instead, and now the six of us are sitting around on her couches, disheveled and tired.

The girls are half-drunk, Trent’s had a single glass of whiskey, and Gavin and I are dead sober, per usual.

“Why do we even have feet,” Frankie says, slouching on the couch, wiggling her toes on Darcy’s coffee table with a beer in her hand. “If they’re just going to hurt. Why can’t we fly?”

“Every single time I swear I’m wearing flats to the next thing, and then I don’t,” Marisol joins in.

“What about roller skates,” Darcy says. “It would be so efficient.”

“Yeah, you should definitely have several glasses of champagne and then put on roller skates,” I tease her. “That would go smashingly.”

She sighs.

“Stop crushing my dreams, Liam,” she says.

We don’t do anything but sit around and bullshit. Trent makes some joke that makes Frankie laugh until she gets the hiccups, and Marisol accidentally tells us about the time that Gavin fell into their pool while trying to take a picture of a sunset.

It feels like it used to, when we were driving around in a van, playing tiny shows. Frankie and Marisol are here now, but they feel like they fit, too, and even Bowie the cat seems to enjoy our company.

It’s nearly sunrise when Frankie and I leave Darcy’s flat, walking down to the sidewalk. I’m holding her shoes and she’s got her skirt in both hands, doing her best not to trip over it while we wait for a car.

She leans against me, nuzzling my shirt.

“I’m gonna sleep all day,” she says. “I think the last time I stayed up all night was to finish writing a paper about Elizabethan bodices.”

“You bad, bad girl,” I tease, and she laughs softly against me.

We stand there for a few minutes, just waiting, the sky lightening in the distance. I’m tired and drained and happy and relieved and nervous and excited all at once, running my fingers up and down her back as she tries to burrow into me for warmth.

And despite myself, despite the years since it happened and the ocean between then and now, I think about the bridge and the train and the car and the American girl. About darkness that seemed so complete I thought it would never end, and how now I’m standing here watching the sunrise with her.

Every single day, I’m glad she came along. Every single day I’m glad I didn’t jump.

Frankie yawns, and I wrap my other arm around her, kiss the top her head.

“I’m gonna fall asleep in the car,” she says, her voice already fading.

“I love you,” I say.

She snuggles in, puts her arms around my waist.

“Love you too,” she says softly.

We stand there, locked together. The sun rises, our car pulls up.

True to her word, Frankie falls asleep as it takes us home.