I wake up to the sun through my bedroom window, sheep bleating softly outside, and I reach one hand out to find Frankie. I may be fucking hungover and it may feel as though someone is attempting to play the xylophone on my brain, but I’ve got a crystal fucking clear memory of the important parts of the last two days.

But there’s nothing. Just cool sheets and empty bed. I stretch further but all I find is the edge of my mattress, my fingers curling around it before I finally open my eyes.

She’s gone. I’m not exactly Sherlock Fucking Holmes, but between the cold sheets and the silent cottage, she feels quite gone. Bad gone. Final gone.

I close my eyes again, bury my face in the pillow. Count to ten, then twenty, try to convince myself that when I open my eyes she’ll be strolling in from the bathroom, flopping next to me in the bed.

Thirty. Forty. No Frankie.

It’s a long fucking time before I get myself out of bed. It’s late November in north England. The weather is shit, the floor is freezing, and the stone walls of the cheap rental cottage where I live have hardly any insulation at all. The sun is too low in the sky to give any real light, just weak and gray, cutting through the dirty windows like I’m in a jailhouse.

I pull on trousers, a shirt, a sweater. Head pounding, stomach roiling. The act of getting dressed makes me break out in a cold sweat, and I lurch to the kitchen, grab the bottle of rum, take a couple of long swallows because I’m fucking hungover and Frankie’s gone.

Maybe she left to get coffee. Americans love that.

Maybe she wanted bagels or scones or pastries or whatever the fuck she eats in the morning.

Blood pounds through my ears. Everything’s muffled and painful, so I take another few swallows, wait for it all to dim. I can tell myself what I want about where Frankie is, but I know none of it’s true. If nothing else, I still know enough to know I’m only lying to myself.

If she were coming back, she’d have said so. If she were going for coffee or scones or something, she’d have said so. There’s only one reason for her to leave without waking me and I don’t have to be sober to know what it is.

I lean against the counter, sweat still oozing from my pores. A flash of memory: Gavin and me, sunrise, London. Still up from the night before, a greasy diner with a bitchy waitress. Piles of bacon and eggs. Dirtshine had just gotten its first record deal and we’d celebrated properly.

I latch onto it — the watery eggs, the puddles of grease — because somehow thinking about having lost my best friend is easier than having lost Frankie. It’s the dull pain of the past, not the sharp knife of the immediate.

It’s because no one wants to be around you, not for long. And can you blame them? Can you really?

Fucking look at yourself. You couldn’t even keep a bartending job.

I shake my head, trying to clear it out. When that doesn’t work, I swallow more rum and wish I had something stronger. Even another joint would take the edge off a little, but those are long gone.

How hard could it be to find something else?

This is how I got to be standing on a bridge railing in the first place.

I never told her. I went home that night thinking of the pretty girl on the bridge. I went back into rehab, again, thinking of the pretty girl on the bridge. I moved to this shithole thinking of the pretty girl on the bridge, and I never told her.

The fuck are you doing, you pointless waste of space?

I sit at the table, face in my hands, and that’s when I notice the envelope. Something written on the back.

It wasn’t there last night. A fresh wave of cold sweat trickles down my back, and I take another drink from the bottle to steady my nerves.

Liam —

I had to leave. Sorry.

Frankie

(732) 372-5598

She didn’t. She could have stayed, and I know that and I’m sure she knew that. The phone number is cold fucking comfort, because what am I to do with that? It’s nothing. It’s a consolation prize for her presence is what it is. It’s part of her un-serious apology for leaving without saying goodbye.

I wish she’d never shown up here. I wish she’d never walked into my pub. I wish she’d have left the first time I was rude to her.

I slug down more rum. It burns slightly on the way down, but it’s a good pain, a familiar pain. I know what I’m doing when it comes to drinking straight from the bottle, but being heartbroken that a one-night-stand has left? Being upset that I’m unemployed?

Fucking alien.

I mean to stop once the table starts wavering in my vision. I really do, but instead I think about the night she got here. Watching the headlights pull up, the way my heart jumped when I heard her voice. Her mouth on mine. The way her freckles are everywhere on her skin, lighter in some places and darker in others.

The way she tasted. The way she came, the way she felt, the way she moved like liquid. Best fuck of my life, hands down, no competition.

The way she fell asleep in my arms. Twice.

Fuck it. I dial the number. I haven’t got a plan, just the need to hear her voice, hear her tell me why she left.

It rings. And rings. It rings until it goes her voicemail picks up: “Hi, you’ve reached Frankie Strauss, please leave your name...”

I don’t.

What the fuck did I think was going to happen, she’d have left and said nothing only to wait breathlessly for me to call her? Of course not. If she really wanted to talk to me she’d have talked to me this morning.

I uncork the bottle and take another drink.

* * *

Two hours later, the bottle is near-empty. I’ve done nothing in the intervening time except sit on my shit couch and go over a list of everything I’ve ever fucked up, starting with grade school. It’s a one-man pity party, rum next to me.

Now that I’m good and drunk, ready for another disappointment, I pick up the phone and call her again.

This time it goes straight to voicemail, and when I hear her recorded voice, I pitch the phone across the room where it hits a stone wall and then crashes to the floor. Probably shattered. I don’t fucking care.

“I ought to take a fucking hint,” I tell the bottle. “A girl doesn’t answer and then shuttles you off to voicemail, it’s a fucking hint, innit?”

The bottle answers with a slosh, another quick hit of warmth down my throat and through my veins. A Teflon coating over my mind and over my heart, deflecting everything that’s really wrong.

“Why’d she even leave the number if she’s not going to answer?” I ask it, reclining my head back onto my shit sofa.

Everything tilts, spins. My phone is still across the room, silent.

* * *

Another two hours. I think, at least, because the bottle’s empty. It could be the next day for all I fucking know, it could be next week, and that’s the point.

I’m on the floor, leaning against the cool wall. My phone’s in front of me, the glass shattered, barely usable.

I call her again. I’ve lost track of the number of times. I’ve still not left her a message because I can’t bear to get through her outgoing one to the beep, but my finger and thumb are bloody from the splintered screen.

“Hi, you’ve reached Frankie Strauss, please leave...”

I hang up. I take a drink, leaning against the wall because I don’t think I can stand. Hit her number again.

“Hi, you’ve reached Frankie...”

Repeat.

“Hi, you’ve reached...”

* * *

I got the other bottle and I’ve managed to not piss myself, but the bathroom mirror seems to be broken. Sun’s getting low, maybe about to go down. Whatever day it is, doesn’t fucking matter.

Just a bottle, maybe a bit more, didn’t used to get me this drunk, but it feels fucking good to be here again. To crawl inside this lovely warm blanket of alcohol where nothing that’s gone wrong can reach me.

I get back to the floor where my phone is. Hit the button to dial Frankie.

“Hi, you’ve reached Frankie Strauss, please your name and number after the beep, and when I’m available...”

I hang up again, too chickenshit to go on. She can’t hear me like this, not again, because what if she suddenly remembers how we really met?

Maybe it’s why she left — why stay with someone you know will implode someday, when your rich fiancé’s likely to take you back?

The thought hits me like a brick to the face, and I close my eyes, tilt my head back against the stones. Try desperately to get my scattered thoughts into order for five seconds, just five fucking seconds, I only need five seconds.

I have to go. That’s what it said, right? Something like that?

I claw at the wall until I can stand. Put one foot in front of the other, nearly fall over myself, nearly vomit twice but I get to the kitchen. Collapse into a chair, the chair, the one where we fucked one night—

I can’t.

I reach out, my head practically on the cool wood of the table, fighting the urge to just lie down right there, but I think I know what happened. I know why she left.

Finally, I grab the envelope, read the words on it slowly, painfully, as they swim in front of my eyes, her letters curling into themselves, combining, separating until at last I’ve got a handle on it.

I had to leave. Sorry.

What was it she said the other night, about how she left him? I close my eyes, hit my head against the table, try to remember.

I left a note so he couldn’t talk me out of it.

There it is. There’s the truth itself.

It’s fucking Alistair. I don’t know what happened and I’ve got no fucking evidence and no cause at all, but in that moment, veins more whiskey than blood, I’m completely fucking certain.

She went back to him. He made her, somehow, I don’t know. It’s a false fucking phone number, just to make me feel better, though why she bothered is beyond me.

It’s over and it’s done and I’m some sort of blistering idiot to think that it could have ever been otherwise.

I put my head down on the table and blissful darkness takes me over.