The plane’s fancy enough to have outlets between the seats, and the moment jet wheels touch down at LaGuardia around noon the next day, my phone is charged and turned on.

I haven’t showered. I haven’t really slept. I did brush my teeth and find a change of clothes, but I’m still a disgusting, nervous wreck mess at the end of the worst plane flight of my life.

Please have called me. Please.

I know it’s fucked up of me to leave with no warning like that, without even saying goodbye, and expect him to call hours later anyway. But it doesn’t stop me from hoping anyway.

Maybe he called while you were in the air and your phone was off.

Maybe he was still asleep before, and then called while you were flying to Frankfurt without leaving a voicemail, didn’t call while you were waiting in the airport, called while you were flying to Atlanta and didn’t leave a voicemail...

My phone finally ticks up to four bars.

No voicemail. No anything. I click my phone off and stick it in the seatback pocket as we taxi to the gate, closing my eyes and leaning back against my seat.

At least I’m finally home. Manchester to Frankfurt, Frankfurt to Atlanta, Atlanta to New York. It took me eighteen hours. I napped a little in airports and a little on airplanes, but I feel like my body’s been stuffed with hay, unpleasant dry and itchy on the inside.

I’ve been in the middle seat for every leg. For the last two, my seat didn’t even recline, and on the flight over the Atlantic I was next to a large gentleman who snored for nine hours straight.

And Liam didn’t call me. I thought he would. I really fucking believed it. I imagined myself apologizing that I didn’t wake him up, probably crying or something but saying that I just needed to go home, get out of England, that it had nothing to do with him.

That he was the one thing that made me want to stay.

We deplane. No call. Drag myself through LaGuardia, to the baggage claim, where my bags miraculously arrive. No call.

Get on the train from LaGuardia to the subway. Switch lines. Switch lines again, finally get out and walks the blocks to my tiny studio, where I collapse on my bed, clothes and shoes still on, teeth unbrushed, face unwashed, and fall asleep almost instantly.

* * *

It’s still half-dark outside when my phone rings, jolting me awake. I roll over and grab it, bladder excruciatingly full and mouth disgusting.

A strange number with a +44 country code. My heart pounds.

Finally.

“Hello?” I answer, raspy and groggy but hopeful.

“Darling,” says Alistair’s voice. “Where are you?”

I flop back onto the bed and stare at the cracks in my ceiling. He must be calling from a landline or something, that’s why his name didn’t pop up. Tears spring to my eyes, despite myself.

Why does he have to care suddenly?

“I’m home,” I say.

There’s a long, long pause.

“By home, do you mean...”

“I mean my apartment. In Brooklyn. Home, the place where I live?”

“You’re in New York?”

I don’t bother answering.

“You were serious? Don’t you think you’re overreacting?”

I cover my eyes with my arm, bent at the elbow. Alistair sounds hurt — not smug, not like an asshole, just hurt, and I’m starting to feel guilty. After all, I’m the one who flew to another continent without telling him.

“No, I don’t think that,” I say, my voice sounding tired and resigned, even to me.

“We had a fight. Couples have fights sometimes, it’s perfectly normal.”

I swallow hard, because he’s still not wrong. He’s somehow almost never technically wrong, always exactly on the correct side of that line, something he’s never failed to point out to me.

I don’t know what to say. My mind’s gone blank, because it’s too early in the morning and I’m too sleep-deprived and somehow still-hungover and, oh yeah, I went and immediately had a ton of sex with someone else the second I left him.

“I meant everything I said,” I say quietly.

“I was just winding you up,” he says, his voice perfectly calm. Like it’s obvious. “Dry British humor is all.”

There it is again. He’s explaining why I’m wrong and he’s right, but this time it does nothing to me. I’m here, in my bed, in New York, and what he does doesn’t affect me anymore.

“I’m American, not stupid,” I say. “Give me a day and we’ll talk or something, okay?”

“Françoise—”

I hang up. Thirty seconds later, he calls back and I don’t answer. Then again in thirty seconds, a minute, five minutes, until I finally turn my phone off so I can go about my day.

I should feel bad. I know. I should feel confused and conflicted and maybe sorry for everything that just happened, but all I feel is guilty about Alistair and a little hurt about Liam.

And like I want to sleep for a week, but I can’t. I have to get up, I have to hustle, I have to head to my waitressing job and pay the bills and stay up late sewing.

Fuck, I have to go to the pharmacy down the street and pay $40 I don’t really have for the morning-after pill, because even though I’m on birth control I didn’t exactly remember to take it while I was blitzed out of my mind.

I can’t even think about STD testing yet. I can think about that tomorrow, because every time I try I just start crying about how stupid I was for fucking someone I didn’t know without protection and he hasn’t even called.

God. I sound like a bad Lifetime movie.

* * *

Days go by, and then a week. Every morning I wake up with the same thought: I wish I’d said goodbye. I wish I hadn’t just left a note.

He’s not gonna call. I’ve got that message loud and clear. I don’t know why he’s not going to call — maybe that was enough for him, maybe he’s angry that I didn’t say goodbye, could be anything — but it’s not happening.

Alistair calls, though. He calls repeatedly, and sometimes I talk to him and sometimes I don’t. He tries to change my mind. He swears he wants me back.

Sometimes I cry when we hang up. I feel bad about how I left him, how I didn’t tell him to his face. There’s a part of me that does mourn the life we almost had together, that’s strangely sad I’m not going to learn to ride a horse and gallop over the English countryside.

But I’m not exactly sad about Alistair. It’s hard to go from knowing what you’ll be doing in five years to suddenly having no clue, like being tossed into the ocean all of a sudden and told to swim. Even if you know how, the cold water is a shock and for a few minutes, you splash around like you’ve forgotten how to use your legs.

I know it wouldn’t be the worst bargain. I’d get a life of ease and comfort in return for dealing with his shit and turning a blind eye. I could fly first-class all over the world, have servants to do my bidding, never work another goddamn waitressing shift again.

But I can’t do it. I can’t. It’s not even some romantic bullshit idea that I have about the world, it’s just that the thought of paying for that with my soul turns my stomach, so I keep turning him down and then crying about it.

A few more weeks crawl by. Alistair calls less and less, and at last, three days go by without him calling at all.

It’s a relief, even though Liam never does call.

* * *

But it doesn’t mean I stop thinking about him. I wish I did, but I don’t. The tests all come back negative, and I get to heave a sigh of relief, promise myself I’ll never be that stupid again.

And then, late one night, I finally decide I’m going to do it. I get home from a double shift at the restaurant where I waitress to pay my bills, pour myself a glass of $2 wine, and finally Google Liam Fenwick.

I think it’s going to take some digging, that I’ll have to spend some time figuring out which Liam Fenwick is the one I want to find, but instead his face pops up right away.

Holy shit.

He said he was in a band. He didn’t mention that the band was a huge fucking deal. For a second I don’t even believe my eyes, I think I must be somehow getting the Liam Fenwick, the drummer from Dirtshine, confused with another guy also named Liam who also played the drums and has a few pictures on the internet, but I’m not. There he is.

Liner notes of their first two albums, there he is.

Concert photos, there he is. Rolling Stone cover, there he is. This is fucking unbelievable. I’ve got one of Dirtshine’s albums. When it first came out I used to listen to it all the time, walking around campus up at Yale.

That was Liam. That was him, and I never even knew.

I should have known. Was I supposed to know?

Is he not calling because I had no idea who he was?

Does anyone in Shelton know who he is?

It’s not like I’d recognize the band members if I saw them on the street. I mean, obviously I didn’t.

Maybe the lead singer, but beyond that I’m clueless. I’ve never seen them in concert. I’m not in their fan club or anything.

Or, I wasn’t. Apparently, I’m in their drummer’s fan club now, except he’s not their drummer anymore, is he?

There’s another lie. The band didn’t break up. The band is fine, he’s just no longer in it.

I read article after article, press release after press release. Some of them mention his drug problem directly, some of them dance around it, but it doesn’t matter. It’s there, clear as day: Liam was a junkie. A bad one, the kind who lived for the hole in his arm and not much else.

It’s why he’s not in the band any more. One night, before they were supposed to play a show in Seattle, Liam, Gavin, and a roadie named Allen shot up like usual.

Only that night the heroin was way stronger than they thought, and they all OD’d.

Liam and Gavin lived. Allen didn’t.

Then Gavin got clean, and Liam didn’t.

I’ve got one hand over my mouth. I’m stock-still. I feel like I’ve swallowed a cannonball, but I can’t stop reading.

I went on a two-day bender with a junkie.

Maybe he hasn’t called because he’s dead, because you got him high and drunk and then left without a word. Maybe he went back to heroin and it’s your fault for not bothering to say goodbye.

I feel like I’ve turned to stone, like reality’s turned itself inside out.

How could he not tell me?

How could I do that to someone?

I grab my glass of wine, take half a sip, and then nearly spit it at my computer because what the fuck am I doing right now? I dump the rest out in the kitchen sink, jam the cork back into the bottle, rinse my mouth out with water.

What did you do? I think, over and over again.

At least I think he’s not dead, because it seems like there would be something, somewhere, about it, but now that the door is opened I can’t stop.

There’s videos, taken on grainy cell phones by fans and sold to gossip websites, of him drunk and high. There’s interviews where he’s clearly strung out. There’s a series of photos, taken from far away, of him and someone else — the lead singer, Gavin, I think — throwing every piece of furniture from a hotel room off the balcony into the pool below.

There’s even a couple of shots of him, naked and asleep, apparently taken the next morning by some groupie he banged. I scrutinize those for a long second. He’s skinnier in them, not as built as he is now, though his tattoos are the same.

Then I click past them as fast as I can. I don’t like the pictures of Heroin Liam, and I especially don’t like that they were taken by some other woman who fucked him and then sold him out for money.

And then, there’s the video. I don’t know why this stupid paparazzi video stands out, but it does. He’s got a bottle in one hand, he’s shouting at someone. It’s poorly lit and raining, low-res, and I lean in so far that my nose is inches from the screen.

A strange, cold feeling grips the back of my neck. It sends shivers cascading down my spine, and I start wondering if I’m actually asleep and dreaming, because this is all too weird.

I think Liam is the guy from the bridge.

The one I shouted at one night, a year ago, when Alistair and I were visiting the east of England and I couldn’t sleep so I went for a drive.

The guy who snarled at me that he wished I hadn’t stopped.

I slam my laptop shut, get up from my chair, pace my tiny apartment for far too long. I don’t believe it. Of course Liam’s not the guy from the bridge, that’s way too weird a coincidence. Stuff like that doesn’t happen, and whoever it was that day is probably dead by now because he really did jump in front of a train.

Only I don’t believe it. Once I realize that that was him, I can’t shake it. Logic doesn’t work right now, only pure feeling, and I’m certain of one thing: that was him.

And I fucked him over. Okay, that’s two. He’s a famous drummer and junkie and I fucked him over and now I’m never going to see him again.

At least now, I know why.

* * *

Then, somehow, a month’s gone by. Liam’s never called. I don’t know how to call him, and I wouldn’t know what to say if I did.

Mostly. I still wonder where he is and what he’s doing at random times during the day. He’s hard to shake, and every time my phone rings, I still wish it was him.

Especially when I’m alone at night, just my trusty vibrator for company. Those two days get a lot of replay.

Alistair keeps calling, but less and less frequently. He’s back in Manhattan, working the ‘finance’ job his father’s connections got him, but despite the phone calls he hasn’t made it out to Brooklyn to see me in person.

I’m fine with that. We’ve talked more than enough, as far as I’m concerned, and he still insists he doesn’t understand why I broke things off. At this point, he’s clearly never going to.

One day, I’m in the middle of my shift at Bobbie Sue’s Burgers, and my phone rings. A Los Angeles area code, and my heart skips a beat. A few days ago, I applied for a costuming gig out there on one of those sweeping historical epics, never thinking that I had a chance.

I hold up five fingers to my manager, who shrugs, so I dart out the back door into the loud alley, and answer the phone.

“Hi, this is Adara Montclair calling from Windswept Productions. Is this Françoise Strauss?”

“Yes,” I squeak.

“Your application for the costume assistant position caught our eye. Are you still available January through March of next year?”