“And do you, Gavin Lockwood, take Marisol Gomez to be your lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold, in sickness and in health, so long as you both shall live?” the officiant asks.

“I do,” Gavin says, eyes locked on Marisol. The white netting veil attached to her hair floats gently in the breeze, and somewhere behind me, I can hear the photographer clicking away.

Doubtless she’s not the only photographer. I’ll be shocked if I’m not standing in a convenience store tomorrow and see shitty, blurry photos of Gavin and Marisol, taken with telephoto lenses from half a mile away.

“And do you, Marisol Gomez take Gavin Lockwood to be your lawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold, in sickness and in health, so long as you both shall live?”

Marisol answers too quietly for me to hear her, although I’m in the second row, but I’m fairly certain she says I do. Next to me, Darcy clears her throat very quietly, and I look over.

She’s dabbing at her eyes, pretending as if she’s not crying, jaw set. Trent’s holding her other hand, and when she sees me looking at her, she shoots me a glare.

As if I didn’t know that Darcy’s kitten fur on the inside and spiked armor on the outside. Of course she cries at weddings and gets angry if anyone sees her. Nothing’s ever been less surprising.

“With the power vested in me by the state of California, I now pronounce you husband and wife,” the officiant announces. “You may kiss the bride.”

Gavin bends down, but before he kisses Marisol I have to look away. I’m fucking happy for them, I really am. They’re blissfully in love, no thanks to me, and they deserve to have this moment.

But I still haven’t quite come to grips with it. I’m no longer smashing mirrors and trying to break them up, true, but it’s hard to accept that this Gavin is the same guy I snorted heroin with in Yorkshire at seventeen.

We did some shit things. We lived some shit places, dated some shit women, woke up half-dead and went out to find more smack. How many times did we nod out together, sitting on the floor of some basement flat in East London talking big dreams and big sounds, Gavin describing the music like watercolors as I’d chime in every so often?

It was the two of us for ages and ages, and even when we added Trent and Darcy it was the two of us. Until one night we plunged all the way to the bottom, together, and only one of us found his way back up.

I think I’m still finding my way up. I feel like I might simply be swimming upward forever, lungs nearly bursting, yearning for the sunlight at the surface.

I look back. The kiss is finished, but then Gavin bends down again. He whispers something in Marisol’s ear, and she smiles, almost laughing. Then he laughs, his face practically splitting open with happiness, and I can’t help but be jealous.

Two useless months, trying to find this girl. Two useless weeks wandering the street of New York. And I know that there are other girls out there who are pretty and funny and might even take the piss out of me the way Frankie did, but I don’t want those girls. I want her.

Gavin and Marisol head back down the aisle. Everyone else stands and applauds, so I follow suit. Darcy sniffles again, quietly, like she thinks no one will notice, so I lean over.

“I always cry at weddings too,” I tease.

Gavin and Marisol walk by, both just fucking glowing with happiness, and a tiny hole opens in my chest, pulled wider by jealousy.

“Fuck off,” she hisses, glaring at my suspiciously dry face.

“Really,” I go on. “I’m just a big, squishy, cotton-candy softie on the inside.”

“Congrats on still being the actual fucking worst,” she says.

I grin at her and wink.

“As if you’d accept me any other way,” I tell her.

“What makes you think I’m accepting you now?”

“Guys, we’re at a wedding,” Trent intones, his deep voice cutting through the applause that’s still happening. “Be nice.”

“She missed me,” I say.

Gavin and Marisol are gone, disappeared into the mansion somewhere to take more pictures or congratulate each other or fuck or whatever it is that just-married people do. The guests begin drifting away from the ceremony, across the lawns, toward the area that’s been set up with cocktail tables tied with big fluffy ribbons.

I have another flash of Gavin, years ago: driving a shit van we had when we’d just started leaving our hometown to play gigs, high as a kite on something that wasn’t smack, wild-eyed and ranting as he drove.

“We’re gonna be Metallica!” I remember him saying. “We’re gonna be the Beatles, the Stones, the Doors, Led Zeppelin—”

That’s when he plowed straight into a ditch, near two in the morning, and when he realized what had happened he just started laughing like mad.

And now here he is, surrounded by lovely floral arrangements on beautifully decorated tables. In a tuxedo. Getting married to a lawyer who’s certainly ten times as good as he deserves. I’m in a suit myself, for Christ’s sake.

I guess life is strange sometimes. I wouldn’t have thought he’d be here, doing this.

I wouldn’t have thought I’d spend two weeks walking the length of New York city, sober as a nun, looking for some girl I can’t fucking forget.

I mingle with the other guests. I know a good number of them, and even if I can tell some are apprehensive as fuck about my appearance here, I manage not to embarrass myself. It does help that I turn down champagne and stick to water, or that I mostly keep my asshole mouth shut and let others talk.

I’m trying to listen to some of Marisol’s colleagues chat — it’s something about immigration law but I’m quite lost — when Darcy suddenly taps me on the shoulder.

“Come to the bar with me,” she says.

“What for?”

“There’s a long line and you never finished apologizing,” she says, raising one eyebrow.

“That’s because every time I tried you interrupted me with another thing I’d done wrong. Also, I’ve stopped drinking.”

“You did a lot of things wrong, and I’m sure the bar has cranberry juice or some shit,” she says, already walking away.

It’s not as if she leaves me with a choice, so I nod goodbye to the lawyers and follow Darcy across the lawn, catching up with her in a few strides. The line for the bar isn’t that long, and I’m sure she’d have survived it alone, but I don’t mind.

“What am I apologizing for, now?” I ask.

“Mostly just for being you,” she says, her eyes dancing.

“I’m sorry for being me, then,” I say, laughing as well. “Did you want a more specific apology?”

“Maybe for Eddie?”

“Was Eddie that bad?”

Eddie replaced me for a while as the drummer for Dirtshine, though that seems to have ended badly as well. As far as I’m aware, right now they haven’t got a permanent drummer again.

I know better to hold out hope for that. Some bridges don’t un-burn.

“He wore cargo shorts everywhere, Liam,” she says. “And flip-flops. And he left us mid-tour for his side-project, which is a jam band called Stingraze. With a Z.”

“I do recall something about Gavin punching him,” I point out.

Actually, I recall it quite well. It was reported everywhere, and I remember reading it and being completely delighted that their new drummer wasn’t working out like I’d hoped.

I’ve not always been a nice person.

“He deserved it,” Darcy says, the line moving forward. “He drugged Marisol. I mean, by accident, but still, who the fuck does that?”

“I can’t imagine anyone ever being so careless or reckless with themselves or others,” I deadpan, shoving my hands in my pockets and looking away.

Darcy just laughs.

“Didn’t you set her book on fire?” she asks, casually, the line stepping forward again.

Holy shit, I’d completely forgotten about that.

“I did,” I say.

“You sound surprised.”

“I am. I’d forgotten.”

“You forgot stealing a van, crashing it into a post, getting into a huge fight with Gavin and then setting fire to a textbook?”

She looks up at me, judgily.

“I remember it now,” I say. “Does that count? I may have been on a substance at the time.”

“Just one?”

“Darcy, am I apologizing again?”

The line moves forward again, the guy in front of us ordering drinks.

“I’ll let this one slide,” she says. “I wasn’t even there, I just heard about it later.”

“Where were you?”

“I think Trent and I had gone for drinks that night,” she says.

“Yes, right,” I say. “Drinks.”

She sighs. The guy in front of us shifts his feet, looks off into the distance at a palm tree.

“We didn’t start fucking for like another year, you know,” she mutters. “I don’t know why no one ever believes that.”

“Because we all naturally assumed you were fucking all along?” I offer. “You did spend a lot of special time alone.”

“We spent a lot of time alone because you and Gavin were either passed out, shooting up, or on the hunt for more,” Darcy counters.

“Then you’re welcome, I suppose.”

She rolls her eyes, and I grin. The guy in front of us get his second drink, picks them both up.

“For all the bad shit I’ve caused, I think I deserve to take credit for at least one good—”

He steps away. I see the bartender for the first time.

I turn to stone, mid-sentence. I can’t move. I can’t breathe. I can’t even think, only stare, open-mouthed, stuck in place like a statue.

It’s her.

I don’t know how and I don’t know why, I just know that it is and her presence throws me so hard that I nearly fall down.

She looks the same. Curly hair, freckles everywhere, wide hazel eyes. Christ knows I’ve thought about her face a million times. I’ve seen her in my dreams, my fantasies, my idle nothing-to-do-while driving thoughts.

I imagined her coming into my bookstore, driving into my driveway. I imagined her around every corner in New York.

But never here. Of course not. Why would I?

Darcy’s at the bar, talking, but her voice is just a low buzz. Everything is a low buzz, because against every fucking odd Frankie is standing in front of me.

You’ve taken something, a tiny voice in my head says. You’re at that party in Brooklyn, you’ve taken an absolute shitload of acid, and you’re hallucinating her.

It’s the only explanation. You got so desperate that your brain just filled her in.

Suddenly Darcy’s in front of me, waving both arms like a lunatic, and I finally look at her, blinking.

“Are you having a seizure?” she says, alarmed.

I shake my head. I step forward, past Darcy, up to the bar. Frankie’s eyes stay glued to me, and suddenly I’m tongue-tied around this girl. The girl.

“Hi,” I finally say, like some sort of fucking idiot.

Frankie swallows. She’s faintly pink, the flush in her cheeks tightening my stomach.

“We’re out of appletinis,” she says.