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Luca forces herself to look away. As it turns out, sheer power of will and two days apart are not enough to convince her body to stop being attracted to Florence.
“We were just talking about the new logo,” Miray fills her in.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” She reaches for the mic stand that Luca hasn’t noticed until now, given how well it’s blended in with the rest of the junk filling the basement. “Shall we start, then?”
With a creaking of her unseasonably warm leather jacket, Izzy gets up and grabs her bass. Miray goes to sit on the wobbly stool behind her keyboard, while Toni stands next to Florence, adjusting her guitar strap so it doesn’t snag on her hair. Luca slowly walks toward the drum kit.
“It’s nothing fancy,” Toni says. “It’s the cheapest thing we could get second . . . actually, maybe thirdhand.”
Luca sincerely doesn’t care. She sits down behind it, rifling through her backpack for her own drumsticks.
“Did you have a look at the sheet music?” Florence asks.
It’s the first time she’s addressing Luca directly. Looking up, Luca realizes that the way they’re positioned, forming a loose circle, leaves her looking straight at Florence.
“Yeah.” She clears her throat. “I don’t know if I have everything down, but . . .”
“We’ll just see how it goes,” Toni says. She turns to Florence. “What do you want to start with?”
“Something calm to start, I think,” Florence says. “Let’s do ‘alexandria.’”
It’s one of the songs that’s already out—Luca added it to her playlist last night. “Cool,” she says. Her palms feel very sweaty. Her heart is thumping the way it used to do right before a uni exam.
Miray starts the song off with a quiet, lilting piano intro. When Florence opens her mouth to sing, Luca feels a chill run from the top of her head all the way to her toes.
None of the recordings did her justice. Florence’s voice is out of place in the claustrophobic basement. It feels like something you should have to pay to hear, something to listen to on a record player with a glass of something pricey in your hand. It’s rich and warm and velvety, with an intentional raspiness on some words that makes Luca’s mouth go dry. She sounds like an angel. She sounds like a siren about to lure someone to their death.
Toni joins in, then Izzy, playing a dark, foreboding bass line. Luca is so caught up in it, she almost misses her cue, but she startles out of her reverie just in time.
The addition of the drums makes the song feel like the building of a wave, Florence’s voice rising above their instruments and mingling with Miray’s once they reach the chorus. Luca faithfully keeps time; the slow, steady rhythm reminds her of a heartbeat running below the song, only speeding up during the bridge, as Florence sings of the Library of Alexandria, of burning herself to the ground before she lets her lover know all of her.
The last note fades, and Luca realizes she hasn’t looked away from Florence once. She averts her gaze just as Florence opens her eyes.
The silence lingers for a moment before Izzy says, “Damn.”
“Yeah,” says Toni.
“We sound,” Miray says giddily, “so good.”
When Luca dares to glance at Florence, she catches the exact moment Florence’s face breaks into a grin. Luca thinks it might be the most genuine expression she’s seen on her face since Florence left her flat three nights ago. “I think this is going to work,” she says.
Luca lets out a breath.
From across the room, Izzy catches her gaze. “Good job, Rookie.”
“Thanks,” says Luca, trying not to preen.
“All right.” Florence takes a sip from the reusable water bottle on the shelf next to her. “Let’s take it from the top.”
After practice, Luca somehow ends up perched on a barstool in the pub upstairs, wedged between Izzy and Miray as Florence puts up her hair and starts her shift.
It’s fascinating, watching her work. She moves behind the bar with an ease that looks effortless, joking with customers, pulling pints, leaning forward onto the counter to give house recommendations, a perfectly manicured nail tapping on the paper menu. There’s something about her, though—something deliberate to the way she holds herself, to the pitch of her voice and her gestures. Every couple minutes, Luca catches her subtly adjusting her necklace, her rings, the way her shirt is tucked into her black slacks. Her eyes keep straying to the refrigerator door, trying to catch a glimpse of her reflection. It’s like she’s editing herself in real time, curating a very specific version of herself that falls somewhere between the Florence Luca met at the bus stop and the Florence from the practice room but is somehow also something else entirely.
“What about you, Luca?” Miray’s voice sounds from next to her.
She shakes herself. “Sorry?”
Miray offers her a patient smile. Her chin is cupped in one hand while the other holds a chip from the little bowl Florence slid their way earlier. The contrast between her and Izzy is almost comical: On one side of Luca there’s Izzy in her clunky silver jewelry and dark eyeliner, and on the other there’s Miray in a white blouse with little flowers embroidered along the neckline and sparkly pink lip gloss. “Did you get the time we’re on tour off from work?”
