Page 36

“I guess.” Miray’s smile is obviously proud as she adds, “We hit twenty thousand followers last night.”

Izzy ruffles her hair. “Well done, you.”

The water is barely cool anymore and does nothing at all to get rid of the dryness in Luca’s mouth. They only have fifteen minutes left. She wishes suddenly that it were even less; standing there like a tool with the bottle clutched in both hands, she’s aware of every single step that separates her from where Florence is sitting. Florence, who’s wearing a wine-red corset over a white dress. Florence, who’s applying a dark shade of lipstick that only makes it harder not to stare at her mouth. Florence, who Luca will have to watch on stage for thirty whole minutes, dancing and laughing and sounding like some mystical creature meant to lure poor fools like Luca to their death.

Oh, God.

16

There’s a strange magic that warps time when they’re performing. The thirty minutes they spend onstage somehow feel like both a heartbeat and a lifetime. By the time they stumble backstage, Florence’s blood is thrumming in her veins, her ears still buzzing with the cheers she heard when she took out her in-ears for only a few seconds. Her cheeks hurt from how long she’s been smiling. She’s breathless as she loops an arm around Miray’s waist and stumbles after her to the dressing room. Over her shoulder, she catches a glimpse of Luca, hair shining like copper in the harsh light of the neon tubes, her makeup smudged under her eyes. Florence wants, with an intensity that punches the air from her lungs, to stop, hook her fingers into the belt loop of Luca’s black trousers, and pull her into a storage closet. She wants to touch and hold and taste the salty skin at the base of Luca’s neck. She wants—

She forces herself to look away.

She just sang to a sold-out arena of eight thousand people. How, after all that, can she still be so hungry?

The hostel room is too warm, and everyone’s breathing is too loud. Lying in bed—the top bunk, this time—Florence feels like a live wire. The show is over, but her body is still humming, flooded with adrenaline that has no purpose now.

She lasts two hours before admitting defeat. The rungs of the ladder creak under her bare feet as she clambers down. After staring into the dark for so long, her eyes are so attuned to it that she can clearly make out the silhouettes of Izzy and Toni in the bunk below hers. They’re lying in a complicated tangle of limbs, Izzy’s forehead tucked into the crook of Toni’s neck, her leg hiked over Toni’s hip. Their blanket is a heap on the floor that Florence almost trips over as she tiptoes across the room.

Managing to find her way to her bag, she blindly fishes out an old jumper she stole from her mum months ago and pulls it on over her matching pajama set. Then she slides into her shoes, grabs her key card and earbuds from the sideboard, and slips into the hallway.

At just past two a.m., the hallway is deserted, but Florence can make out signs of life from behind the closed doors as she drifts by. The tinny sound of a TV here. Muffled laughter there. A group of teenagers talking in excited voices. The cheap hostel they’re staying at is overrun by students on school trips.

The creaky lift delivers Florence to the lobby. The tired-looking receptionist looks up from his phone as she walks past him and into the small seating area, where the glow from the vending machine paints the beaten-up sofas a ghostly blue. There are only two other people here this late, and neither of them pays Florence any attention as she sinks down on the sofa closest to the vending machine.

She has a handful of unread text messages: her mother asking how the show was, a heads-up from her landlord about some construction work happening next week, one of her piano students asking about a song they practiced before Florence left for tour. No emails. No messages from her father, either.

Sinking farther into the sofa—it has a quicksand-like quality—she opens social media. The first post that shows up is the photo Miray took in the dressing room before the show. Because it’s late and there’s no one else around, Florence allows herself, finally, to look.

Luca looks like a fantasy come to life. She’s wearing high-waisted black chinos and a black tank top. Her hair is mussed from running her hands through it so many times. In the photo, she’s lying back on the beanbag chair, her eyes half-shut as Izzy’s tattooed fingers grasp her chin, her head tilted back to reveal the vulnerable slope of her neck. Her posture is looser than it usually is—pinned under Izzy’s weight, her usual nervous fidgeting slowed into uncharacteristic stillness.

Florence isn’t sure which part of the tableau, exactly, affects her so much. Maybe it’s the makeup. Maybe it’s the sight of Luca’s arms in the tank top. Maybe it’s the ease with which Luca handed control to Izzy, as though she had just been waiting for someone to pin her down and take the reins.

It’s a heady thought that’s followed first by a hot curl of interest in Florence’s stomach and then quickly by guilt. She’s not supposed to think about Luca like this. It doesn’t matter if Florence wishes she were the one straddling Luca’s lap, the focus of her heavy-lidded stare. That door closed the moment Luca joined the band.

Perhaps it’s some kind of self-destructive punishment that makes her leave the band account and type in her father’s name. The top result under #jeffreyblake is a recording of him, aged twenty-three, performing at Glastonbury in 1991. Halfway through his third song, the skies open up. Despite the torrential downpour, Jeffrey Blake keeps singing, voice raw as he belts “Watercolor Eyes,” the song that would hit number one in the British charts the following week. Even ankle-deep in mud, the crowd is ecstatic—when he holds the microphone toward the audience, they sing back every single word.

It’s a lightning-in-a-bottle, once-in-a-lifetime moment. It’s the footage that is probably going to roll when they announce his passing on BBC. It’s the video Florence rewatched on VHS, over and over, sitting inches away from the TV in her mum’s living room, mouthing along with the words. She knows every note change, every audience interaction, every little move he makes throughout the performance.

She has watched it a million times, dissected it frame by frame, and still she doesn’t know how she’s ever meant to come close.

A touch on her shoulder makes her flinch. Craning her head back, she finds Luca standing behind her.

“Sorry,” Luca says sheepishly as Florence’s hands fly up to take out her earbuds. “I said your name four times.”

Florence swallows dryly. The racing of her heart has nothing to do with the shock and everything to do with the way Luca looks. She’s sleep-rumpled, her hair sticking up in every direction, wearing sweatpants and a ratty T-shirt and . . .

“You wear glasses” is the first thing that makes it out of Florence’s mouth.

Luca self-consciously nudges them farther up her nose. “Contacts, usually.”

Florence nods dumbly. She feels like someone has struck her over the head, repeatedly.

When nothing else seems to be forthcoming, Luca gestures at the spot beside her. “Is it all right if I sit with you?”

“Sure. Yes,” Florence says. She sounds mortifyingly breathless. In her mind, she catalogs how she must look to Luca: barefaced, her hair pulled into two thick braids, wearing her mum’s old jumper and a pair of striped, baby-pink pajama pants.

The cracked leather of the sofa creaks as Luca settles down next to Florence, keeping a few careful inches of space between them. “I heard you leave,” Luca says.