Ever After (Dirtshine Book 3)

by Roxie Noir

  I’ve emailed costume designers all over New York, asking to be put in touch with her, and met with curt dismissals or radio silence, not that I can blame them for wanting to keep her contact information private from a strange man. I’ve found about twenty women named Françoise Strauss on Facebook, and I messaged them one after another until one reported me as a stalker and got my account shut down.

  I even called Winstead Manor. I didn’t talk to Alistair — I’m not stupid, I know that would get me nowhere — but I did try to talk my way to their social secretary, said that Frankie had left something of hers behind at the pub and I’d like to contact her.

  No dice. No luck anywhere, no matter what I’ve tried, no matter how creative I think I’ve gotten. Frankie may as well have vanished into the ether for all the trace she’s left in my life.

  I turn the check over in my hands, thinking.

  I’m thinking that I’ve tried to forget about her, get over this American girl who’s impossible to find, but it’s not working. There’s not a day goes by that something doesn’t remind me of her, the way she scrunched her nose when she laughed and her freckles collided with each other, the way her hair rioted around her face and over her shoulders.

  Her face the first time I told her we didn’t have appletinis, her face when she told me about her fiancé.

  Her face when I nearly kissed her. The way she looked a few nights later when she was inside and Alistair was outside, calling her name and pounding on the door.

  I miss her. Desperately. I can’t stop thinking about her, can’t stop coming up with new harebrained ways that I might be able to contact her, tell her I didn’t forget her, that I never called because I’m my own worst enemy all the time.

  I want to tell her that destroying her number is what made me finally stop drinking.

  I want to tell her that finally, now, I’ve got a reason to try to be a better person.

  Going to New York would be fucking stupid. It would be an idiotic waste of money, because it’s a city of eight million or so people and simply wandering the streets looking for one of them is going to get me nowhere.

  But I’m already nowhere.

  A week later, it’s settled. For once I’ve been responsible, sat down with a cup of tea, pen, and paper, and written out a budget that accounts for the time until my next royalty check in three months.

  It’s a bit of a stretch. The payment was for quite a sum of money, but not so much it’s impossible to spend. Hell, I used to receive much larger checks quite regularly, and I plowed straight through those.

  But it’s enough.

  Enough for three months of rent at this flat, for starters.

  Enough to fly to Los Angeles for a week, rent a cheap hotel room, and watch my best friend marry the love of his life.

  The five thousand pounds will have to wait.

  And enough to spend two weeks in New York City before that. I know it’s crazy and far-fetched, and I know that I’m fucking unlikely to find her by simply showing up and walking the streets until she pops up in front of me, but I can’t do nothing.

  Frankie’s got a hold on me. Still. She did even when she was technically someone else’s, she did when she was briefly mine, and even though she’s gone now, I can hardly think about anything else.

  Whatever it is I can do to find her, I’ll do it.

  Chapter Thirty

  Frankie

  The strangest things remind me of Liam sometimes. Things that should remind me of Alistair — the guy I dated for three years — remind me of him instead.

  I’m boxing up most of my belongings, though there aren’t that many, preparing to sublet my apartment and leave most of my stuff at my parents’ house in New Jersey for three months while I’m in Los Angeles, working on The Spinster’s Panorama, a movie set in post-World-War-II Scotland.

  As far as I can tell, the plot is a little stupid, but the costumes are going to be amazing.

  For example, here’s a shot glass I got from Glasgow Castle when Alistair and I visited last year. The same visit when I first met Liam, sleepless and out for a midnight drive somewhere in the countryside near Newcastle. I think of Alistair when I pack it away in a box, sure, but then I think of Liam, on the bridge, in my face.

  How even when he was a wreck there was something about him that stopped me in my tracks.

  The card that came with flowers Alistair sent me once. They were roses, which I always think smell weird but which Alistair likes, delivered to an internship on Valentine’s day. I think of Alistair, sure, but then there’s Liam’s face in the pub, agreeing that he worked at the flower shop in Shelton.

  God, if I were him I wouldn’t call either.

  He still lives there. Fucking Alistair already cost him a job and I’m sure he could cost Liam plenty more, so I can’t exactly blame him for never calling. I can be upset about it. I can cry every once in a while, and I can wish with every fiber of my being that I’d done things just a little differently that morning, but I can’t blame him.

  Besides, why do I think it was anything but a one-night-stand? Two adults scratching an itch before going their separate ways? Just because I’ve never had a fling before doesn’t mean he wouldn’t.

  I think again about the pictures I found printed in the tabloids from years ago: Liam, naked and sprawled on a bed, heroin-skinny. Taken by someone else who got to see him naked in the morning. I haven’t looked at the pictures again since I first found them, because as much as I think about Liam naked, I don’t think about that Liam.

  Try not thinking about him at all, I tell myself. Instead, you could think about how you’re flying to Los Angeles in two days, you’re probably going to need more boxes, and your dad is gonna be here with the SUV in three hours.

  Shit. I’m right.

  “You sure you haven’t got any more fabric scraps? We got a couple cubic inches of space left, I’m sure we could jam something else in there,” my dad says, admiring his handiwork.

  “I’ve seen your collection of interesting or historical lightbulbs,” I point out. “That’s way less moveable.”

  “That’s your inheritance. It’ll be worth something, someday.”

  “A burned out fluorescent from the Meadowlands isn’t going to worth something ever.”

  “What? They tore Giants Stadium down, you can’t get those anymore!”

  “That doesn’t mean anyone wants it,” I tease.

  He lowers the hatchback door gently, making sure it clicks at the bottom without slamming it.

  “Just wait,” he teases back, then puts his hands on his hips, looking around my street. My dad’s got thinning, graying hair, and he’s wearing a fleece over short-sleeve button-down shirt tucked into shorts, along with loafers and athletic socks pulled halfway up his calves.

  Yes, shorts, even though it’s a few days after Christmas and about thirty degrees outside. I’ve learned not to ask questions.

  “You hungry, kiddo?” he asks. “If you help me find a parking spot in this neighborhood I’ll take you for burgers.”

  “Deal,” I agree instantly, and get into the car.

  A parking spot isn’t that hard to find, though you wouldn’t know it from the amount my dad complains. Before long we’re in Jody’s Diner, where we both order cheeseburgers and fries, no onions, extra pickles, and split a chocolate milkshake.

  Moving is a lot of work, after all.

  “So what is a spinster’s panorama?” my dad asks with a mouthful of fries. “Is that when an old unmarried woman makes a scene in a shoebox?”

  I just stare at him while I munch a couple of my own fries, trying to figure out what the hell he’s talking about.

  “That’s a diorama,” I say when the lightbulb comes on. “I think the panorama in the movie is the ocean, because she’s looking out her window or something, waiting for her love to come back from the war? I just know what she’ll be wearing, really.”

  “I always did confuse those two,” my dad says. “If she’s
got a love, how come she’s a...”

  Just outside the windows, a guy walks by. He’s wearing jeans and a peacoat, and he’s got floppy brown-red hair, but that’s not what makes me stop listening to my dad mid-sentence or what makes me stop chewing my fries.

  It’s the way he walks. Head up, self-assured and cocky, and somehow... British.

  Like Liam. He walks just like Liam, and for a long moment I follow him with my eyes as he moves past the plate-glass windows of Jody’s Diner and on down the cold Brooklyn sidewalk.

  It’s him. Every fiber of my being is screaming that’s him, he’s here, why is he here? I want to jump out of this booth and run down the sidewalk, shouting his name.

  “Frankie, you okay?” my dad says. He waves some fries in front of my face. “Hellloooooooo, earth to Françoise.”

  I look back at him, blinking.

  “What’s up, space cadet?” he asks.

  It’s not Liam. Of course it’s not Liam, it’s just one of the eight million people on this planet who look and walk like Liam. In New York City, there’s bound to be someone like that.

  Liam’s in England. Even if he hasn’t called me just to chat or whatever, I’m sure he’d let me know if he were going to be in Brooklyn.

  Right?

  “Sorry, I thought I saw someone I knew,” I say, shaking my head.

  “Want to go say hi? Fine with me, I’ll just steal your fries,” he offers.

  I laugh, shaking my head.

  “It’s not him, I was wrong,” I say. “What did you want to know about the spinster?”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Liam

  It’s only your second day here, I remind myself. Of course you weren’t going to find her within two days, that would be a miracle.

  It’ll be a miracle if you find her at all.

  A chilly wind blows down the street, rattling the few leaves left on the trees, scattering a fast food cup and wrapper across the sidewalk. I shove my hands into the pockets of my pea coat and put my head down against the wind, wishing I’d brought my scarf on this particular outing.

  For some reason, I always think that America is all warm and sunny, all the time. Los Angeles mostly is, but I do tend to forget that New York is a drastically different place, as far from L.A. as Moscow is from London. Farther, probably.

  I did manage to come up with a plan besides walk the entire city until you find Frankie, because that’s not a plan at all. I’ve got a list of all the movie, television, and commercial shoots that are currently happening in New York, and systematically, I’m visiting as many as I can per day.

  I can’t get to them all, obviously. Particularly since my budget is quite tight, meaning I’ve got to take public transit. God knows the New York system is baffling at first, but I did live in London for several years. I can manage.

  The wind blows again. It’s not even that cold, but there’s something about it that cuts straight through my coat. I’m passing by a neighborhood diner on my left, the sort of place that serves coffee and milkshakes. It’s mid-afternoon but I haven’t eaten lunch yet, telling myself I’ll make a sandwich in the room I’ve sublet from a lovely Russian woman for the week.

  Some tea would be lovely, though.

  Lovely? Who the fuck am I, my Nonna?

  Besides, it’ll be American tea. Not worth the price.

  I put my head back down against the wind, stop contemplating the plate glass windows of the diner, when a voice jolts me from my thoughts.

  “Liam!” a woman calls.

  I turn, looking for the source, slightly baffled. True, I used to be in a famous band, but no one ever recognizes drummers out of context. Besides, I don’t look anything like I used to.

  “Liam, come back here,” the woman calls again, and a child in a bright blue puffy jacket races past me, toward the woman. I finally spot her, a tired-looking mum-type, another child in a stroller.

  “Don’t you dare just run off like that,” she admonishes the kid, and I turn back into the wind.

  See? Not famous.

  Just some bloke.

  I do the same thing, every day, for two weeks. I walk around New York City by day, trying to frequent the places where I think Frankie might be, and by the time I’m finished I feel as if my feet have been worn down to icy stumps.

  I lurk outside commercial and movie shoots. I go into every museum I can find, since she seems like the curious sort. I go to art openings, I ride every subway that goes into or out of Brooklyn, I compile a list of fabric stores in the city of New York and visit them all.

  It’s for nothing. Deep down, I knew it would be, like finding hay in a haystack. You can’t just go to a massive city, wander the streets for two weeks, and expect to find someone.

  But it’s disappointing. Fuck me, is it disappointing, because it’s easy to know that something is logically near-impossible while still believing that, despite every single odd, it’ll happen anyway. And deep down, I think I did believe. I had repeated visions of rounding a corner and seeing her, walking toward me.

  Of getting onto the subway, glancing right, and seeing her freckled face staring back. Of finding her on the set of a commercial. I’d shout her name, she’d look around, and the instant she saw me she’d come sprinting over and leap into my arms.

  Like a movie or some shit. Of course it didn’t happen. All the self-delusion in the world wasn’t going to make the impossible come true, and now I’ve spent two weeks and several thousand dollars that I ought to have saved on this fruitless, stupid search.

  The night before I fly to Los Angeles for Gavin’s wedding, I do something new. Clearly my search isn’t working, and a band that I used to know, the Deep Sea Divers, are playing a show at an old theater in Brooklyn.

  It’s strange to simply go to a show. I can’t remember the last time I did it the normal way, buying a ticket and showing it to the doorman. Back when I was in Dirtshine, we never had to go in the front like this — we always got to go in the back entrance at least, usually hung out in the green room or the VIP area, and for good reason.

  Back when people still recognized me, I got mobbed. It was impossible to pay attention to the music for all the people coming up to us, poking their friends in the ribs, drunkenly wanting to tell us how much they loved our music and how great Lucid Dream was, how it changed their lives.

  Looking back, I ought to have been a bit nicer. I ought not have flipped off a thousand fans who just wanted photos, or been such a shit to so many of them who took video, because Christ knows that all ended up on the internet.

  So when the doorman asks for my ID, I hand it over. I skip the bar and lean against the back wall of the theater. I feel a bit like an alien, like an old man watching a playground from outside the fence, even though I’m the same age as most of the people here.

  But I’m not them anymore. Now I’m someone who lives in a cottage in north England, who works at a bookshop and rides a bicycle around and yearns for a girl he can’t have and leads the very definition of a normal, quiet life.

  After the show’s over, ears still ringing, I’m ready to make my way back out into the cold when two girls come up to me, both wearing leather jackets. One’s wearing jeans torn so badly I don’t even see the point in her wearing them, and the other’s got a poodle skirt on, her t-shirt tied around her waist and showing a thin sliver of skin.

  Poodle Skirt nudges Torn Jeans in the ribs. Torn Jeans nudges back, and Poodle Skirt rolls her eyes.

  “Hey, uh, sorry,” she starts. “But did you used to be the drummer for Dirtshine?”

  It’s literally the first time in six months anyone has recognized me, though of course it would be here if anywhere.

  “I did,” I say.

  “Shut up,” says Torn Jeans, and I raise my eyebrows. “Did you really?”

  “Yes,” I confirm, wondering how this is going to play out.

  “I loved Lucid Dream,” Poodle Skirt gushes. “And, I mean, that last song, Starglow? It’s fucking amazing
.”

  “Thanks,” I say. “Glad you like it.”

  They exchange a glance.

  “Listen,” says Torn Jeans. “We’re actually heading out to a party, if you want to come? The guy who’s throwing it usually has some pretty good stuff, you know.”

  I try not to laugh in their faces. I can’t quite believe this, that — if I’m correct in my assessment, which I’m near certain I am — I’m being offered drugs by two fairly cute girls who can’t be over twenty-one.

  “I mean, it’s all totally pure, nothing hinky or whatever,” Poodle Skirt rushes in. “I don’t know if you still do that stuff, I remember some stuff happened?”

  “Do you mean when I overdosed and someone else died?” I ask, folding my arms in front of myself.

  They exchange another wide-eyed glance, and I nearly laugh again, because it’s the most charming, adorable offer for drugs I think I’ve ever gotten. Formerly, by now, I’d have been smoking something or shooting up in the back room along with Gavin and whoever else was partaking that night.

  Nothing hinky. God, it’s cute.

  “Right, maybe you don’t still party after that?” Torn Jeans says.

  And yet, despite the cuteness and the wide-eyed nature of their inquiry, I’m fucking tempted. Getting high right now — not even on heroin, on coke or X or even just weed, something a little less demanding — sounds fucking lovely.

  It always sounds fucking lovely. I think it always will, but at the moment my feet hurt and my heart feels like it’s dissolving in my chest, running through my veins like ice breaking up in a river. I’d fucking love to go with these cute girls and get high enough to forget that I didn’t find her and now my chance is over. I’d love to forget that the reason everything is tits-up right now is because of me.

  Yes is on the tip of my tongue. Even just a drink, a hit from a joint, anything so I don’t have to go back to the tiny bedroom I’m renting and face up to the fact that I’ve fucked up things once again.