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Luca’s lips part, letting in the cool rush of water. Some of it spills, droplets rolling down her throat and soaking the front of the ridiculous pirate shirt that is going to ruin Florence’s life. Florence has the dizzying, overheated thought that she wants to follow their trail with her mouth. She wants to rest her fingers on Luca’s throat and feel the way it bobs as she swallows. Luca doesn’t miss a beat through all of it, and somehow even that, the easy, thoughtless competence with which she keeps playing, does something to Florence. She wants . . .
She wants.
Of course, she doesn’t do anything. When Luca has had her fill, she leaves the bottle at Luca’s feet, ruffles her hair, and dances back to center stage to finish the song.
The audience is muffled by her in-ears; she doesn’t know if she’s imagining it or if the crowd sounds louder than it did before.
The lobby of their hostel in Amsterdam is nicer than the one in Brussels. Next to a bookshelf filled with battered paperbacks sits a handful of armchairs for Florence to sink into. At half past two, there’s only a small scattering of night owls around having quiet phone calls or reading or waiting with their luggage for taxis to the airport. The air-conditioning whirs softly.
Tucking her knees to her chest, Florence opens her phone. She’s greeted by a flurry of notifications from the post Miray uploaded earlier, but nothing more. Her email inbox yawns at her, entirely devoid of new messages. She hasn’t told the others yet, but she’s spent the last few months sending demo recordings of their songs to record labels. So far, there’s been nothing but radio silence.
Trying to tamp down the welling disappointment, she pulls out her lyric book instead. It’s small enough to fit into the pocket of her pajama pants, the leather binding battered from spending so much time at the bottom of various bags. A chewed-up pen marks the page where Florence left off.
Songwriting, Florence has learned, is a fickle thing. She can finish a song in twenty minutes or not write a word for weeks. Ever since the tour started, it’s like her brain has forgotten how to string words together. The page she’s on is filled with little doodles and fragmented lines filled with so much yearning that even Florence—a veritable yearning expert—flushes looking at them. The last addition was made after they stumbled back from the coffee shop and Florence waited for her turn in the bathroom. It’s smudged beyond recognition, but she remembers it had something to do with the sight of Luca lying in her lap, caught in a rare moment of stillness with her hooded eyes fixed unwaveringly on Florence.
Florence jumps violently when someone clears their throat. It’s jarring, having Luca standing in front of her after Florence was just thinking of her. She’s back to wearing her glasses and an oversized T-shirt that reads, The horrors persist, but we stay silly. Below it, inexplicably, is a raccoon in a cowboy hat.
“Hey,” she says, cheeks dimpling.
“Hey,” says Florence. She closes her lyric book while Luca sinks into the armchair opposite hers. “Are you okay?”
“The room’s too hot to sleep, and Izzy is like an oven,” Luca says. She runs a hand through her hair. Florence feels her own fingers twitch, remembering its texture, soft and damp with sweat. “Did you want to be alone?”
“No,” Florence says, a knee-jerk reaction. “This is good.”
At that, Luca settles more thoroughly into the chair, long legs stretched out in front of her. Her fingers toy with the hem of her shirt as she looks around the lobby. Florence wonders if they’re going to talk about what happened last night, though she isn’t sure what there is to say. The fact that they both want to kiss each other is nothing new. Neither is the resigned certainty that neither of them is going to.
She’s relieved when Luca says, “I watched your dad’s performance.”
Florence makes a face. “The Glastonbury one?”
“Yeah.” Luca is silent for a moment. “I don’t get it.”
“His performance?”
“What everyone saw in him. He’s just a guy standing in the rain singing a love song.”
Florence would never admit it, but she has spent entire nights trying to figure out the same thing. She hasn’t found an answer. “I don’t know. I guess he struck a nerve.”
“You’re a better performer than him,” Luca says.
“Luca,” Florence says. “You don’t have to lie.”
“I’m not.” Luca frowns. Her right foot is tapping a restless rhythm on the faux wooden floor. “When you step on stage, it’s like a switch flips. If I were in the audience, it would be impossible to look away from you.”
Florence sincerely does not know how to respond to that. “Luca,” she says, helpless.
“I’m serious,” Luca says, and she is—Florence can tell from the way she’s speaking, quiet and determined. “You’re so talented. And you don’t need any rain or a huge stage to make people feel like they’re seeing something special.”
It’s all too much—what Luca is saying and the fact that she believes it, her tone and that earnest look from behind her glasses, for once holding on to Florence’s gaze without darting away. It unsettles Florence, sometimes, how freely Luca hands out truths. It’s like she’s never learned how to lie; her soft underbelly is always on display, right there for anyone to see. “Are you dehydrated?” Florence asks, because she thinks she might cry if she doesn’t somehow turn this into a joke. “Did you get heatstroke on stage?”
“You made sure I didn’t,” Luca says. So sincerely, again, even in the face of Florence being anything but.
Florence has to look away. She wonders how it’s possible for her to do all sorts of things in front of eight thousand people, but this—sitting in a hostel lobby with Luca in their pajamas while the clock ticks toward three a.m.—makes her heart feel like a skittish thing in her chest.
They spend a few moments in silence. Luca is turned toward the window, watching groups of people drift by on the pavement. Florence is turned toward her.
“Every morning,” she hears herself say, “you take pills. What are they?”
