chapter fourteen
Willa
The train hummed beneath her like a lullaby she couldn’t quite fall asleep to. The gentle rhythm of metal against metal, the soft sway of the car—it should have been soothing. It usually was. But today it only rattled her nerves loose.
Outside the window, snow-dusted trees blurred past in streaks of white.
The sky hung a muted gray, never quite promising sun, while frost curled across the glass in delicate patterns Willa traced absently with her finger.
Bundled in a flannel and beanie, AirPods in, Frankie’s songs played softly in her ears—like a fucking masochist—as her thoughts looped back on themselves.
She hadn’t really slept last night. Maybe two hours, tops. The hotel bed had been soft, the linens crisp, the room quiet. None of it mattered. Her body had been restless. Her mind was too loud. And the reason?
Frankie Monroe.
Not the glitter-slick version she’d prepped herself for. This was the Frankie who leaned too close when they talked, who smiled like she didn’t realize how disarming it was. Who made Willa laugh so hard she forgot to keep her guard up.
And it hadn’t just been last night. It had been building, threading into the empty spaces she hadn’t realized she’d left open. Until it hit her somewhere between Frankie nudging her arm after a dart toss and Willa meeting her eyes and forgetting how to breathe.
It was there. That shift. The realization.
She liked Frankie Monroe.
Like, liked her. Not just in a cool-girl, good-at-her-job, excellent-subject way.
In a lingering glance, tightened throat, tiny flutter behind the ribs kind of way.
In a way that made her want to keep looking even when she told herself not to.
It’s why she left the bar last night before she could have done something stupid like ask Frankie to walk her back or admit how much she’d wanted to stay.
She’d done features before. Written profiles on arena-fillers and underground icons, soloists and synthpop duos and painfully cool alt-girls with septum rings and God complexes.
She had dissected artistry. Teased out image versus authenticity.
She knew the mechanics of performance. She was good at the line between truth and narrative.
But none of them had made her feel like this.
Like her hands were a little unsteady on her laptop.
Like her chest was tight in a way she couldn’t entirely blame the dry train air.
She flipped open her camera, fingers moving on muscle memory. Clicked through the shots from the night before, half looking for something usable, half looking because she didn’t know what else to do with herself. And there she was.
Frankie, onstage at a sound check, turned toward someone off-frame. Laughing. Her head thrown back slightly, one hand pressed to her chest, eyes scrunched in a way that made Willa pause.
It wasn’t perfect composition. The light was uneven. A bit of a blur in the edges, but it was real. Unposed. Unpolished. Frankie not performing. Just being.
Willa stared at it for longer than she meant to. Then longer still.
It wasn’t the kind of photo you submitted with a profile.
It was the kind you kept.
The kind you printed, maybe, when no one was looking.
She put down the camera. Opened her laptop.
Forced herself to focus on the article—the thing she was actually supposed to be doing.
She was a little behind on the draft. Julian had already sent a soft check-in email.
She was running out of excuses, and honestly, she didn’t want to give them.
She wanted to do the job. She wanted to write something good.
And she was.
She had.
She just needed to keep going.
* * *
Frankie
The bus swayed gently, tires thrumming against wet pavement as it carved its way toward Northampton. Frankie sat curled into the back lounge like a cat in hibernation, in her oversized Frankie Monroe hoodie—hood up—ankle tucked under her thigh, journal open in her lap.
She’d been reading the same damn line, over and over.
You look like a reason I shouldn’t write love songs/but now I can’t write anything else.
It still hit like a bruise she kept poking.
Frankie had always been good at giving herself away onstage. In lyrics. In throwaway liners she made sound casual, even when they weren’t. But this? Whatever the fuck this was happening between her and Willa—it didn’t fit into a lyric. It didn’t fit into a casual shrug.
She hadn’t meant to start caring. And she definitely hadn’t meant to start noticing the way Willa’s voice got softer when she talked to fans. Or the way she bit her nail when she was thinking too hard. Or the way she hadn’t even looked at her phone once during the show.
She groaned and flopped onto her back, journal sliding off her lap.
“Alright, broody,” Kara said, poking her head in. “You’ve been staring at the notebook like it just told you your ex was right about you.”
Frankie blinked, “Do you mind?”
“Just checking on your emotional state.”
“I’m fine.” Frankie rolled her eyes.
“You’re in the fetal position next to a candle and a closed notebook. That’s not fine. That’s feelings.” Kara shook her head.
Frankie flipped her off.
Kara grinned, “You’ve got that Willa left without saying goodbye and I got ghosted energy.”
“She didn’t ghost me. She just didn’t… stay.”
Kara raised an eyebrow. “Exactly.”
Later, as the bus pulled into the next city, Frankie opened her Notes app again and added:
She doesn’t linger,
But I feel her in the pause
Between a question and my answer.
Then hit save before she could talk herself out of it.
* * *
Willa
The air in Northampton smelled like wet pine needles.
A college town wrapped in queer charm and indie bookstores.
Willa walked slower than usual on the way to the hotel, hands tucked deep in her coat pockets, scarf pulled up to her nose.
It was too warm for real snow, but the dampness clung to her skin like static.
She checked into a little boutique place—exposed brick, plants in every window, someone playing Fleetwood Mac at the front desk. It should’ve been her ideal setting. But she felt… off. Untethered.
She dropped her things and wandered out in search of a café.
Something warm. Something grounding. A few blocks from the hotel, she found a quaint little spot.
Inside, lavender steam curled from her cup.
The place buzzed in a quiet sort of way—two friends whispering at the counter, a student hunched over a laptop plugged into a power strip dangling from the window frame, someone sketching on a napkin in Sharpie.
Willa took the corner seat. Pulled her journal out like a reflex. She stared for a long time before writing.
What scares me more?
That she’s nothing like I thought—
Or that I actually want to know her?
She didn’t try to answer it.
Her phone buzzed breaking the quiet.
Frankie: You gonna kick my ass in darts this stop again? Or was that a one-night-only performance?
Willa stared at the message for a second. Her lips curved into a dumb smile.
Willa: Bring your A-game.
The next message came almost instantly.
Frankie: Oh sweetheart. You’re gonna need a backup excuse when I win.
Willa didn’t reply. But she didn’t stop smiling either.
* * *
Frankie
The Northampton venue was warm, earthy, like a house show with better lighting and a real sound system.
Exposed beams overhead, Persian rugs layered on the stage, soft couches with worn velvet cushions in the greenroom.
Someone had lit candles around the dressing area—small glass jars flickering faintly, the scent of sandalwood and smoke curling through the air like memory.
It smelled like calm. Like something old and sacred.
Frankie should have felt grounded. At home. This was her kind of place—small, intentional, soaked in queer magic.
Instead, her skin buzzed static.
She sat on the arm of the couch, guitar resting against her thigh, fingers twitching against the strings as the band moved around her.
Malik played a lazy rhythm on a practice pad.
Ember tossed gummy bears into Juno’s mouth with impressive accuracy, and Kara was in the corner, on the phone with someone from the next venue, her voice low and focused.
When Willa walked in, she felt her before she saw her. Her heart skipped the way it did before the last chord of a show.
Willa’s camera bag slung over her shoulder, hair in a messy bun, black coat still clinging with the last of the cold air. Her lips were slightly pink from the wind, and her cheeks matched—flushed like she’d just been thinking too hard or walking too fast.
Frankie tried not to look. She really did. But she failed, instantly and completely. Her breath caught.
Willa moved through the room like she belonged in it—quiet, focused, precise. She didn’t try to make herself smaller, didn’t try to impress anyone either. She was just…there. Present. And it threw Frankie off harder than she wanted to admit.
Kara leaned in, stage whisper close, catching the whole thing. “Hey,” she said under her breath, “You really need to stop getting crushes on journalists. That’s how you end up in a PR nightmare.”
Frankie elbowed her lightly without looking, “Go away.”
Kara laughed and walked off, and Frankie tried to focus. She really did. She picked up her guitar, strummed through a few warm-up chords, and forced herself to tune it like it mattered. Like her hands weren’t already shaking just a little.
Willa had already started working. She moved along the edges of the room with her camera held low, eyes scanning like she was collecting secrets.
The camera was safer than eye contact—safer than remembering how badly love had wrecked her once before.
The soft click of the shutter came every so often—at the band, at Frankie’s boots by the guitar stand, and then, of course, at Frankie herself.
She caught the flash of the lens just as Frankie rolled her eyes. Typical.
Frankie groaned. “Don’t you dare print that,” she warned, but there was no bite in it. Just the curve of reluctant smile tugging at her lips.
Willa didn’t lower the camera. She tilted her head and said, almost too quietly, “Some things are just for me.”
Frankie’s fingers stilled against the strings. Her throat tightened around a response that didn’t come. She wasn’t sure what she would have said anyway.
And Willa… she didn’t wait for anything. She just turned and moved on, checking her settings as if she hadn’t just knocked the wind out of her subject.
Frankie didn’t look away. Not right away, she watched her until she disappeared behind a curtain near the stage.
And then she stared at the place where Willa stood like she was still there.
Because in a way, she was. Still lodged in Frankie’s ribs.
Still tingling in the part of her chest she usually saved for music.
* * *
Willa
The post-show adrenaline had worn off hours ago but sleep still hadn’t come.
She’d watched the whole thing from behind her lens, in front of the barricade—Frankie lit up under those stage lights, all power and presence and something softer when their eyes met across the crowd.
She wasn’t supposed to feel like this. She wasn’t supposed to feel anything at all.
And yet, here she was—wide awake, chest tight.
The light from the desk lamp cast a soft amber glow across the comforter, her journal half-buried under the pillow beside her. Her tea had long gone cold.
She’d been staring at the blinking cursor for twenty minutes, the white page too bright, the space too loud.
She was supposed to be writing. That was her job.
That was the reason she was here. But every time she went back to her page, the words came out wrong.
Too formal. Too safe. Too distant. Because none of it had felt distant anymore.
She let her fingers drift across the keys, slow and tentative.
Frankie Monroe doesn’t perform like she wants you to look at her. She performs like she wants you to see yourself.
She blinked. Her breath caught slightly, like the words had taken something out of her just by existing. She reread them once. Let them sit there. Simple and true.
She should have deleted them, but she was going to write what she felt. It scared her a little how easy that line had come. How close to herself it felt. How much it said about Frankie—and maybe about her too. She left it.
She didn’t write anything else that night. Just closed the laptop, set it gently on the nightstand, and lay back against the pillows. Her chest was tight, like there was something waiting to be let out—but not yet.
She rolled onto her side, pulled the comforter up, and she whispered into the room like it would stay there safely if no one else heard it.
“I’m definitely already in trouble.”
* * *
Frankie
On the bus later that night, the windows were foggy. Streetlamps and stoplights flickered through the mist, glowing like halos in the fog. The hum of the wheels on the asphalt steady and low, the kind of rhythm that used to soothe her to sleep on nights when everything else felt too loud.
But not tonight.
Frankie sat curled in her bunk, hood up, one leg tucked under the other, guitar untouched beside her. Her journal was open on her lap, the same half-finished lyrics staring back at her.
She hummed the melody to herself—soft, raw around the edges, the kind of song that didn’t belong to a crowd yet. It hadn’t made it that far. It was still hers. Still secret.
Her pen hovered over the page, but she didn’t write.
She was thinking about the way Willa had looked at her tonight. Not behind the lens. Not through a screen. Just—looked. Like she saw something Frankie hadn’t even meant to reveal. That messed with her more than she wanted to admit.
“She’s not gonna make this easy, is she?” She whispered into the dark, voice barely above the bus’s soft mechanical hum.
She kind of hoped not, because for the first time in a long time, Frankie didn’t want easy. She wanted real. She wanted the slow burn, the spark that came with friction, the pull she felt every time Willa walked into a room and refused to be impressed.
She flipped to a new page in her journal and wrote just one line:
Every time I try to stop thinking about her, she gives me something else to remember.
She closed the book and tucked it under her pillow. She didn’t want to dream about her, but she already knew she would.
* * *