Chapter Text
Spain looked indecently golden.Not in the glossy, influencer way Eloise would have taken the piss out of, though she had done precisely that from the back seat of the taxi while filming the motorway and announcing, in a dreadful documentary voice, that local roads had now been confirmed to exist abroad as well.
No, it was worse than that. Softer and more dangerous.
The late afternoon sun turned the whitewashed buildings to honey and laid a warm hand over everything it touched. Terracotta roofs, drooping geraniums. The sea in the distance, flashing between streets like a blade. Francesca sat in the back with Sophie and watched it pass through the glass, trying to let it settle somewhere inside her. Trying to unclench.
Holiday, she reminded herself.
A proper holiday. Not a long weekend stolen between school terms and not an overbooked wedding where she spent half the evening at a piano in a hotel ballroom while drunk guests shouted for Billy Joel. Not a family event where she had to smile at people asking whether she was doing all right in that careful, dreadful tone reserved for the recently dumped.
A holiday.
Eloise twisted round in the front seat, sunglasses slipping down her nose. “You’re thinking too loudly.”
“I’m not saying anything.”
“Yes, but your face has taken on that haunted little look it gets when you’re mentally composing a string quartet about your own repression.”
Sophie laughed under her breath. Francesca turned to the window again, though there was no hiding the smile tugging at her mouth.
“I’m fine.”
“Mm.” Eloise sat back. “Classic phrase spoken by women who are not, in fact, fine.”
Sophie patted Francesca’s knee once. Practical, warm, kind. “You don’t have to be fine. You’re allowed to be sad. You’re allowed to be heartbroken. Men can be awful. Most of them don’t deserve us.”
Eloise snorted. “And yet you’re dating our brother.”
“Yes,” Sophie said, dry as ever, “but he’s a decent man. Annoyingly.”
“Exactly,” Eloise said. “Which is why what Francesca perhaps needs now is a woman.”
“Shut up,” Francesca muttered.
Eloise ignored her. “Well, it was you who drunkenly admitted you couldn’t stop staring at Penelope’s boobs while sprawled across my sofa last weekend. And then you informed us that at least three of your favourite actresses had made you question your entire sexuality.”
Francesca covered part of her face with one hand. “Yes, I made the mistake of speaking absolute rubbish while nearly passed out, and you haven’t let me live it down since.”
Sophie smiled. “I hope you know this is a safe place to try something different, if you want to. No one’s going to judge you.”
“Yeah,” Eloise said. “Welcome to Francesca’s slut era. This should be fun.”
Francesca went quiet.
Heat climbed her neck, though whether from embarrassment or something worse, she could not have said. The awful thing was that part of her suspected Eloise might be right. Not about the slut era, obviously. Eloise made everything sound like a dare or a punchline. But about the rest of it. About trying something different. About wanting something different.
The thought frightened her almost at once.
She was shy. Too quiet in most rooms. More comfortable in corners, by windows, behind pianos, anywhere conversation did not have to be performed at speed and under bright lights. Women like the ones Eloise imagined did not walk into bars and notice women like Francesca. They certainly did not come over and start talking.
Her thumb worried at the side of her index finger before she caught herself and stopped. “We’ll see.”
Eloise, mercifully, did not soften. Softness from Eloise had all the subtlety of a brick through a conservatory. “Right. New plan for this week. Sun. Food. Sea. Alcohol. Possibly a morally questionable crush.”
“Possibly?” Sophie said. “That’s less commitment than I expected from you.”
“I’m trying growth. It’s revolting.”
The villa they’d rented sat on a hill above a little coastal town, all pale stone and blue shutters, with a narrow terrace overlooking a pool that caught the sky in broken pieces. Bougainvillea climbed one wall in a riot of pink. Somewhere nearby, cicadas whirred like faulty wiring.
Sophie handled the practicalities at once, because of course she did. Bags in rooms, food in the fridge, windows open before the place turned into an oven. Eloise wandered around declaring herself spiritually aligned with Mediterranean architecture and asking whether it was racist to assume the olives would change her life.
Francesca took her suitcase upstairs and stood for a moment in the bedroom she’d claimed, fingers still looped around the handle.
The room was simple. White sheets. A small brass lamp. French doors opening onto a balcony just wide enough for two chairs and a tiny round table. From here, she could see the sea properly. Deep blue. Sun-struck. Endless.
Back in London, everything had felt close. Tight. Corridors and Tube carriages and classrooms and polite conversations and the shape of her old life still pressed into every corner of it. Here, the air moved.
That should have felt like relief.
Instead it felt like standing at the edge of something too open to understand.
Her hands had started again, a faint tremor through her fingers, annoying as a mosquito. She pressed them flat against the cool top of the dresser until it passed.
Downstairs, Eloise shouted, “Francesca, if you’re already having an emotional collapse, do it near the pool so it’s picturesque.”
“I’m unpacking.”
“Liar.”
They ate at a little place a short walk from the villa just as the heat began to ease - grilled vegetables, bread still warm in the middle, something salty and fried for the table that Eloise insisted counted as cultural enrichment. None of them wanted anything heavy after the sheer volume of snacks they had demolished on the journey over, and Eloise in particular seemed eager to keep dinner quick and light so she could get pleasantly tipsy before the night had got too far ahead of her.
By the time the sky began to turn peach at the edges, the three of them were showered, changed, and heading into town for drinks.
Eloise had bullied Francesca into wearing a linen dress the colour of cream, claiming she looked too heartbreakingly pretty to be allowed near the public unsupervised. Sophie wore navy, simple and lovely, with her dark hair pinned back neatly despite the heat already loosening it. Eloise herself had gone for red, because of course she had, and looked like the sort of woman old men wrote poems about and regretted for the rest of their lives.
“You look frightened,” Sophie murmured as they walked.
“I’m hot.”
“You’re in Spain.”
“I’m also being marched into a public social setting by a woman who describes seduction as community outreach.”
Ahead of them, Eloise lifted one arm in the air without turning around. “I heard that, and I accept the title.”
The town had begun to wake properly by the time they reached the square. Music spilled from open doors. Glasses clinked. People drifted between bars in linen and sunburn and the loose-limbed ease of being nowhere they needed to be in the morning. A fountain splashed at the centre, children tearing round it while their parents pretended not to be exhausted.
They chose a bar on a corner where fairy lights had been strung beneath a pergola. The menu was mostly gin, citrus, and bad decisions.
“Perfect,” Eloise said.
Francesca sat with her back to the wall, out of habit more than preference. Or perhaps both. From here she could watch the room without feeling watched in return. A guitarist played somewhere near the entrance, the melody warm and lazy. Glasses flashed behind the bar. Laughter rose and fell like birds lifting from a roof.
This, at least, she could do. Sit. Listen. Let the edges blur.
Eloise ordered something with cava in it and immediately began charming the waitress in shocking Spanish that was half confidence and half crime. Sophie took the menu seriously. Francesca asked for white wine because it seemed safer than making a decision.
“Look at you,” Eloise said. “Already re-entering society.”
“I never left society.”
“Debatable.”
Sophie slid the bowl of olives away from Eloise before she could knock it over. “Ignore her.”
“Impossible,” Francesca said.
“Correct,” Eloise replied. “Now. Ground rules for the evening. One: no talking about your ex unless it’s funny. Two: if someone gorgeous flirts with you, you flirt back.”
Francesca nearly inhaled her drink. “No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
Sophie leaned on one elbow. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”
“Thank you.”
“But,” Sophie added, entirely too calm, “it isn’t a crime to enjoy a bit of attention.”
Francesca stared at her.
Sophie lifted one shoulder. “What? It’s true.”
Before Francesca could answer, Eloise’s attention shifted over her shoulder like a weather vane catching a gust. Her grin sharpened.
“Oh, now that is interesting.”
Francesca turned.
Three people had just come in from the street: a white man in a loud shirt already laughing at something no one else had heard, a shorter Black woman in green with her hair piled up and gold hoops catching the light, and—
Oh.
The third woman moved with the kind of confidence that made space reorganise itself around her. Black, a little shorter than Francesca would later realise, with long dark hair falling over one shoulder in waves the heat had coaxed towards curl. White cropped shirt, tan skin-tight trousers, jewellery that flashed when she lifted a hand. Her mouth was devastating. Her arse, Eloise would later say with the solemnity of a priest, deserved state honours. Even Eloise, who swore blind she was straight, could not seem to stop staring.
Francesca looked away at once.
Too late.
“Bloody hell,” Eloise said softly. “That one.”
“I’m begging you not to become weird,” Francesca muttered.
“I am already weird. Don’t change the subject.”
Sophie, who had glanced over with more restraint and perhaps more wisdom, said, “She is very pretty.”
“She is criminally pretty,” Eloise corrected. “Francesca.”
“No.”
“You haven’t even heard what I was going to say.”
“I know you.”
“Fine. I was going to say that if she comes over here and offers to ruin your life for a night, you should thank her politely and ask whether she’s free tomorrow as well.”
Francesca drank more wine.
Across the bar, the woman tipped her head back and laughed at something the man beside her said. It was impossible not to look again. Francesca hated that. Hated more that the woman caught her this time.
Not a vague passing sweep of the room. Not an accident.
Directly.
Her gaze landed and stayed.
There was nothing aggressive in it. Nothing hard. Just amusement. Interest. The unmistakable flicker of well now.
Francesca dropped her eyes so fast it felt adolescent.
“Oh my God,” Eloise whispered. “She looked at you like she was halfway to getting you out of that dress.
“Eloise.”
“What? I’m trying to help.”
“You never help.”
“That is so unfair. I am inspirational in a crisis.”
“You are the crisis,” Sophie said.
The drinks arrived. The night thickened around them. Bit by bit, the first brittle layer of Francesca began to loosen. The second glass helped. The warm air helped. Eloise doing a savage imitation of Francesca’s ex-boyfriend helped most of all, if only because it was impossible not to laugh when she made his voice three octaves higher and had him say, I just think emotional honesty is really important, unless it’s inconvenient for me personally.
By the time Francesca stood to go to the bar for another drink, she was not drunk exactly.
Braver, perhaps. Or softer at the edges.
“Do not run away,” Eloise said as she slid off her stool.
“I’m getting wine.”
“And perhaps making a proper start on the slut era.”
Francesca gave her the finger without heat and made her way through the crowd.
At the bar, a row of people waited beneath the hanging glasses and mirrored shelves. She found a sliver of space and leaned there, tucking hair behind one ear. Her fingers had started at the familiar little pulse again, touching thumb to fingertip, then back, then again. The music was louder here. The room brighter. Too much happening at once.
Breathe.
One drink. Back to the table.
“Excuse me,” said a voice beside her. “I was wondering if you could help me. There’s something wrong with my phone.”
The accent was British. Warm, low, and far too pleased with itself.
Francesca turned.
Up close, the woman was worse.
Her face belonged in trouble. Sharp cheekbones, deep brown eyes, mouth curved with the confidence of someone who had rarely been told no in any way that mattered. A small gold chain rested against her throat. She smelled like citrus and night heat.
Francesca blinked. “Sorry?”
The woman held up her phone with a solemnity that fooled no one. “Terrible malfunction.”
Francesca, still a step behind whatever was happening here, said, “Do you need to ring someone?”. “That’s the issue,” the woman said. “It doesn’t have your number in it.”
For one extraordinary second Francesca simply stared.
Then, despite herself, she laughed.
The woman’s grin widened, victorious. “There she is.”
“That is appalling.”
“And yet effective.”
“I haven’t given you my number.”
“Not yet. I’m an optimist.”
Francesca should have left. Any sensible version of herself would have nodded politely and escaped back to the safety of Eloise’s wicked face and Sophie’s sensible eyebrows.
Instead she found herself saying, “Do you use that often?”
“Never twice on the same woman. I’m not a monster.”
The barman appeared. Francesca ordered wine with slightly more care than the act required. Beside her, the stranger ordered tequila and something sparkling for a friend at the other end of the bar.
“I’m Francesca,” she said, before she could quite decide why she was offering that much.
The woman smiled. “Francesca.” She said it as though testing the shape of it. “That suits you.”
“You don’t know me.”
“True. Not yet, anyway. But I’d like to.” Her smile deepened. “I’m Michaela.”
The name landed low and warm.
“Do all your chats start like this?” Francesca asked.
“Only with beautiful women who look like they might tell me off properly if I disappoint them.”
Francesca nearly choked on air. “That is an insane thing to say to someone.”
“Was it too much?”
“Yes.”
Michaela leaned in a fraction, smiling. “All right. I’ll save the really outrageous lines for later.”
Their drinks arrived. Francesca reached for her card, but Michaela was already handing hers over.
“Oh, absolutely not,” Francesca said.
“It’s one glass of wine.”
“It’s my glass of wine.”
“And I’m buying it.”
“No.”
Michaela barely glanced at her as the payment went through. “Bit late for that.”
Francesca stared at her. “You really do just do whatever you like, don’t you?”
Michaela took her tequila, then passed Francesca her wine as though this had all been perfectly reasonable. “Only when I’m right.”
Francesca curled her fingers round the stem. The glass was cold. “Thank you.”
Michaela’s smile shifted, pleased but quieter for a second. “You’re welcome.”
At the far end of the bar, the woman in green called over, “Michaela, are you coming back tonight or have you decided to live there now?”
Michaela didn’t look away. “Ignore her. She’s jealous.”
Francesca let out a small laugh. “Of what?”
“Your attention.”
Heat rose, quick and traitorous, under Francesca’s skin.
She took a sip of wine to give herself something to do. “You always this stubborn?”
Michaela’s brows lifted. “Interesting question, coming from you.”
Another laugh slipped out before Francesca could stop it.
“You laughed again,,” Michaela said softly. “I like that sound.”
Something about the way she said it sent a small electric shiver skimming down Francesca’s arms.
Francesca looked down at her wine, then back at Michaela. “That is an outrageous thing to say to someone you’ve just met.”
“Was it too much?”
“Possibly.”
Michaela smiled, unrepentant.
Francesca huffed another small laugh and took her wine at last. “Your confidence is genuinely alarming.”
“I practise.”
“With everyone?”
“No.” Michaela’s tone changed there, just slightly. Still light, but steadier underneath. “Only when I mean it.”
That should not have mattered. They had known each other for under three minutes. It meant nothing. It was flirting. Holiday flirting, at that. All shimmer, no weight.
Yet something in Francesca eased and sharpened at the same time.
Michaela tipped her head towards Francesca’s table. “Friends?”
“Sister. And our friend Sophie.”
“The red dress one is watching me like she’s deciding whether I’m a scam.”
“She almost certainly is.”
“She should. I’m trying to seduce her sister.”
Francesca’s fingers tightened round the stem of her glass. “You’re very direct.”
“I find it saves time.”
“That sounds suspiciously like a line.”
Michaela smiled. “Everything sounds like a line in this bar.”
“True.”
“Would you prefer honesty?”
Francesca opened her mouth. Closed it.
Michaela stepped a little closer, close enough that the noise of the bar seemed to pull back around the edges. “All right. Honestly? I saw you laughing with your friends and thought you looked like someone who doesn’t laugh like that often enough. Then I thought you were beautiful. Then I came over.”
No swagger now. Or rather, not only swagger. That would have been easier to dismiss.
Francesca looked down at her wine, then up again. “That was smooth.”
“Devastating, wasn’t it?”
She laughed again. She could not seem to stop doing that around this woman, which was unnerving in itself.
From across the room, Eloise lifted both brows in a way that should have been illegal.
Francesca ignored her.
Mostly.
Michaela collected her own drink and the sparkling one for her friend. “Can I ask you something?”
“You seem likely to regardless.”
“I like this mouth on you. So yes, I can.”
Francesca stared.
Michaela laughed outright. “There she is again.”
“That was terrible.”
“And yet you’re still standing here.”
Francesca took a sip of wine to buy herself time. “What were you going to ask?”
“Will you sit with me for ten minutes? If I’m unbearable, you can leave. If I’m charming, you can admit your sister was right about me.”
Francesca glanced over. “You’ve picked out my sister already?”
Michaela smiled. “The one looking at me like she’s five seconds from staging this entire conversation herself? Yes.”
That, depressingly, was fair.
Francesca glanced at the table. Eloise was already waving her over with an expression of such indecent delight it bordered on unholy. Sophie only smiled, small and encouraging.
The sensible answer was no.
The interesting answer was yes.
Holiday, she reminded herself.
“Ten minutes,” Francesca said.
Michaela’s grin turned bright and wicked and pleased enough to be dangerous. “Darling, I can do a lot with ten minutes.”
Francesca nearly dropped her glass.