NOVEMBER, 1999, GLASGOW, SCOTLAND

THERE WASN'T ENOUGH alcohol in the world for Dave to drown himself in. Not even in Scotland, where the brew ran plentiful and was more often than not given to him for free. He raised another swig of lager to his mouth, the closest selection he'd been able to find to Coors.

He should have been happy and he knew it. The Foo Fighters had just released their third album, which was continually being met with soaring reviews and high praise. They were touring again, as of now an ocean away from home in Europe, and the guitarist they'd nabbed to join them — Chris — was easily one of the coolest guys that Dave had ever met.

If he'd been able to extract himself out of his body and view the world from somewhere above the clouds, he would have envied himself. He would have marveled at all that he'd accomplished and was still accomplishing, finally having leapt the hurdle of club touring to the big time of courting arenas. He'd produced his own album without the help of anyone but Taylor and Nate, and it all been impressively done in the basement of a house.

All of those things were admittedly great and something Dave would have never taken for granted. He was grateful, humbled even by the success that he'd poured blood, sweat and tears into to earn. It agitated him endlessly that despite that success, he was still bothered.

It was like having an itch he couldn't scratch.

He missed Virginia, for one thing. Fleeing there in the spring to record had been one of the best decisions he'd ever made. Being back home, making music, had cleared his mind. He'd been able to concentrate on something else besides the downfall of his love life.

The second thing, the biggest thing of all, was Reagan.

Always fucking Reagan.

Dave had done his best to accept the brutal end of their relationship. He'd been amiable, perhaps even too amiable, as they'd gone through the divorce proceedings and signed away their history together. Looking back, he occasionally wished that he'd fought harder for her, refusing to sign the papers or getting down on his knees begging until they bled, but he'd seen how his initial resistance had hurt her.

He didn't want to hurt her again. And now, their divorce was finalized. They were officially separated, legally declared single, yet Dave still felt hopelessly bound to Reagan by a force that couldn't be broken by court documents.

He belonged to her. No matter how much he tried to tell himself that that was no longer true, her constant presence on his mind suggested otherwise.

Sitting at a tucked away table inside of the smoky local bar that Nate had picked, Dave drained the rest of his beer and watched his band mates. They looked a hell of a lot happier than he did, drunk and laughing as they mingled with the entourage of Scottish girls that had followed them there after the show.

Dave knew what Taylor would have insisted he do in that moment. He would have demanded that Dave 'get his ass up' and have fun. He'd been saying that since September when the tour had officially began.

Dave had honored the request, working to the best of his abilities to put himself out there the way his friends had. It'd been a long time since he'd tried to pick up girls and although they flocked him to without prompting, Dave still struggled to put on a confident facade in front of them, pretending with failure that he wasn't still nauseating in love with his ex-wife.

Despite that, there had been girls. Groupies. He'd embarrassingly lost count of how many he'd brought back to his various hotel rooms. Being that the starting leg of the tour was overseas, the majority of the girls he'd met only spoke broken English, which Dave preferred. It wasn't that he didn't want to talk — he just favored conversing with their bodies instead, sometimes so it would all be over sooner.

The strip clubs were a nice reprieve from having to put on an act. When he and the guys had visited the Parisian clubs in less reputable parts the city, he'd taken pleasure in admiring women from afar, exchanging only eye contact with them and dollar bills. At the strip clubs, he didn't have to say a word.

When he was feeling especially vulnerable, he allowed himself to question if Reagan was thinking about him, too. Since the tour had started, he hadn't seen her, putting a temporary pause on his weekly visits to pick up Gracie. He thought about when he'd last seen her before taking off for Europe.

His interview on the Howard Stern Show had just aired at the time and Dave had gone to her bearing an apology for what had been said.

He had steeled himself when he'd been asked about Reagan on the show, having not prepared for her to be lured into the conversation with such ease.

Dave, you're divorced now. Divorced, right? What the hell happened, man? She was a smoke-show. I mean, I've seen the pictures of her. What happened? Problems in the bedroom?

Even Taylor had tensed next to Dave when the question had been asked. Ever the professional though, Dave had answered swiftly, explaining the situation tastefully to Howard's disappointment.

My ex-wife is one of the greatest people I know. I love her. She's great. It just didn't work out in the end. But she'll always be one of my best friends.

Shortly after when Dave had arrived on his old doorstep, he'd winced as soon as Reagan had answered the door. She'd given him a smile, but there was a twinge of pain behind it.

"I'm sorry you got dragged into it," he'd apologized quietly, knowing that she'd already known what he was referring to.

"It's alright," had been her response. "Howard Stern is a dick anyways."

While Dave agreed with Reagan on that fair point, the incident hadn't been isolated to only the Howard Stern Show. He'd learned that year just how public his life had really become when interviewers everywhere asked about Reagan, asked about his feelings, asked about Gracie.

He'd never considered before that people — his fans — had been invested in his marriage. The biggest part of his public life was geared obviously towards music and that's he assumed everyone exclusively saw him as — a musician. He was shocked, if not a little disturbed, that so many people were vying for the details of his personal life, seeing him as more than just the frontman of a rock band. They were eager to know the him that was a father, a husband. Or ex-husband, rather.

Reagan couldn't have possibly been ignorant of it. There'd been fucking magazine articles printed about it, even a mention of it on Total Request Live by Carson Daly before the music video to Everlong had followed the commentary.

It was fucked. It wasn't fair to Reagan and Dave was feeling the weight of the unfairness too in knowing that it was no longer his given right to protect her.

He reached for the new beer that he hadn't even noticed had been delivered to his table. Knocking back a long sip, he thought more about Reagan, sensing that he could get away with it when his band mates were distracted. They wouldn't give him that look, the knowing, identical ones that appeared on all their faces whenever he got particularly quiet.

He wondered what she was doing an ocean away. No doubt working a shit ton when she wasn't with Gracie, which he silently took as a sign that she was trying to distract herself, too. The more he thought about her, the more he couldn't move past losing her, but she made it impossible in her own right.

Nothing had changed about her. She was still the same headstrong person that he'd met and fallen in love with, the same person who teased him mercilessly with a private little smile on her face, just like she'd recently done in regards to the mutton chop beard he was sporting.

As Dave rubbed a hand across his chin, he could still hear her giggle ringing in his head followed by the soft, taunting lilt of her voice as she'd confessed her hatred of his new look.

"Dude."

His eyes flashed up and he saw Taylor leaning over the table, his blonde hair ruffled and a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth.

"You gotta' come over here. This chick has been asking for you like, all night."

Taylor raised his eyebrows and reared his head back with a single nod in the direction of where everyone else had set up camp for the night. Dave looked but couldn't distinguish who Taylor was referencing — it could have been one of seven different girls.

"Who?" he asked, motioning for Taylor to spare him a cigarette.

As Taylor wiggled one out of its box and handed it to Dave, he smirked.

"The redhead."

Dave's jaw instantly locked. Of all the strange forbidden words that he didn't like hearing, 'redhead' was one of them. It conjured images of Reagan and her long auburn hair and the way it had fallen over her shoulder, or the practiced manner in which she'd swipe it behind her ear and out of her face.

Taylor noted his expression and shook his head, motioning behind him with his cigarette now between his fingers.

"She's not, uh . . . that kind of redhead."

That kind of redhead? Dave thought. It looked as if Reagan had been given her own quality based on hair shades.

Reluctantly, he looked over to where Taylor was gesturing, giving his best friend the benefit of the doubt. Amongst the scattered blondes and brunettes, his eyes settled on the one ginger-haired girl of the bunch.

Her hair was admittedly nothing like Reagan's thick cascade of warm red copper. It was closer to the hue of orange than that, but it still looked good on the her. She looked good, in a dangerously short skirt and low cut top that was held perilously together by thin crisscrossing strings. In the pair of stiletto boots she was wearing, she appeared tall, and the spray of freckles across her nose was cute.

Dave sat back and ran his tongue over his bottom row of teeth. The girl wasn't anything to sneeze at. She was hot and if he tried hard enough, he could definitely imagine fucking her, no matter how hazy the image was. The strain of her shirt against her breasts was waking something up inside of him, but it flickered and faltered like a dying light despite his efforts to guide his brain in the right direction.

"Out of all the girls here," he said grudgingly, shooting Taylor a look, "you pick a redhead?"

"Oh, come on, man. It's Scotland, there's fucking redheads everywhere. And she looks nothing like Re- her."

In retrospect, it was thoughtful of Taylor to not say Reagan's name considering the context of the conversation, but Dave couldn't decide if he was thankful that he'd done it.

Hearing her name outside of the fortress of his mind would have rooted him back to the spot, reminded him of the love he was still nourishing for his ex. He wouldn't have fucked anyone else if reminded of that, content to sulk back to his hotel room mulling over all the things he'd done wrong over the last two years.

But Taylor hadn't said her name. He'd unintentionally fueled the idea that she was just a memory — no, her and Dave's relationship was just a memory. She wasn't at his side where she was meant to be and she'd never resume her place there ever again.

Maybe there was a reason for that.

Dave set his beer down and stood up, much to Taylor's surprise. He was met with a tentative grin.

"You gonna' go talk to her?" Taylor asked.

"Yep."

There wasn't a viable reason as to why he shouldn't. Regardless of however many girls he brought back to his bedroom, Reagan wasn't coming back. She'd signed those divorce papers the second that they'd fallen into her hands, and in the court room standing in a front of a judge, she'd shielded her eyes from his. He'd wondered if she'd been crying, but it provided less useless hope to assume that she hadn't been.

Less hope meant that he could move on with his life, or at least try to.

Striding up to the ginger-haired girl, Dave tucked his hands into his pockets and summoned a deep breath. Everything he'd wanted to say had been right on the tip of his tongue, but his half-assed enthusiasm for the whole ordeal stole it away.

The girl, on the other hand, smiled slowly at him. She took her time before speaking, raising her drink to a pair of pouty pink-stained lips.

"You must be Dave," she said, revealing a thick Scottish accent that admittedly, added to her appeal.

Her act of beating him to the punch regenerated some ounce of confidence within Dave. He'd always liked women, always liked chasing after them even if he thought he'd fail, long before Reagan had come into the picture.

"What, was that a lucky guess?" he asked, taking a draw from his cigarette.

"Well, I don't know," she laughed. Her laugh was throaty, sultry, just like the rest of her. "It was hard to say since you've been avoiding everyone the whole night. I didn't think that Dave Grohl would do that."

He mustered a smile but felt a pinprick of embarrassment. Of course she would call him out on that straightaway.

"Isla," she said, sipping from her drink again. It took Dave a moment to realize she was telling him her name.

It was more than an introduction, though. In the mere second it had taken for her to say her name, she'd moved a half-step closer to him. She'd straightened her back, no doubt pushing out her chest, and lowered her eyelids. Her voice dropped and although she was still smiling, there was impossibly even more implication behind that smile.

Dave observed her, his gaze sliding up and down. The fact that she was hot was reiterated to him again. She was easily one of the sexiest women that he'd yet to encounter during the European leg. He didn't know anything about her, hadn't exchanged more than a few words with her, but sometimes that was just enough.

For Dave, at least, that was enough.

___________________

She was loud. Almost too loud, the sound of her moaning shrieks and breathy gasps nearly grating to Dave's ears. It was as if she was putting on a show, much like he'd put on a show for her earlier that night, but he wasn't sure he appreciated what she was selling.

Despite the annoyance, he found it easy to distract himself with her body. She felt good, looked good, and he was reminded of that as he remained on his knees behind her, his hands fastened to her hips as he pushed into her roughly from behind.

It was satisfying, but that didn't keep at bay the wandering of his thoughts. Dave gritted his teeth and held on tighter to Isla's — or was it Ivy? — waist and concentrated on the attractive slope of her back flowing into her ass, which was presently pressed against his hips.

He had a feeling that the encounter would last longer than the others. Although she hadn't said much, more keen to rip off her clothes the second he'd brought her back to his hotel room, she seemed to be of a determined kind.

She was nice. Superficially, Dave had concluded that. But that still didn't rid of him the foreboding sense that he wouldn't be able to get rid of her, wouldn't be able to retreat to his own private despair once they were done.

It was his habit to need to be alone after fucking another girl who wasn't Reagan.

She let out a stuttering screech of 'oh my god' as Dave slammed into her harder, hoping that the beads of sweat gathering on his forehead would remind him that he hadn't finished them both off yet and still had time to go before he could be alone.

He moved faster, trying to enjoy it at the same time, when she looked back over her shoulder at him and their eyes connected.

She had green eyes. Crystalline green eyes that were simultaneously woodsy and as clear as a forest lake, round and familiar in a way to Dave that made him almost gasp.

She had Reagan's eyes. She might not have shared the same shade of red hair, but her eyes were identical to Reagan's, mirror images that he hadn't noticed up until that moment as she looked at him.

Suddenly, she became Reagan. It wasn't a stranger whose hips Dave held, but hers, and it wasn't an unfamiliar face tightened around a moan that was staring at him.

It was Reagan's. Terrifyingly, the girl that he was fucking was suddenly his ex-wife, unloading a hailstorm of memories onto him. Her face, her sounds, became that of Reagan's. The way Reagan's face would fall gently into a mask of surprise when he edged her closer to a climax, or the soft cries she would breathe into his ear when he hovered over her.

Dave let go and scrambled back off the rumpled bed, breathing hard. Isla/Ivy/whatever-the-fuck-her-name-was looked at him in shock, turning so that she stood on her knees.

"Are you alright, love?"

As soon as she spoke, the illusion snapped and she became her true self and the deception of Reagan drifted away. Her voice was not Reagan's. It was a stranger's, not the one Dave missed so badly that his body ached with the weight of it.

"Yeah, yeah, sorry, I just . . ."

Remembering that he was stark naked, Dave grabbed a pillow that had fallen to the floor and covered himself with it. He backed away slowly, anxiously looking around the room as if anticipating Reagan jumping out from behind the furniture.

As he pulled away, she pouted and reached for him, but Dave couldn't find it in himself to indulge her. He needed to get away. He wanted to escape the incredibly fucked up shit that had just happened to him and he wanted to escape that girl's eyes, now the most noticeable thing about her face.

"Give me a minute," he offered weakly.

Leaving her confused on the bed, he slipped into the exorbitantly big excuse of a bathroom that his hotel room provided and locked the door. He felt crazy, like a little kid stowing away from the monster of his nightmares, but he was nearing a panic attack and he knew it. His fingers twitched for a handle of alcohol or maybe even a handful of sleeping pills. Anything that would knock him flat on his ass, unconscious.

It was twisted in the most horribly ironic sense that the girl would have Reagan's eyes. He'd been trying to enjoy himself, trying to reason that he was lucky enough to lay even the hottest of women just by being who he was, and of course Reagan had appeared to him.

It wasn't the kind of scolding reminder about where his loyalties laid. If anything, he regretfully assumed that Reagan didn't care who he fucked or when he didn't.

It was the reminder of how in love he still was with her. He was betraying himself, the faith he had in his own feelings, instead of Reagan.

Dave had promised that there would only be her. That promise still felt as fresh as the day he'd made it nine years prior.

Finding a pair of baggy pants on the bathroom floor, he slipped into them and leaned over the sink, trying to bring his heart rate down. He thought about the girl still on his bed, probably wondering what bizarre medical issue he was suffering from that had made him leap away from her in the heat of what should have been rapturous release.

It wouldn't have shocked him if she eventually went to the tabloids, spilling the gossip on Dave Grohl's inability to complete the act of sexual intercourse due to a bout of paranoia, stage-fright, maybe even a small dick. Who knew what she'd say.

He didn't care. He couldn't find the will to give a damn when he was still trying to cleanse his mind of that image of Reagan, her silk skin pressed into his fingertips and her moans melting into calls of his name.

Minutes turned into a full hour before Dave finally felt like he could leave his hiding spot. He'd calmed himself down somewhere around the fifteen minute mark, but had stayed in the bathroom with the lingering hope that the girl would leave.

His wish was granted. As he opened the door and peeked his head out, he saw that her clothes had been scooped off the floor and she was gone.