JUNE, 2001, LOS ANGELES, CA

DAVE FELT GOOD and that feeling alone came with the barest trace amount of guilt. It had only been two months since he and Reagan had officially ended things, for good this time, and yet the heaviness that had followed him around like a shadow from the first time was fading.

As he stood next to Taylor inside of the Sunset Marquis with a drink in his hand, he found that he couldn't complain in regards to that night. He felt weirdly alive, like he'd come out of a months-long coma and was being welcomed back into civilization.

Those first few weeks after his and Reagan's final goodbye had been rough. He'd retreated into a shell that he rarely hid beneath, but only because he'd been barely able to hold it together. Taylor had been the one to lure him out into the world again, always having been difficult to say no to. His insatiable energy had worked its magic perfectly on Dave this time around.

The only shitty thing was having to still see Reagan. He saw her often because of Gracie and it hadn't been an easy transition, slowly trying to give each other space while also pleasing their daughter. Gracie had been seriously in to the bond they'd rebuilt but even Dave couldn't deny that it was too much being around Reagan, too soon. There was no way in hell he'd sit over a homemade dinner in her dining room, staring at her and longing to do more than just be polite.

He'd wanted to kick the shit out of his forced politeness. In the early days of Divorce Round Two, as he privately called it, it had been difficult for him not to touch her when he saw her or at least consider the idea of it.

She'd just looked so . . . lost. It didn't help that Richard was facing an illness with no cure. Dave had wanted and still wanted to make it better, albeit in a different way now. At first, all he'd been able to think about was grabbing her face and kissing her, holding her in his arms until she cried herself ragged. It was fucked up that he was willing to be there for her in every way, but the relationship had still ended, all because he'd had to go and pick up a fucking guitar in his youth.

Dave didn't blame his success as much as he blamed the universe for willing it. He blamed Black Flag and The Beatles and Naked Raygun. He blamed his cousin Tracey and he even blamed his mom for having let him manifest the early beginnings of what he was now, as much as he loved her.

He especially liked to blame John Bonham.

Fuck you Bonham, he thought scathingly, lifting his drink to his mouth.

It was true that those experiences had paid off, but they'd also flipped a proud middle finger up in his face with a saccharine smile.

He huffed to himself. When he thought about it along those lines, he could sometimes hear Reagan's voice in his head, chiding him for being so stupid. She'd go off on the same routine spiel about 'destiny' and he would silently question how his destiny could possibly mean shit if she wasn't a part of it.

But that had been then. That had been before the quasi-method of healing he'd taken up, mostly involving a lot of liquor and playing his guitar until his fingers bled. It had taken two weeks to smile. Four to enter public spaces accompanied by friends. Six to stop thinking alcohol-induced thoughts about Reagan that were way out of the control of his sober brain and mostly centered around how badly he wanted to be inside of her again, fucking the sadness out of both of them.

Dude, Taylor had said, cringing after Dave revealed that little morsel of thought. Did you just say you wanna' fuck the sadness out of her?

Sloppy drunk, Dave had sighed. It might work, he'd said.

I don't think your dick is gonna' make her dad's Alzheimer's go away, dick. It ain't THAT fucking life-changing.

For once, Taylor had been the one with a stroke of moral reason.

Dave drained the rest of his drink and looked to his left where Taylor was, chatting up a busty brunette with electric blue eyes. It'd been Dave who spotted her first, intrigued by the fact that she one, was not redheaded, and two, had blue eyes rather than green ones. But of course she'd beelined for Taylor, her eyes sliding right past Dave without a second thought.

He snorted under his breath. What good was it being the lead singer of a band when in a reversal of standard practice, his fucking drummer was pulling all the women?

Not that he was looking. Or maybe, he was but hadn't yet accepted it. That night was the first that he'd finally been able to notice, truly notice, any female within a five foot radius of him. The groupies of the past had been painkillers, as much as he hated referring to them as so, but it was plausible now for him to browse for someone who'd actually sustain him.

It was, on the other hand, implausible that he'd settle down any time soon. He hoped that he'd be able to try again and not die alone one day, turning to dust beneath the ground next to a guitar for all eternity. But now? Jumping into another marriage seemed wrong from every angle. His heart wouldn't have been in it, anyway.

"Fuck dude, that one's a talker," Taylor said, appearing at his side and exhaling a sigh of relief. He raised the straw in his drink to his mouth, flashing a paranoid glance over his shoulder to ensure he wasn't being followed.

"What did you guys talk about? The weather?" Dave asked with faux-sincerity, grabbing Taylor's drink out of his hand and replacing it with his empty one. It was the least Taylor could do.

"It was fine until she started telling me about her grandmother's sex life."

"Dude, what?"

Taylor shrugged. "It was actually kinda' interesting. Her grandma was married seven times."

"Alright. Brunette is off the list. You might as well stay away from brunettes for the rest of the night, actually," Dave said. He was feigning interest in his best friend's ability to attract women exceedingly better than he did, but being a wingman was better than moping into his drink.

"What are you thinking? Blonde?" Taylor asked, cupping his hand around a cigarette and sparking his lighter to life against it.

Dave considered the options, but not necessarily for Taylor. He thought about what he'd want, imagining a woman that was the stark opposite of Reagan but would still manage to rouse a flicker of attraction in him. Perhaps even more than a flicker, if he thought about it long enough.

"Blonde," he agreed. "Blue eyes. Medium height. Cute smile. Great body."

"That's kind of specific," Taylor said, laughing through a puff on his cigarette. "Is the next one supposed to be for you or me?"

As soon as he asked, another woman sidled her way up to them both and flashed a blinding smile, her eyes of course fixed on Taylor. She was blonde incredibly enough, but nothing like the picture Dave had verbally painted. She was short and had brown eyes, though that did little to negate how good-looking she was. By all means she was the hottest woman in the bar that night.

"Hi," she said, her smile never wavering. "You're Taylor Hawkins, right?"

Taylor flashed Dave a borderline smug smile. His track record was impressive. It hadn't even been a full minute since he'd moved on from the brunette.

"Wait, you think he's Taylor Hawkins?" Dave intervened, widening his eyes and jerking a thumb towards Taylor. "That's fuckin' crazy! He gets Andy Gibb all the time but Taylor Hawkins is a first."

The blonde actually laughed much to Dave's pleasure, but Taylor knocked him in the shoulder lightly with a fist.

"Yeah, I'm Taylor," he said to the blonde, a charming smile curving his mouth upwards. "Don't know who this fucker is, though. He's been following me around all night asking for a picture."

"I know who he is. He's Dave," the blonde said. She spared Dave a sincere smile, though his ego felt slightly crushed.

Just Dave? Not Dave Grohl, legendary rock-n-roll sex god?

"Need another one?" Taylor asked smoothly, nodding at the blonde's near-empty drink. Score for him, then. He wouldn't have invited her over to the bar if he wasn't interested.

"Sure!" she said enthusiastically. She glanced back at Dave. "Do you need one too?"

Dave looked into what had been Taylor's cup and saw that he'd sucked it dry. The sudden lack of alcohol didn't necessarily make him want to join Taylor and his new blonde friend, though. His responsibilities started at wingman and stopped at third-wheel.

"Ooh, wait!" the blonde said, rounding her eyes with excitement. She turned around and stood on her toes, peering over the crowd as she began to call out for her friend.

"I'm the bestest best friend in the whole fucking world," Taylor whispered through the corner of his mouth and into Dave's ears. "I pick the ones who loan you their friends."

Dave was about to scoff and tell Taylor to keep it to himself, at least until the friend made her appearance, but he didn't get the words out in time before she did.

Parting her way through the crowd, the blonde's friend arrived and promptly caused the liquor in Dave's stomach to shoot back up into his throat.

He was staring at her. The girl he'd imaginatively created for Taylor based off of his own set of preferences.

She was blonde, just like her friend, but it was different on her. Her honey colored hair fell in ringlets past her shoulders, which Dave noted were a pair of very nice shoulders indeed in due part to how much he could see of them. The thin-strapped tank top she was wearing suited her well, fitting snugly and revealing just enough that any guy who saw her was bound to want to see more.

She was miraculously of medium height, even in the low pair of heels she was wearing. Check. Her smile was soft, much like the rest of the features on her face, and could have melted a block of ice with its warmth. Check.

But her eyes . . . Dave held his breath when he looked into them.

They were so round, so crystalline blue that they were easily the first thing anyone would notice about her. They weren't as piercing as most bright blue eyes were — they were soft in their prominence, brimming with a glimpse of every positive character trait that she could possibly have. Dave guessed them all in the span of seconds — kindness, humility, humor.

She had it fucking all and he'd only managed to glean that information through a single once-over.

He didn't know if it was raw attraction that was kicking his heart rate up or something else. It could have been from the reminder that he hadn't felt that way upon looking at a woman since Reagan.

Check, check, check, fucking check-mate across the board.

"Dave," Taylor's freshly acquired blonde said. She grabbed the new addition to their group and pulled her forward. "This is Jordyn. Jordyn, Dave."

Jordyn offered Dave the cute smile he'd been picturing from earlier, except hers was somehow better than what he'd initially contemplated. It was incredible enough to keep the sun and moon hanging in the sky, working twenty-four hours a day to keep the world functioning without a shred of effort.

Throw in the towel now, Dave, he told himself. She wasn't out of his league — she was at least a thousand notches higher on the hierarchy of girls he was worthy enough to even look at.

"Hi. It's nice to meet you," Jordyn said. When her eyes locked with his, he dug his heels into the ground just to keep himself steady.

What the fuck was happening to him?

"It's nice to meet you, too," he said.

________________

When the door to her office flew open and Reagan saw that it was Jesse Evans standing in the threshold, pissed did not begin to cover how she felt. Pissed, along with another mile-long string of emotions. Pain, insecurity, irritation . . . longing.

She batted the last considerable feeling away and let her face fall into a stony expression. Cool enough to send the message that he ought to keep his distance, but professional in the sense that it wouldn't betray how truly annoyed she was to see him.

"Who sent you up?" she asked, firmly setting the pen she'd been twirling between her fingers down.

Jesse breathed heavily, having clearly booked it all the way to her office. He held his hands up in defense.

"Just listen," he panted.

Reagan made a noise of disbelief and stood up from her chair. That was the moment that her shock resonated and she processed that it was actually Jesse in front of her. After all those months of radio silence, he'd appeared out of thin air in the last place she'd ever want to see him in.

"Jesse, what the hell?" she said, leaning over her desk with her hands splayed across it. "What are you doing here?"

"I knew you weren't going to pick up the phone after the first time. So I had to come see you in person."

"When somebody visits someone in person, it's usually by invite!" She spoke the last word with searing emphasis, narrowing her eyes.

Jesse's face turned pleading. "Reagan, I wouldn't bother you like this if it didn't actually matter. Just hear me out for five-,"

Reagan's secretary shouldered through the doorway, panting as equally hard as Jesse was.

"Reagan, I tried to tell him to stop," she explained, shooting Jesse a spiteful glare.

Reagan sighed and lifted one hand to her temple, rubbing it. She figured that she shouldn't have been surprised that something like this would happen to her. While she'd never expected to hear from Jesse again, it made sense that the time she finally did would happen while she was at work, straining her eyes over a stack of paperwork.

"It's fine," she said, closing her eyes. "He can stay."

Her secretary looked skeptical, stealing another glance at Jesse with disdain, but she backed herself into the hallway and closed the door as Jesse entered.

"Five seconds," Jesse said, picking up where he'd left off before the interruption.

"I'm counting," Reagan replied, rolling her eyes and sitting back down into her chair.

This was going to be good. From that first phone call he'd made to her with Dave at her side, she'd assumed that he was going to ask for her back. The assumption was hardly fueled by her ego, but by the notion she had that Jesse wouldn't ask for anything else. There was nothing he could ask for. She hadn't taken any of his clothing or kept any of his potentially treasured belongings. She didn't have any pertinent information that he couldn't find out on his own.

"There's this band," he began, "an all female group that I have coming to the studio to record. They need a drummer while they're there. I suggested you."

Reagan lurched forward in her chair as her eyebrows shot up on her forehead.

"You did what?"

"Look, they're in a pinch and we start recording in days, they need someone and-,"

"Jesse! Look around you!" She waved a hand wildly through the air. "I'm not a fucking drummer! I work for Geffen!"

Jesse paused for a moment to frown. "You are a drummer. I listened to you play. You're one of the best drummers I've ever heard."

"I play the drums as a hobby. A hobby. I don't rent myself out to bands 'in a pinch'!"

"You did in nineteen-ninety for Nirvana."

Reagan snapped her mouth shut. She hadn't expected him to say that.

"That was for a friend," she said slowly. "Kurt was my friend and I'd played with him and Krist before. We were friends. They knew how I played and I knew their songs."

Jesse pulled something out from his jeans pocket. When he tossed it on her desk and it skidded towards her, she realized it was a tape.

"They do know how you play," he said. "I played that recording of you drumming for them."

She went to touch the recording, mystified to see it in front of her when she'd assumed Jesse would have trashed the tape after they'd broken up. She snapped her hand back.

"This is ridiculous," she said, lowering her voice. "I don't play in bands. I've never been in one. I've only done one live show in my life."

"It wouldn't be a live show, Reagan. We just need you to lay down the tracks for their album and it'll be over. They're really on board with this. They want you."

Reagan eyed the tape suspiciously, raising her chin up in the air. She was frustrated by the odd experience of déjà vu waving over her.

"What happened to their drummer?" she asked tersely. It annoyed her to show a sliver of interest in the offer, but she was curious.

Jesse sighed and raked one hand back through his hair. "It's a long story. Their first drummer quit back in March. That's when I called you, thinking you could be an understudy, but you didn't answer. They hired the new one in April, but she broke her arm and she can't record the album now."

"Rick Allen plays in Def Leppard with one arm," she said bluntly. "This girl can't do it?"

"Be serious, Reagan."

"No, you be serious. Listen to what you're asking me!"

"I'm asking you because you're a damn good drummer and there's no one out there that deserves to be on the record as much as you do. The band agrees. It'll take two weeks tops and then you'll never have to do it again."

Reagan was admittedly flattered by the offer, even though she tried to hide it. She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms like a pouting child. It was ridiculous that Jesse could soften her up with a few well-said compliments that stroked her ego.

"What's their name?" she grumbled.

A flash of hope brightened his eyes. "Nymph Spit."

"Well. I don't entirely hate the name."

"I knew you wouldn't. You wouldn't put your name in the album credits if you did."

As much as she wanted to send Jesse packing, his flattery had definitely succeeded in making her hesitate. She supposed that if she did accept the offer and help out the band, the threat of being roped into joining wouldn't exist like it had with Kurt and Krist. And even then, Dave had already been in line to fulfill that role.

This was only a recording session. Although it was basically the bare minimum, Reagan considered briefly that even if the band did like her that much and fired their current one-armed drummer, she wouldn't be all that intimidated by an invite to keep playing.

It was unrealistic, but the principal of the matter was that it would be a change. It would be something else besides days spent in Santa Monica slaving for Geffen in a position she'd grown to despise.

She would get to play the drums again, and not in the shelter of her home where it was simply something to pass the time. This time it would come with a purpose.

She sighed and returned her fingers to her head, massaging away the start of the headache she was giving herself.

"When would you need me?" she asked.

Jesse grinned. "So that's a yes?"

"Answer the damn question, Jesse."

"Next week. If that works with you."

She sighed again, turning her eyes towards her office windows. The view was the same one she'd gotten eventually sick of, much like the rest of the stagnancy in her life. She was tired of tending to her heartbreak over Dave, tired of worrying over Richard.

Distracting herself with an opportunity as big as the one Jesse was presenting her with might have been a nice way to mitigate all the stress and pain she was juggling.

"I'll be there," she muttered.

Jesse tilted his head back in relief and closed his eyes. "Thank fuckin' god. You're the best for this, you know."

She watched him as his worries were alleviated, his expression loosening up into the relaxed, cheerful smile that she most remembered about him.

He should have gone into entrepreneurship, she thought. He was pretty damn good at feeding people bullshit and convincing them on the spot to make big decisions.

"You . . . looked surprise," he said after a bout of silence. His smile turned crooked.

Reagan bristled. "Of course I was surprised. You came barging in here asking me to record with a band when I don't even do that for a living."

"No, I mean, you looked like you were expecting me to ask you something else. Before I brought up the recording session."

A warm flush spread through her face and she sank a little lower in her chair. Assuming really did have the potential to make an ass out of her.

"I didn't know what else you'd want from me," she said uncomfortably.

Jesse moved closer to her desk, taking a deep breath.

"There is something . . . that I want. But I have a feeling I know the answer."

"You won't know until you ask."

"Even though you and I both definitely know that you're going to turn me down?"

Reagan ducked her head and looked into her lap, awkwardly grabbing the pen she'd been toying with earlier. She rolled it between her fingers and spoke to her thighs.

"I'm kind of going through a lot," she said. "A relationship isn't exactly in the cards for me right now."

"I can understand that." Jesse paused and cocked his head to the side thoughtfully. "So . . . you're not saying no because of how I ended things, then?"

"No, that is partially why I'm turning you down. Sorry."

"If you'd give me a chance, I'd love to explain myself to you. I'd get on my knees and beg, if you asked."

"I thought you came here to ask me about the recording session," she said, the blush in her face burning hotter. "Not to beg to get back together."

Jesse leaned a little ways over Reagan's desk and placed his fingertips on the tape in front of her. He slid it closer to the edge where she sat.

"You said you're going through a lot," he told her gently, "so I'm not going to bug the shit out of you about it. I really do you need for the session too, so I won't chase you away. But you should know that I never stopped thinking about you. Not after all this time."

She didn't look up, suddenly feeling stone-cold and flaming hot all at once. The pen turned faster in her hands.

"You're the only person I've ever been in love with. I know that sounds like total bullshit after the way I acted, but like I said, if the day comes that you want my explanation I'll tell you."

He backed away from her desk and gradually made his way towards the door, staring at her with a blatantly painful look of longing.

"Reagan, I listened to that tape of you playing every damn day," he said. "Not just because it's some of the best drumming I've ever heard, but because I really loved you."

He opened the door and paused before stepping out.

"I don't think I ever stopped."