SEPTEMBER 7th, 2000, LOS ANGELES, CA

          EXCITEMENT PRICKLED AN electrifying course all the way down to Dave's fingertips as he bounded up the driveway to his old house. He knew that behind the brick walls, the two people that he'd been vying to see the most over the last year were inside.

It had felt like forever. Years, even. In reality it hadn't been, but for Dave, the stretch of time that he'd gone without seeing Gracie had been unbearable. For some reason, his latest tour with the Foo Fighters had felt like the longest ever and he'd found himself missing Los Angeles and the objects of his affection that called the city home.

He'd been counting down the days, the minutes, until he got to see Gracie again, but Reagan had inevitably been included in his constant longing. His conscious told him that it was wrong to lump her into that equation, but he couldn't help it. He felt . . . optimistic.

The tour had put some necessary distance between them, allowing for time spent away from each other to lick their wounds from the fallout after the divorce. Reagan had gotten the chance to live her life without endlessly waiting for his return home, and he had gotten a taste of what it was like to be single on the road.

It hadn't taken long for him to decide that he was an advocate for monogamy, at least if it was with her. He hoped that she'd made a choice too, a choice centered around her missing him as much as he'd missed her. He'd dutifully upheld his side of the bargain that had been written out in those fucking papers that they'd signed and now, Dave wanted to put it past them.

As hopeful as he was, he knew that they'd have to take it slowly. He certainly didn't expect Reagan to fly directly into his arms the second that she saw him, but he did hold onto the idea that time away from him had worked its magic on her.

He hoped that she would look at him, face to face, and feel some spark of the old feelings that they'd once shared. The whole way back to L.A., he'd envisioned the look that would glaze her eyes when she saw him again, the smile that would bloom slowly across her face in a silent but sweet form of 'welcome home.'

It was a good thing that he wasn't returning to the tour until early October. He had a month to spend with his daughter and if he was lucky, his ex-wife. He'd reasoned that Reagan wouldn't have to make any immediate decisions. As long as she got to see him again, to see in person how much he'd missed her, than things would work out the way he'd intended them to. There hasn't been any harm on trying to look at the bright side of things.

Taylor had told him that he was being stupid as soon as he'd let on to his scheme. What he'd really said was that Dave's imagination was working 'ass-backwards,' but Dave had ignored him, determined to cling to his very last shred of hope that he'd get Reagan, as well as the three-part unit that he considered his family, back.

So much time had passed. During it all, he had missed her like hell, never able to wipe his mind clean of her no matter how many groupies he ran through or how many shows he played. She still had her fingerprints spotted on every facet of his heart and soul and he was ready to work on things with her, as long as she was ready to as well.

As he made his way up the winding path to their front door, he thought about Gracie and what he had planned for them both that week. He'd been in such a bright mood that he'd purchased tickets to Disneyland, figuring a two day trip to Anaheim with her wouldn't be such a bad idea. She was going to flip.

Sunset basked the front doorstep in a faint glow as Dave approached it, swallowing nervously in preparation to announce his arrival. Reagan knew that he was coming, being that he'd phoned her four days earlier asking if he could pick up Gracie when he got back home, but that didn't fully settle his anxiety.

Just as Dave raised his fist to knock on the door, he glanced through the front window beside it that revealed the inside of the living room.

His heart spasmed and for a moment, he wondered if he was having a premature heart attack. The symptoms were all there. Pain in his chest, tingling down his left arm. Actually, it was both arms, all over his body even, but the detriment of what he was seeing couldn't have been contained to just pure shock.

It was Reagan. She was sitting on the couch, her hair pulled back into a low ponytail and her green eyes bright. Her face was just as he'd committed it to memory, warm and glowing in the midst of a smile, and she'd never looked more beautiful than she did sitting there in the light of the living room.

She wasn't alone, though. Sitting next to her was a man, turned slightly away so that Dave couldn't make out the features of his face. All he could make out was that the stranger had long hair and wore a checkered brown flannel over jeans. Whatever he was saying was making Reagan smile, and Dave held his breath when the stranger's hand reached up to hold her cheek against his palm.

His first thought, despite the obvious pleasure in Reagan's expression, was that the stranger was a home intruder. He clenched his hands into fists, prepared to kick down the door and put her out of harm's way, but his theory was quickly squashed.

The unidentifiable man leaned in and kissed Reagan. His hand moved to her neck, holding her against him, and Dave watched as her eyes fluttered closed and she kissed him back.

She kissed him back.

I'm tripping fucking balls, he thought incredulously, his heart continuing to pound in spite of his previous assumption that he was suffering from a heart attack.

It was right there, right in front of his eyes. The more he watched, the more he wished he could look away. The stranger was pulling Reagan in closer, his hands creating a path down her sides, and she was letting him do it. She was responding to his touch, leaning into him as her fingers knotted into his long hair, and Dave felt like he was dreaming.

It wasn't a dream. It was a fucking nightmare.

Where the fuck was Gracie?

Without thinking, he pounded his fist against the door and tore his eyes away from the window. He imagined them springing apart in surprise, Reagan wiping at her mouth and the mystery dude trying to subdue any evidence of his expectations that he'd had in the front of his jeans.

Dave stood at the door, his body tensed and his teeth gritted together until it flew open and Reagan was suddenly standing in front of him.

The leisure look on her face abruptly morphed into surprise, and then into horror. Her lips parted to speak, but no sound came out. Dave forced himself to address her first.

"Is this a bad time?" he asked in a low voice.

"Dave!" she finally exclaimed, hurriedly pushing back the pieces of hair that had escaped her ponytail. "You're back."

"I'm back. I called you four days ago. Remember?"

"I . . . remember."

Strangely, Dave couldn't summon any feelings of rage towards her. Even though his anger at the situation unfolding in front of him and what he'd seen was stewing, he couldn't bring it to the surface. Not in front of her, when she was looking at him with her stunned eyes. He was unwilling to confront it, but he knew right away that she was a harboring a concern over hurting him. He could see it written across her face.

"I came to get Gracie," he reminded her. Suddenly, he felt humiliated. He agonized over the fact that he'd come there happily, thinking falsely that his relationship was going to mend itself when it was obviously hurtling down an in an opposite direction.

He'd been wrong. So excruciatingly wrong that his anger easily subsided into shame and heartbreak, making him want to dig his own grave in the front yard before stepping into it and pulling the dirt over his face.

Even as he wrangled his anger at bay, he continued to think the same question repeatedly in his head.

How could she?

"She's upstairs," Reagan answered, looking mildly frantic as she compulsively tucked her hair back again. "I can . . . I can go get her."

Dave's eyes flashed to the window again, where the stranger had disappeared from the couch. He wondered where he'd gone.

"Can I come in?" he asked bluntly, testing Reagan in order to see what she'd say.

"Um . . ."

As she lingered on her response, she was joined in the doorway. The stranger from the couch became someone that Dave vaguely recognized, though he couldn't place where exactly he'd seen the face that suddenly came into view. It was a youthful face, unassuming and kind, and it wore an awkward smile that was clearly an attempt to extinguish the tension of the situation.

"Hi," the stranger said. "I was just on my way out."

Dave squinted. Who the hell was this guy and why did he feel like he knew him?

"You don't have to go," Reagan said quietly, placing a hand on the stranger's chest.

His eyes flickered over to Dave. "It's getting late. I should probably head home."

"Do I know you?" Dave blurted out tersely.

The stranger gave him another lopsided, unsure smile.

"Sort of. We, ah, met once. Your VMA performance in ninety-seven?"

Dave did a quick sift through his memories, trying to collect the ones that he'd stowed away from September of nineteen-ninety-seven. He hadn't remembered much of that show, mostly because it had been the night that Pat announced to the world that he was leaving the band, but the harder Dave thought, the more things shifted into precision.

Reagan had been with someone that night. When he'd gone to grab her from the VIP area, she'd been chatting with some long-haired dude that had been ogling at her with apparent affection. He remembered that it had pissed him off a bit.

"Jesse Evans," the stranger added. He outstretched a hand for a shake.

The memory suddenly brightened. Of course. Jesse fucking Evans, the creepy wannabe rockstar that had made a move on his wife while he hadn't been looking.

White hot anger flared up inside of him. There was no fucking way. It wasn't possible that she'd sought that guy out again, only to embark on an actual fucking relationship with him.

Dave glanced at Reagan and saw that her face had fallen, wracked by pain and guilt. She was looking between them both as if expecting a brawl to break out.

He wanted to defy her expectations.

"Oh yeah," he said smoothly. He took Jesse's hand, shaking it once. "I remember. You were in VIP. Good to see you again, man."

It had taken all of his effort not to deck Jesse across his face, but it paid off well. Reagan looked shock as Dave pumped his hand up and down in a relaxed, genial greeting that didn't mirror the way he was truly feeling.

"Good to see you, too," Jesse said. "Sorry to rush out, I just . . . I've gotta' get going." He hesitated before quickly pressing a kiss to Reagan's forehead. "See you later."

He shouldered gently past Dave and hurried down the sidewalk towards the driveway, not once looking back. Dave waited in silence in front of Reagan until he heard Jessie's car start and pull away.

He thought offhandedly why he hadn't noticed the car before. Why hadn't it struck him as odd that an unfamiliar vehicle had been parked in the driveway, so late in the evening?

He hadn't given a second of time to think of it as being odd. He'd been wrapped up in the tenacity of hoping that things would be different. That Reagan would have missed him as much he'd missed her.

Once the sound of Jesse's car disappeared down the street, Reagan spoke gingerly, hugging the door frame with a trembling hand.

"Dave," she began softly, lifting her eyes to meet his.

He didn't want to look at her. If he did, he would be reminded that once again, he couldn't have her. It would have been a double whammy next to all that he'd been through in losing her for the first time. All he could train his focus on was the pain spreading through him, heavy and cloying like poison. He stared past her, into the house.

"Come in," she said, taking his hand. "Please."

Dave allowed to gently pull him limply inside. The house that he was in had never felt farther from home. It was a strange place now, marred by the new memories that Reagan had created that didn't involve him.

He stood with his head lowered, choosing to stare at the carpet rather than at her face. His rage was whispering away into his overwhelming sadness, his heartbreak, as he came to terms with the fact that he was too late.

She had chosen someone else.

"Can you look at me?" she whispered.

Dave honored her request unwillingly, raising his eyes as the stiffness of his neck screamed in protest. She looked so small standing in front of him, heartbroken in a way that was a world's difference away from his own.

"I know you're probably mad at me right now," she started, her voice still lowered to a raspy whisper.

He raised his shoulders in a half-hearted shrug. "Not mad. Just surprised." It was a bullshit lie. He was mad, but his anguish overpowered that above anything else.

"I didn't think it would . . . turn into this," she explained, settling herself with a deep breath. Her voice raised to a normal speaking volume. "He reached out to me in June and we started spending time together. Things just happened."

So, things had happened. Things had happened for Dave as well, even if she didn't know it. He had fucked countless women in the time that he'd been gone, stared into their eyes and listened to them scream his name, but those things had never progressed to anything more than that. He had done his job of playing an endless amount of shows and indulged himself on the side, but all of those things and more had never been enough to sway him away from her.

Yet she had been swayed away from him.

"Does Gracie know?" he asked huskily. His daughter would always be his first and foremost concern. He could put aside his own feelings when it came to Gracie.

"She knows he's my friend," Reagan answered hesitantly. "She likes him. She doesn't mind him coming around the house."

Friend. It was such a cheap way of describing what Dave had seen happening between them. If friends kissed each other with such heated intensity, he would have been engaged to Taylor a long time ago.

"I don't want her to be upset," he said, forcing the words out. As hurt as he was, he didn't want to make it obvious. He didn't want to explode on her as she'd probably predicted that he would.

At the end of the day, Dave knew that he couldn't be upset. He might be permitted the grudging feeling of wishing that she hadn't kept it a secret from him, but she wasn't his. The stupid hope that he'd had of getting her back had been nothing but a far-fetched product of his imagination.

All there was left to do was to play his role. He would be a good dad to Gracie and an amicable ex-husband to Reagan. He'd focus on the band, his music. He would numb himself to the pain of realizing that Reagan was finally and truly out of reach.

"I wouldn't let it happen if she was upset," Reagan said. "Her feelings have always been most important."

Dave looked up at her, wondering if this was exactly the thing that she'd been suggesting when she'd asked for a divorce. His time spent on tour created so many empty spaces, so many voids that he couldn't fill for her no matter how hard he tried. When he was away, doing what he loved, he was on a different timeline than she was. He'd been oblivious to the pain he'd put her through and he'd been oblivious to the strides she'd made in moving on from him.

Of course the first love his life, music, would go on to cause him the greatest pain. It only made sense in regards to how much of a bitch life was in itself.

"Good," he said, clearing his throat. "I want her to be happy. And I want you to be happy, too."

"Thank you. That's . . . kind of you to say."

His eyes hardened. "He makes you happy? Really?"

Reagan looked back at him as sincerely as she always had, never one to hide the truth from him. Her mouth was turned downwards as she spoke.

"He does."

"You think you'll stay with him?"

It was an unnecessary question, but it was also one that Dave had to know. He was already prepping for a future in which he'd have to watch Jesse Evans assuming the role that was meant to be his.

"I don't know. Right now, yes, I guess. It's all still
pretty fresh," she said quietly, folding her arms across her chest.

There were so many more questions that he wanted to ask. He wanted to make the same pleas that he'd made to before, insisting that he would give everything up if she would come back to him. In that moment, he could see himself without the Foo Fighters. He could see a life without the stadium tours, the chart-topping records and the aspirations that had dogged him since his childhood.

He only wanted her.

"As long as you're happy," he muttered.

"Dave," she said, stepping towards him with a note of desperation in her voice. She grabbed his arm, luring him closer, but they were interrupted by the sound of Gracie's voice.

"Daddy!" she cried, running down the hallway until she wriggled herself in between them, throwing her arms around Dave's waist.

Moments like these required the utmost care out of him. He'd followed in Reagan's lead in pretending that nothing was wrong, that things were just the way that they should have been for their daughter's sake. It had been an unspoken rule since the start that she was never to feel their heartbreak over the situation in lieu of her own. It was too much for someone of her age to bear.

"Hey, Peanut," Dave said, swiftly making an attempt to change his mood as he lifted Gracie into his arms. "You're getting too heavy to carry."

"Daddy, I missed you," Gracie said immediately, roping her arms around his neck. "I've been practicing my bass and I went to Jessica's sleepover party and I watched you on the t.v. and Mommy took me to the zoo and we built a fort in the living room and Grandma  Ginny called this morning!"

Dave shot a curious glance at Reagan. "You talked to my mom?"

She shrugged. "I talk to her a lot."

That was interesting. He hadn't known that his mother was talking to Reagan during her frequent phone calls to the house to speak with Gracie. He hadn't know that that she and Reagan had maintained a relationship through the divorce.

"Daddy," Gracie said ardently, trying to snag Dave's attention again. "Am I saying with you?"

"Yeah, G. You're coming with me. We're going to Disneyland tomorrow."

"Disneyland?!" Gracie shrieked. She wriggled out of Dave's arms and jumped to the floor, tearing away towards the stairs to collect her duffle bag of things.

Watching her go over her shoulder, Reagan raised her eyebrows and looked back at Dave.

"Disneyland, huh?"

"Yeah. I bought three tickets so that we could all go, but . . ."

He didn't have to finish the rest of his sentence.

Reagan slipped her hands into the back pockets of her jeans and stared hard at him, forming her mouth into a tight line that implied she was fighting back more emotion than she was willing to reveal.

"I'm sorry, Dave," she said. "I really am."

The act of looking into her eyes, seeing the full scale of the face that he'd loved since he was twenty-one, was more painful than he'd ever understood until then.

"Yeah," he replied. "Me too."