—
SHE WROTE about her first boyfriend, Michael, her first and only boyfriend to date. She’d been in love with him and they broke up but the love didn’t. In fact the love got—not truer, just better. Their friend Maisie’s parents were away on the same weekend as the Eurovision Song Contest Grand Final so Maisie opened up her house to “all my Eurovision bitches,” which turned out to be not that many. Just Maisie, Day, and Aisha, until Michael showed up, with two friends, Luca and Thalia. A taxi pulled up outside of Maisie’s house and Michael, Luca, and Thalia got out, the three of them dressed in silk sheaths—real, heavy silk. Maisie rushed to the front door: “What? Who are they? Are the Supremes really about to come in right now? I must have saved a nation in a past life . . .”
—
IT TOOK DAY A COUPLE of hours to get around to talking to Thalia and Luca. She only had eyes for Michael. For the first time she was seeing that he had everything she coveted from pre-Technicolor Hollywood. Hip-swinging walk, lips that tell cruel lies and sweet truths with a single smile, eyelashes that touch outer space. If Bette Davis and Rita Hayworth had had a Caribbean love child, that child would be Michael just as he was that night. They hugged for a long time, and later they talked on the balcony outside. “Thank God for the Internet,” he said. “I wouldn’t have found Luca and T without it. All sorts of nutters out there, but mine found me . . .”
He settled on the name Pepper. Day remembered the rest of that night in stop-motion—galloping, shimmying, the speakers turned up so loud that the singing shook the air and the beat of the music was like being knocked on the head. The backbeat was a hammock you fell into. Ring a ring o’roses, pan flutes, trumpets, and yodeling—Day was holding hands with Luca, who held hands with Aisha, who held hands with Maisie, who held hands with Pepper, who held hands with her, dancing around in a circle with bags and coats stacked in the center, cheering for the countries whose stage performances made the most effort or projected the most bizarre aura. Luca and Thalia became Day’s too. “For life, yeah? Not just for Eurovision . . .”
Thalia didn’t even like Eurovision. She said she’d come along to meet Day. “This one’s always going on about you,” she said, gesturing toward Pepper.
—
DAY’S STEPDAD, Anton, who’d had trouble remembering Michael’s name, hailed Pepper with joy, even as he teased Day about the times she’d said Michael was the one. Day just shrugged. Pepper wasn’t always on the surface, but whether she was with Pepper as Pepper or Pepper as Michael, Day had found the one she’d always be young with, eating Cornettos on roller coasters, forever honing their ability to combine screams with ice cream.
—
SO . . . WHO is a Homely Wench?
—
DAY WROTE about Luca, muscular and much-pierced Luca, and how that first Eurovision they spent together his hair was the same shade of pastel mint as the dress he wore. He and Thalia were a bit older, in their early twenties. By day he sold high-fashion pieces: “Everyone wants to fly away from here but not everyone can make their own wings . . . so they buy them from me . . .” By night he was an unstoppable bon vivant, deciding what kind of buzz was right for that night and mixing the pharmaceutical cocktail that had the least tortuous hangover attached. He’d had nights so rough he could hardly believe he was still alive: “But this can’t be the afterlife. Ugh, it can’t be.” Luca laughs long and loud and his body shakes as he does so. He’s better at forgetting than forgiving; he says this is the only thing about himself that scares him. Speaking of him Day’s father says, “So . . . vulnerable,” at the same time as her stepdad says, “Brazen!” Neither is quite right. When Luca was younger he got kicked out of his parents’ house for a while; they’d hoped it’d make him less brazen, but it didn’t—he stayed with friends and got brasher, and when he came home it was like he took his family back into his heart rather than the other way around. Day knew Pepper and Luca were together. She’d also heard that Luca liked to pursue straight men. Thalia referred to this tendency as “Luca’s danger sport.” Pepper said Luca’d be fine. “He’s got us.”