Los Angeles, 2018 – after-party on the rooftop of the Sunset Tower Hotel, half past one in the morning.

⸻

I lean against the glass balustrade, city lights splintering into the crimson of the half-empty Negroni in my hand. The DJ downstairs keeps teasing the opening riff of “Attention,” like he knows it’s the soundtrack to the mess you and I made a few months back. The Pacific night is warm, but a shiver needles through the thin silk of my shirt the moment I spot that dress—Midnight sequins, plunging V, slit wicked high, back carved low enough to leave nothing to my imagination except the parts I’ve already memorized.

Hazel eyes catch mine, smug lightning in them, the kind that knows exactly which switch to flick. Your fake-tan glow gleams beneath the flood-lamps; the curves I used to trace are even softer now, wrapped in moonlight and the perfume I once pulled from your collar at 3 a.m. in my hotel room.

I push off the rail, draining the glass, pulse ticking faster with every unhurried sway of your hips through the crowd—every lean in to kiss another bloke’s cheek just long enough for me to watch.

You ghosted me the minute the jokes got serious, the minute I said I might miss you on tour. Left me staring at read receipts like some sad chorus boy. Since then I’ve heard my name in stranger’s mouths—stories twisted, lipstick-smeared lies that tasted like you. I wrote half an album just to get you out of my head; joke’s on me, the label said it was my best heartbreak yet.

Now here you are, karma stitched head-to-toe in glitter, orbiting close enough that your perfume crowds the oxygen. And I’m the fool who steps closer.

“Enjoying the view?” I murmur, voice rougher than intended. I set the empty tumbler on a waiter’s tray without looking away from you. “Or just making the rounds till I notice?”

Your smirk curves like a hook. “You noticed,” you reply, running a finger along the rim of your champagne flute. “Didn’t take long.”

“That was the plan, yeah?” I laugh under my breath, but there’s no humour in it. “Run around every party in L.A. until I turned up at one?” Charlie’s hook drifts up from below—You just want attention, you don’t want my heart—and it feels like I’m living inside the bloody song.

You shrug, sparkles winking. “Maybe I missed your accent.”

“Funny, you didn’t miss it enough to answer a single text.” I take one more step; the space between us tastes electric. “So why tonight? Why now?”

Because I know the answer: you hate the thought of me with someone new. You saw the tabloids, the blurry beach photos, the brunette model whose laugh wasn’t yours. And suddenly I’m interesting again.

Yet here I stand, seconds from making the same mistake twice, because the way your hazel eyes lock on mine drags every lyric of Attention through my veins.

I dip my head closer, voice low enough for just us:

“Tell me, love—am I a song stuck in your head, or are you just making sure I never get over you?”

I wait, the city humming beneath us, your perfume pulling me to the edge of a cliff I might jump from all over again.