Mal is not cold, or arrogant, or high-browed. He cuts his own hair and high-fives strangers and thinks brown sauce is the cure for all of the world’s problems. Mal hates lavish events, entertainment journals, mainstream record labels, and elegant food. He loves his mammy, having the craic, getting shit-faced, and songwriting while lying under the flawless night sky in his backyard. He refused a check for sixteen-grand a pop sweetheart tried to give him to buy one of his songs, simply because he had a good laugh watching her confused manager and agent try to decipher the word no.

But that was eight years ago, a little voice inside me points out. For a period of twenty-four hours.

What do I know about today’s Malachy Doherty?

What did I ever know about him at all?

“There she is.”

Callum’s arms wrap around my waist. I jump in surprise, his posh, English accent startling me for a second.

“The belle of the ball.” His lips, still cold from the outside, brush my ear from behind.

“You made it.” I turn around, wrapping my arms around his neck and giving him a peck on the lips, like punching a time card. He’s still wearing his pale gray suit from the office.

“Don’t I always?” He scrunches his nose.

He does. Callum is the most precise, trustworthy man I’ve ever dated. The exact opposite of spacey, unreliable Mal. When I look again, I see that my boyfriend has remembered to wear my favorite tie. Dark green with strings of gold. When we spotted it in the store, about two weeks into our relationship, I told him it reminded me of Ireland, and he immediately bought it.

I yank the Nikon D18 he bought me for my birthday from my purse and snap a picture of him, capturing his rich-boy, pouty smile as he searches my face for approval.

I’ve been freelancing as a photographer for Blue Hill Records ever since I got my arts degree four years ago. It pays next to nothing, but next to nothing is still better than actual nothing, which is what I got paid when I interned here for the first three years. I work a part-time job as a bartender to pay my astronomical Manhattan rent.

It’s not that I have to live the poor Manhattan girl cliché. I have an inheritance from my late father, but I refuse to touch it. Using it never even crossed my mind. I’d burn the money if I could, but that would give my mom a heart attack, and I don’t want that on my conscience.

I never wanted the money. I only ever wanted my dad in my life.

“You look gorgeous, love.” Callum captures my chin with the back of his thumb, tilting my head up.

Do I, though? I’m the opposite of what a man like Callum would usually go for. I have pale, borderline-sickly skin, big green eyes always framed by an industrial amount of eyeliner, a nose hoop, and an undying love for everything punk rock, which is probably getting a little old at my ripe age of soon-to-be twenty-seven.