This Bird Has Flown

Table of Contents
 
 
 Cover
 Title Page
 Copyright
 Dedication
 
 PART ONE: Friday I’m in Love
 
 Chapter 1.: Tears of a Clown
 Chapter 2.: People Who Need People
 Chapter 3.: Heavy Petting
 Chapter 4.: Kurt Cobain Cardigan
 Chapter 5.: Man Thighs
 Chapter 6.: Hot for Teacher
 Chapter 7.: Coffee, Tea, or Me
 Chapter 8.: Sweats
 Chapter 9.: Tiny Bubbles
 Chapter 10.: First Date
 Chapter 11.: First Sext
 Chapter 12.: Second Date
 Chapter 13.: No Secrets
 
 
 PART TWO: Dirty Mind
 
 Chapter 14.: Sexual Healing
 Chapter 15.: I Want You to Want Me
 Chapter 16.: Wild Horses and Red Lipstick Girls
 Chapter 17.: X Marks the Spot
 Chapter 18.: Monday, Monday
 Chapter 19.: Rebel Rebel
 Chapter 20.: Dirty Dancing
 Chapter 21.: Polite Intercourse
 Chapter 22.: Dead Things
 Chapter 23.: Pregnancy Boobs
 Chapter 24.: Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
 Chapter 25.: What’s New Pussycat?
 
 
 PART THREE: Once in a Lifetime
 
 Chapter 26.: First Class
 Chapter 27.: Here She Comes Again
 Chapter 28.: Friday on My Mind
 Chapter 29.: The Lion, the Bitch, and the Wardrobe
 Chapter 30.: Skeletons
 Chapter 31.: Wedding Bell Blues
 Chapter 32.: Stranger on a Plane
 Chapter 33.: Who’ll Stop the Rain
 Chapter 34.: Coming Clean
 Chapter 35.: Just When I Thought I Was Out, They Pull Me Back In
 Chapter 36.: What the Fuck
 Chapter 37.: The Royal Fucking Albert Hall
 Chapter 38.: My Way
 Chapter 39.: I Want to Hold Your Hand
 Chapter 40.: Incurable Romantic Seeks Dirty Filthy Whore
 Chapter 41.: There’s Got to Be a Morning After, or We Can Work It Out
 Chapter 42.: Ain’t No Sunshine
 Chapter 43.: Where Is Oskar Wilde?
 Chapter 44.: Shit Fuck Paris France, or Under My Thumb
 Chapter 45.: You Can’t Always Get What You Want
 Chapter 46.: Leaving on a Jet Plane
 Chapter 47.: Both Sides Now
 Epilogue: Something Good
 
 Discover More
 Acknowledgments
 About the Author
 
 
 Navigation
 
 
 
 
 
 Table of Contents
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
 Copyright © 2023 by Susanna Hoffs
 Cover design by Lucy Kim
 Cover images © Shutterstock
 Cover © 2023 Hchette Book Group, Inc.
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 First Edition: April 2023
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 “What’s New Pussycat?” Words by Hal David. Music by Burt Bacharach. © 1965 (Renewed) United Artists Music Co., Inc. All Rights Controlled and Administered by EMI U Catalog Inc. (Publishing) and Alfred Music (Print). All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission of Alfred Music.
 ISBN 9780316409513
 E3-20230221-NF-DA-ORI
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 PART ONE
 Friday I’m in Love
 
 
 There you stood on the edge of your feather, expecting to fly.
 —Neil Young
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Chapter 1.
 Tears of a Clown
 
 Elevators are like life, when you think about it: You’re either going up or going down. I was dressed like a whore and descending fast, alone, for a “private” in Las Vegas I should never have agreed to. There’s always something a bit creepy about privates. But I was desperate. For so many reasons. If only my luck would change, and this would be the last dodgy gig I’d have to face for a while.
 I was wearing a tiny scrap of fabric posing as a dress, half-hidden beneath my ex-boyfriend’s vintage cardigan, the one possession I’d pinched, for sentimental reasons, when he’d left me for a twenty-three-year-old lingerie model. Two months ago.
 Don’t you dare cry. Not about him, not about this, not now.
 I caught sight of myself reflected in the mirrored doors and flinched. Who the hell is that? Oh right. It’s her. She dances, she sings, she entertains.
 “Hang in there,” I murmured, rallying. “You can do this. A gig is a gig is a gig. The show must go on!”
 The doors slid open on Mezzanine, and Pippa appeared in silhouette, late-afternoon sun flooding in from an outlandish wall of glass, creating the impression of a shimmering halo above her tousled blond hair. Pippa, my angel, best friend, and manager, who’d winged all the way from London to rescue me from despair.
 Our reunion was cut short by a commotion in the corridor. Pippa seemed to vaporize in a blast of white light, and I was knocked back by a warm body barreling blindly, and rather rudely, into the elevator, and me.
 “Sorry! God, so sorry,” said a richly resonant, Australian-accented voice. Two clumsy hands on my shoulders steadied me, and the warmth of them, the weight, sent an unexpected ripple through me. I peered up, caught the flash of a smile (apologetic) and the sweep of long hair (dark and glossy), and was locking eyes with a pair of big blue sparkly ones when Pippa