Chapter 14
Julie
“You’re not bleeding, turns out,” Helena said softly, although I wasn’t fucking listening, because I was sitting in Helena Warrick’s apartment with her boobs pressed into my back and her fingers working carefully through my hair.
Holy shit. I was glad she was sitting behind me and couldn’t see the way I was probably the lovely blotchy red of a rotten tomato.
“But you do have a bad lump… here, and here. How have you felt? Dizziness? Lack of concentration?”
“How have I… what?”
She sighed frustratedly, sinking back into the couch, giving my shoulder a squeeze. “Lack of concentration, then, I’m guessing.”
Oh, shit. Right. She had said that. “I’m—I’m feeling perfectly fine, honestly. I didn’t even realize I had an injury.”
“You just completely clocked out on me, Houdini.”
Rah—what was the use of dignity at this point? “That had nothing to do with my head and everything to do with you being pressed into my back and touching me.”
“Oh.” She relaxed, and she laughed. I burned with embarrassment, and, um, a little bit of arousal as well.
I was too tired to be turned on. Or at least, I thought I was, until Helena led me into her apartment, took my jacket off, sat me down on the couch, and pressed herself into me while she ran her fingers through my hair.
I could have been dead and I’d still be turned on by that.
The apartment was nice—she’d warned me beforehand about the mess, and I’d rolled my eyes assuming there would be one coffee cup out on a draining rack and that would be it, but it was actually a little cluttered, knickknacks scattered out on surfaces, a few jackets and bags slung over the backs of chairs or the arm of the sofa, cardboard boxes broken down next to the front door.
Honestly, what a relief. I worried I’d feel like I was in a showroom and I wasn’t allowed to sit down or I’d dirty it.
Also, she called the place cozy, and I hoped she meant in terms of the décor.
It was—warm colors and plenty of textiles making the place feel lived-in.
But also, it was a two-bedroom apartment in Tribeca.
If she meant it as in small, I was even more embarrassed about my literal laundry supply closet I lived in.
“You still need to take off the rest of the night,” she said softly, and I bristled.
“I really appreciate this, but I cannot afford to—”
“Yes, you can. What you cannot afford is to hurt yourself more and go to the hospital. How much have you been sleeping?”
I winced. “Um… more than zero.”
She stood up from the couch, walked around me, and sat down again in front of me this time, her hands on my knees, and I think I lost my fucking mind. I was in Helena Warrick’s apartment, with her hands on my legs. “You,” she said, her eyes fiery and intense, “are worrying me.”
“Ah… well, isn’t that the show? Everyone thinks there’s no way out, but Houdini pulls off a great escape again. The crowd goes wild!”
She shifted closer. Holy shit. I forgot what I was saying.
She put her hands on my shoulders, so close now I could count her eyelashes, and I forgot what I was saying somehow even harder.
“This isn’t a show,” she said. “This is you neglecting yourself. And as someone who cares about you, I’m not ignoring that. ”
Oh, god. I wanted to cry, because she didn’t care about me, she cared about the person she thought I was, and I had to tell her at this rate, but I had no idea how.
Or I guess it didn’t matter how, because after coming this far, not only would she realize I was a loser she had no reason to talk to, but also she’d hate me for lying to her.
I should have told her earlier on, when I didn’t care about her as much, when it wasn’t going to crush my soul as much as it was now.
“Maybe I have a magic trick to heal myself,” I said, my voice wobbling.
Wanted to cry might have been generous. She put her hands on my cheeks, and it was a wonder I didn’t pass out.
“Cassandra,” she said, and it made me cry harder, like the dumbass I was, reminding me she only cared about someone I wasn’t.
She misinterpreted it, wiping my tears away with her thumbs, which was so sweet and so tender and so good and I wished she hated me and had someone better in her life, someone who wasn’t a stupid-ass loser who lied constantly because of a fucking white guy in a durag called Kingmaker.
“Cassandra,” she whispered, leaning in closer.
“Hey. You’re safe here, okay? Nobody’s going to hurt you here. ”
“It was a pothole,” I cried. “It’s not going to get me anywhere except in that one spot. They don’t move.”
“I mean, in New York I think they do.”
“Okay, point taken, but I’ve never seen one climb stairs. Not yet. Never say never.”
“Does he know where you live?”
“The pothole?”
“Cassandra.”
“Oh my god, Helena, he didn’t do this. I literally fell off my moped.”
“My question still stands.” She didn’t take her hands off my cheeks, and my heart was pounding so hard I thought I’d throw up. Somehow, I managed to shake my head.
“I don’t think he’s even looking for me. He’s busy with a different woman.” Namely, his actual wife. Helena’s eyes widened.
“He’s with somebody else?”
“He has been. I’m not unhappy about it. I’m sure she’s a lovely woman and much better suited to him than I am.”
She looked at me with galaxies of emotions in her eyes, and frankly I don’t think anyone had ever looked at me like that. My literal girlfriend hadn’t looked at me like that. “You said you haven’t been separated from him for long…”
“I haven’t been… going to events and things… without him, for long.”
“Oh, Cassandra,” she said, her voice cracking, and I wanted to scream. She was being so kind and caring and sympathetic towards someone who didn’t exist. “I’m so sorry.”
“You really don’t need to be.” My hand betrayed me, moving to where her knee was touching mine on the couch. “Will you believe me now that I hit my head while driving?”
She gave me a sad little smile, eyes crinkling with tears in the corners. “That’s what happens when you try driving on zero goddamn sleep, Cassandra.”
“I just… have a lot of places to be.”
“Like the fucking emergency room at this rate.”
“Who ever landed in the emergency room driving five miles an hour?”
“God, you’re pissing me off,” she laughed. “You scared me to death. Stay here tonight. What do you want to eat?”
Oh, shit. I hadn’t had a proper hot meal in… uh… a long time. Disgustingly, the closest I’d gotten to a real meal in months was Tasty Slice. “I’m not taking your food,” I said, and she smiled.
“Listen to yourself. You’re not taking my food, you’re taking a restaurant’s food. We’re ordering in. Tell me what you want.”
“I’m not taking your money to obtain food that would otherwise go to you, Miss Loopholes.”
“Tell me,” she said, gripping her fingers into my hair and punctuating each word hard, “what you want, or I swear to god, I am going to tie you down and scroll Doordash with you until you pick something.”
“Uh. That’s not as threatening as I think you think it is.”
She smiled. My face burned.
“Let’s maybe pretend I didn’t say that.”
“We’ll see if we need to get the bondage tape involved.”
“Bondage tape? Why do you have bondage tape?”
She smiled wider, eyes sparkling. “Why do you think I have bondage tape, Houdini?”
“Oh. Uh.” I think I was overheating. She tugged lightly on a lock of my hair, and my libido was suddenly Godzilla tearing down the city.
“It’s for good girls who do as I say.”
“Jesus Christ. Um.”
“So now be a good girl and tell me what you want to eat.”
That really was not fair. “I could go for Chinese,” I said meekly. She grinned.
“Good choice. Have you ever had hong shao rou?”
“You vastly overestimate my palate if you think I know the actual Chinese names of any of the dishes, so I’m gonna guess no.”
“There’s a place close to here that comes with Linyue’s highest recommendation, and she doesn’t recommend things lightly, let alone Shanghai-style Chinese restaurants.
The only problem is that they load you up with so much meat you feel like you can’t move for a week, so I am going to order us a few dishes, and then I will put on some frozen vegetables, and we will have a nice meal before you get some rest.”
I wanted to protest, but god it was hot when she told me in that slightly patronizing voice exactly what we were going to do. Still, I protested a little. “I can help. In the kitchen.”
Laughter danced in her eyes. “You think I need help putting frozen vegetables in the microwave, Cassandra?”
“Well…”
“Sure. You can make drinks.”
“God. Thank you. I hate feeling like I’m being a burden.”
She brushed her thumb over my cheek one more time before she stood up, and then I think I must have hit my head harder than I realized, because I suddenly had a very vivid hallucination of her bending over and pressing a kiss to the top of my head.
“Come join me whenever you’re ready,” she said, turning back towards the conjoined kitchen, and I took a minute slowly blinking, trying to remember how to use my body.
That was a nice hallucination. I needed to hit my head more often.
Helena was clearly placating me a little, because there really wasn’t much to do, but I felt impossibly blissful moving around her kitchen with her, as she showed me what was where in her refrigerator and her cabinets.
I put on tea and, at her request, set out to make cocktails, even though I protested I had no idea how to make cocktails, and we laughed together as I tried mixing things, sampling them to mixed results.
She put on some music not long before the food arrived—a little John Legend, which was completely in line with the music I’d expected from her—and we sat with tea, dubious cocktails we’d invented together, and food that smelled so good it made my stomach cramp.