Chapter 6
CASSIE
My vision blurs. My mind fizzes. My pulse speeds up, and I feel the telltale tingle of perspiration down my spine.
And yet in all this chaos, I see my two choices very clearly.
I can deny what Pia is implying. I can laugh it off.
I can explain my dazed expression on tiredness, the smoke in the room, the emotional hangover I feel at sharing – finally!
– my struggles with reading and writing with someone.
I can navigate this conversation back out of unchartered and dangerous waters.
Or I can tell her she’s right. I don’t hate her.
Not at all. I’m intrigued by her. She fascinates me.
I find her beautiful and arresting and unsettling, and so very exciting.
I can tell her that in these few hours we’ve spent together, I’ve struggled to breathe in a normal rhythm.
It’s been hard to concentrate, and I only found focus when I closed my eyes and lost myself to the song.
But even then, I was thinking of her. I was literally singing the words to her, to this woman that other people made my nemesis, but really, right now, in this moment, she has become something close to an obsession, and all at my own doing.
“You’re right,” I say, and I swear I can feel her body warm mine, even though we’re not touching. “I don’t hate you.”
Pia’s little smirk doesn’t go anywhere.
“I don’t hate anyone,” I add, and her lips flatten into a straight line. “It’s you and the rest of your band who have no time for us. It’s you who seems to hate me, with what you’ve said in the press and the way you act whenever we’re in the same room together.”
Pia blinks at me. “You think I hate you?”
“I know you do.” I busy myself with the papers and pen so I can avoid her gaze. “I know you’re only doing this because your manager gave you no choice.”
“You think my manager has that much control over me?” She scoffs. “Nobody has that much control over me. I do what I want when I want. Full fucking stop.”
“So you don’t hate me?” I ask. I wish my voice didn’t sound so fragile.
Pia’s lips curve into a slow smile. “You really have no idea, do you?”
Her eyes pull me in again. Once more, she’s a cat, hiding her thoughts, her motivation, her next move. She gives me just enough to encourage my imagination to conjure up the wildest fantasies, the most impossible dreams, the sweetest of illusions. I feel like I’m falling into a trap – her trap.
“We need to work on the chorus,” I say after clearing my throat loudly.
“Yes, we do,” Pia agrees after a beat. “And I need to help you with your writing.”
“I don’t see how you’re—” I’m interrupted when Pia reaches over me and grabs the papers and pen. On my next inhale, my nose is full of her smoky, spiced scent, and it’s almost dizzying.
“So, my brother found that writing on blank paper made life extra difficult, so we’re going to need some lines here,” Pia says as she starts drawing surprisingly straight lines horizontally across the paper. “And we’re going to write clearly and in short lines. Just a few words.”
She then starts to sing her first verse – the amended version – slowly as she writes the words, skipping a line after each refrain to keep the lyrics more spaced out.
The words aren’t immediately clear to me, but when I recall what she just sang, they start to come into clearer view.
Pia then goes back to the first line and starts to fill the blank line with … with doodles.
“And one of his teachers encouraged him to use visual prompts as much as possible,” Pia explains as she draws two eyes and then a featureless face with hair in my exact style. On the next blank line, she draws a bed.
“You’re good at drawing,” I say.
“I know.” Pia leans back and admires her work. “Maybe I should have gone down that route instead of being a rockstar. Probably wouldn’t have made as much money, but maybe I’d have been happier.”
I open my mouth to interrogate her on that statement, but then close it when I remember it’s not my place. Besides, Pia has moved on, drawing more visual prompts next to the corresponding words.
“Now sing your verse, slowly,” she says, the pen poised in her hand to write the words.
I do as I’m told and watch as Pia writes more words on the page.
“Fuck you,” she says when I stop singing.
“Pardon?”
She shakes her head and doesn’t look at me, already drawing her own black hair. “You have the most beautiful voice,” she laughs to herself. “In fact, maybe I do hate you, because I’ll never sing like that.”
I’m overcome with a red-hot blush that feels like it encompasses my whole body, but I know for certain it’s visible in my cheeks, so I look the other way, pretending to comb my hair with my fingers.
“Don’t do that,” Pia says. I turn back to her.
“Do what?”
“Deprive me of the sight of you blushing.” Her eyes roam my face. “Not when it makes you look so pretty.”
I freeze. Her words. The way she’s looking at me. It’s absolutely a trap. It’s right there in front of me. And suddenly, I want to fall into it. I want her to grab me. I want to be trapped.
My hand moves. It’s lifting off my knee and going above the table.
It travels towards Pia’s face, and she watches it.
When it touches her cheek, I inhale sharply, and Pia’s eyes snap to mine.
I hold my breath as I apply more pressure, curling my fingers around the shape of her face, my fingertips resting on those world-famous cheekbones.
I wait for her to shrug me off. For her to give me a derisive comment. For her to laugh at me, or worse, to swear and curse at me like the world has seen her do countless times in interviews. But she does the very opposite. She closes her eyes and leans into my touch.
This is a version of Pia I’ve never seen before.
Not that I’ve seen many versions of her.
Maybe, it’s as simple as me never seeing the real her but rather what the newspaper and magazines portray her to be, what the record label wants us to think, an image that other people have projected onto her, and stupidly, I’ve swallowed their lies.
Until now.
“Pia,” I say, and of course my voice is croaky and hoarse. But Pia doesn’t seem to notice or care.
“Yes, Cassie,” she says, still leaning into the palm of my hand.
“Can I kiss you?”
She blinks at me, and when her lids lift, her eyes are darker than I’ve ever seen them.
“You want to kiss me?”
“Yes,” I say, although it’s more of a gasp for air. “I really do.”
“Well, come here then,” she says with a sly smile as she reaches for me.
Even before her mouth touches mine, even before her breath ghosts over my lips, I feel a sense of peace I haven’t experienced in years, if ever.
Just by closing my eyes and leaning closer to her, I feel like I’m moving in the right direction for the first time in my life.
Like I’ve pulled off an endless dull highway and now I’m on the most scenic road in the world.
At the same time, I feel like I’m being grounded in place but not weighed down.
Not at all. I am light, I am unburdened, I am free.
I wonder if it’s because I’m about to kiss a woman for the first time, or if it’s because I’m finally, finally doing something for myself.
Something that I’ve been told is wrong and unseemly and a sin.
Something that speaks to the darkness inside me when the whole world wants me to be a ray of sunshine.
But as my world goes dark behind my closed lids, and Pia’s lips press gently against mine, so gingerly the touch is barely there, it’s deeply ironic that my vision fills with brightness, with clarity, with endless light.
I expect Pia’s tender touch to develop quickly into a push, a force, a taking, but it doesn’t, and that seems so unlike her.
It also seems unlike me when I take it upon myself to deepen the kiss, bringing my other hand to her face so I can I hold her in place.
I shift to the edge of my chair and put all that I am behind my kiss as I try to nudge her mouth open — because I want more.
Her lips are too soft. Her touch is too delicate.
Her hesitancy is too torturous. What I want is more.
A little hardness, a desperate touch, a kiss with no hesitation at all.
It takes a second or two, but finally, with a perfect little moan, Pia opens her lips, and her hands find my waist, and her tongue touches mine, and oh sweet Jesus, yes…
This is what I want. I think this is what I’ve always wanted.
And then I can feel everything. Her teeth. Her tongue. Her lips. Her nails digging into my hips. Her hair brushing against my forehead. Her exhales and her inhales.
In no time at all, Pia isn’t the only one moaning.
It’s me. I’m making all the noise as I sigh and pant and hum my way through the most exciting kiss of my life.
With each sound I make and with each clash of our teeth, a tiny voice in my head warns me that Pia will pull away any second, that she will laugh at my clumsiness and my desperation, she will berate me for making so much noise from just a simple kiss.
But she doesn’t. She matches me stroke for stroke, nibble for nibble, moan for moan, until I have to pull away because I’m suddenly aware of how wet my underwear is, how hard my nipples are, and I know I’m standing on the cliff of wanting even more.
Of wanting Pia’s hands inside my clothes, of wanting her naked skin on mine.
And that’s a step too far.
Isn’t it?
Keeping my hands on her face, I press my forehead against hers, our famous fringes blending. If only those blood-sucking journalists could see our bangs right now. They’d have to come up with something better than “Battle of the Bangs.”
“Pia, I…” But I don’t finish. I can’t finish. I’m out of breath and out of words.