What I Want

Chapter 13

PIA

Isuck hard on my cigarette, and as I release the smoke slowly, I roll my neck because standing at this window for the last few hours is starting to take its toll.

But just as I go back to my cigarette for another drag, I see her.

Or rather, I see the flash of sunshine that is her hair, emerging from the restaurant’s double doors with sunglasses on and a pointless trench coat pulled up high around her neck.

It’s already thirty degrees Celsius in LA and not even June. Fucking ridiculous.

I hold my breath as she takes six steps to a car that’s waiting for her. The restaurant’s doorman is there, opening the rear door, and I feel a pang slice through my heart that that’s all I’m going to get.

Six steps, golden hair bouncing, oversized shades hiding her pretty blue eyes.

But then she pauses before getting in. Cassie looks up, almost exactly in my direction, across the street.

But she doesn’t look up quite high enough.

She wouldn’t see me anyway because I double checked these windows are mostly obscure from the outside.

My breath is still locked in my lungs as she tilts her head to the side, almost imperceptibly, but I see it.

I see her. Her pretty, interesting, English rose face.

And then she moves. Disappears. Into the car, which speeds off like it has somewhere much better to be.

I stay at the window until I’ve finished my cigarette. After stubbing it out, I carry the ashtray with me to the bed that is still made up. Resting my back against the headboard, I gather my legs under me and pick up the telephone, holding it to my good ear.

It takes a minute or so to ring, but only a few more seconds before it’s answered.

“Silver Waters, Michael Sweeney. How can I help you?”

“Mickey, it’s me,” I say.

“Oh, Pia, hi. I did what you asked. I gave her the envelope and—”

“What did she say?” I interrupt.

“Err, not much.”

“What did she say?” I repeat with more force behind every word.

“Well, she asked if you were coming yourself,” he rushes out. “And I said no.”

“Good,” I say and reach for the hip flask of gin I brought with me, taking a quick swig. “What else?”

“She thanked me. For answering her question, I guess. I don’t know. And that was pretty much it.”

“Hmm, what about when she opened the envelope?”

“Oh, she didn’t … She didn’t do that while I was still there. Was I supposed to wait?”

I roll my eyes but hold back the expletive on the tip of my tongue. Mickey’s a good kid. He doesn’t know the … history between me and Cassie. He was just carrying out my orders.

“No, it’s fine,” I reassure him, and maybe myself.

“Right, okay. She’s really pretty,” he says on a soft laugh. “Like even better close up than in all those photos and on TV.”

“I know,” I whisper.

“What?”

“Nothing. That’s all. Can you get a car to come pick me up?”

“Sure, yes, of course. Where are you?”

“Hotel Miramar,” I say. “I’ll be outside in fifteen.”

“But wait … That’s right opposite—”

“Just call me the car, Mickey,” I say, and then I hang up.

“I’ve been trying to call you,” Jon says as soon as he sees me standing on his doorstep. He’s naked from the waist up, a pair of slim-leg jeans hanging low on his hips. I wonder if I’ve interrupted him with someone.

But then I remember I don’t give a fuck.

“I wasn’t at my apartment,” I say and push past him.

“You never are. God knows why the label even pays for that place for you.”

“Not my problem,” I say. I walk into the kitchen, which has floor-to-ceiling windows along one side, offering multi-million-dollar views of the crashing waves on Malibu Beach just outside.

For all the ways Jon moans about this place costing him a fortune, I can almost believe it’s worth it.

Standing at the quartz countertops, watching the sea roll in and out, the horizon so far away, you feel like you’re the only person in the world, which is as terrifying as it is calming.

“We need to get some songs written,” I tell him once he’s in the kitchen with me, opening cupboards and busying himself with what I hope is a pot of coffee.

“Well, Jakob is upstairs, with two others, I hasten to add, but don’t ask me their names.” Jon yawns as he does indeed switch the filter pot on. “And I can call Geert. He landed last night, so I guess he’ll be here in … well, a few hours, I guess. If we’re lucky.”

“I don’t need them,” I say, waving my hand around. “We can write the song together.”

He stops moving and levels me with a hopeful look. “You have an idea.”

“Maybe. Just something that’s been going around my head recently.”

“Tell me more.” He resumes coffee duties.

“It’s nothing, but it is … softer. You know that riff you’ve been working on. I think that could work.”

“Are you saying I am right about us needing to go in a new direction?”

“I didn’t say that,” I spit out, coming closer so I can hear him better because the coffee machine is switched on and it’s an unhelpful amount of background noise. “I just think it might work. And yes, maybe you and Martin have a point that the next album needs … a love song.”

“Wow, you’ve changed,” he says, retrieving mugs and placing them down with a loud clatter. “That’ll be two love songs in two weeks. People will start talking.”

“Two love songs?”

“That ballad you did with Cassie Big Boobs.”

“That’s not a love song.”

“No, fine, I guess it isn’t.” Jon yawns again and shoves his hand down his trousers to scratch … somewhere I don’t want to think about. “But it’s a different tempo for you, which is no bad thing.”

“Let me take over making the coffee.” I knock him out of the way, not wanting his hand anywhere near my much-needed caffeine. “Light me a cigarette.”

He obliges and pops it in my mouth while I pour. We then head to the table by the window and fall into silence as we smoke, our mugs of coffee steam and the Pacific Ocean entertains us.

“So, what’s the song?” Jon says eventually.

“It’s … I think…Look, it’s called ‘Trying to Forget You,’” I say, and I’m not surprised when Jon’s eyebrows lift. But I’m relieved when he doesn’t say anything. “Go get your guitar and I’ll sing it for you.”

“Fuck, Pia, that’s good,” Jakob says from the couch.

He’s been lying there since he emerged from Jon’s guest room just before sunset.

Jon and I had been working on the song for a solid four hours by that point, and we’ve continued to do so long into the night.

We tried calling Geert, but not one of us was surprised when we couldn’t reach him at his hotel.

“You’re almost making me feel something. ”

“That’s just the blow wearing off,” Jon says and passes the joint he’s just lit to Jakob.

“Jag menar det verkligen. Det ?r riktigt bra,” he compliments me in Swedish.

“Tack, tack.” I nod at Jakob, but then go back to running through the chords one more time, humming the melody Jon and I worked out together.

“Sing it again. I think I’m finally ready to cry my heart out about Ayana,” Jakob says as he exhales a large plume of smoke. The telltale herby scent immediately catches my interest, and Jakob holds out the spliff to me, but I don’t feel the need to join in. I’m too busy with this song.

“Maybe in a minute,” I say. “I want to figure out the bridge again.”

“She’s one hell of a perfectionist when she’s sober,” Jon says, and he tucks himself on the end of his couch, placing Jakob’s feet on his lap.

“I’m not…” The words trail away. I am actually sober. My last drink was that swig of gin in the hotel room. Well, fuck. I gesture to the blunt. “Pass me that.”

Jakob hands it over to me. I’m sitting on the coffee table in the middle of the room. I take a long pull and close my eyes.

“I like sober Pia,” Jakob says. “She writes beautiful little love songs.”

“Don’t patronise me,” I hiss at him in Swedish as I exhale.

“I told you both, it turns me on when you both speak Swedish,” Jon says with the kind of smile the media has called a panty-dropper, and maybe I agreed once upon a time. “So don’t start something you can’t finish.”

“You’ll be lucky,” Jakob says. His long, slim body is wearing a white towelling robe that was almost certainly stolen from a hotel. It’s a little small on him, so his forearms and his calves stick out. “I’m still recovering from last night. Brazilians really know how to fuck.”

“I thought they were Argentinian?” Jon frowns at him. I’m only half-listening as I go back to strumming on Jon’s guitar.

“Nope. He was from Rio, and she was from … somewhere else. But definitely Brazil.”

“Nice,” Jon says.

“I did invite you to join in.”

Jon has a thoughtful look on his face as he leans back against the couch cushions. “I know, but I wasn’t feeling it.”

“What the fuck is happening here?” Jakob exclaims. “She’s sober and writing love songs”–he points at me–“and you’re not interested in group sex.”

“Don’t you get bored?” I snap, bored of this pointless chatter.

“Bored?” Jakob repeats, and Jon lifts his head to look at me with curiosity.

“Yeah, with all the … mindless fucking. All the different … bodies.”

Jakob and Jon look at each other and then both burst out laughing.

“Fine,” I say. I kick Jon’s feet off the coffee table as I storm past. “I’m going to bed.”

“But it’s only eleven,” Jon calls out, but I’m already halfway to the door, his guitar still in my hand.

“I’m tired,” I say and then walk further away so I can’t hear them.

Upstairs, I find one of the guest rooms that still looks neatly made up.

I’m grateful to Jon’s small army of housekeepers and that his architect gave each guest room its own bathroom.

I take a long shower, clean my teeth – with one of the clean toothbrushes he no doubt stocks for passing lovers – and then slip into bed naked.

The guitar stands against the wall by the door, and I stare at its shadows before my eyes finally start to close.

I thought I’d feel something like closure after sending that message to Cassie. I thought I’d have pushed myself so far in one direction that I’d stop wanting to run in the other, just because I’d have no choice. I thought I was right to close a door, but now I wish I’d kept it open.

I tell myself it’s just today. I’ll only feel this way today. Tomorrow, I’ll feel better. Especially if Jon and I can finish the song. If I can exorcise whatever these feelings are and put them into a song, then I’ll stop feeling this way.

I should have had a drink, I think, as the nausea in my stomach has me curling up in a ball under the sheets.

Jon and Jakob’s laughter bounces up from downstairs, and part of me considers going down there, drinking and smoking more with them.

Maybe even falling into bed with one or both of them.

Maybe that’s what I need to do to forget Cassie fucking Everard.

But my interest in doing so evaporates just as quickly as it appears.

I don’t know what I want, but I know I don’t want that.

Instead, I think about “Trying to Forget You,” and I come up with a brand-new verse that feels like the perfect end to the song. I replay it over and over in my mind, thinking about how Cassie does this – creates songs in that brain of hers. It makes me smile despite myself.

Even so, it’s a great relief when sleep finally comes and takes me.

I sleep for ten hours. The sun is high in a cloudless blue sky when I wake, and there’s clattering downstairs, which tells me Jon and Jakob’s night hasn’t finished, or maybe one of them is up surprisingly early.

With my stomach growling with hunger, I decide to go and find out.

Just as I walk out of bed, I see Jon’s guitar by the wall, and the song we worked on instantly fills my brain.

The lyrics, the melody, the way it’s about Cassie Everard.

And then I remember the Polaroid I sent her.

I sigh. Maybe I’ll feel better about it in a few more days.

Picking up the guitar, I take it with me downstairs and into the kitchen, where Jon is drinking a large glass of water. He is also dripping wet, a towel wrapped around his waist.

“Wow, you actually can drink water,” I joke.

“Yeah, apparently it’s good for you.” He shrugs with a lopsided grin.

“Conspiracy theories,” I tsk while preparing the coffee machine.

“Don’t tell anyone” – he leans back against the counter – “but I like to get up early sometimes, go for a surf with the fit and healthy people.”

“Your secret is safe with me.” I wink at him. I think I like sober Jon, too.

“Wanna finish that song?” he asks.

“Yes, definitely,” I say. I want it out of my system for good.

“Oh, Silver Waters sent something for you.” He points at the countertop. There’s an envelope lying next to a pot plant, which looks surprisingly healthy.

“Oh? Just for me?”

“Yep, it’s got your name on it.”

I pick it up and am surprised by how thin it feels. Almost like it’s empty. Turning it over, I don’t recognise the handwriting, and there’s no branding on the envelope.

I rip it open.

Inside is a photo. A Polaroid photo.

I pull it out, and my smile is immediate and uncontrollable.

It’s a headless torso dressed in a grey T-shirt that used to be mine.

It has been cut open straight down the middle.

Full breasts are partially visible, but the nipples are – devastatingly – covered by the material.

In the centre of the photo is a hand. Cassie’s hand, her middle finger erect and pointed right at me.

Her nail is round and painted a baby pink, the same colour her toenails were that night.

Laughter rumbles out of me.

“What is it?” Jon asks, stepping closer.

I clutch the photo to my chest. “Oh, nothing.”

He gives me a puzzled look, but I don’t entertain it. Instead, still smiling, I look back at the photo and hear her message loud and clear.

Fuck. You. Too.