Chapter 19
PIA
When she reaches for me, the pain in my body finally stops screaming.
As she pulls me into her hotel suite and closes the door, I finally feel like my lungs can fill completely for the first time in months.
When her hands grip my forearms, cautiously, and she sits me down on the bed, I fight to stay upright.
Because all I want to do is crawl into her bed, to smell her rose scent on the sheets and fall asleep with my face buried in her perfect fucking hair.
“What happened?”
“Got drunk,” I offer. “Got in a fight.”
“Well, I could have guessed both of those things from this shiner and the way your breath smells.”
“You should see the other girl.”
“Girl? Knocking out six-foot-plus men got boring for you?”
“I didn’t knock him out. Only his tooth.”
“Oh, Pia,” she says, and she cups the better side of my face in her hand. “You’re a mess.”
“That pretty much sums it up.”
“But … why?”
I look up at her. Those big blue eyes. Those pink lips.
Those tiny freckles that not one article has ever mentioned, even all the stupid fucking beauty tips ones she’s done for Cosmopolitan.
How could they not mention how fucking pretty her freckles are, j?vla idioter?
And her hair. How is it still so fucking glorious when she just got out of bed?
“I saw … something.”
With a big sigh, she sits down next to me. “Oh.”
“Yeah, in a newspaper.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And I didn’t like it.”
“Right.”
“And Geert needed a drinking buddy, so … we went out drinking.”
“Where did you go?”
“Easy questions only, please.” I hold up a hand, but even that hurts, so I drop it again. “There were a lot of bars. A nightclub, I think. Maybe two.”
“You … you didn’t want to come to a concert instead?”
I turn to look at her so quickly it hurts my neck. Or maybe that’s from being pushed down a flight of stairs. “You expected me to be there?”
“Expected? No. Hoped? Maybe.”
My cold, dead heart kicks once at that.
“How did it go?”
“I put on the show everyone wanted.”
“But what about you? Did you enjoy it?”
“I enjoyed … singing. The fans … they were asking for ‘What I Want.’”
“Huh.” My body lifts in a rough laugh. I guess our six weeks at number one really did mean people loved that stupid fucking song that ruined my life. It’s a bitter thought, but my smile is real as I speak. “Can you imagine if I’d been there? If I’d come up on stage?”
She takes a moment to reply, but when she does, it’s worth the wait. “I wish you had.”
“Not tonight, my English rose.” I shake my head. “I was too busy pulling this bitch’s hair out.”
“What did she even do?”
“She … called me a name,” I say, spine straightening despite the aches everywhere in every bone.
“What do you mean?” Cassie turns her head. I can feel her eyes on me, but I don’t meet her gaze.
“When you look like me, you get called certain things. And I don’t like it very much.”
“That’s … not okay. Wait, where was Geert in all this?”
“Doing lines in the toilets. And then he took the woman, den j?vla fittan, home.”
“What?” There is horror in Cassie’s voice and on her pretty, pretty face.
I shrug. “He has a lot of issues.”
“We all have issues,” Cassie snorts. “That doesn’t give you an excuse to be a terrible friend.”
“Wow, pretty and clever and with the voice of an angel,” I say. “No wonder the whole world loves you.”
“The whole world doesn’t…” She sighs, like she’s given up the idea of fighting my sarcasm. Wise move.
For a long minute, we just look at each other. Her eyes search my face, and I wish it wasn’t all bruised and damaged. I wish I could interpret her assessing look as admiration and not disappointment or disgust.
I drop eye contact.
“So, what does it mean?” I ask, aware now of a throbbing headache in my temple. I rub at it pointlessly.
“What does what mean?”
“The photo.”
“Oh, that.” She turns her head away.
“Yeah, that.”
“It means nothing,” she says. “It was Stephan. He’s such a…”
“Dick? Wanker? Rov? Horunge? Rá-yam?”
“I don’t know what half of those words mean, but yes, that’s what he is.”
“I think I hate him,” I say, and I lean more of my weight against her body because holding myself up is getting harder and harder, but also, I want to touch her. I want her warmth. I crave it. I crave her.
“You don’t know him,” she says, and she finds my hand, places it in hers. “If you really knew him, you’d know you hate him.”
I laugh, but that makes me feel like there are shards of glass between my ribs, so I stop and just lean my head on Cassie’s shoulder.
In the silence that follows, I realise she must be exhausted. It was the opening night of her tour. She can’t have had much sleep, if any. And here I am, barging in with all my fucking drama and stinky breath.
“I’m sorry I came,” I tell her, readying myself to leave.
“I’m not,” she says, and she grips my hand tighter. “Will you let me clean you up?”
I don’t know if she means literally or metaphorically, but I know the answer to either question immediately.
“Yes.”
“That’s better,” Cassie says with a soft smile.
I should feel relieved that I’m cleaned up, that I may no longer look like the troll I feel, but I don’t.
I feel sad that I am now expected to move from sitting on the closed toilet lid.
I don’t want to. It’s been medicine enough to just sit here and look up at Cassie as she wipes away blood, mascara and God knows what else from my face.
“Thank you,” I say, but I don’t move.
She also doesn’t take her hand away from under my chin.
“You don’t even seem that drunk,” she says.
I shrug and regret it instantly because it prompts her to take her hand away. “I sobered up pretty quickly after I was pushed down a flight of stairs.”
Cassie steps back and leans against the vast vanity in this ridiculously opulent bathroom. “One day you’re going to get seriously hurt. You need to be more careful.”
“Okay, Mom,” I snort and stand up, messing with my hair in the reflection behind her.
“I don’t get it,” she says. “You have all this talent. So much potential. A whole brilliant future ahead of you. And you choose to get in bar brawls and build this reputation for yourself as some rebel with, actually, not much of a cause.”
I pin my gaze on her, defensiveness sparking to life in the pit of my stomach. “What would you rather I do? Sing love songs about men who treat me like shit? Live in the shadow of religious trauma? Let others define me and decide who I am?”
Cassie’s head rears back like I’ve hit her. “I don’t … That’s not who I am,” she says with far too little authority.
“I didn’t say it was,” I say, and I catch the smirk on my face in the mirror’s reflection, and fuck, it’s ugly. “Anyway, it was our last hurrah. We fly to Europe tomorrow.”
“Right,” Cassie says, and she starts tidying up the things she was using to clean me up.
“Which means I won’t see you again for a long time,” I add. It’s a test of her reaction, and also mine.
She stops moving. “I suppose not,” she replies without looking at me.
“How does that make you feel?” I ask.
When she finds my gaze in the mirror, it almost feels like answer enough. Her blue eyes on me are almost all the answer I need to any question, but then I notice there’s no sparkle there.
“What do you want from me?” she asks so softly, it’s like a line in a song she’s humming to herself as she tries to put a verse together.
I blink. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“And you didn’t answer mine.”
I turn to the side so I can look her right in her eyes. For real this time. “Tonight, last night, whatever, was the first time I drank in weeks,” I tell her. She may not know it, but it’s an answer to her question.
“Oh,” is all she says in return.
“I didn’t even want to. Definitely didn’t enjoy it. I … I’m writing the best songs of my life at the moment,” I say, and Cassie frowns at the change in direction of the conversation. “And each one is about you.”
“Oh,” she says again, but there’s so much more depth in it, just like there’s so much more colour in her cheeks now.
“It’s cute and all,” I tell her, revelling in how I have her full attention. “But it’s also getting kind of annoying. I don’t want to only be writing unrequited love songs for the rest of my life.”
“Pia, I…” she begins with clear determination, but then the words disappear and so does the light in her eyes again. “I don’t know what to tell you.”
“The truth.” I tuck her hair behind her ear. “Tell me the truth.”
“I think about you all the time,” she says on an exhale, like it’s a great relief to push the words out of her body. “And I don’t know what that means.”
“I think,” I say, stepping closer and tucking another strand behind her other ear. “It means that we’re fucked.”
Her face melts into a smile. “That’s what I was afraid of.”
We gaze into each other’s eyes for a long time, and then I yawn. And she yawns.
“What time do you fly out tomorrow?” Cassie asks.
“Late. It’s an overnight flight.”
“Okay, well, I have rehearsal in the afternoon, but will you stay? Here? With me? Until then?”
I should take my time to reply. I should weigh up the many ways this will fuck me up more than a badly-dressed white girl with a terrible perm pushing me down the stairs. But I don’t.
I answer immediately. “Yes, I’ll stay. Here. With you. Until you have to go.”