“Please, Cassie…” She grabs my hands and squeezes them. Her eyes shine with moisture. “If you love me, please. I don’t want to talk about this now. But we will, I promise you, we will.”
And I believe her. She’s never lied to me before, and maybe I’m just not used to that because all I feel the men in my life have done is lie.
I’m about to reply when she drops my hands. Pia brings her index finger to her lips and then flattens that hand and taps it on top of her left hand, which is balled into a fist.
She’s signing “I promise,” and I can’t help but smile.
We’ve spent many hours learning sign language over the last few days, and it thrills me more than it should to feel like we now have this almost secret language we can share.
In the same moment, it becomes so startlingly clear how much I don’t mind this kind of secret with Pia. But keeping our relationship a secret … that sends a shiver down my spine.
“Cassie,” Pia says, and then she signs “I promise” again.
I nod and slowly sign, “Okay.”
And then she pulls me into her body and hugs me so tightly that it’s hard to breathe.
CHAPTER 41
PIA
Istare at her sleeping for a long time. Minutes pass, and I don’t move. My car is outside, my bags already in the trunk, and I know I’m going to be late getting to LAX. But still, I don’t move.
What if I just stayed here?
What if I didn’t go on tour?
What if I gave it all up to live with Cassie, support her dreams, cook her meals, take care of her?
It’s more appealing than I would have ever imagined, but it’s not what I want.
Yes, I want Cassie. But I also want to write songs and sing them and tell fans through my music to fuck anybody who gets in their way.
So why can’t I follow my own advice?
I know the answer. It’s easy.
Because now I have something to lose. I havesomeoneto lose.
It’s easy to go tell people to fuck themselves when you don’t care about them.
It’s easy to tell other people to get angry and to rebel and to be loud and take up space when you are consumed with nothing but that anger.
It’s easy to throw punches and pull hair and use my stiletto as a weapon when the only person I was putting at risk was myself.
It felt easy when the preppy librarian journalist was interviewing us to come out and say, “We’re women who like to kiss other women,” because that’s all it was. Kissing. Fucking. Showing that the world puts stupid fucking rules on what we do behind closed doors.
But now, we wouldn’t be saying that. We’d be saying “we’re women wholoveeach other” and I am not sure I want to fuck with that.
Now, I have so much more at risk.
I haveeverythingto lose, I think as I stare at Cassie sleeping, her hair spread out across the pillow, one hand above her head and the other on her stomach.
And I won’t do it. I won’t risk Cassie.
Maybe that’s why I’m considering sneaking out before she wakes up.
I know I was asking a lot of her when I requested that we don’t talk about the future, about going public. I know it was unfair and cowardly and downright selfish, and I’ve felt all of that as an undercurrent during the last four days as we saw in a new year by making love countless times and seeing nobody but each other.