“There’s something else,” Nora says, and a small smile appears on her face. “But this time, better news.”
“Oh?”
“You’ve been nominated for a Grammy.”
“The album? But that can’t be. It was released too late last year…”
“No, not Evergreene. You. And Pia Lindberg.”
“‘What I Want’ has been nominated?”
“Yes, for best single.”
Despite the pain, the nausea, the exhaustion, my heart picks up its rhythm. Pia’s image fills my mind. I wonder what she thinks about this.
“Oh, wow,” I say softly.
“Aaaand…”
“And?”
“And they’d like you both to perform the song at the awards ceremony in February next year.”
My heart’s happy rhythm flatlines.
“What did Pia say?”
Nora looks surprised by my question. “Oh, I don’t know. But Kevin thinks you should do it,” she says.
“Of course he does,” I scoff before wincing when another shot of pain sears into the right side of my temple where the stitches are pulled tight over my swollen skin.
I dread to think what I look like.
Well, that has to be one advantage of Pia being on the other side of the Atlantic right now. At least she isn’t going to see me looking like this.
“You should sleep,” Nora says. “We can pick this up after you’ve had some rest.”
I nod, too tired to argue and too preoccupied by everything Nora has just told me to make more effort to be coherent.
“I’ll check on you in a few hours, see if you need anything.”
“Thank you, Nora,” I say, and then I roll over onto my better side and pray that sleep comes to take me away from having to make sense of all this new chaos that is my life.
I wake to shouting voices, and it makes me freeze in place, lying in my bed, my eyes wide open. The light in my bedroom has changed–it’s darker–meaning I’ve slept most of the day, but when I realise the pressure in my head has eased, I know I needed it.
Straining to hear what’s being shouted, and from where in my house, I stop breathing when I realise I recognise both voices, and one of them is getting louder, closer to me.
I’m sitting up as Pia bursts through the door. She’s looking back at Nora behind her and telling her, “I’ll leave if she tells me to,” but as soon as she sees me, she stops talking and stops moving.
Her eyes scan my whole body up and down and then back up again. Her face creases into a person I’ve never seen before. She looks horrified and terrified and so very fragile, like she might shatter like glass.
I must look awful. I bring a hand to my face as if to shield myself from her view, and that prompts her to move.
Pia rushes towards me, sits on my bed and grips my wrist. She brings my hand away from my face, and those wise brown eyes search me. Slowly, she lowers my hand into the cradle of her other palm, and then she schools away the fear that wrinkles her brow, and she smiles.
It’s the most beautiful smile I’ve ever seen. And maybe it’s the painkillers I’m on, but in that moment, I know it’s a smile I want to see every day for the rest of my life.
“Cassie, shall I—” Nora speaks from somewhere near the door. But I don’t look for her. I can’t take my eyes off Pia.