I don’t know what day it is, nor what time. But I couldn’t care less.
“And will you stay?” I ask.
“Yes,” she replies, giving me what I need to fall back into a dreamless sleep.
CHAPTER 31
PIA
Cassie has such a grown-up house. I am not being facetious when I say that. I mean it genuinely and with no disrespect to her. If anything, I mean it disrespectfully to myself. Because never once in my life have I thought about kitchen appliances or matching crockery or how much cutlery I would need. But here’s Cassie’s kitchen, fully stocked with a microwave, a blender, a waffle maker and a handful of other devices I don’t even recognise. And her fridge has food in it. Actual fresh food. And although I don’t specifically look for it, I haven’t seen a single bottle of liquor or wine anywhere. Not even champagne.
Once I’ve gotten over the shock, I set about trying to make a meal with what is in the fridge and in her just as neatly stocked pantry.
My first attempt is pasta with extra virgin olive oil, fresh cherry tomatoes and a lot of black pepper. My second attempt is a mixed bean salad, with crumbs of feta. I finally feel confident enough to try making rice, how my mom used to, on my third night at Cassie’s house, and my only disappointment is that I don’t have a red or massaman curry to go with it, considering how fluffy it turns out. But Cassie doesn’t seem to mind the chilli steak I make to accompany it. In fact, she tells me many times that it’s the best meal she’s had in weeks. And then she asks me for a shopping list that she can give to her assistant, Nora, who I suppose I’m going to have to apologise to after the way I rudely barged in when I arrived.
“Why don’t you have a house? With a kitchen?” she asks as I’m washing up our dishes. Cassie’s in pajamas and a robe in the little nook with a table. And I’m wearing some silk peach-coloured palazzopants and a matching vest top that I stole from her wardrobe. I’d simply die if anybody saw me wearing this. Apart from Cassie.
I stay at the sink, my back to her as I reply. “I don’t really like LA,” I admit. “So I have never wanted to put down roots here, as you say. If the label finds me a place, I’ll stay in it, but I don’t want to buy or sign a rental agreement or anything like that.”
“Then where does feel like home?”
I stop scrubbing the frying pan. “Nowhere,” I answer honestly. There’s something about Cassie that just pulls these truths out of me. Truths that I buried in the deepest parts of myself a long, long time ago.
“Not Sweden?”
“No,” I scoff. “Definitely not Sweden. Maybe when I’m older. But not now.”
“But there must be somewhere where you want to put down roots, one day.”
“I like being nomadic,” I say, and not for the first time. It’s my default answer to anybody asking me where home is. But for the first time, the words feel hollow.
“But when you’re touring, you know, travelling around the world, there must be places where you think to yourself, I could live here.”
I think about this for a moment as I rinse the pan. “Well, there’s Amsterdam, of course. That was home for a while, and I always like going back. And London. We recorded our first album there, and it’s a good place to be for musicians.”
“But what aboutyou?” Cassie asks, and she’s standing next to me now.
Placing the pan on the drying rack, I wipe my hands with a tea towel she hands me.
“There must be somewhere where you want to be because it’s good for you, not because of music or recording. Just for you.”
Here, I think.Right here with you. Wherever you are, I think that’s the best place for me.“Maybe I’ll find that place one day,” I say. I pull her in close and kiss her neck so she stops asking me questions she doesn’t want the answer to.
CHAPTER 32
CASSIE
“Please, Pia, please,” I beg. I bring her fingers to my mouth and suck on them.
“Cassie,” she growls, but she pulls them away, wipes them on my sheets. “Not yet.”
“I’m fine!” I protest. I’m not. I’m so horny it hurts. Literally, there is an ache between my thighs that no painkiller will take the edge off. Having Pia in my bed night after night, having her walk around my house like it’s also hers, day after day … I don’t know what to do with myself.
“You need more rest.” She pulls away, but I quickly reach out for her. I tug her back down next to me and grab her hand. I place it on my cunt where I’m wet and hot and in agony.
“Fuck, Cassie,” she says. “And they say I’m the evil one out of us two.”
“Who says that?” I ask, so horrified at such a thought that it almost distracts me from my desperate need to have Pia fuck me.