“Everyone.” Pia rolls her eyes and gently takes her hand away. The kiss she leaves on my forehead feels like both an insult and a blessing.
“They wouldn’t, you know,” I tell her. “If they could see the way you’re looking after me.”
Pia doesn’t say anything. Just nods her head, lifts my fingers to her mouth, kisses my knuckles, then drops them and rolls away.
“Pia,” I beg, even if there’s a threatening edge to my voice.
“Cassie,” she matches my tone.
“Ugh!” I ball my hands into fists and slam them down on the bed.
Pia has the audacity to laugh as she gets off the bed. “Nora filled our fridge with all the ingredients I asked for. It’s time for me to make you the besttom kha gaiof your life.”
“I’m still angry,” I say with a pout.
“I can see that.” Pia walks to my side of the bed and gives me another forehead kiss. “So you don’t want any?”
“I want!” I say quickly. Too quickly. Pia’s meals have just gotten better and better each passing day.
“Okay, I’ll get cooking.” Pia walks to the door but stops before leaving. “By the way, I’ll know if you touch yourself.”
“So? What then?” If I’m honest, I’d not even thought about it. But now I am.
“Oh, I don’t know.” She pauses. “Then I’ll make you wait an extra day. Or two.”
“I hate you!” I say, but the lift in my lips betrays me.
“Oh, I know.” She grins back at me. “You and Martin and the rest of the world.”
I open my mouth to contest that, to interrogate it further, but Pia’s gone, leaving me a tight coil of desire and confusion.
CHAPTER 33
PIA
“Well, that was a shitshow,” I say, after replacing the phone on the wall.
“It didn’t sound great.” Cassie shuffles over on the piano stool so I can sit next to her.
We’re in her music room and California’s bright afternoon sun is filtering through the patio windows. Cassie has been back on her feet for a few days, but most afternoons, I see her energy dipping so I insist on her taking a nap. But never alone. I follow her everywhere, telling her to take her meds, making sure she drinks enough water.
For the last few days, I’ve been batting away her advances as she becomes not only stronger but hornier, apparently. I shouldn’t enjoy teasing her so much, and it’s getting harder by the hour, but I need her to take this rest while she can. But today, when Cassie said she wanted to sit at her piano and play with some melodies, I sat and listened until I had to do the inevitable and speak to Martin.
I’d been putting him off for five whole days. I’d half-expected him to show up with Kevin one day, but Cassie had told Kevin she didn’t want visitors, so maybe he had stopped Martin. Instead, he’d resorted to sending couriered notes and leaving voicemails on Cassie’s machine. But I’d not responded to a single one, until Cassie suggested earlier that I get it over and done with because she didn’t want me giving myself a headache to match hers.
“I suppose it is a compromise,” I explain, before playing the two opening chords of ‘What I Want’ on the piano. “We’ll do the outstanding Spain and Portugal dates next year, but the North America dates this month have to go ahead as planned.”
Cassie’s inhale is sharp and short. “So you leave…”
“In three days,” I finish, before playing the next three chords in our song.
“And how long will you be away then?”
“Three weeks,” I reply as levelly as I can. “We’re due back in LA on Christmas Eve.”
“Christmas in LA,” Cassie muses. “It’s always so strange here at that time of year. I’m still not used to it. All the sunshine and blue skies, along with the tinsel and Christmas trees and fake snow.”
“Yeah, the snow,” I muse, filled with an unexpected nostalgia for the snow in Stockholm that would transform the city. My brother and I dragging an old wooden sled to the nearest hill, only to exhaust ourselves going up and down, over and over again. “It’s the only time of year I miss Sweden. It’s when the snow is still a novelty, when the winter has barely begun, rather than dragging on for months and months. What’s Christmas like in England?”