“The lyrics would have a double meaning?”
“Yes, exactly.”
I chew on my lip as I recognise both my immediate enthusiasm for this idea but also my immediate need to temper that. But I can’t admit that. Not to Pia Lindberg. “But if we’re the only ones who know the double meaning, what’s the point?
“But we won’t be,” Pia says. She brings one of her legs up, bent at the knee. She rests her arm on it and extends her hand, waving her cigarette around across the table. “You think you’re the only woman in the world who has harboured a secret desire to kiss another woman? To be with a woman? And you think only rock stars like me are out there fucking whoever they want? No, that’s not the world we live in. We’re everywhere.” She waves her cigarette towards the window. “There are more of us than you could ever imagine, and we deserve love songs too.”
“A love song?” I say, more air in my voice than usual.
“Yes.” Pia grins at me, her eyes literally sparkling. “Two women singing a love song to each other. And those who want to believe in miracles like that, they’ll hear it. They’ll know it too.”
“You really want to sing alove songwith me?” I ask slowly, tentatively. I reach for the miniature bottle of vodka, but I don’t open it.
“Oh, Cassie,” Pia says, a small frown pinching her eyebrows together. “You reallyarea bit gay, aren’t you?”
“I’m not!” I protest so instinctively, it immediately angers me. “Or maybe I am. I don’t know.”
Pia shrugs again, her T-shirt slipping off her shoulder once more. “You don’t need to know what you are. You just need to knowwhoyou are.”
Her words land inside me with a gravity that alters my breathing. “And who are you?”
Pia pins me another devilish smile. “Me? I’m your worst nightmare.”
A laugh bubbles out of me, and with it, some of the tension in my body evaporates. A beat later and Pia is giggling with me.
“You know,” I say, once our laughter has abated, “I don’t think you are my worst nightmare. That’s just what our labels want the media to say. That’s what sells more records.”
“Sellsyoumore records,” Pia says, half under her breath.
“You don’t do badly.”
“We don’t sell like Evergreene does. Albums, singles, or tour tickets. And weshould,” she says with emphasis. “But the world isn’t quite ready for a woman who fucks whoever she wants, gives no shits and sings loudly about misogyny.”
I can’t decipher if this statement is delivered to me like a dig, a shot, an insult, but it feels like one all the same. And it hurts. It hurts because I know what she’s saying is true, and the fact that Evergreene’s music does nothing to challenge the world like Femme Fatale’s does, makes me feel things I can’t yet name.
It hurts, but it also makes something inside me wake up – wake up and sit up and pay attention.
“I’m in,” I say as I catch her eye. She’s halfway through downing the rest of her gin. Slowly, she lowers the now-empty bottle and holds my gaze.
“You’re in?”
“Yes, let’s do this,” I say, banging my hand on the table. “Let’s sing a love song for the women who love women.”
CHAPTER 5
PIA
“So, how do you write your songs?” I ask as I kick off my boots and tuck my legs under me.
“Sort of like this, actually. I like to have at least a riff or melody first, and then I add the lyrics. You?”
“I’m the other way. Poet first. Musician second. I write the words and then work with one or some of the guys to find a tune for them. Usually Jon.”
“You wrote all your lyrics?”
“Yep, every single one,” I reply as I reach over and grab the song sheets. I turn them so I can read the words.
“That’s impressive considering English must be your second language.”
