Not that I regret my decision to not create another fake relationship as a cover so I can keep seeing Pia.
Not for a second.
I’m done with Kevin and Haven and everyone else deciding what my story is. I’m not prepared to be a pawn in their sordid scandals, just to sell more records. I’m fed up with my fate being decided by other people, other powers.
It’s one thing to not be able to have the thing I want, but it’s quite another to then be told what Ishouldwant orpretendto want instead.
With Pia’s postcard held tight in my hand, I head upstairs to my bedroom. I tuck it in the back of the book that lies on my bedside table – a copy ofA Photographic Guide to American Sign Language– and I then move it to my bed so I can pack it in my bag for the show tonight. I’m preoccupied as I throw clothes, toiletries and some make-up in there too, but I make sure I have clean underwear and my toothbrush and dental floss. I think I might be the most boring rockstar on the planet.
In theory, I could come back here after tonight’s performance at the Hollywood Bowl, but I know I’ll be exhausted. I need a good night’s sleep as I have an appointment with Dr Knudsen, an educational psychologist who once worked with Sandhya Naidoo, a pioneer of dyslexia research and the author ofSpecific Dyslexia, a book I discovered in a bookshop in Austin, Texas, a few weeks ago,the same bookshop where I bought the sign language book. It’s not an easy book to read – unlike the ASL book, which is mostly pictures – but Nora has been reading sections to me as I make dinner or have hair and make-up done. After just a few chapters, I knew I had to find a doctor who knew more. It took Nora precisely three phone calls and forty-five minutes to make the appointment, and seeing as it’s at lunchtime tomorrow in downtown LA, staying at the hotel will mean I can have an extra thirty minutes of sleep.
“Nora!” I call out as I carry my bag downstairs. “Can you call Heather to come pick me up?”
“Of course,” she calls from the office, and I dump my bag by the front door before heading to the bathroom to freshen up.
The shrill ring of my phone stops me in my tracks.
Pia.
Of course, I think it’s her, hopeit’s her.
She’s in Rome today, tonight, whatever. It can’t be showtime yet. Maybe it’s her. Maybe she found a way, because if anyone can, if anyone wanted to, it’s her.
“Cassie!” Nora calls out. My heart rate picks up pace.
“I’ll take it in my bedroom,” I say, racing up the stairs.
“I’ve got it,” I say to Nora when I pick up the handset next to my bed. I wait for the click of her putting the phone down before I speak again. “Hello?”
“Cass,” Stephan slurs.
“What do you want?” I demand, not knowing if the nausea I feel is disappointment that it’s not Pia or disappointment that it’s him. Both – I know it’s both.
I’ve not spoken to him since he spoke to the photographers outside his hotel last week. Since he told them that he’s going to propose to me, the foolish waste of space.
“I need … I need to see you,” he says, and he hiccups. Is hecrying?
“Stephan…” I clutch the phone a little tighter. “What’s going on?”
He sniffs. “It’s all so fucked up,” he says.
“What is?”
“Melissa … Vik…The band. I fucked it. I fucked it all up.”
I bite back the urge to agree with him enthusiastically. But it’s not the time. He doesn’t sound … right.
“Where are you, Stephan?”
“Chateau Marmont.”
“Are you alone?”
Another long sniff. “Yeah, George was here, but he’s gone now. Like everyone else. Everyone leaves me eventually.” He’s mumbling, barely coherent. And definitely crying.
“Stephan, you need to sober up,” I sigh as I sit down on the bed. “We’re on stage in less than six hours.”
“I can’t do it…” he says. “I can’t go on stage. It’s all over, Cass. It’s all over.”
