‘Cassie,’ he says. It’s almost a whisper, and he looks a little nervous, too. Now my entire body feels woozy, as if someone is pulling at a thread of me and I’m unravelling from the inside out. Because I know exactly what’s coming. I’ve played it out hundreds of times in my head at various points in my life. Countless times when I was a teenager, obviously, but over the last few weeks as well. It’s as if I’m living out my very own romcom, what with the river, and the lights, and the slightly nervous way we are around each other. It’s all completely perfect, and I lean back against the embankment wall, gripping it so hard I am sure my knuckles have turned white. He tucks my hair behind my ear and I am done for.
I close my eyes and he presses his lips against mine. I loop my arms around his neck and he exhales against my cheek as the kiss deepens, and all I can think of is that I am being kissed by Jesse Franklin. Jesse Franklin has his tongue in my mouth and his hands on my waist. I have Jesse Franklin’s hair twisted around my fingers. I can feel the curve of his neck under my hand. If sixteen-year-old me could see this, she’d go bananas.
He pulls away and runs a hand through his hair, looking nervously past me, out on to the river.
‘I… I just… I’m –’
‘About time,’ I say, cutting him off. ‘I’ve been waiting for you to do that all evening.’ He looks visibly relieved. ‘I mean, I’ve wanted to kiss you all evening too, but I don’t think I’d have been able to stand it if you’d told me to piss off.’
‘I wouldn’t have told you to piss off,’ he grins.
‘Good to know,’ I laugh and look down at the pavement between us. He takes one of my hands, and I watch as our fingers interlock.
‘Come back with me. To the hotel. Right now,’ he says and I gulp. Bloody hell, Rachel was right on the money. ‘I just figured, you know, we’re having a good time,’ he pauses and studies my reaction. ‘Nothing has to happen if you don’t want it to. We can just… hang out. I don’t know.’
Oh, please. What a line. Yes he does know. We both know. If I go back to that hotel with him, we are definitely going to have sex, and I am one hundred percent down for that. ‘Sure. Why not? Let’s do this.’
Jesse’s expression changes again, and his eyes flick over me in a way they haven’t before, but I can tell just from that cursory glance that he wants me very badly, and it’s very, very arousing. And I also know, from the reaction I’ve just had, that he is going to absolutely ruin me for anybody else.
I reach my arms around his neck again and we kiss some more and this time it’s positively drenched with anticipation. This time it’s not tentative at all. This time his hands slide down from around my waist over my bum and back up my sides, pulling up my top until it’s almost at my bra. Dude, I think, we are in the middle of the street. There is traffic, and there are people, and this ain’t no peep show.
‘Oi oi!’ an oiky lad yells from the window of a Transit van stopped at traffic lights. ‘Get a room!’
With my arms still around Jesse’s neck, I flip my middle finger up in his general direction, and then there is laughter and wolf-whistling as they move off. Time to take this somewhere less public.
‘Hotel?’ he says, his mouth still on mine, and I nod. ‘Jesus Christ, yes,’ I breathe.
Chapter Thirteen
Cassie
The entire walk back to the hotel is hurried and humming with nervous energy and a lot of sexual tension. By the time we get through the lobby and into the lift you could cut the air with a knife. He jabs at the buttons for the fifth floor and the doors close painfully slowly, and as I lean back on the hand rail I decide there’s no one in the world I have ever wanted more in my life. We have a cliché lift kiss, and he holds my wrists up above my head and my ring clinks against the mirror.
Outside the hotel room door, he reaches into the pocket of his jeans and pulls out a keycard. The tiny light on the door flashes green and as it clicks open he takes my hand again and pulls me inside. As soon as it slams shut all the sound from outside mutes and it’s like a vacuum. And my nerves have gone as well, broken up and scattered to fragments of nothing because something about the way we are around each other just seems to fit. I drop my handbag and kick off my shoes and now he’s standing by the edge of the bed, and I go to him. Pushing him down on to it, I climb on to his lap, our faces inches apart.
‘Hi,’ I whisper. I push his shirt down his shoulders and he pulls it off and throws it to the floor behind me.
‘Hi.’ He lifts my top over my head and I shake out my hair and he stares at the flimsy black netting of my bra, and if I could high-five this morning Cassie for a choice so obviously well made, I would. Now his hands are all over me and he’s kissing my neck, just under my ear, and along my collarbone, and dragging my bra strap over my shoulder and down my arm.
And then he flips me on to the bed and we’re making out like teenagers, and I like the weight of him on me, like the way his skin smells and the hardness of his body against the softness of mine after we’ve grappled with his t-shirt and pulled it off. Like how our limbs are tangled up and our faces are mashed together and the contrast of his dark hair against the crisp white bedding. I reach down and unbutton my jeans and wriggle a little in what I hope is an encouraging way and suddenly he’s off me and the coolness from the air conditioning hits my skin again. He’s pulling them off me now, agonisingly slowly, and all I can do is stare. They land in the ever-growing pile of our discarded clothes on the floor and just when I think he’s going to remove his own and fuck me all the way into next week, he kneels down on the floor and pulls me down the bed until my legs hang over the edge.
‘So,’ he says. ‘These panties.’
‘What about them?’
‘Are they, like, sentimental?’
‘No.’
‘Could you replace them if you wanted to?’
‘Er, yeah, probably,’ I say, beginning to wonder if he’s got some sort of kinky knickers fetish. But he yanks them off me instead and I distinctly hear the fabric rip at the seam. Good grief. Blown together. ‘Oh,’ I say. ‘I don’t have any others. With me. I mean, I have others. But just not here. Felt like bringing some might have been a tad presumptuous.’
Shut up, Cassie, shut up, shut up. Shut. Up.
‘Did you?’ he asks. He doesn’t believe me. I can tell by his glinty, smirky eyes.
‘Maybe,’ I say, giggling. ‘Is that your signature move?’
‘Nope,’ he says, shaking his head. He balls them up and tosses them behind him and I lie there, staring up at the ceiling now, because I didn’t foresee this level of intimacy, and yet, there he is, my teenage crush, bass player from the band I loved fourteen years prior, inching up my thighs, getting closer and closer to my very naked vagina and I think that might just make me a bit of a groupie. Right on!
In any case, he shows me what I suspect might be his signature move and it’s not long before I’m a spent woman, trembling and laughing with my breath still hitching and my hands over my face.
‘You’re fucking ace,’ I laugh, and he grins at me because he knows. He sits on the edge of the bed, back to me, rummaging in a duffel bag, finding a condom, and I notice two things. One, he’s got rid of his jeans and his pants. When did he do that? And how didn’t I see? Was I too busy seeing stars and biting my fist, or is he actually Houdini? They’re tight jeans, as well, I noticed that at the bar downstairs. He looked good in them. I liked the shape of his thighs in them. How they clung to him. It was very, very lovely. And two, he has a constellation of moles scattered across his back. Like they’ve been thrown there, haphazardly. I want to trace my fingers over them. Join them up with imaginary lines. Kiss every single one of them. He turns back towards me, and the moment has passed.
He scoots up the bed towards me and we get under the covers, and face each other and kiss again, except this time there’s a whole lot more touching, and my bra is removed and flung across the room, and he rolls on to his back.
‘Can we
switch off the light?’ I ask, and I don’t really know why. He has seen every single inch of me without clothes on, but something makes me want us to do this in the dark.
‘Uh huh.’ He nods, reaches back and hits the switch and now it’s dark in here and all I can make out are the lines of his features and the shape of him illuminated by the glow of the moonlight. And finally, this thing that I never truly thought would happen, does, and it’s perfect.
Afterwards, I pull the duvet right up over my face to my eyes, and I watch as he disappears off to the bathroom. There’s the sound of a tap being turned on, and then off again, and the metallic shudder of a pedal bin. And when he returns there’s an awkward couple of seconds where I make a big show of not looking.
‘Well,’ I say, ‘that was an unexpected turn of events.’
‘I guess it was.’
I scoot over and turn on to my side as he climbs in next to me. ‘But, unexpected in a good way, right?’
‘Of course. The best way.’
He turns on to his side and slings an arm across my hip, pulling me a little bit closer.
‘You’re beautiful, Cassie,’ he says, looking right into my eyes. ‘You know that?’ And I think, if they tested my oxytocin level right at this second, it’d be off the chart.
I trace my index finger from his chin all the way down his chest to his stomach and make circles there with my fingertips. He wrinkles up his nose and I pull my hand away.
‘Sorry,’ I say.
‘You don’t have to stop,’ he says. ‘I’m just ticklish, is all.’
I replace my hand. Make infinity signs. ‘Are you really? That’s fun to know.’
‘I probably shouldn’t have told you that.’
‘I think I’d have figured it out, eventually.’
I shift closer still and kiss him again, softer this time, less insistent and frantic, though inevitably it becomes that way and leads to more and soon he pushes his thigh between mine, and leans over me.
‘I think you’re probably going to need another one of those,’ I say, nodding towards the little pile of silver packets on the nightstand. It doesn’t escape me that there are quite a lot of them. Pre-empted? Was it really an unexpected turn of events?
‘Uh huh, yep, I think so,’ he says. And this time the vibe is different, and we look at each other the entire time, through the silvery darkness. And my fingernails dig into the flesh on his back when I come. And he pushes my hips right down into the mattress when he does. And he kisses the part where my shoulder turns into my neck and I stroke back his sweaty hair and in my heart I know I’m completely in love with him.
‘So probably not that unexpected, then?’ I whisper, after a few minutes.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, you seem to have rocked up, excuse the pun, pretty well prepared for this.’ I pat his back and gesture between us and around the room. ‘Did you actually just think I was a sure thing?’
He sits up and studies me and I don’t know what he’s thinking.
‘Literally not at all.’ He raises an eyebrow. ‘But, would it have been better if I hadn’t?’ I shake my head. ‘And we’d have had the awkwardness of finding a late night pharmacy and… picking something up.’
‘Pretty sure I saw a vending machine down the corridor,’ I say, giggling.
‘Well either way, that’s okay then,’ he says. I stretch myself out and then curl back into him and close my eyes and as I’m falling asleep I try to memorise all of this; imprint it on my brain so I can hold on to it forever.
Chapter Fourteen
Jesse
There’s a red standby light on the TV and I’ve been staring at it since I woke up. I don’t know for how long exactly, but long enough for it to be the only thing I can see in here now. On the nightstand, my phone lights up and I reach over for it. But it’s just an email, and not an important one.
Four thirty-two a.m. Next to me, Cassie stirs and moves. The slight frizziness of her hair giving way to the outline of her neck and her shoulders. The shape of her underneath the sheets. Curled up, facing the window. The calmest she’s been since I sat down opposite her in the bar downstairs and even in sleep she shifts and fidgets. I like it, though, the fidgeting. It didn’t feel nervous, more enthusiastic and energetic. And I like the way she gesticulates and gets really animated when she talks, and how, when she’s recounting something funny, she puts her hand over her mouth and laughs as she’s talking and her eyes light up and the corners crease into folds.
Now she shifts on to her back and turns her head a little to the side. She brushes her arm against mine and reaches for my hand, like she’s checking I’m still here. She’s not really asleep after all. Not deeply, anyway. She did this a lot throughout the evening, kept brushing her arm against mine as we walked along, and I’d assumed it was accidental, until it became apparent that it was almost certainly deliberate. And as we hurried back here, she squeezed my hand as we waited for the lights to change.
There are other things I like about her, too. That ass in those pants, for example. Oh my god, and out of them. Especially out of them. I’m only human. Those pants are now in a heap on the floor by the bed, next to her top. And also the contrast of her skin against her black, lacy, somewhat see-through underwear. That was absolutely not every-day underwear. I’ve seen my fair share of women’s underwear in my life and I know sex panties when I see them. These were they. Were being the operative word. I’m not even sorry.
Which brings me back to the red standby light on the TV. And how I’m lying here, thinking about all the things I’ve learned about her tonight and forcing myself to remember the one thing I already knew before all this happened: that she was a Franko fan all those years ago.
Which means she could so easily have been one of those girls Dad kept us away from. Fans were off limits, tarred as untrustworthy girls who wanted something from us. And when Adam was caught making out with one, the ban was extended, arbitrarily, to include pretty much all girls. It’s a wonder any of us ever managed to develop normally functioning attachments to anyone.
I make myself think about that and consider it carefully because I want to work out if it makes any kind of difference at all to me. I always knew that about her and yet I still went out of my way to make all this happen, when usually I’d give anyone and anything Franko related a wide berth. Before, I would never have dreamed of hooking up with someone who was in any way tangled up in that part of my life. So on that basis alone I don’t think it does.
I am acutely aware, though, that this room is like a sort of bubble, entirely devoid of any kind of reality for either of us, and in a few hours the bubble is going to pop and give way to real life again. She’ll go back to her everyday, and I’ll get on a plane. So I guess the only way to really tell is to see whether I’ll still feel like this or not after she’s gone.
Cassie turns over. She half opens her eyes and kisses me again, but she’s sleepy and it doesn’t go anywhere. Within less than a minute she’s fallen back to sleep. My eyes begin to feel heavy.
* * *
There’s a distinct absence of her the next time I wake up, an empty space where she was. A dip in the mattress. Her clothes are still on the floor, her shoes still kicked off by the bathroom door. I reach my hand across and the bed’s still warm. I turn my head and she’s by the window, peering out at the day with a sheet draped around her.
‘Hey, you,’ I say sleepily, watching her from under the covers. She turns around. Tightens the sheet in her fist.
‘Hey you,’ she says.
I flick my hair out of my face and pat the empty spot on the bed.
‘Whatcha doin’ up there?’
‘About to head out to a toga party. Isn’t it obvious?’ She gestures at the swathes of fabric around her.
‘Yeah? Forget the party and come back to me,’ I say, my voice heavy with sleep. ‘Leave the toga.’
* * *
‘Hey, Cass,’ I say, quietly, after we made the
morning last as long as possible. She’s running her thumb across my collarbone and I’m tracing my fingers up and down her spine. There are goose pimples on the top of her arms.
‘Mmmhmm?’ she says, leaning up on her elbows. There are specks of make-up in the corners of her eyes.
‘So… I’m going to have to get going in a bit.’
It’s categorically not what she wanted to hear. Her eyes flicker around and she sits up and pulls the sheets over her.
‘Oh, okay,’ she says, like she’s weighing the words up in her head.
‘It’s just… I have a rehearsal for tonight, and then a sound check and stuff… I’m sorry.’
‘No, it’s fine,’ she says, but I don’t believe her, because now she’s looking down at her hands. This was not how I wanted things to be. I’d ditch everything to spend the day with her if I could. It’d be so easy, but it doesn’t work like that. You’re only as good as your last gig, and it’s not cool to dick people around. ‘I expect you’ll be going home soon, won’t you?’ she says, quietly.
I shift a little, and she hugs her knees to her chest.
‘My flight’s tomorrow morning,’ I confirm, almost apologetically. But she knew this was the deal. I was very explicit in telling her I only had the Friday evening free. ‘I actually have a stupidly busy few weeks.’ I don’t know why I’m going into this level of detail. It sounds like I’m blowing her off, and I’m not. ‘A load more sessions, one in New York next week, and then back to San Francisco…’ I trail off.
‘Sounds like you have a busy life,’ she says and I watch her face for a few seconds to see if I can figure out what she’s thinking, and now it’s uncomfortable and not at all how I want to remember her when I think back on this.
Call Me, Maybe Page 9
