If I'm Honest - Picture Perfect (Ch 2.2)

This one's coming to you a few days later than I'd wanted. The back end of the chapter really kicked my butt to try and bring together, but I think I managed to find the line I wanted to take in the end. There's also the introduction of a character that, if you've read CorruptingPower's original story you'll be familiar with, so I've had to wait on a few little notes from him to make sure I was finding their voice and keeping everything consistent with his original take on the world.

Next up I'll be jumping straight into Chapter 8 of QT:UK and hopefully that doesn't take me quite as long to make work, or end up with a word count so far above what I planned for (like this one and Chapter 7 of UK did).

I know that one of CP's latest updates mentioned that Picture Perfect is something I'm working on and will be posting publically next month. I'm going to be clear here however that as supporters you will always have a minimum of 2 chapters in advance on here. What this means is that since I want to post Chapter 1 and 2.1 together to give people a proper taste of things, I won't be posting anything to the likes of Literotica until you've got next month's chapter.

I'm also working on a little something for the collective group of QT writers which is taking up a little extra time but if you're enough of a fan of the universe to have ended up here, I hope you'll appreciate when its ready.

Anyway, here's the rest of things in NYC for Riley, let me know what you think!

******

Brooklyn hadn’t changed in the short time I had been inside The Near Horizon’s offices, still wrapped in the crisp grey of early January, but as I left it seemed a drastically different place to the one I had escaped from a couple of hours earlier. The bracelet at my wrist had gone quiet again after sex with Lydia, and without its insistence the city felt like it was in the aftermath of a summer storm, one that takes the pressure and humidity with it. I may not have loved New York, but that afternoon I was able to see it with a different pair of eyes, and I drifted on my way to the hotel Chris had booked for me. The handful of spontaneous pictures I found myself taking were handily better than anything I’d ever captured there before.

It was early evening by the time I found my way to the converted townhouse off Atlantic Avenue where I was staying. The hotel suites were another exercise in gentrification, far too showy to really be to my taste, all trendy expense at the cost of any sense of soul. It was the sort of place I would never justify paying for myself, but then I was on Lydia’s dime not my own. Climbing the large set up steps up to the front door, I headed to the desk where a pretty black woman about my age waited to book me in, with her hair tied black dreadlocks and a bust that strained against the regimented smart-casual of her uniform.

The bracelet felt half-awake, watching my interaction with the receptionist with seeming disinterest through non-existent, bleary eyes. The other woman’s gaze caught my own on several occasions as she took my details and fetched my key, accompanied with slight smiles that left me unsure if they carried interest or were simply professional. I couldn’t tell if suddenly being left to my own devices again was reassuring or disarming, and stumbled my way through her unclear attentions, more awkward than I would have been otherwise, feeling oddly vulnerable.

I’d already made plans to meet up with some old friends from Toronto later that evening, regardless of how the interview went, but still had a few hours to kill in my suite, which I quickly discovered felt far too large for what I needed. I’m pretty simple when I travel, I just want a bed, a shower and a place to set my Macbook. The suite I’d been given however came with an added large living space, kitchen and extra bedroom, and left me feeling a little lost in all the space between the high ceilings and wood panelled floors. Exactly the sort of place to make you aware of how alone you are with the loudness of your thoughts.

I grabbed a Diet Coke from the mini bar and opted to try and settle in on a couch that was apparently designed to look stylish rather than actually be sat on. I’d come away from The Near Horizon with a contract to look over, setting out my (extremely generous) pay, conditions and expenses, along with the long-list of places they were looking to cover. There were several I’d already been to, a handful I was desperate to see, and a smaller number I knew next to nothing about. The prospect of spending hours meticulously researching and planning, neatly jotting things down in the notebook I always kept with me, would normally have been something that would have grabbed my attention and refused to let go. I should have been beside myself with anticipation. But as the immediate rush of things with Lydia had settled and the incessant press of the bracelet had given way to clarity, I instead found other creeping thoughts pulling at my focus.

‘If I’m Honest.’ Lydia had used the exact same phrase as Dani and Alice, and I found myself dwelling on how for whatever reason I knew for certain that the words that came out her mouth after were nothing but that. Honest. But even knowing for sure that Lydia wanted me for the job regardless of what had just happened, I was left trying to figure out if I was excited or ashamed at the idea I’d just fucked my way through an interview. With hindsight it was probably both.

Bothering me more was how I still had no idea why any of this was happening. The bracelet was involved, that much was plain, even if it was now dormant in silvery sleep, but I was no closer to knowing how or why. It might be obvious by now, but back then I wasn’t exactly great at not being in control. I only really got as far as deciding to request Cartagena in Colombia as my first trip before I tried to contact Alice for answers. The unread messages and three unanswered calls just pissed me off more however, and I found myself agitatedly pacing the room. What if this happened again, I wondered. It almost fucked up my dream job interview, what was to say it couldn’t happen again? Ruin my job, get me arrested or deported. I couldn’t and wouldn’t risk letting it ruin my career like that. And the more I dwelt the idea that my helpness might just be at the expense of someone else’s cosmic joke the more I began to stray into frustration.

Ok, fine, I became a bit of a petulant bitch.

Rummaging through the suite’s kitchen looking for anything that might help me make another attempt to cut through the bracelet’s chain doesn’t rank among my proudest moments. I managed to snap a pair of kitchen shears apart trying to squeeze them shut around unyielding silver before moving to a chef's knife. I only gave up when that blade also nicked while the bracelet itself remained immaculately unmarred. The thought even crossed my mind that I might be able to break my thumb like they do with handcuffs in the movies. However, since I’m definitely not cut out for that sort of thing, I settled on simply screaming at it out of confused exasperation.

“What the fuck are you!?”

As weird as the day had been, I wasn’t expecting what happened next. Stood in the kitchen, shouting at my wrist, the bracelet answered back.

‘I swear, I’ve done this over 200 times and nobody else was this much of a pain in my ass from the start.’

The words glided directly into my mind, spoken in a rich female voice. I looked across at where the chef’s knife still lay upon the countertop and I clearly remember how my first instinct was to take several steps carefully away from it. With a voice now in my head, I decided I had indisputable proof I must be going insane, and in that context being near anything sharp felt like a particularly bad idea. Or at least that made sense to me at the time.

“What the fuck…” I repeated, my tone quickly shifting to something much quieter, edged with a very real sense of panic. My feet moved without me really thinking, carrying me towards the nearest chair which I obligingly slumped into. The world narrowed towards me as I felt my heart rate rush.

The voice sighed and I could practically feel the exhaled air, tickling away in my mind, before it spoke again, thick with exasperation. ‘Look, Riley, you need to calm down.’

“There’s a voice in your head and you’re definitely going crazy Riley,” I said to myself, shaking slightly in my agitation. “If there’s a time not to be calm this is it.”

‘I get it, you’ve had a weird few days, but you’re far too smart to think this is all in your head.’ The voice came again, soothing.

It was right. As much as it was the quickest answer to write this all off as simple insanity, I couldn’t really deny how what had happened to me today had been very much outside my head. It wasn’t possible to just conjure Lydia into fucking me across a table with some manic hallucination. A part of me knew, was viscerally sure in a way I can’t really explain, that something else was going on, and acknowledging that certainty was oddly reassuring.

‘Of course you’re not hallucinating, I’m too clever for that. Now take a couple of deep breaths for me, ok, good.’

Slowly I did as it said, sucking in air, then out again, with a faint puff of the cheeks as I willed the pace of my anxiety to slow. If nothing else it at least gave me a sense of even a trace of control back, and I did my best to draw the room back into focus around myself.

‘Down here on your wrist.’ I looked down in the direction of the bracelet, understanding that however the voice was reaching my head, it was coming from there. It saw my recognition, and I felt a smile spread through my thoughts. ‘Hello there. Yes, this is me talking. No I don’t have an explanation for it you’re going to understand, you’re just going to have to go with it.’

The bracelet’s voice was smooth, the way that some people might describe a whisky as smooth. There was a certain level of luxuriousness to it, mixed up with a hefty dose of remaining frustration and a smaller dash of knowing humour, which mercifully didn’t seem to be at my expense. And the more I heard it the more I was put in mind of Charlize Theron, and wondered how many of my own sensibilities were being drawn upon to stir it into being.

“What are you?”

'Well the last three people to wear me all called me Harvey, so why don’t we start with that? I had a different voice then but I’ve gotten used to the name, and it’s a lot better than some of the things you’re calling me in your head.’

It was an odd sensation, feeling embarrassment because of an inanimate object. But my thoughts towards it had definitely been unflattering at best over the previous few minutes, and the realisation that there was another mind there judging them caused an unpleasant little lurch in my gut, exactly as if there had been a person standing behind me while I spoke about them.

Several thoughts tried to run through my mind at once, tripping over each other. There was the self-consciousness, alongside the irritation that a name still didn’t give me the answers I wanted. Then there were implications that whatever it was could read my thoughts, as well as the idle reflection that, as odd a name as Harvey was for a female voice, there was a certain unmistakably queer energy to the choice that resonated with me. However, before I could pick one of them to focus on, my Canadian upbringing kicked in like a reflex and I found myself lamely apologising instead.

“Sorry. I didn’t realise...And that’s not what I meant.”

‘I know. And yes, I can hear some of your thoughts but only the most superficial ones. I’m sure you’ve got all sorts of wonderfully fun neuroses further down but, lucky for me, I don’t have to put up with those.’

“That’s a small relief I suppose,” I said, drifting back to sarcasm as I adjusted to the oddness of the voice.

‘Great, there’s the belligerence coming back. You must be getting over the shock.’ The voice, Harvey, replied in kind. I can’t tell you how it’s possible to know a formless voice is rolling its eyes at you, but the spirit of the gesture was unmistakable. ‘Normally I like to ease people into things a little more first, before talking to them like this, but I could tell that wasn’t going to get us anywhere fast. It’s a messy way to do things, but hey, we’ve got a process to get on with and you’re already going to be hard work.’

Naturally I resented being told I was hard work, no matter how true it was at the time. “Maybe I wouldn’t be if someone actually told me what was going on. What process?”

‘Well if I’ve come to you that means someone decided your love life could do with a little more luck, or a little more honesty. Although for you I’m already getting the impression we need a lot more of that second one. You could say that I work for a goddess, one that’s accepted you as her latest disciple, and that means we’re stuck together until we work out exactly what’s getting in your way.’

“So some goddess-”

Harvey cut me off, “Veritas. Her name’s Veritas’

Mythology wasn’t really my thing. I’m not what you’d call an academic and, while I enjoyed history, I was always much more interested in what it could tell me about the cultures and people that are there now than anything else. The name wasn’t familiar to me, even if I could tell that it sounded Latin, and it was only reading later that would reveal to me her identity as the Roman Goddess of Truth. I still can’t tell you for sure even now, if she actually exists, or if Harvey was something else entirely, but events definitely ended up living up to her bill

“Fine so this Veritas thinks there’s a problem with my love life? But what does she know about me? Who says I even need that fixing? I’m happy, I have my career, I’ve just landed my dream job. I don’t need luck or honesty, I just need to be able to get on with things without…whatever the hell you’ve been doing to me.”

‘So you’re telling me you aren’t lonely then?’

Harvey is, more often than not, disarmingly charming, wheeling through conversations in a way that makes even the ridiculous seem casual. But every so often she’ll find the exact words to cut straight to you like a knife.

Her question took me a moment to register, but when it did, I again found myself aware of how overbearingly empty my suite was with only me in it. And as Harvey went quiet, I noticed how silent the rest of the room was too. Just a woman, on her own, talking to herself. I’d spent most of the last 18 months like this and the large painful ache in my core that kept feeling too big to acknowledge was suddenly demanding attention, a monster that struggled to fit in even beneath the high ceilings.

I fucking hated it when she was right.

‘I’m not here to take the other things that matter away from you Riley.’ She said reassuringly, presumably feeling the choking sting in my throat, that found itself there rather than my own answer. ‘That’s really not how this works. You know some of what you want and I respect that. Seriously. 10 out of 10 for determination. But I don’t need to be deep down in your head to tell that there’s something missing.’

“Something that you think can be fixed by throwing women at me,” my reply came out sardonic, although the cynicism was probably aimed more at myself than at Harvey.

‘Something like that. I’ve been doing this for almost 2000 years and believe me, I’ve learnt a few things about people in that time. You’re all different but you each want to feel wanted and loved, and I believe there’s at least one person out there for all of you. Or at least I’ve not had a wearer that’s proved me wrong yet, a couple of close calls and tough roads, but I got them there in the end. And you definitely aren’t about to be the exception, trust me.’

Sure, trust the expertise of an inanimate piece of metal, easy.

Picking myself up from the chair I paced across the room, my body needing to find something to do with itself while my head did its best to let everything settle.

“So let’s say I accept any of this,” I half conceded after a heavy, restless sigh. “I’m not going mad, and there’s a magic bracelet sent by an actual goddess here to work a miracle and fix me even though I haven’t asked for it. How does this work?”

‘Hey, I said I was sent by a goddess, not that I could work miracles. I’m just here to put a finger on the scales in your favour, you know? Move things in the right direction. It’s not about throwing any woman at you, it’s about trying to rig the odds to make sure you find the right one. But I’m going to need time to figure out what that looks like and, like it or not you’re, going to have to work with me here.’

“I’ll try.” And I actually meant it. I could tell Harvey really wanted to help me with the same odd certainty I knew I wasn’t going mad. And it was hard to really deny to myself that I hadn’t enjoyed my encounters with Lydia and Dani. Or that I hadn’t been happier waking up with someone alongside me than I had been in months. I was excited, in spite of myself. But the wilfully stubborn perfectionist I was back then was still nervous in equal measure.

“Great, that’s all I ask.’

I found myself thinking of the rules I kept for relationships, reassuring myself, and insisting to Harvey, that I didn’t have to do anything I wouldn’t normally do. No straight women experimenting. No-one still in the closet. No outward playing up to stereotypes. Nothing long distance. No rebounds. No getting involved in existing relationships. No…

Harvey’s voice cut my thoughts off again. “...one who wears white after labour day. No-one who’s taller than me on every third tuesday. No fun. Got it. Add ‘keeping an open mind’ onto the list of things I’m asking for.”

“How is humouring any of this not keeping an open mind,” I protested defiantly.

‘Ok, step one Riley, we’re really going to have to get you to be honest with yourself first.’

Harvey went quiet again after that, seemingly deciding we’d said all that really needed to be said. It would be several days before I heard from her directly again, an unusual pattern I’d learn to get used to over the next year, long stretches of silence between bursts of activity where it felt like she was the most natural conversationalist in the world. I was about to find however that talking wasn’t the only thing she timed wildly inconsistently.

The longest stretch I would go without an ‘encounter’ was almost three weeks. The most frequent was the four in one day that comes much later in the story. But leaving that evening, as I went to meet friends at a nearby bar, I hadn’t yet realised that just because I’d had sex with Lydia a few hours earlier didn’t mean I was in the clear from Harvey’s influence. Not by a long shot.

Madison had been my roommate sophomore year of art school, sharing a tiny apartment with leaking pipes and a rent we could barely cover between us and that I had finally conceded I wouldn’t be paying for with photography gigs as a clueless 18 year old. It was at the part time Tim Horton’s job I finally ended up taking instead that I’d met Tyler, and it was through me that Tyler had met Madison. What I hadn’t expected when I’d given my shaggy co-worker the number of my then-goth roommate was for the pair of them to be married ten years later, settled and respectable together in New York.

The last time I’d seen either of them was a little before Covid. Tyler had moved down for a paralegal opportunity at a law firm called AOA out of Manhattan several years back, with Madison landing work in marketing when she’d followed him. Madison had been the one to insist on a bar with live music, trying to recapture a taste of our younger years as idiotic students travelling to crumbling venues across Toronto, and she’d picked out a small, faux-shabby hipster bar with a small stage rigged up in one corner and posters for old acts covering the walls. I found the pair of them waiting in a booth and although they were both far enough removed visually from the teenagers. Tyler’s scruffy beard had long since been trimmed to hipster stubble, blandly dressed from the office rather than the worn out jeans he used to live in like a second skin. Meanwhile Madison’s hair was back to its natural brown from the bottled black I’d known and had ditched her contacts for glasses, her nail polish restrained and tattoos covered up. Even so I couldn’t help but smile on seeing them. It barely took a minute for Madison to hug me and Tyler to poke fun at my hair and to find the well worn grooves of the dynamic we’d had a decade earlier.

Several overpriced drinks later we had exhausted talk of families and interviews, and of how Tyler’s boss was a demonic taskmaster, and the conversation inevitably wandered back to the travel I was about to be doing.

“God I’m jealous,” Madison offered. “Do you have anywhere picked out? For where you’re going to try to ask to go?”

“Not really? I know I want to go to Colombia first but I…had other things on my mind and…”

Tyler smirked. “Is this a Tortured Artist thing?”

I did my best to hide my reaction behind a swig from the terrible bottle of IPA he’d bought us, my face caught unflattering between a pout and a wry smile of my own. The ‘Tortured Artist’ nickname was a long standing, in-joke amongst our friendship group, deployed to make fun of my love life and how over serious I could be in general. It was the exact right amount of lovingly mocking, and never seemed to fail to drag me back down with a bump when I needed it.

“That’s a yes then,” Madison said, joining her husband’s amusement.

“It’s not a ‘Tortured Artist’ thing,” I insisted, weakly enough to only confirm things further. “It’s just, you know, a thing”

Madison’s look turned sympathetic, looking for signs of how concerned for me she needed to be. “It’s not like you to be distracted from a trip.”

The response from Tyler was characteristically less serious. “Who is she and how hard do we need to make her pay?”

It was nice to know they were both worried for me, but I didn’t have the tools to really know if I even was going to be ok, let alone explain to them what was going on without sounding deranged. Instead I tried to playfully brush things off.

“What, so Alice starts dating a college kid, who might as well be a foetus, and suddenly my love life is fair game for your entertainment?”

“You do make for some impressively entertaining car crashes,” Tyler joked, only to yelp as he received the sharp point of his wife’s elbow into his ribs for being potentially insensitive. “But it’s true!”

I gave a small but genuine laugh. He was right, I could be a total mess and I knew it. And it was nice to have someone remind me that that fact didn’t need to always be taken as seriously as my instincts wanted me to. “He’s fine, I don’t think I’ve even been behind the metaphorical wheel for a while. If there’s going to be any crashes I’ll make sure you two have a front seat.”

“I knew there was a reason we hung out with you.”

Madison saw that she wasn’t going to draw anything more out of me at that point than discomfort, and did her best to give me an escape from scrutiny of my romantic failures. “So, Colombia?”

I was halfway through another sip of my drink, but hurriedly cut the swig short as the prompt made me realise, for the first time, just how excited I really was at the prospect.

“Ok, so there’s this place called Cartagena on the coast,” I started, and saw warm affection cross Madison’s face as my enthusiasm surfaced. “You’ve got your classic, Spanish old town which, naturally is what they want photos of. I’d looked at going there in the past so I think I might already have the contact details of a fixer who I’m hoping can get me off the beaten track. You see there’s all these smaller towns and mountains and mangrove swamps down there as well as the beaches.”

I went for my phone to begin showing the pair of them some of the research I’d been doing that afternoon and let them humour me as I did my inelegant best to describe several ideas for shots I already had in mind. I was animated enough that I mostly ignored the smattering of applause from the bar’s small crowd as the evening’s act took to the stage. I even managed to only half pay attention as the lone guitar found it’s tune and picked out the opening chords of the first number.

It was only when the instrument was joined by a flawlessly beautiful voice, warm yet ethereal, that I looked across in earnest.

“...I've just settled into the glass half empty, made myself at home.”

The words hung in the air, coming from an Asian woman who perched on a stool with an old worn acoustic guitar in her hands, her eyes closed as she sang. She was dressed all in black, a stylish leather jacket slung over a form as delicate as her voice, with her short hair peering out from under an equally dark hat. Even her lips were black, painted as an extra flourish against her pale skin that only served to draw my eye to them as they traced out the syllables of her song. Without her voice she still would have been beautiful, but with it she was enchanting.

She continued. “I just stopped believing in happy endings, harbours of my own”

I must have paused talking for just long enough for Madison to notice, as when I looked back in her direction her eyes were full of amusement, mouth curled in a knowing smile.

“What did you say this act was,” I mumbled, attempting to play cool by leaning back in the booth, a gesture that was no doubt painfully transparent to my friends.

“Cassie Chen,” Madison replied. “We’ve caught her a few times. Tyler’s friends with a guy who owns an indie label she’s just signed to.”

I simply nodded. Briefly I considered trying to push on with the conversation about Colombia but realised just how amusingly hollow the attempt would have seemed to my friends. Instead I just allowed myself to enjoy the lilting sound of her performance.

On my wrist, Harvey stirred. I somehow almost allowed myself to forget she was there as I’d shared the evening with Madison and Tyler, but even though she said nothing I could feel her awareness, scrutinising both Cassie and myself with ancient curiosity.

She remained quiet as I picked up on the lyrics of Cassie’s song, an upbeat and honest piece about feeling settled into your own cynicism only to feel wonderfully exposed as someone special comes along and upend your feelings.

“Where do I go when every no turns into maybe”

When I noticed how oddly fitting some of the words happened to be, the insight came as a start, and I found myself wondering just how far Harvey’s ability to engineer things went, or if this was simply a coincidence. The thought must have been loud enough for her to skim off the surface of my mind, and I was met with a wordless sense of smug amusement. Even now I’m still not entirely sure how much was by design.

Beside me Madison leaned in close enough to speak quietly. “We could introduce you?”

Harvey gave a tug in Cassie’s direction, a gentle pluck at her attention, and deep brown eyes that had been held closed to this point fell upon me. Our gazes met, and as she smiled at me the unmistakable, magic pull I had been feeling on and off all day returned, capturing us in each other’s gravity.

I heard myself reply, “I think I’d like that.”

If Harvey wanted me to humour her and her ‘process,’ and it didn’t feel like I was getting much choice with that, then there were definitely worse places to start. I could definitely keep an open mind for someone like Cassie. And as if on cue the song echoed my feelings.

“...everything I can't afford, to know, is possible now.”

Tyler and Madison had spent much of the song more interested in my reaction than in Cassie’s act itself, whispering to each other conspiratorially, but as Cassie lilted her way through the song I found myself past caring about how obvious my interest was. I allowed myself to enjoy each furtive little glance she gave me, and for the second time in a day I was left aware of how helpless I was going to be to simply walk away from an encounter. Because the longer Cassie sang, the more it seemed like I was the only one in the room she was singing for.

The lyrics to the rest of her set were a little less uncomfortably on the nose, nothing that seemed to capture in quite the same way perfect snatches of the wavering feelings of the situation I found myself in with Harvey. It didn’t lessen how beautiful she was however, or how eagerly I listened to her lilt and move from one song to the next, each seeming as earnest as the last. By the time she was done and the final applause died down I was torn between wanting to hear more and hoping she would finish so I could talk with her. I was ready to throw at least a little of my usual caution to the wind, not that my intentions were exactly innocent.

Tyler didn’t waste time in rising, preparing to head in her direction and shooting a smirk back in my direction. “Look out drivers, the car crash is back on the highway”

I flipped him the bird, but underneath the sarcastic gesture I had to admit that the prospect of putting myself out there again felt good.

When Cassie approached me a few minutes later, still sitting in our booth, she seemed shyer than I expected, less self assured away from the stage and without a guitar in her hands. She fidgeted with the cuff of her jacket and it was hard to tell if she would have come over at all without the push Harvey was giving her.

“Hi there, Tyler says you’re Riley.”

“Guilty.”

She gave a small nervous bite of her painted lips before speaking again. I watched them move up close, and it took effort to listen to what they were saying rather than simply picturing the feeling of them on my own. Her words were as poised as her singing, elegantly well spoken in a way that immediately brought Chinese-American cliches to mind of an upbringing with private tutors and violin lessons on the weekends.

“Could I maybe buy you a drink? Please? As a small thank you.”

“A thank you? For what?”

“Well, I’ve always found it helps to imagine there’s someone sitting in the audience that I’m singing for, to keep things sounding personal. Tonight I didn’t need to imagine.”

I’m not normally one for pick up lines, but then I wasn’t sure if it even was one. Either way, it got the response I assume she was hoping for as she sent my stomach into a flutter.

“Ok, that was pretty smooth.”

Cassie gave a nervous laugh, just as pretty and musical as the rest of her. “Thanks, it sounded good in my head anyway. I promise you I’m not normally that forward. Or composed.”

I looked over to Madison, still sitting beside me, with a unsure pang of guilt that I was letting my flirting hijack our first meet up in years. The expression she gave me in return made it clear that she thought I was being an idiot for even hesitating.

“I think I can manage a drink,” I relented. “If you let me buy you one after?”

Cassie beamed. “We have a deal”

I wish I could give you a good account of what we talked about as the night drew on, but the truth is the exact ins and outs of the conversation are nowhere near as clear in my memory as the sound of her voice that had come before, or what was to come after. I do remember vividly how Cassie’s frame got closer to me as the four of us talked, body easing as if familiar against mine as I slipped an arm around her. And how pretty she looked in the low light and soft shadows of the booth. Eventually Madison and Tyler would make their excuses, leaving the pair of us, both slightly buzzed from more alcohol than I’d had in months, to keep talking.

Finding ourselves alone, it would have been easy to have simply leaned in and kissed her, but as we moved on to how she got into music and her inspirations, she became animated in the way I can be about pictures, and the last thing I wanted to do was to stop her. Part of me would end up wishing I had.

“...I’m rustier at cello than I’d like to be. But I play piano still, on most of the tracks I’ve recorded, it’s just more than a little difficult to play a keyboard and the guitar at the same time for a show like this. And the guitar’s the one that’s really speaking to my creativity at the moment.”

I’d been half right with my assumption about her parents having put her through violin lessons, getting the instrument wrong but not the studious amount of time they had expected her to practise for.

“I’m jealous of anyone who can play one instrument, let alone three.”

Cassie had found herself practically in my lap by this point and smiled at me knowingly as she reached for her drink.

“More than three?”

“I spent lockdown teaching myself how to play a clarinet that I picked up at a flea market,” she explained, revelling in the praise and attention I was happy to give her.

“Ok, well, point stands. I’m jealous, and grateful you put in the work. Your parents must be pretty proud.”

The Chinese girl in my arms tensed ever so slightly before I could fully finish speaking, not letting me add ‘of the work you’ve put in’ to the end of the thought as I had meant to. Or maybe I was too tipsy and slow and careless to say precisely what I meant. Cassie made a face, and some of the easy joy she had disappeared for a moment as she floundered awkwardly.

“Yes,” she said after a beat. “I suppose…something like that”

For the first time in what felt like hours, the beautiful brown of Cassie’s eyes wanted to look anywhere other than at me, evasive rather than expressive. I was still sober enough to recognise where the sudden shift in mood came from and the butterflies in my stomach balled up into a knot. I’d made the mistake of talking about making her parents proud, when it was clear her being here with me was the one thing that would make them anything but.

“Oh. Right…I see…”

I knew I wasn't good with that sort of thing. My own folks have always been nothing but supportive and I’d had just enough to drink that my response was faltering rather than considered like I would have wished. I had always shied away from wrinkles like this for a reason, still immature enough that I would run from the first sign of difficulty or imperfection. And in an instant things with Cassie had gone from being idealised to brushing up against uncomfortable reality. It was my problem not hers, but I’m sure I probably made her feel like it. I still hate myself for that.

“Sorry,” she said, although she definitely didn’t need to. “Could we maybe just…”

I cut her off. “Look, it’s not a problem…I didn’t mean to…Fuck”

Her response surprised me, as she abruptly leaned in for a kiss, leaving a faint hint of black lipstick marking my lips.

“I was enjoying myself Riley, really enjoying myself. Can we just go back to that? Just for the evening. And deal with the rest later.”

Either she could sense my misgivings, the entrenched concern of anything not quite perfect, or she had her own serious hang ups about how her parents and her sexuality clashed. Whichever it was she must have realised just how hard things between us had stumbled. And as I hesitated to respond, I could see a stray look of upset cross her face, pleading with me to wind a minute back on the clock.

“Please?”

I wasn’t about to say no to her. My answer was a kiss of my own, lingering into her as reassuringly as I could manage.  In the past I might have made my excuses and left, but Harvey and alcohol were a potent mix, just about managing to hold together the spell Cassie and I had cast over ourselves even after that first crack had appeared. Even so, neither of us were keen to talk much further, as if worried that things had suddenly become fragile enough that anything other than making out would shatter it entirely. It helped that she was a spectacular kisser, and I was able to simply allow myself to lose myself in the play of her tongue against my own.

We left the bar shortly after, skipping last orders and hurrying through the cold of the Brooklyn night, back to the waiting warmth of my suite. Cassie wasn’t as hurried as Dani had been, our trip to the bedroom less fervent, but that didn’t make things any less intense. She was soft and tender with her affections, but there was a need to her that felt almost as strong as the one I was denying I also had. She wanted to be seen, to be needed. I wondered how long it had been since she’d been able to allow herself to be like this with someone else. She certainly wasn’t in any rush, and I lost track of exactly how long and we dallied on the bed, half dressed, tipsily making out.

Eventually Cassie peeled away, leaving me alone on the sheets as she rose from the bed. By that point we’d successfully retreated back into only worrying about our attraction for each other, and she got an evident little thrill from the way my eyes eagerly wandered over her as she made to strip away the rest of her clothing. Like the kissing, she drew things out, red-faced in the shy pleasure she took from my attention as I was slowly treated to more of her.

The asian woman’s chest probably wasn’t any bigger than Lydia’s, but set against her slender frame they seemed more than generous, eliciting a breathless little moan of appreciation as she uncovered them for me. Seeing my response, she teased at the puffy brown peaks of her nipples, leaving me rubbing my thighs against each other. It was the taut curve of her ass, as she turned to slide down her panties for me, that really caught my appreciation however, and it was there that my hands kept wandering when she returned to the bed.

Reclining against a pillow, I sat up just long enough to pull Cassie towards me, before gripping at the cheeks of her rear as I drew her crotch towards me. She gripped the headboard, held in place against me, riding my face in shuddered little bucks.

“Oh shit, that’s it. My greedy little pussy wanted you so badly.”

Hearing her talk dirty surprised me, the curses almost luxurious when framed in her mouth, but how vocal she was only managed to spur me on, almost as beautiful to me in the moment as her singing had been earlier. Not that I needed Cassie’s words to let me know how eagerly her cunt craved the attention my tongue was giving it. Her desire beaded itself, wet, onto trimmed dark hair and I savoured the taste on her folds as I worked. I went slowly, forcing myself to take my time, realising that the girl above me wanted things drawn out, intimate.

“Fuck Riley, you’re making me so hot like that…”

All of Cassie’s following attempts to speak came out broken, punctuated by little shockwaves of pleasure that crept their way through her. With each one her thighs pressed in against me, and I felt the moans tremor down her shapely limbs.

I was building her to her peak when she shifted without warning. Swinging her legs around, she kept her crotch where my tongue could continue to oblige it, but repositioned herself so she could lower herself towards my own. She fumbled with my jeans before I caught on and wrigged half-drunk to help her remove them.

Cassie attempted to hold herself above me like that for a short while, half kneeling half lying over the top of me, mouths tending to each other. The combination of her own drinking and the pleasure she was feeling soon made her sway to the side, and we settled for lying next to each other, chasing the other’s release. We lasted longer than I might have expected, somehow managing to draw out the enjoyment, in spite of how fragile everything felt in the back of my mind, and how I might have wanted to rush rather than risk something ruining what we had. Even so, in other circumstances I would have taken more time in appreciating just how special she was.

She came before I did, relenting from her own efforts as I flicked and teased at her clit. Helped over the edge by occasional swats of my hand across her rear, my fingers filled her as she clenched and tensed. Black hair spilled messily across her face, and she cried out from between the smudge of her painted lips, the sound as sweet as everything else about her.

My own climax by comparison felt snatched at, drunk and tired, my arousal still partly tempered by being fucked across a table by Lydia only hours earlier. Even so, it made most of those I’d had before this year pale by comparison, and I whimpered through it as she wrung out the last I had to give in slow, lingering bliss. Whatever small talk came after was perfunctory, a footnote in the haze of amazing sex and too many cheap beers before I finally fell asleep.

Unlike things with Lydia, the bed next to me was empty when I woke.

It was still dark outside when I did, the realisation that Cassie wasn’t there enough to stir my thoughts into something approaching awake after only a few hours. I’d fallen asleep with the light on, and groaned as I glanced to see her clothes gone and most other signs of her with it, the rest of the suite confrontationally dark and empty beyond the bedroom. All that was left with me was a note carefully folded and left on the table beside my bed. Pushing through the faint headache that I found myself with, I sat, emotions uncertain as I read Cassie’s handwriting.

‘If I’m honest, I would give things between us a try, but you’re probably already worked out that my parents are old fashioned and really don’t approve of my love life. I worry you might not be patient enough for that, and I have a horrible feeling that if I let you, you're going to end up hurting me.’

She signed the confession with a kiss, before adding what I can only presume was a hopeful afterthought.

‘If I’m wrong, get Tyler to give me a call.’

I’d go back to the note several times over the next few days. A large part of me desperately wanted to talk myself into thinking that she was wrong. She was beautiful and talented and had pushed me another step closer to admitting to myself that I really was desperate for someone like her in my life. But as Harvey had said, I needed to start being honest too. And  no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t convince myself that the person I was then wouldn’t have hurt her in exactly the way she feared, burdening her with my expectations.

Cassie got a happy ending. One of the things it took me a long time to learn about Harvey is that I’m not the only one she tries to poke along, making sure that those we brush up against aren’t left unrewarded for their trouble. I looked her up recently at one of her gigs and found out that our evening together had been the push she needed to work through things with her folks, who are far more enamoured with her current girlfriend than they ever would have been with me.

I, on the other hand, still had a lot of work to do and a lot of air miles to cover.