Rays of golden-hour sunlight are streaming through the tall windows, light beams bouncing around the room off of the Villeneuve chandeliers that took Willa, Leon, and I over a day and a half to install properly, and off the copious amounts of champagne flutes and tumblers that people are holding as they swan around the studio’s current gallery installation. It makes the place look ethereal, like something plucked straight out of a dream.
Not that the place isn’t dreamy already – once you walk through the geranium red door you’re met with a myriad of the most stunning selection of trinkets and intricate art pieces alike. The baby blue walls are adorned with various sculptures, glass ornaments, and clay pieces, some Willa’s, some not: but all beautiful. The light beams only enhance the all-round immaculate vibes, and the amount of shiny happy people milling around only adds to the ambiance.
It’s perfect.
Not that I thought Willa would be capable of anything less.
For the one-year anniversary of her studio, she wanted to give back. To show off others’ talent. Hence tonight, where Willa’s ceramic pieces take a backseat and other artists and creators’ pieces are the forefront. When she told us she didn’t plan on putting any of her own pieces on display I was taken aback.
“Surely you need to sell your own pieces: isn’t that how business works?” I asked.
“I’ve had more success than I could ever dream of. I want to give a bit of it back,” she replied, in typical Willa fashion, but… it’s true.
Willa’s pieces have been featured in GOOP, Vogue, and Vanity Fair; not to mention other listicles galore, editors and other artists alike shouting from the rooftops about how you want a Willa Daniels piece. I cherish my bespoke Willa piece – a mug thrown in a creamy porcelain with a coffee speckled glaze – in the same way a mother would cherish their newborn baby. She gave it to me after I told her I was moving back to Berkeley indefinitely, and my close proximity to getting personalised tableware thrown by Willa is one of the reasons that make me feel as though here is the right place to stay, to let my roots grow.
The other reason is walking my way, a smile on his face as he looks at me, and he wiggles the martini glass in his hand, flaunting the fact he used his big brown eyes and sweet words to convince the bartender to make me a martini. I roll my eyes at him, and he responds by holding the glass aloft with pride, Simba style. I can’t help the giggle that comes out of me. Leon seems to have that effect on me. He helps me not give a single shit about how I hold myself around others. My years of media training are thrown out the window as soon as his gaze lands on mine. I’m more… me. Much more myself when I’m with him. Hence the giggle. Before Cassidy would never.
Before Cassidy wouldn’t be okay with a lot of things current me is comfortable with. Before meeting Leon and moving back home, I’d have never went to an event without my hair being freshly washed and blown out professionally. Yet tonight I’ve slicked my day two hair into a ponytail, complete with a scrunchie I bought from one of the textile artists on show tonight. Before, I’d never have been okay mixing around this many people from the past. In fact, I’d have avoided people I used to know with the same urgency a mouse tries to avoid a hawk.
Even this exact night last year I was met with an awkward mix of contempt and pity, and sometimes even outright disdain. Even people I didn’t know eyed me with the desire to place where they know me from. Is she another artist? A celebrity? Singer? Actress? No… Politician? Ah! The intern who slept with Cooper Abbot. That’s her. Although somehow, it’s better than people who didn’t know me than the people who knew Before Cassidy. Watching them try to reconcile how the blue flame who left Berkeley with big dreams paired with big enough confidence to go get ‘em ended up back in the Bay, unhappy, unemployed, and a political sex-scandal trailing in her wake.
Both then and now, sometimes people still do look at me with the slight squint in their eye that means they’re picturing me with Cooper Abbot on the Resolute desk in the Oval Office. Which wasn’t where we did it, for the record. Come on.
The difference is, now I care less.
Not that I don’t care – I do. I still care all too much (ask Tilly). Just less.
Leon arrives by my side, interrupting my overthinking as he seamlessly passes me the glass and then slides his arm around my waist, pulling me close to him.
“Hi,” I say.
“How you holding up?” He asks. No hi, no niceties – straight to the point. That’s my Leon.
“I’m good.” I say, and when he looks at me with a raised eyebrow, I smile. His disbelief melts into delight and he bends down to press a kiss to my forehead.
“I’m so proud of you, ya know,” he says and the smile gracing my cheeks only gets wider.
“I’m proud of me too.” I reply. “Let’s wander around.”
He nods, and we peel off the wall, wallflowers no more, and start to move into the crowd.
My stomach lurches and I have the terrible urge to run. Run out from the studio, past my parent’s house, and further and further until I’m at the edge of the world. Feet in the sand, water lapping around my ankles. Nothing else matters when you’re by the sea. Thanks to Leon over the past year, I’ve become quite the beach baby. He’s teaching me to surf and we’re working on it – slowly. He loves to laugh at me as I try (and fail) to stand upon the board, then laughs even harder when I pout and insist on sitting on the sand, watching him ride the waves instead.
“Who’s the procrastinator now?” He asked, laughing. I frowned and stuck my tongue, and then middle finger also, at him – but he knows me well enough to know it’s all in jest.
I understand him more now, Leon. His Procrastination piece. The hold that fear can have on you. How paralyzing it can be.
Before Cassidy would claim that compartmentalising your problems was the one size fits all cure. Stuff all your worries and past mistakes into a box never to be thought of again. But After Cassidy, current Cassidy, realises that it doesn’t work. It’s a big pile of steaming shit sitting in the sun on a summer’s day – it never amounts to anything good. I’ve learned in the last year that I must face my problems (cue Tilly almost crying tears of joy). I can’t run from them, no matter how much I want to.
And right now, I really want to run away from the physical manifestation of my anxiety that’s hanging in the studio. So, I’m letting myself run. Temporarily.
“So, we’re staying well clear of our piece then?” Leon asks.
I nod. “For now.”
“For now,” he echoes. “You lead and I’ll follow, Cassidy.”
I act as though I’m cracking a whip at him. He recoils in mock agony then says, “Cassidy, I’ve been gone for you ever since you first scowled at me.”
“And I’ve scowled at you a lot.”
“Indeed you have.”
“You loveee me,” I croon.
Just when I think he’s about to scoff, he pulls my hand (our fingers still intertwined) up to his lips and presses a soft kiss. “You know I do.”
I do.
Before I say anything soppy, he pulls us over to Willa and Bryce – in a rare stroke of luck it’s just them. No artists, no investors, no reporters. There hasn’t been more than thirty seconds tonight when someone hasn’t been pulling Willa in one direction or the other, so I swoop toward her. As soon as she sees me, she pulls me into a hug, and I squeeze Leon’s hand before I let go and wrap my best friend in a tight embrace. We wiggle in the hug, neither wanting to let go, just savouring the moment of being so close. Willa is all warmth, smelling like her signature scent of bergamot, jasmine, and a hint of vanilla.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” she whispers into my ear.
“Wouldn’t miss this for the world,” I whisper back.
She pulls out of our hug, and her eyes light up when she sees Leon.
“I will never get tired of seeing two of my favourite people together,” she says with a smile.
“Wow…” Bryce says sarcastically. Willa punches his shoulder, and the light reflects off the shiny engagement ring on her left hand.
“Aside from you, of course,” she says to her fiancé.
“Okay, now I’m hurt.” Leon says.
“Be quiet,” Willa and I say in unison, then high five.
“Still glad she moved back to the Bay, man?” Bryce asks Leon.
Leon doesn’t hesitate for a second: “Yes.”
He must notice the blush creeping up my cheeks, as he quickly adds, “But maybe we should separate the two snark queens over here…”
“You hate us ‘cause you ain’t us,” Willa says, and I laugh.
“Sure, whatever you say. Come on Cass, we better hover by our piece-”
“It’s stunning!” Willa exclaims. “My favourite piece here tonight.”
“Mine too,” Leon says quickly, and even Bryce nods in ascent.
“Can I not stay here in the Cassidy Weaver fan club for a bit longer? Don’t make me face the critics!” But it’s too late, Leon pulls me away – slowly stepping toward the terrifying back corner, where I can see a cluster of people hovering by already. I look back to see Willa blowing me a kiss as I take another step forward. Facing my fears. It’s words on a canvas. What people say about it cannot hurt me. I control what I want to say. That’s kind of the whole point.
I take another step forward, straightening my spine, shoulders back, chin up. Then I smile. Before Cassidy would never. She thought a resting bitch face was the epitome of power and control. Smiling was soft.
I might be soft, but I’m not weak. I’m strong. Stronger than I ever was before.
I now like to think instead of having Before Cassidy and After Cassidy, there’s just me. Just Cassidy. I’m simultaneously messy yet tied together with an intricate assortment of strings. Organised to a fault with a colour coded diary yet couldn’t choose which movie to watch even if you held a gun to my head. I admit my feelings and don’t cower behind whichever dress covers the most skin in an impregnable façade and it turns out I feel my feelings deeply. Deeply enough that I found myself contemplating accepting one of the offers to let me ‘tell my story!’. Leon told me to sit on these feelings and really think them through. He held me as I cried thinking back to seeing my face on front pages (yes, plural) across the country and beyond. Handed me a pen and paper and instructed me to get the thoughts out of my head and onto the page.
One page turned into another, until I filled a whole notebook. Rambling journal entries turned into poems and short stories, and with all my barbed thoughts scattered across my many notebooks, I became kinder to myself. Softer. Turns out my own brain is a much kinder place once my regrets and catalogue of self-doubts are expelled from it. My softness grew from something I thought was useless into my greatest strength.
I only brought up my idea to Leon around three weeks ago, when we headed to the bar we ran into each other in a whole year ago now. We’ve become regulars, and more often that not I still order a martini. I swear, he nearly knocked over his stool with excitement when I tried to make sense of some of the ideas swimming around in my head by speaking them aloud, to him, only him.
“Cassidy – yes. Fuck. Yes. It’s so you. It’s perfect.” He beamed at me, so bright, I felt I could bathe in it. “Have one of my paintings as your base. We’ll display it at Willa’s show! It’s perf-”
“-Woah, no!”
“Yes! Think about it. I’m not going to force you, but I’m voting the biggest fattest yes possible. I want to help. It’s brilliant. You’re brilliant.” He leaned forward and held my face in his hands, kissing me with such passion even I forgot why I was thinking it was such a bad idea.
Later, when Leon went to the bathroom – I texted Maya about it. The only other person who knew the Cooper situation as intricately as I did, she was the only other opinion. Despite the time zones, she replied instantly, either working the crazy round the clock cycle of politics or touring somewhere with her rockstar boyfriend. Or is he her fiancé now? Regardless, she responded instantly with (almost) as much enthusiasm as Leon did.
And here I am. I take a final step forward and I’m standing directly in front of the piece. Our piece. I squeeze Leon’s hand, and he squeezes mine right back. I’m here, he says without words.
For the first time, I take in our piece as a bystander, not the artist. Not that I am the artist – I scrawled some words atop Leon’s stunning painting. Over more martinis that night, we brainstormed I would write my words over a painting of Leon’s, in black ink, purposefully messy. Like me.
Three martinis in, and while I wished to recreate exactly what Leon and I did a year previous, instead I showed him some of my favourite poems and prose from my notebooks. He listened earnestly, so enthralled he was almost unblinking, and it was like flipping a coin. When I asked him which words I should use for the piece, I knew which was going to be written before the coin can drop. I think Leon knew it too, as he stayed silent, smiling.
“You know exactly what you want to write, don’t you?”
I nodded.
“That’s my Cass,” he said, and after that we did go home and recreate last year’s events. Sans the rivalry. I don’t think I could even pretend to hate Leon Park ever again.
The studio is raucously loud, so many people here taking in all the wonderful creations. But it’s a rare moment of silence in this back corner, a group of about seven people (Leon and I making the group into nearly ten) standing in silence, taking it in. I even see one girl – I think – brush away a tear. I blink back my own tears which are threatening to spill, and take in what Leon and I made, together. The first of many.
The little white card beside the painting reads: ‘My Turn to Talk – words by Cassidy Weaver, painting by Leon Park; 2026.’ It’s beautiful seeing it pinned up, between a piece that has already been purchased by Richard Kerrigan, and beside another that was originally designed for a Jack Felgate film, now up for sale here for an insane amount of money.
Leon’s painting is immaculate, as all of his paintings are. Each and every brush stroke stands unique and they all group together to make a piece that is just so visually stunning. I’m biased, obviously, but considering he’s sold twelve out of the fifteen he gave to Willa’s studio, he’s really fucking good. One even hangs in our bar.
But in our piece, his individual brushstrokes add together into a stunning rendition of Ocean Beach. The sky is grey and cloudy, the waves are wild – yet it’s perfect for what I wanted to say. My poem is overlayed on top of the beach, really furthering the choppy, messy, chaotic vibe. Before I’ve even acknowledged all the little details in Leon’s painting (including a figure on a surfboard far out in the waves), the group have noticed that it’s my name on the plaque. That I’m Cassidy Weaver. And for the first time I’m not ashamed to be recognised. Not embarrassed when I see Richard Kerrigan come over and raise a seemingly impressed eyebrow when reading my words. I don’t want to shy away even when the girl puts her hand on my shoulder and tells me she adores the piece.
“Thank you,” I reply.
“No, thank you,” she insists. “Could you tell me more about what inspired the piece?”
I take a deep breath and nod. I’m Cassidy, just Cassidy; no Before, no After. Just me. And it’s my turn to talk.
“Of course,” I begin.