Rooms on Fire

Second.

A/N: Explicit. 

Ten days after our first kiss, I haven't been to my apartment in a week and for all intents and purposes I've moved in with Stevie. I still have my apartment, this is far too new to give up everything but it has become second nature to hang a left at the corner of Santa Monica and Fairfax and head up to Stevie's house in hills above the ocean rather than hanging a right, followed by a left onto North Gardner and pulling into my apartment block. I had to go back to my apartment yesterday after work to grab more clothes and some more presentable shoes and it felt foreign to me.

I've only ever lived with one partner in the past, my first serious girlfriend Rebecca and that was nearly 15 years ago. We lived together for nearly two years before she had to move back to New Zealand, she had been in Australia on a working tourist visa and in that time I never felt entirely comfortable sharing my space with another person. Rebecca liked getting up at 6am and watching the sunrise. I am a night owl. Rebecca didn't like soap operas or have the same taste in music. There were some areas of overlap. 60s girl groups and The Beach Boys but she was a heavy metal fan at heart and as much as I listened, tried to understand the significance of the lyrics, it mostly remained unpleasant noise to me. We both liked cooking and the sex was frequent and very good. I don't know whether it was knowing that whatever we had was by its nature temporary that prevented me from fully letting her into my heart and my home but I feel more comfortable with Stevie after 10 days than I ever did with Rebecca.

Stevie and I are complements. Both night owls. Both introverts who need our space and our time to recharge. Everyone assumes that Stevie is an extrovert, that her life is an endless party but that couldn't be further from the truth. I think maybe that is why she used more cocaine, found it impossible to stop. Because cocaine allowed her to be the person that everybody else expected her to be. She has her circle of close friends. Her backing singers Lori and Sharon, Tom Petty, Mike Campbell, and Benmont Tench from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Sheryl Crow, a couple of non-industry people, everybody else has long since fallen away. We are both incredibly dedicated to our work. Both perfectionists, always thinking that we can do better. We have similar taste in entertainment, She is incredibly tolerant of my quirks and anxieties and I am tolerant of hers, though I suspect hers are far less irritating to live with than my own.

Her new album came out last week and we went out together for the first time to celebrate. She took me to Spago in Beverly Hills. The food was delicious and the night was lovely, after we came home we had spent hours sitting and talking on Stevie's balcony overlooking the ocean. I think she was maybe hoping for something more than the chaste kisses that have characterized our physical relationship to this point but I wasn't ready. I didn't have to say anything. She just knew. I worry that I disappointed her. I constantly worry about disappointing her. I worry that I will do something or say something that will break the illusion and she will fall out of lust, or love, or whatever has developed between us is.

I'm cooking dinner when Stevie comes home. She has been doing press in support of Trouble in Shangri-La all day and it is after 7 by the time she gets home. She looks drained as she enters the kitchen.

'How was your day?' I ask as I fry off some bacon, garlic, onion and a little brown sugar in a frying pan.

'Long,' she sighs, 'I hate these press junket things. I don't mind the interviews where I can invite a journalist up to my house or somewhere else and get to make a connection with them but these days where I have to tell 20 journalists who know nothing about me the same three things, they aren't fun.'

'Poor baby,' I say laughingly as I lean over and give her a quick kiss before turning my attention back to the stove.

'What are you cooking?' Stevie asks, taking a seat at the kitchen table, 'it smells delicious.'