Anastasia

Cahuilla Hills

"It takes a while to get over someone like her. It takes different strategies and people to pull you out of the void that people like her leave you in. I'll be honest, I wasn't in the best place of my life when she died and I tried everything to kill my own senses without actually killing myself. It was the notion of never ever hearing that voice or seeing that face again that destroyed me."

--

"Come back to bed," he called out to her as the sun was seeping through the sheer white curtains of her bedroom.

"It's a nice day - we should probably do something."

"Oh, I'm planning to do something plenty. Come back to bed."

Easily convinced, she allowed him to catch hold of her hand and reel her back in with a laugh. "You're incorrigible."

"Do you want me to start singing 'you are my sunshine' to explain my lack of need for the great outdoors?" Teasing. "I can, just for you."

"God, don't you dare." They laughed harder and leaned in for a kiss.

--

His hands clutched at the steering wheel driving down Route 111 to Palm Springs where her old house was. He still hadn't sold it, he couldn't just sell it and give it to someone else. He kept it intact the way she had left it, everything organized and put into place. He would come here sometimes to escape certain things, he would confide in the one thing that she had left for him.

"We lived together but still had our own separate places. She loved this house and she would come here most the time to get away from the city. She bought this place with the first big paycheck she got back in 91." he said staring at the road as he was being recorded by the two people that were also in the car with him.

"No one has really seen the inside of it since, well her death. It's pretty much the same. The only difference is I put a few of my snakes in there, I had put most of them in there before she died. She had grown quite fond of them over the years." he chuckled.

The car pulled up on a large one story 60's style home with the large bright yellow door she had picked out herself back in 91. The yard was flat and instead of full grass there were patches of shrubbery everywhere with flowers, cactuses and two, now a bit large, willow trees that supported a patchwork hammock in the middle of them.

"She would always be there reading whenever she would come here pissed off at me. I would always find her either asleep or reading one of the many old school books she kept in the house, plus the occasional joint in her hand. She was a hippy at heart and even sometimes I would even find her here with my mother. They got along pretty well, sharing and listening to their old vinyls, working on clothing, drawing, exchanging books. My mom had taken her death as bad as I had, she was basically the daughter that she never had and it was always amazing seeing them together." He walked up to the door, gulping down the lump in his throat as he thought about the two, now gone, women in his life.

The door opened to an entrance that was filled to the ceiling with fresh flowers and old jazz records attached to the baby blue wall.

"When she bought this place it had belonged to some pimp in the 60's. The walls were all fur and for the longest time, I couldn't persuade her to change them. She would always shrug me off and say that maybe she liked them cause she was a pimp in her previous life." He chuckled as he touched one of the bright yellow lilies on the high marble table.

The living room of the house was large and seemed to have all windows instead of walls. A large white grand piano stood in the corner next to the back window that overlooked the backyard and pool. A few guitars were mounted on the wall included two of slash's guitars and one that Angus Young had signed for her on her birthday party back in 93. The large marble and glass fireplace was circled by two simplistic 60s themed white leather sofas and a glass coffee table in the middle that still had magazines from the 90s stacked on top.

"I got the piano for her as a house gift when she first bought the place. She had been playing piano for almost all her life and was obsessed about rerecording her own versions of 20's rag music." he shook his head as he slowly glided his hand over the keys of the piano. He had customized and designed it himself, there were drawings that he had done for her all over the piano, a drawing of her face and his on the side, dates, and engravings on the top. The black keys were white and the white keys were black. The stool of the piano was covered in plush red fur.

"She added the fur to the stool. It had covered the dining room wall when she first bought it and she wanted to at least keep a chunk of it somewhere in the house so she put it on the stool."

--

"What're you doing?" he walked into her large master bedroom, there was an old B.B King record playing on the record player and the sound of a sewing machine at work. He found her sitting at a sewing machine working away on a patch of red fabric, her long blonder hair held back by a red bandana and a large Lakers Basketball sweatshirt over her body and a joint between her lips.

"I'm trying to stitch this up properly so I can put it on the stool of the piano you got," she said not turning away and sticking out her tongue in concentration as she worked away on the patch of fur.

"I thought we threw the last bit of that dinosaur fur out." he leaned against the frame of the door with his arms crossed over his chest staring at the woman he loved.

"Nah, I kept a piece just to piss you off." she smirked and turned around winking at him.

He rolled his eyes and laughed as he walked closer to her sewing station.

"Where did you get the sewing machine from?" He sat on the floor next to her and looked up.

"Your mom dropped it off two days ago."

"Oh, so she knows that you're trying to still pimp up the place?"

"Yeah, she encouraged me to not listen to you." she scoffed and gave him the side eye.

"This is Palm Springs, not fucking Vegas." he laughed.

"You're judging me now, but I know you like this shit too so shut the fuck up Hudson," she smirked at him.

--