"That sounds exhausting."
"It is." She leans back, and her head finds my shoulder. "But it's getting better. I guess people are only close when they can argue with each other.”
I run my hand over her hair. "Is it worth it for you?"
"Yeah," she says quietly. "It is. I love my band, no matter how much they annoy me."
We sit quiet for a while.
"I'm tired," she says.
"I know."
Later, in my bed, I marvel at the difference between public Rhonda and private Rhonda.
This private version is all mine.
She asks “is this okay?” between kisses. Then she reaches for her overnight bag and goes, for a second, Rhonda Mars is shy and says, “I brought something for us to play with, if you want.”
I want. I tell her so, and I watch relief and want move across her face at the same time, and we take our time with the how of it—what feels good, what to say, the word that means stop even if I’m laughing when I say it. She’s careful in a way that isn’t timid, careful the way she is with everything she loves, and when it’s the two of us and the dark and this, she keeps checking my face like it’s the only feedback that counts.
“Still okay?” she says against my throat.
“Yes. Wow—don’t stop.”
She doesn’t. She finds a rhythm the way she finds a groove—patient, then certain—one hand splayed warm and sure on my hip, the other laced with mine above my head, and she talks me through it in that low unguarded voice, telling me how I feel, telling me I’m doing so well, telling me she’s got me. I’m not quiet. She taught me that words are a kind of respect, so I say exactly what I want and she gives me all of it, and when I come apart it’s with my name in her mouth and her forehead against mine and my whole life narrowed to the place where we meet.
And then it’s my turn, I roll her onto her back and take my time about it—slow, unhurried, watching her come apart the way she watches me, learning her by the sounds she doesn’t mean to make. When she breaks it’s with my name in her mouth and both hands fisted in my hair.
Afterward she gives me a minute—water, a kiss to my shoulder, her hand tracing slow circles until my breathing comes back down—and then, when I reach for her again, she laughs low against my neck and says, “Again?” and we go again.
Afterward she doesn’t rush past any of it. She eases us down slow, cleans us up without making it a thing, and pulls me into her chest and stays present while my heartbeat finds its way back. “There you go,” she says into my hair.
After, lying in the dark with her arm across my waist, my back to her chest, I feel so content and seen. But underneath is a hollow feeling, nobody knows about this. And the reason for my happiness is a secret I can’t tell anyone.
At lunch Ravita was telling me about a design client.
"We're bringing in three different teams," she said. "Getting them together to work on it. The designer they hired before tried to solve it all by herself, and the back end got upset because they didn’t consider if it would be functional or not."
"My—"
I caught myself mid-word.My girlfriend. My partner. My person.
"My friend had a thing like that once."
Seamless. Ravita didn't notice the catch. But I noticed. I noticed the gap betweenmy girlfriendandmy friend. I swallowed.
Ravita kept talking about her client, about the vulnerability of collaboration, about how people resist being seen when they're struggling. I was on my phone under the table, reading Rhonda's texts:What are you eating? Miss you.
"Lena?"
I looked up.
"Who are you texting?" Ravita said. “You’re not even here.”
"Sorry, I just distracted." I put down my phone.
She held my eyes a beat too long—the way she does now, like she’s deciding whether to push—and then she let it go.
