8. The Blowup
THE BLOWUP
Lena flies home Sunday morning before I’m properly awake. I feel the mattress shift and hear her moving in the dark, careful, trying not to wake me.
“I know you’re awake,” she says from the doorway, dressed, bag on her shoulder.
“I’m not.”
She laughs, crosses the room and kisses my forehead. “I have to make the nine-forty. Some of us have spreadsheets.”
“Stay, please.” I say, which is not a word I use. It surprises both of us.
“Next time.” She says it like a promise, not a brush-off. “Text me when you’re at rehearsal.” And then she’s gone, and the apartment is too quiet, and I lie in the warm dent she left.
Sandy is forty minutes late.
The studio costs four hundred dollars an hour.
Jeremy is behind his kit, practicing ghost notes.
His hands move through the air first, muscle memory and deliberation, before the sticks touch anything.
Ana is on the couch noodling through a chord progression.
Jo is here, which counts as a tactical victory—the last three sessions she sent apologies via email from Rebecca's apartment.
Sandy's guitar is not here.
Another headline dropped this morning. BELLADONNAS GUITARIST SPOTTED WITH MYSTERY WOMAN AT EXCLUSIVE VENUE. The photo is blurrier than the last one. The woman in the leather jacket is the same, but the angle is different, the context is different, the narrative is deeper now.
I spent two hours fielding label calls instead of warming up. Each headline equals one more conversation with upper management equals one more person questioning whether this band is worth the investment.
I'm at the mixing desk with my bass plugged in. Phone showing a text from Sandy: omw!! Two exclamation marks.
"She said she's on her way," Ana says when I don't ask.
"She said that twenty minutes ago."
Jo's phone buzzes. She glances at it. A smile crosses her face—fast, private—and she types a reply. Rebecca. Always Rebecca.
I look at that smile and feel something shift in my chest that feels like a match meeting fuel.
"Jo," I say. My voice comes out level. "We need to talk about the EP."
"We are talking about the EP. We're here."
"You're here. Your phone's here. I'm not sure the rest of you is."
Jeremy puts his sticks down. He sets them on the snare with a care that is its own statement. The drummer going quiet before the explosion.
"Rhonda—" Jo starts.
"Don't. Don't try to manage this the way we've managed everything else.
" I pull out my phone. Open the notes app.
"I booked this studio. I booked the last one.
I called in favors that cost me something.
I found three producers this month, the collab opportunity, the festival submission.
Three different paths forward. You replied to one.
'Looks good!'. I feel like I’m carrying everything.”
"I've been—"
"You've been happy. I know. I'm glad. But you used to stay until midnight. You used to send me producer links with reasons why you thought they could cross us over. You used to sit in the driver's seat sometimes and I could rest. And now I'm alone."
"That's not fair," Jo says. Her voice has an edge now. "That's not what's happening here."
"What is happening then? Tell me. Explain to me how you're helping us move forward when you're spending every waking moment with Rebecca instead of with us."
"I'm in love," Jo says. "That's what's happening. And apparently that's a conflict of interest in your version of the band."
"It's not about love. It's about commitment. You checked out."
"I didn't check out. I'm here. I'm always here for the actual work."
"You're here in body. Your head is somewhere else. And that's fine for you, but it's not fine for the rest of us. We're trying to build something that matters and you're treating it like a side project while you figure out your relationship."
Jeremy flinches.
"You know what I think?" Jo says, and her voice is steady in a way that tells me she's been waiting for this.
"I think you go quiet and think you keep that tab in your head—every email, every call, every task you took on that nobody asked you to take on—and you wait until the list is long enough to use as a weapon.
So we feel guilty enough to fall in line. "
"That's not—"
“You're manipulating us by making us feel like we owe you something just because you chose to work harder."
I stare at her.
"We're here now," Ana says from the couch. "Both of us. Can we just work?"
"Why are you defending her?" I ask.
"Because she's right!" Ana says. "You are controlling and make decisions and then you present them to us like they're facts we have to accept. You rerouted the tour without asking anyone. You’re the one who decided on producers without getting input.
You booked this studio without checking if we had other commitments. "
"The tour routing made sense—"
"It made sense cause you wanted it to make sense.” Ana interrupts. "Because you've decided what's best and you're brilliant at convincing the rest of us that we should trust your judgment, but that's not trust. You just want us to be obedient."
Sandy walks in. Forty-three minutes late, guitar case in hand, sunglasses on her head. She reads the room in two seconds—the setup, the silence, the energy of something that already happened.
"What did I miss?" she asks.
"Everything," Jo says. "You missed Rhonda reading us all a list of our failures."
"That's not what's happening," I say, but my voice is quieter now.
"It's exactly what's happening," Jo says. "You're doing it right now. You're the only one who can see. The only one who cares enough to make hard decisions. The only one who matters enough to keep score."
I look at Jo. Jo looks at me. Five years of partnership visible in the gap between us. Five years of writing together. Touring together. Building this thing from nothing..
Perhaps I was keeping us alive when maybe I was just keeping myself necessary.
"You're right," I say. "You're right about all of it."
"I know I'm right," Jo says. "But you're right too.
About the momentum being important. And about Sandy's thing being a distraction right now.
You're right about all of it. But you're also cruel about how you deploy the right things.
And I can't keep working with someone who uses what I do wrong as currency. "
"I never—"
"You did. You're keeping tabs and you're going to keep it until it's heavy enough to justify whatever you want to do next."
I unplug my bass. Put it in the case. Zip it with deliberate calm.
"Where are you going?" Sandy asks, her voice careful.
"Home."
"We have studio time."
"I know. I booked it."
"Rhonda—" Jeremy starts, but doesn't finish. He just watches me go.
I walk out with my bass and I don't look back.
The parking lot is cold. Mid-evening asphalt wet from earlier rain. The van sits twenty feet away. I walk to it because my car feels too small, too much like a container for all the fury that has nowhere to go.
I sit on the bonnet. Pull out my phone.
What did you eat for dinner?
The three dots appear after six minutes. Six minutes is longer than immediate but shorter than deliberating too hard. The number feels important.
Roast chicken and too many potatoes. You?
Haven't eaten yet. Had a thing at the studio.
Three dots. Disappear. Appear again. Disappear.
I had a really bad disagreement with the whole band.
I read that. Her reading my subtext even through text.
Do you want to talk about it?
Not yet. Not about Jo and manipulation and ledgers and the sound of being called a control mechanism by someone I've spent five years trying to save.
Tell me about the potatoes, please.
She does. She roasts them with rosemary and garlic.
The garlic burns every time—it's a pattern she's learned to accept about herself.
She talks about salt and olive oil and the precise temperature, the way they come out with crispy edges and soft centers.
She talks about sitting alone in her kitchen eating them while watching a show where nobody yells and nobody keeps score and nobody is confused about what love is supposed to look like.
I sit on the van bonnet reading about burnt garlic and feel something in my chest that was wound tight start to unwind.
We text about the show she's watching. Some comedy special where a woman talks about her dysfunctional family like it's material for laughs instead of actual conversation. And somehow that matters. Somehow that is the thing that makes the parking lot less cold.
That's what they do, she texts. They laugh so they don't have to talk about the damage.
Jo said I was manipulative. She was right. I do keep a ledger.
I've spent five years thinking I was saving the band. I thought if I just worked hard enough, if I made myself necessary enough, then I would matter.
It's never enough.
Lena texts me goodnight at 11 PM: Goodnight, R. Rest well.
I sit in my car with the engine off. The parking lot is empty except for the van and the last light draining from the sky. The word manipulation is echoing somewhere I'm trying not to listen. But underneath it is Lena texting about potatoes and goodnight and rest.
That's enough. That's everything.
I text Lena at midnight.
Me: I can’t stop thinking about your couch.
Lena: Then come see it. Come here, stay at mine. I’ll cook.
Me: Better be careful. I might do that.
Lena: That’s the entire idea.
And somehow that terrifies me more than anything else.