9. The Line
THE LINE
She arrives on a Friday—always Friday, always with some excuse about timing—with a bass case in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other. I watch her shoulders loosen the moment my apartment door closes behind her.
We eat whatever I've cooked. Each meal more ambitious than the last, as though the quality of the food is a proxy for whatever this is becoming.
She brings wine and stories about rehearsals and labels and the peculiar politics of a four-piece band where one member is in permanent crisis.
I bring structure: the exact amount of salt, the perfect temperature for proteins.
"The band's falling apart," she says.
“How come?"
"We had a fight about commitment. About whether I care about the music more than I care about her. Apparently, I'm a manipulator who keeps score."
"Are you?"
“I don’t know anymore. I thought I was organising. Apparently I was just too controlling and manipulating them..”
“Hey.” I put my hand over hers on the table. “You drove for hours to sit in my kitchen and eat food you’re too upset to taste. That doesn’t sound like manipulation to me. You sound like you’ve been holding onto too much and not able to put anything down.”
She doesn't elaborate. I don't push.
"So you walked out in the middle of a session?"
"Yeah."
"That must have been horrible."
"Jo said I kept tabs on everyone’s faults. That I was weaponizing my own hard work to make people feel guilty."
"Do you think that too?"
"Yes," she says. "Maybe. I think I have been. And I don't know how to stop."
Tuesday. The office. Gerald from audit is at my desk with sunflowers at 9:30 AM.
"I was wondering," Gerald says, "if you'd want to grab dinner with me tonight. Theres this amazing place where they grill meat right in front of you.”
I remember him building this for months. The Mondays asking how my weekend was. The lattes at 10 AM. The book recommendations. He's kind and he's constructed this approach with care.
"That's really sweet, Gerald. Can I think about it?"
"Of course. No pressure."
He goes back to his desk. Ravita materializes within thirty seconds.
“Looks like someone got an admirer!” Ravita says. “That’s so sweet. Is this the reason you haven’t been hanging out with us? You two are secretly dating?”
I feel guilt immediately in the pit of my stomach.
“No, we’re not dating. Its just, I’ve just been really busy, with my family and all and it’s just been a lot.” I say, staring at her in the eye. She raises her brow.
“You can tell us, you know.” She leans on the corner of my desk. “It’s been like this for months. You bail, you go quiet. You know we see you smile at your phone and turn it face down like we can’t see you do it.”
“I’ve just had a lot on.”
“You always have a lot on. This is different.” She studies me a moment, then lets it go. “I’m not going to pry. But whatever it is, I hope it’s worth how far away you’ve gone.”
She goes back to her desk, and I sit there with an ache, and that I wish I could just tell her everything.
We're on the couch with wine and the remains of the chicken cacciatore, the plates pushed to the coffee table, and I mention Gerald.
"So Gerald asked me out this morning. Even gave me sunflowers."
Rhonda's wine glass stops halfway to her mouth.
She sets the glass down.
"He what?" she says.
"He asked me out."
"Are you going to go?"
"Hmm…I haven't decided."
"Right. Okay."
"It's just dinner."
"Sure."
"It doesn't mean anything."
"I didn't say it did."
But her face is saying everything her voice isn't. She sets her wine down and looks at the ceiling. Her hand on the couch cushion between us, not touching but close enough that I could reach it.
"Are you jealous?" I ask.
I mean it lightly. A tease, maybe. But the silence that follows has a gravity I can feel. She looks at me and then looks away.
"Rhonda."
"Yeah."
"That wasn't a rhetorical question."
"I know."
"So you're jealous."
"I think I am," she says. "You're telling me that this Gerald gave you flowers, and I'm losing my mind about it."
I feel my pulse quicken.
"You're not—"
"I am. I’m completely losing my mind."
She leans forward. Her hand finds the side of my face, her palm against my jaw, her thumb along my cheekbone. The touch is so careful it makes my teeth ache.
"Can I?" she asks.
"Yes."
She kisses me. Or I kiss her. We meet in the gap between the couch cushions, and the kiss is soft and searching and tastes like red wine and a year of voice notes and all the things we've been building toward since the vending machine.
We pull apart. Her forehead against mine and our breathing is uneven.
"That answers my question," I say.
"Shut up."
"Make me."
She does.
The second kiss is less gentle. Her hands are in my hair and mine are under the hem of her shirt, finding warm skin and the ridge of her hip bone. She makes a sound against my mouth.
"Wait." She pulls back. Eyes on mine, pupils blown. Her breathing is quick and uneven and deliberate. "Are you sure? Is this okay?"
"Rhonda, I’ve been cooking elaborate meals for you every time you come over. I made you chicken cacciatore. I don’t even like tomato. "
"That's not an answer." She’s smiling.
"Yes," I say. "I am sure. I've wanted this since the vending machine."
"The vending machine was ages ago!"
"I'm know."
She grins and then her mouth is on my neck. My hands are pulling her shirt up. We're moving, stumbling, laughing with a graceless urgency toward the bedroom.
In my bed, she's more nervous than her texts suggested. Her hands are confident on my body—the same confidence she brings to the fretboard—but there's a hesitation in her movements that wasn't there before. She stops to check in.
"This good?"
"Yes," I tell her.
"Tell me if—"
"I will. I promise."
She nods and then her mouth finds my throat, my collarbone, the soft space between my breasts.
Her hands are everywhere—on my ribs, along my sides, across the inside of my thigh. She’s watching me, listening to my breaths, adjusting the pressure, angle, and speed.
"There," I say. "Like that."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
“There, like that, more. “
She's gentle where I didn't know I needed gentleness—on my throat, on the inside of my wrist, on the vulnerable part of my shoulder where the nerve endings are too close to the surface. She's demanding where I wanted to be wanted, and the demands come with questions.
"More?"
"Yes."
"Like this?"
"Yes."
"You can tell me to stop anytime."
"I know."
She's inside me and I'm gasping and she's asking "okay?" and I'm saying "yes, yes, don't stop" and she's listening to everything my body is saying.
The rhythm builds. Her mouth on my neck. Her hand holding my face. Her body moving against mine.
I come with my name caught in her mouth, with her hand still holding my face, with the knowledge that she came with me or just after or we came at the same moment.
Afterward, we're both trembling. She pulls me close and I lean into her.
She lies next to me with her arm across my waist, and I lie still and let myself have this.
“So,” she says into the dark, her arm across my waist. “Is this a thing now? Are we—” She stops. “I don’t have the vocabulary for whatever I want to call this.”
“Girlfriends,” I say. “The word is girlfriends. If you want it.”
“I want it.” She says it fast, like she’s scared I’ll take it back. “I want to be able to call you that. Even if it’s only ever in this room for now.”
“Only in this room,” I agree—and I don’t let myself think too hard about the for now.
The room is dark and warm. Her breathing is evening out into something deeper. I can feel the rise and fall of her ribs against my back, the press of her arm specific and present and real.
I don't sleep for a long time, I lie there feeling the weight of her arm, the warmth of her breath.
The streetlight moves across her face, and she's asleep now, her hand curled against my ribs like she's afraid I'll disappear in the night.
I think about Gerald and his sunflowers sitting on my desk at work, and I think about Ravita asking what I'm thinking about.
I'm thinking about her. I’m always thinking about her. I am only thinking about her.
I'm thinking about how happy I am in the dark with her sleeping next to me.
I'm thinking about forever, which is a dangerous thing to think about someone you've only known a year.
She sleeps with my hand resting on her ribs, her breathing deep and real.