11. The Cost
THE COST
Being happy and being a liar turn out to be the same thing.
"Hi," she says.
"Hi. How was the drive?"
"Long. The traffic out of the city was insane."
"You hungry?"
"Maybe after. Can I just—" She sets down the bass case and drops the overnight bag by the couch. "Can I just exist for five minutes without thinking about Sandy Gauntlet?"
"Yeah. Come in."
The apartment recalibrates when she's in it.
Smaller. Warmer. I make her hot chocolate the way she's taught me—two marshmallows stacked, aerosol whipped cream because she's told me that specificity matters, that small attentions lodge in a person—and watch her shoulders drop as she wraps both hands around the mug.
She breathes like she's been holding it for days. Maybe longer.
We sit on the couch—the couch with all its accumulating significance, all the ways it's becoming our couch in a room that's still mostly hers—and she drinks the chocolate and doesn't talk about Sandy or the label or the contract reviews or emails in capitals.
She tells me about the Belladonnas session instead.
“Jo’s been bringing me cookies and coffee,” she says.
"That's good, right?"
"I think she’s offering an olive branch." Rhonda traces the rim of her mug. “We’re working together but not really talking much.”
"What did you work on?"
"Three new arrangements by Jo, which is great. She’s putting herself out there again.
She used to arrange everything before the relationship, and then she stopped, just let Ana and Jeremy drive the creative direction.
Now she's coming back with full arrangements and playing them for the group like, 'here, try this. '"
"That's awesome."
"It is. I just hope she’ll start answering emails again too."
"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 between my girlfriend and my 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.
“Anyways, look who my cousin spotted at the mall!”
Ravita slid her phone across the table with a blurry photo on it—Sandy Gauntlet, the Belladonnas’ guitarist, caught mid-stride outside a shopping centre.
And I sat there with chewing my sandwich, looking at the photo of Sandy. I smiled and handed the phone back.
“That’s so cool.” I try to be as convincing as possible.
She looks at me a beat too long, like she’s deciding whether to push.
"Everything okay? Your parents or something? You’ve been gone a lot."
"Yeah. Just the usual stuff. Don’t worry about it."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. You know how it is."
"I don't, actually. My family's pretty low-pressure. They just want to know I'm happy."
"That's nice."
"Is yours not like that?"
"It's complicated."
"How so?"
I looked at my sandwich. "My father has specific ideas about how things should be."
"What kind of ideas?"
"Like, who we should date. What we should do for work."
She nodded. "That's rough."
"It is."
She didn't push.
Marnie already stopped asking why I was bailing on things because she got tired of my deflections.
Gerald has stopped coming by my desk. I told him that I couldn’t do dinner—that there was someone, sort of, that it was complicated—and he said “of course, no problem”, and now he takes the long way to the printer to avoid my aisle.
I started bailing on lunches. "Sorry, I have to meet family." "Work thing just came up." "Doctor's appointment." I was meeting Rhonda at a café across town, a place none of my colleagues go. Just two women having coffee, which is what any observer would see—just two women sitting and talking.
Ravita ate alone those days.
I’ve skipped so many Sunday dinners in a row—two “work deadlines” and one “I think I’m coming down with something”—and Karen has left a voicemail about every one, each one sounding concerned. So this Sunday I go.
Sunday dinner at my father's house. Karen had made cabbage rolls.
My phone buzzed. Rhonda sent a photo of a cool painting in a hotel lobby. A banana with eyes.
I kept my hands on the table, folded at the edge.
"You seem distracted, Lena," Karen said.
"Sorry it’s just work. Tax season again, you know how it is."
"Anything exciting?" my father asked.
"Well, I guess all the companies want their tax done at the same time."
"That sounds taxing." He laughs at his own joke.
I smile. “It keeps me busy.”
Karen smiled. My father took another bite.
"You should come to the badminton club with us next month," Karen said. "They're doing a mixer."
"Maybe. I'm pretty busy with work."
"You should make time for your social life. You're not getting any younger, Lena."
"I have a social life."
"What kind of social life?" my father asked. "Are you seeing anyone?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"I haven't met anyone I'm interested in."
"You should try online dating. Your mother's cousin did that, and she met someone within weeks."
"I'm okay for now."
"Being alone isn't good for you," Karen said. "You need someone to take care of you. Someone reliable."
"I take care of myself."
"Of course you do, honey. But there's nothing wrong with wanting companionship."
I cut my cabbage roll into smaller and smaller pieces. The knife was very sharp.
"Your sister called last week," my father said.
I looked up.
"She wanted to know if we'd ever changed our stance on certain topics."
Karen made a small noise of displeasure.
"Had you?" I asked.
"Has she?" my father countered.
I take a drink of water, swallowing the lump in my throat.
"The cabbage rolls are great, Karen," I said.
"Thank you, honey. Have some more."
She spooned more onto my plate.
After dinner, I excused myself and texted Jani from the bathroom. Just: How are you?
She responded hours later: Good. Why?
I didn't write back.
I bailed on another concert with Ravita and Marnie.
The Sirens were playing an acoustic set downtown.
I used to live for those shows—front row, recording every second, analyzing every shift in performance.
The Sirens were the light of my existence.
Or they did, before I found something that mattered more and couldn't tell anyone about it.
I texted right before the show: Can't make it. So sorry. Work emergency just came up, you know tax season.
Ravita: Whatever.
Marnie: We kinda know you wouldn’t anyway.
The apologies were stacking up. I was getting better at them, which is its own kind of tragedy.
Rhonda was playing a nearby city that week—close enough to reach by train—so I went to her instead.
"How was your night?" I ask.
"Better now that I’m with you." she says, kissing down my neck.
The next morning at the office, Ravita brings me hot chocolate. She sets it on my desk with a deliberate clink.
“You left before the encore last time,” she says. “This time you didn’t come at all.”
I have three responses ready. I was tired. Family thing. Wasn’t feeling well.
“Just had so much work,” I say. “Thanks for the hot chocolate. You didn’t have to.” Ravita nods.
I realised it was the same excuse last time. What I said when I bailed on drinks.
Ravita’s face tells me she knows it’s a lie. She frowns and goes back to her desk.
I sit in my cubicle and feel it in my chest, that my friends will eventually stop inviting me.
Jani calls on a Thursday. “I’ve got a few days off,” she says. “I’m coming to you. I want to see your terrible little apartment and your terrible little life. I’ll bring your favourite cake.”
“This weekend?” I say, and my stomach does the maths before I do.
“Yeah. I already booked the flight.” She paused. “Why? Do you not want to see me?”
“Of course I do.”
And then I text the woman who was supposed to be in my bed on Saturday and tell her not to come.
Me: Change of plans this weekend—my sister’s coming to visit. I’m so sorry. I’ll make it up to you.
Rhonda: Don’t apologise for having a sister. Go. I’ll survive.
I stare at the text, and something cold settles in me, because I have started scheduling the people I love around one another so that none of them ever meet.