73. Pretending
Pretending
Rafe
R?vind’s soundcheck rolls through the venue in Tokyo, Freja on drums, Ronan watching her with that stupid grin that makes it obvious to everyone but him. The tension from opening night has finally broken; everything feels steadier now, like we’ve survived the storm.
We’re running through last-minute checks when I spot her, Mara.
She asks a few harmless questions: if the piano monitor’s working better since she adjusted it, if I want in-ears or wedges tonight.
I keep my answers short, and measured. She nods like she’s translating me into a language she wants to learn.
Later, she passes me in the wings, gaffer tape looped around her wrist. The smile she throws me is small, quick, a little hopeful. I look away first. Bad habit lately.
Ronan clocks it immediately, he always does. He leans his shoulder into mine while we wait for a lighting cue, drumsticks tapping some secret rhythm against his thigh.
“Look at you,” he murmurs. “Might actually be letting that one in. Someone to spar with, dust off the rust from all your tears?”
“She handles the equipment,” I say flatly. "Not me."
“Why not both?” he fires back, not unkind.
Kiri, quiet as usual, hears anyway. “She’s nice,” he says, checking his tuner. “Crew says she even feeds everyone when catering forgets vegetarians.” He tilts his head, studying me. “You could use someone who keeps you fed. You're getting so skinny your mom might show up soon.”
Rithy just smirks, told you so written across his face.
“I’m fine,” I say.
They exchange that look, the one that says maybe I’ll finally relent, that getting over her is as easy as getting under someone else. It used to be routine. Life in the small spaces between load-in and soundcheck, the mercies and mistakes of hotel rooms. The thought just makes me tired.
The show burns clean, fast, no lingering where it hurts. I skip the new one. When the last chord fades, the night exhales into cases and checklists. I shake hands, I nod, I vanish. That should’ve been the end. It isn’t.
At the hotel, there’s a knock, three light taps, then laughter trying to whisper.
Ronan, Freja, the rest of the R?vind ladies, Rithy, Kiri, our familiar chaos spilling into my room: techs, riggers, a lighting op I’ve known since the first festival, a front-of-house engineer with saintlike patience.
And Mara, in a hoodie now, hair damp from a quick shower just like mine.
Someone has plastic cups and bad whiskey. Someone else cues up a Bluetooth speaker destined to ruin the neighbors’ night.
Ronan presses a cup into my hand. “You don’t disappear, and you don’t hide from what could be,” he says. “Therapist’s orders.”
“Since when are you licensed?”
“Since I learned to count to four.” He winks. “Drink.”
I do. It warms nothing important, but it softens the edges.
I pull out my guitar, the only peace offering I know.
They ask for old tour stories; I deflect with half-truths.
When conversation drifts toward frostbitten fingers and busted vans, I play something small to cut through it, a slow melody I wrote at sixteen, convinced the world would end if I couldn’t find the next chord.
Mara drifts down onto the mattress, settling across from me the way shy people do, slowly, so I can move if I want to. I don’t. She listens like it matters, like watching my hands might teach her a secret.
“You teach yourself?” she asks when the laughter rises somewhere else.
“Mostly. Other people showed me roads. I wandered them until one felt like home.”
“That sounds like you,” she says. She doesn’t mean it as a line.
The group thins the way it always does on nights like these, one lobby call at a time, another apology for sleep.
The door shuts, and suddenly it’s just us.
Mara’s close enough that our knees touch.
It’s not an accident. She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, smiling like she’s asking permission without words.
I should talk about early mornings, jet lag, anything but I don’t.
I’m so fucking tired of this ache, and some stupid part of me thinks maybe, just maybe, this is the cure.
She leans in. The kiss is soft. I let it happen, even give a little back this time.
But the second my eyes close, she’s there.
Kasia, reflex. The weight of her hand on my jaw, the warmth of her skin, the way she’d melt into my mouth, laughter folded between her breaths.
A thousand unrepeatable details crash through the dark behind my eyes.
This kiss isn’t that. No matter how much I want to, I can’t feel past her.
It’s only ever her. Mara shifts closer; the mattress creaks.
Her tongue grazes my lip, testing, reaching.
I breathe wrong, like I’ve forgotten how.
She pulls her hoodie over her head, then her shirt, two small, practiced motions and for one heartbeat I see myself from above: how easy it would be to step into the old script, to let momentum write the next scene.
I put my hand up between us on her shoulder, gently. “Wait.”
She freezes, trying to read me in the dim light. “If you want we can slow down,” she says softly. She takes my hand, guides it beneath her bra, cupping her breast. I pull away, careful.
“It’s not speed,” I say, voice wrecked. “It’s me.”
Confusion and embarrassment cross her face in quick succession. She scrambles for her hoodie, armor first. “Did I—? I mean, is this—am I—”
“No.” I shake my head. “You didn’t read it wrong. I’m attracted to you, you’re great.” I breathe in, feel it bruise. “I just thought I could. I can’t.”
She glances at the door, pride warring with retreat. “Oh. Okay.”
She searches for her shirt. I reach it first, not to rush her, just to hand it over, an attempt to make this less humiliating.
“Here,” I say, eyes fixed on the carpet. “Take your time. I’ll wait over here.”
Silence. Then, through rejection and hurt: “I wish you’d said something before. You didn’t have to—any of this.”
“You’re right.” I nod. “You didn’t deserve this, it’s my fucked up brain.”
Her eyes shine with anger she’s trying to swallow. “Next time,” she says, voice trembling, “tell Ronan I won’t come along.”
The door slams hard enough to rattle the windows. I press my forehead to it. The wood is cool. I tap once, hard, like I can knock the memories out. Kasia, Mara, everything.
“Don’t wait for me,” I whisper to Mara, to Kasia, to myself. “I’m trying not to.” My hand flexes, like it burns from where I touched her, like I need to punch something again until I look at the bright scars on my knuckle.
I slide down the door until I’m folded on the carpet, knees up, face in my hands.
Two stupid tears escape anyway. This isn’t like Emily, that was a slow fade, love starving for oxygen.
This is the opposite. Kasia turned the lights on, she made everything wild and alive.
Now every song is haunted in her shape, and even kindness tastes like dust.
I sit there until the heater clicks off and the quiet grows teeth. Ronan does our old three-tap knock at my door, a question without intrusion. Mara probably already read him the riot act for inviting her by now.
“You good?” he calls softly.
“Yeah,” I lie. “Just tired.”
His footsteps fade. The emptiness doesn’t.
Kasia
The house is still except for the cartoon credits coming from the TV. Zosia’s head has fallen against Dominik’s chest, her thumb slipping from her mouth. He brushes a strand of hair from her forehead, gentle in the way only a father can be and mouths bedtime to me.
He carries her down the hall. I follow, with her blanket. When she’s tucked in, I sit beside her for a moment, watching her chest rise and fall. The little nightlight throws soft stars across the ceiling, plastic constellations trying to mean something.
Dominik’s hand touches my shoulder. “She’s out cold.”
“Good,” I whisper. “She deserves a night without worries. After everything she’s been through.”
He nods, small and careful. His body still moves like it’s remembering pain; he never complains, though lowering himself onto the couch draws a hitched breath. We sit there watching something neither of us cares about, a comedy with too much laughter in it. His hand rests on mine. I’m trying.
It’s only the second time we’ve done this, sat together, shared space, tried to feel normal again. It still feels disjointed, like learning choreography that once made sense but now moves to someone else’s rhythm. Haunted steps in someone else’s dance.
He kisses me once, then again. Warm, safe. But every time my eyes close, it isn’t him I see. It’s Rafe. The dark waves. The tremor in his voice when he said my name. The steadiness of his hands when everything else was falling apart. The memory makes my breath catch in my throat.
Dominik pulls back, searching my face. “You okay?”
“Just tired,” I say, smiling through it.
He nods, stands, offers his hand. “Come to bed?”
I follow because it’s what’s expected, because I keep telling myself normal is a muscle, you rebuild it by using it.
His room is wrapped in the scent of detergent from fresh bedding we put on earlier and the sweetness of Zosia’s shampoo from bath time, the wet towel in his hamper.
Dominik kisses my shoulder, my neck. He’s so patient and kind.
His lips trail lower, down my stomach, his hands tracing the map of a body that doesn’t answer the way it should.
I can’t.
“Wait,” I whisper, voice thin.
He looks up, confusion softening into concern. “What’s wrong?”
“I think I feel sick,” I say quickly, already sitting up, gathering my clothes from the chair, throwing them back on. “Maybe cramps or something. I’ll be right back.”
I don’t look at him, I just move. Into the bathroom and lock the door.
The mirror doesn’t lie. My eyes are ringed, sleepless.
My face is thinner, hollow where laughter used to live.
Nothing reads right anymore: food, air, even color.
Everything’s dimmed since the night I told him not to wait for me. Except I never stopped waiting for him.
I wash my face, breathe, pull myself back together until I can pass for normal.
Then I go back to bed. Dominik is already half asleep, worry still faintly on his face.
I slide under the covers, let him think my silence is rest, not retreat.
His hand finds my waist out of habit. I stay very still.
Eventually, he finds rest again but I can't, I haven't been able to for months, no matter what I do.