Page 43 of Hidden with a Rockstar
Like what?
Let's watch a movie.
We dress like fugitives—my hat and mask and flipped collar, her beanie pulled low and glasses she doesn’t need. We look insane. Like two people who robbed a bank and fell in love during the getaway.
For an hour and a half it’s perfect. Her hand in mine in the dark. Her laughing at the wrong moments. The way she narrates the plot holes under her breath like a director’s commentary nobody asked for. I don’t watch much of the film. I watch the side of her face lit blue by the screen and think: this. This is the thing I’ve been holding out for without knowing it had a shape.
Then the lights come up, and a girl two rows down goes still, and lifts her phone, and I feel the exact second recognition crosses her face.
“Are you—from the Belladonnas?”
“Wrong person,” I say, already up, already reaching for Lena’s hand.
We walk very fast, out the side exit, down an alley that smells of rain and fryer oil, her hand tight in mine, both of us running and laughing. We don’t stop until we’re three streets over and out of breath.
“That,” Lena says, hands on her knees, “was the most fun I’ve ever.”
My apartment swallows the noise of the city when I shut the door. She stands in the middle of it, cheeks still flushed from running, and I turn the deadbolt and lean back against it and just look at her for a second.
“Rules,” Lena says, and there’s a smile in it. “You’re the one who wanted rules, remember.”
“One,” I say, crossing to her. “You tell me the second anything is too much.”
“Two,” she says, letting me back her toward the bed. “Same goes for you.”
“Three—” I get my hands in her hair and lose the thread entirely. “There’s no three. You made me forget three.”
She laughs into my mouth. We take our time about it. I learn her by touch and by the sounds she doesn’t mean to make; she pulls me down and says my name. When I put my mouth on her she goes quiet, one hand fisted in the sheets and the other holding the back of my head like she’s afraid I’ll stop, and I don’t, not until she’s shaking and saying please and then not saying anything at all. Afterward she returns the favour with a thoroughness that undoes me, unhurried, watching my face the whole time.
We end up tangled, her head on my chest, my hand tracing nothing up and down her spine.
In the morning she leaves before I want her to—she’s staying at her sister’s, keeping the story straight—and an hour later my phone lights up.
Lena: I just had lunch with Jani. She wants to know who the mysterious friend is I keep staying with. I told her I’d tell her, just not yet. I said you’re shy.
Me:I’m not shy.
Lena:I know. But “she’s a Belladonna and she’s my girlfriend.” felt like a lot for a diner booth.
Lena:Also told Ravita and Marnie I was visiting family all weekend. Which was true. I hate how good I’m getting at this.
I hate how good she’s getting at it too. I put the phone down and feel the guilt at the pit of my stomach.
The next weekend I head over to Lena’s.
She cooked stir fried noodles. We eat in her kitchen and she tells me about her week.
"I feel like I'm lying to everyone," she says.
"You're being private."
"It's the same thing and you know it."
I swallow the guilt along with the noodles.
"What happens if someone figures it out?" she asks. "If the band sees me here too much? If Ravita recognizes my car?"
"Then we tell them we're private."
