Page 25 of Hidden with a Rockstar
Gerald catches me at my desk, the way he’s started to, one hand resting on the top of my monitor like it’s a fence post he’s decided to lean on.
“Hey I was thinking, would you like to join me for lunch?” he says. “There’s a new place by the station. Apparently they deep fry their sandwiches.”
“Oh sorry, can’t,” I say, already gathering my things. “I’ve got lunch with Ravita.”
“I could join,” he says, easy and hopeful. “I don’t mind being a third.”
“It’s kind of a girls’ thing,” I say. “We mostly talk rubbish and complain about people. You’d hate it.”
“Course.” He smiles, completely undeterred, a man who has clearly never once been the last person picked for anything. “Rain check.”
“Sure,” I say, because that’s what you say, and I take the stairs down to the café feeling almost virtuous about it—turning down a lunch to keep a lunch—right up until I sit down across from Ravita and remember how I missed the last few hangouts.
Ravita is eating her salad across from me.
“You didn’t come Sunday,” she says, not looking up.
“Sunday?”
“Collage day. The Sirens collage. Me and Marnie laid out eight months of tour photos and the good polaroids and the ticket stubs, we had the special washi tape, and you said you were busy.” She spears a cherry tomato like it owes her money. “You’ve been busy for a while now.”
I was busy. I was hanging with Rhonda. I don’t say that.
“I know. I’m sorry. Work’s been?—”
“Work.” She finally looks up. “You’ve been hard to get hold of, Lena. You don’t come to collage. You half-answer the group chat. You smile at your phone and then flip it face down like I can’t see you do it.”
“I’m not?—”
“And Gerald keeps coming by my desk to ask where you are.” She lets that land. “The audit contractor. He asks about you constantly. Brought you an oat latte on Tuesday and you weren’t even in.”
“Gerald’s just friendly.”
“Gerald is into you, and you haven’t noticed, because you’re somewhere else. All the time. Even when you’re sitting right here.” She says.
“I’m not disappearing.”
“Then come Sunday. We’re redoing the collage. Bring back the washi tape you stole.”
I can’t say yes, because Sunday is family lunch—the immovable object, the one appointment I can’t move or explain away. “I can’t do Sunday. I’ve got family. Lunch with my parents.”
Something crosses her face, and she nods, slow. “Right. Family.” She goes back to her salad. “Of course.”
“—and then the new monitor guy panics and routes Rebecca’s vocal to the front row at full volume, so now she’s convinced he’s cursed,” Jani says. “Riley won’t stop laughing about it. Nine days on the road and I’ve eaten gas station food for six of them. How is a person meant to live like this.”
“You love it,” I say.
“I do and it’s killing me. Both true.” A pause, the phone shifting against her shoulder. “Okay. Enough about me and the cursed monitor guy. Tell me about you.”
“I’m the same.”
“You are not the same. Are you seeing someone? I can hear you typing while we talk. Who is he?”
Who is he. I glance at my phone, where a woman who is very much not a he has just sent a photo of a cursed gas-station sandwich captioned: ‘This is worse than a pretzel’.
“Nobody. Work friend.”
“Lena.”
