Page 36 of Hidden with a Rockstar
Not yet. Not about Jo and manipulation and ledgers and the sound of being called a control mechanism by someone I've spent five years trying to save.
Tell me about the potatoes, please.
She does. She roasts them with rosemary and garlic. The garlic burns every time—it's a pattern she's learned to accept about herself. She talks about salt and olive oil and the precise temperature, the way they come out with crispy edges and soft centers. She talks about sitting alone in her kitchen eating them while watching a show where nobody yells and nobody keeps score and nobody is confused about what love is supposed to look like.
I sit on the van bonnet reading about burnt garlic and feel something in my chest that was wound tight start to unwind.
We text about the show she's watching. Some comedy special where a woman talks about her dysfunctional family like it's material for laughs instead of actual conversation. And somehow that matters. Somehow that is the thing that makes the parking lot less cold.
That's what they do, she texts.They laugh so they don't have to talk about the damage.
Jo said I was manipulative. She was right. I do keep a ledger.
I've spent five years thinking I was saving the band. I thought if I just worked hard enough, if I made myself necessary enough, then I would matter.
It's never enough.
Lena texts me goodnight at 11 PM: Goodnight, R. Rest well.
I sit in my car with the engine off. The parking lot is empty except for the van and the last light draining from the sky. The wordmanipulationis echoing somewhere I'm trying not to listen. But underneath it is Lena texting about potatoes and goodnight and rest.
That's enough. That's everything.
I text Lena at midnight.
Me:I can’t stop thinking about your couch.
Lena:Then come see it. Come here, stay at mine. I’ll cook.
Me: Better be careful. I might do that.
Lena:That’s the entire idea.
And somehow that terrifies me more than anything else.
CHAPTER 9
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?"
