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you’re thinking anyway. And that’s fucking bullshit, and it’s not fair, because if this were you making this decision, I’d support it.”
    “But it’s not me,” she says, her voice trailing off. “It’s you. And you wouldn’t.”
    The air in Her bedroom is heavy with smoke, but the fireworks are over. We sit on opposite corners of Her bed, and she leans forward, burying Her face in Her hands. I watch Her shoulders rise and fall with each breath, firstin slow, measured cycles, then building into more pronounced, irregular jerks. She begins sobbing, and there’s nothing I can do to pull Her back to me, into my arms. Her face is flushed and the tears are pouring out of Her eyes so fast that I can’t wipe them away, so I just sort of rock Her back and forth, kiss Her forehead. I want so badly to tell Her it’s going to be all right, that I’ll leave the band and forget this silly crusade. I want to tell Her that I am ready to settle for this life, that she is all I will ever need in the world, and that we’ll never be apart. I want to tell Her that I will protect Her forever. But none of that would be the truth. So I don’t say anything at all.
    The silence is the worst part of any fight, because it’s made up of all the things we wish we could say, if we only had the guts. And the unspoken truths here are plain: For the first time, I am thinking of me instead of us . For the first time, she is worried about our relationship, about whether it can survive the tyranny of distance (and what does that say about our relationship anyway?). And, for the first time, we’re both wondering why we’re doing this. It was a bad fight, it got out of hand quickly, and it was all my fault—seriously, go back and reread the transcript if you don’t believe me—but it was by no means a pointless one. If anything, it was too pointed. This is how your heart gets snagged, like a balloon on a barbed-wire fence, this is where pieces of you get torn away.
    Her roommate is washing dishes in the kitchen, clanging the pots and pans a bit too loudly, just so it’s clear she’s not paying attention to our fight. I hate her so much right now.
    The tears have stopped flowing, and she sits up, sniffles a bit, rubs Her eyes with the heels of Her hands. She sighs. “How long will you be gone? Weeks? Months?”
    I tell Her I don’t know the answer to that, even though I do. The plan, we have been told, is to load back into the van next month, do a run of shows around the Midwest, then head directly off the road and into the studio. And we won’t be recording in Chicago, either: The label has booked us into a studio in Madison, Wisconsin . . . a redbrick building owned and operated by the guy who produced Nirvana’s Nevermind (they even recorded some of it there). It is going to cost money. It is going to take a while. It is not going to turn out the way she wants.
    Let’s just make it through tonight, worry about the rest later. I can see she is coming around now. I am pulling the wool over Her eyes. I am not the wolf or the sheep. I am another animal altogether. This is not dress-up.
    “However long it is, I promise that when I come back, you and I will get a place together,” I lie. “And, if you want to move somewhere else—if you really want to go to Berkeley like you’ve been saying—we’ll go. Together. I promise.”
    Smart girls always want to go to Berkeley. Most of them never make it there.
    “I love you,” she says, sniffling again. “And I want you to be happy.”
    She cocks Her head and looks at me with those big, sad eyes, still red from the tears. She’s waiting for me to say something. Anything. All that comes into my head is this bit of psychobabble she had once told me, back when wewere first dating: Freud suggests that in order to love someone else, one must love themselves; it’s a classic “needs before other needs” argument. Unfortunately, no one really loves themselves. And, if they do, they