“Aren’t I, though? We’re close but we don’t do anything. I’m half mad scientist and half clown when it comes to the kitchen stuff, because I’m trying to find something that works for him, but I’m not getting any wins there. He does have to help me with some things, even though I’ve gotten more independent.”

“There’s more to it than that, though,” I said. I suspected it was futile, because Sveta was letting something out that she’d bottled for a while.

“He’s coming back and I’ve seen how he gets after he has the hard missions. Tired, but not in a way that he lets me see, and he hinted that this was a bad one. What if he comes back and he has to do his part to take care of kid sister Sveta, and what if he says he’s too tired for that? He’s given me so many good days, and I’m not sure I’ve ever given him one.”

“Not the vacation trip, hunting for your homeland?”

“That was for me, though.”

“He seemed pleased as punch to see us reuniting at the group meeting.”

“Again, that’s me. If I could just—if I could make something and have it taste good or new or interesting to him, then that would be happiness originating from him, his thing. A breakthrough for him. If I had a full body that I could show him, that looked right, if nothing else, maybe that could be nice for him. There’s supposed to be equity and I don’t think I’m holding up my end.”

“Sveta—no.”

“No?”

“Not equity. What you want is balance.”

“Same thing.”

“No. Equity, to me, feels like a transaction. One for me? One for you. I give you something, you owe me something? With balance, it’s about… I hate matching and folding socks. He hates cleaning the bathroom. So I’ll always do the bathroom and he’ll always have the socks folded.”

“Okay. But even there, what am I giving him?”

“It could be that it’s really, really important for him to have a friendly, loving face to come back to. I—I kind of feel like I’m betraying Dean by saying this, but I think one thing he taught me was that guys tend to be more disconnected than girls. Girls more often have support networks, or they can use the network they have more than guys can use their networks. Guys like Dean or Weld? I’m not sure they ever really have a shoulder to cry on. I mean literally cry. Except sometimes a girl they’re close with.”

“Did Dean?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Only a couple of times… still feels like a betrayal, confessing that. Which is maybe the problem or mindset that feeds into why they can so rarely do it.”

“We could change the topic.”