<div class="floatleft">(https://i.pinimg.com/564x/64/a1/eb/64a1ebbbcf4fdbd74d30ee3e374e3270.jpg)</div>"A cooking class? Are you<em>serious</em>?"  Renée sounded more angry than incredulous. "So, what? Now you're going to put on a little apron and be<em>domestic</em>?  Probably for some<em>man</em>?"<br/><br/>Annnnd there it was. The primary reason she and Celine had broken up.  Oh, there were other issues, among them the fact that, for all her professed liberation, Renée didn't really accept bisexuality as a thing, and was surprisingly vanilla in the bedroom. That would have been fine, more or less- tolerable, anyway- without Celine's ex's insistence on turning every little disagreement into a polemic on sexual politics.  Most of the time, she wasn't even aware she was doing it, so Celine had cut her slack for almost two years. Ren was smart, gorgeous, and funny when she wasn't being an ass. At some point, though, enough was just fucking enough.<br/><br/>"Actually,  Ren, I'd like to be able to eat something that didn't come out of a can or a microwave bag. Maybe once in my life," Celine drawled, knowing she was being a bitch, regretting it even as venting that way gave her pleasure.  Another point of fracture. Neither of them could cook worth a damn, but Renée had made a fetish out of it, insisting on living on ramen and commercial soup and zapped veggie pizza rather than 'submit to the patriarchy', or something. Not that Celine had a lot of time to do the Martha Stewart thing, between grad school, a teaching assistantship, and a side job at the local library. But<em>Christ</em>- wasn't 'The Movement' supposed to be about self-improvement and self-determination?<br/><br/>"By the way," she plowed on, voice saccharine, making sure her former lover couldn't fire off another salvo, "I found those sweat pants you were missing. Wadded up behind the couch. I don't want to know how they got there. I washed them, and left them on the kitchen table. You can come get them when you drop your key off. Before four, please. I won't have much time between teaching and yes, going to my horribly sexist, reactionary cooking class. I'd rather you not be here. In fact, I insist you not be."<br/><br/>"Cel, wait-"<br/><br/>"Goodbye, Renée." Folding her retro phone in slow motion, Celine laid her head on the back of the couch and squeezed her eyes shut. No crying. She didn't have time to redo her makeup, simple as it was, before she had to leave. And Renée hadn't been totally wrong in her philosophy- a woman showing weakness in academia, especially one in a position of authority, was like dumping fish guts in shark waters. She couldn't count the number of times she'd been mistaken for a secretary on campus, even in her own office. That misimpression had been quickly, some times savagely corrected. But still, it happened.<br/><br/>No tears.  Move on. Other fish in the ocean. Blahblahblah.<br/><br/>In a few minutes, she was fine. A quick glance in the mirror to be sure her face hadn't melted, and she was off to the grind.  At least that night she'd do something fun.