“I’m good,” Lili says, heading for her room.
Jackie’s grin falters. “Maybe at least have some food?” she suggests.
“I’ll pass tonight,” Lili replies, forcing a smile that feels closer to a wince. She slips past Jackie into her bedroom. “Thanks, though—”
Jackie catches her door before it closes. “Lili,” she says, low with concern, no longer smiling. “Come on, what—”
“I’m fine,” she insists. She grips the door tight. “I’m just tired.”
“Don’t do that, talk to me.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
Her gaze narrows. “Lili, please.” Over Jackie’s shoulder, Lili spies Amina watching them closely, setting out plates for dinner. “He called me to ask if you were alright when you didn’t call him today, to ask if you needed anything. He’s worried you’re, like, hurt or something—”
“Well, I’m fine—and he shouldn’t be calling you. Please, Jackie, just—just leave me alone.” With a shove of her shoulder, she shuts the door in her friend’s face, blocking out the noise and light of the living room.
It’s already dark in her room. The last bit of sun has drained, passed behind the buildings.
Alone, she lets out a breath, leaning against the door. Behind it, she can hear the slightly stunned silence of her friends. Then the floorboards creak, as Jackie walks away.
Lili feels a fresh pang of guilt, piling onto the aches already gatheredinside of her: for having turned Jackie away like that, and for the coldness she needs to preserve this frozen balance that’s so close to tipping over. Muffled, she hears hushed voices, pitched low and serious. She does not strain to make out their words.
Her phone buzzes.
Against the door, her shoulders ache. She realizes tension has been building in her body; that a few hours had passed since he’d last tried to contact her. Maybe a work meeting, maybe a run.
The call keeps going.
Lili feels something start to crack in her chest.
Distant, she hears her friends, dinner, indistinct conversation.
Aleksandr Petrov.
Aleksandr Petrov.
Aleksandr Petrov.
She slumps down the door.
The sound of sirens, far away.
Somewhere in this city, there is a girl, in a museum, and a man beside her.
The scent of earth is fresh and rich, as Lili rips out the last of the chickweeds cluttering the beetroots. Standing, she brushes dirt from her overalls. The shift is wrapping up. By the greenhouse, volunteers card through produce that won’t sell at market. Eileen waves at her. Lili nods back, managing a smile. When she arrived at the Williamsburg location that morning, she’d handed her paperwork—tax forms, employee contract—over to Eileen, and felt nothing but walls closing in.
One foot in front of the other, she’d told herself: as she’d gotten out of bed; as she’d dressed for the day; as she’d glanced at her phone, and her throat had tightened, seeing fresh calls, new texts.
Late time stamps. 12:43 a.m., 2:07 a.m., 4:56 a.m.
Signs that he wasn’t sleeping. Just like her, but with such different reasons.
Soon, he’ll know—he has to, it’s inevitable he’ll figure it out, put two and two together; if not the details, then the contours. But the idea of telling him herself makes her entire body feel like a scream. All her possible explanations—all her fumbled logic about how she’d hurt herself beforehe could hurt her, how she had wanted to feel the inevitable hurtle towards her as a known thing, within her own power, giving herself time to brace—will mean nothing. And this waiting, this hold between her action and his knowing, this no-man’s-land between choice and consequence, hurts more than she’d ever imagined.
She heads out without saying goodbye to anyone, her bag half full with some imperfect produce; she got lemon cucumbers, remembering how much Jackie likes them. Past the compost and apiaries, she slips through the open slot in the chain-link fence covered in posters announcing farm workshops and community events, emerging onto River Street—
A black car waits at the curb. Lili stops breathing.
