(7/31, 2:14 a.m.) Lili, what the fuck?
(7/31, 2:14 a.m.) I’m begging you. What the fuck happened?
(7/31, 2:15 a.m.) Tell me what’s wrong.
(7/31, 2:15 a.m.) Whatever’s wrong, please just tell me.
(7/31, 2:17 a.m.) Fuck, just answer me. I’m going crazy here.
(7/31, 2:19 a.m.) Lili, please.
Hand on her own throat, shaking—her shoulders tremble through the burden of her own breathing, the racket of her pulse pushing higher and higher.
There are voicemails, too.
She clicks on the first one.
“Lili, where are you—”
A sob breaks past her teeth, so desperate and instant, at the sound of his voice. Lili clasps a hand over her mouth.
“—your keys? Talk to me, just pick up the phone. I can help, whatever happened—Christ, that’s what I’m fucking here for, what else—”??She hears concern, urgency, his discomfort with being utterly in the dark, and there,there—anger.
Lili lurches towards that.
Silk rustles as she draws her knees up, letting the hem of her dress pool around her hips. She clicks on another voicemail. Her hand slips between her legs.
“—coming to Brooklyn. What the fuck is this, Lili? Are you alright—”
She isn’t wet. Her fingers are clumsy—drunk, desperate—but she imagines his hand over hers, as the soft fabric of her underwear gives against her wrist, as a dull burn of pleasure starts to glow.
“—fucking talk to me—”
A sound—half-moan, half-sob—cracks in her throat. Her head tips back, searching out a hard, low ache inside of her, an injury of want.
“—don’t freeze me out like this—”
Like she is trying to find old bruises, like she’s trying to scratch open scars—body memories of this man, a wound she can dig her fingers into, push deeper into her own skin and muscle. Enduring, something she can’t lose of him. Him, this man who touched her so acutely she can remember the exact way her gasps felt, rasping out of her throat, under his hands.
“—Jesus Christ, do you have any idea what’s going through my head right now? Fucking tell me you’re safe—”
If she touched herself deep enough, hard enough, would it be like him? Are there traces of him in her body that she could grasp at, chase after, still find?
Are there remnants of how she’d asked him to hurt her?
And would he hurt her still?
She tries to imagine it now: a weight at her neck, pressure against her windpipe. Anger, heated, and closed to her—hurt forced into her, again and again—something that would bruise, that would bleed—
Is this all you want from me?
Her phone clatters to the floor as her hand keeps moving.
This moan, an ache in her skin—like she’s searching for an entry wound, praying there isn’t an exit wound: that the bullet of him remains lodged in her, that these shadows of his grip, lingering heaviness, are hers to hold onto—that the heat of his body is still inside of her, cleansing, in how he could make her feel like nothing, but a nothing he wanted—
Is this what you deserve, Lili?
Her bare heel slips against the wooden floor, as she chokes on a sudden, panicked sob.
