“You’re coming with us,” Amina insists. Her knife starts chopping through the herbs again, hard. “To the boat, tomorrow.”
Lili closes her eyes for a moment, suddenly resoundingly exhausted, again. “Okay,” she whispers.
She wants to be more: She wants to make Amina grin, and James laugh; she wants her friends to feel happiness around her, rather than this frustrated helplessness; she wants to feel like she makes their days brighter by being with them, rather than ruining them; she wants to trust that she can show them the wound of herself, and they’d want her still. She wants that so badly, and Amina and Jamie are so close—so close—the rustle of her friend’s hair as she determinedly chops herbs, Jamie’s quick glance at them while he stirs the risotto, and Lili wants to reach for them, trying to find comfort, but—
Her friends feel like they’re nowhere near her, and she’s miles and miles away.
As soon as the bedroom door closes behind her, she starts sobbing. These ragged, full-body cracks in her chest that she tries to suppress, the impact from the park, that hollow ringing, the disconnect of the call—just that morning,just that morning.
She finds the ground, pressing her forehead against her knees, trying to hold herself together. It’s a huge house, but she tries to hold her gasps in, to stay quiet as she cries.
There is nothing in her hands; there is nothing in her hands.
A breath in, a breath out: what she will keep doing, again and again, without him.
She doesn’t sleep.
Through the night, she lies awake. She leans against the ornate metal headboard, white flaked with age, with the sheets tangled around her. In the dark, alone, her heart feels like a small, scared animal. In her hands, with blankets around her ankles, the night’s heavy heat pressing in through the open windows, she attempts to calm it, to soothe it. In her insufficient palms, with murmurs, words without actual comfort.
Because what can she say?
That she deserves this—to be blocked out of his life, carved out; exactly what she had done to him—that she must live with this? That her actions have consequences, and terrible things return terrible things?
She tries to breathe around the shape of things she wants, things she’s done.
Because the wants she has—him, only him, with her here, in this bed, this night, holding her, maybe also unable to sleep, dark blue night—they will become unspeakable, each day.
She tries to adjust under the weight of it: her own actions. The sobs, again, that shake her, the bleariness of exhaustion, how tired she is; and she deserves it, being alone with this sadness. She deserves it, even as she wishes—even as she wants to scream—that deserving doesn’t mean wanting.
She wants to hold herself. She wants to throw herself away.
Outside, the sky is lightening, and there are birds. Morning.
They start spending days on the water. Waking up early, they head down to the docks in Cassis, the little seaside town. Radiant blue winks under her feet, stepping onto the boat. Immediate happiness comes over James as he lets loose the mooring lines and starts up the motor to ease them out of the harbor.
Exploring the calanques along the coast, with the shine of turquoise waves, incredible scale of limestone cliffs, dazzling sky above. They stop in coves and beaches. Amina points out the red rock of the Massif de l’Esterel, the Corniche roads nestled into cliffsides, the names of these different villages dotted along the coast.
Across this sea, another world: Lebanon, a part of her family unreachable to her. Her mother had never been to France, the home of one of her first languages. Foreign tongue, mother tongue: distant land, countries on the shared Mediterranean. Lili turns away.
As they sail, Lili watches how James moves around the boat, adapting to the sway of balance, intuition in how he knows when to accommodate for the wind, taking moments to enjoy the sun on his face. Sensing her interest—even if it’s just a desire for distraction—he shows her how to tie knots and narrates what he’s doing as he moves around the boat. Sunbathing on the bow, Amina dozes with a book.
“There’s Saint-Tropez,” James calls out, pointing at the coast. “Fancy lunch?”
And it’s this town, and then another one; and so, the days go.
But eventually, they always anchor, and there’s nothing left for her to do. Her friends go swimming, jumping off the boat, laughing. Lili lies on the bow in the sun, drifting. Around them, it’s a vast haze of light and water, nestled in a cove, thin waves breaking like thread against the rocky shore. Salt water dries on her skin. The sense of an open wound, infection coming to the surface—no, not infection.
Just her.
Just her.
This can’t be healing.
This cannot be healing—
A loud splash, and James shouts as he and Amina race to the other end of the calanque.
Lili closes her eyes. If she starts crying in broad daylight, she will not stop; if she acknowledges, if she listens, if she reaches, if shebreathes, she will only find guilt; guilt, and responsibility, but no power. Instability, so intimate under her skin.
