“Really, I’m fine, just give me a second—”
“She’s fine, Jamie,” Amina snaps, behind him. “She’s always fucking fine.”
Lili stiffens. “I am—Iam.”
Amina laughs, a hard twist of sound. “Great, you see? Little Lili doesn’t need anyone.”
She flinches at the endearment, grasping the tree tighter.
“I understand you’re hurt.” Amina, talking. “I do, I really fucking do—and it hurts to see you like this, thinking you can pretend nothing’s wrong, but you’re—you’re... you’re acting likehehurt you! It was you, it was a choice you fucking made, pushing him away like that, hurtinghimlike that—”
“I know,” Lili whispers, “but Ami, you don’t know what happened—”
“Of course, I don’t know what happened!” she yells. “You won’t tell us anything!You’ve completely shut us out! And now you’re breaking everyone’s heart around you, as if what you do doesn’t affect us, and it hurts, Lili, it really fucking hurts—”
Lili shuts her eyes. “Amina, please...”
“No,no.You need to hear this. You’re going to fucking hear this. What you did was fucked up—fuckedup, that you’d hurt someone who cares about you like that—”
“I know,” she whispers against the tree. “I know.”
A sound of angry frustration. “Jesus Christ, Lili—be angry, be fuckingsomething! Fight back or talk to me. Just not this—thisnumbness.You’re killing yourself.”
“I’m fine,” she repeats, the force of a lie she can will to be true. “It’s fine, it’ll pass—it was... it was always going to turn out this way. We just aren’t—we weren’t compatible. Our lives, it’s not—”
“That’s bullshit,” James interrupts. Lili startles, not expecting his interjection. “You’re basing that on what? Your external impressions of how you appear, what your separate lives look like to other people?”
“It—it wasn’t sustainable,” she says. “We weren’t ever going to work out. This would have happened, some way or another—”
“Don’t do that,” he snaps. “Don’t you dare do that. If you actually believed that shit, you wouldn’t be this... thisshellof a person. This whole idea that you need to be in the exact same place in life, believe the exact same things, as another person, all that shit—it’s bullshit. You’re scared, you’re just scared—”
“It doesn’t matter now,” she whispers. “It doesn’t matter—”
“Jesus fuck,” Amina interrupts, incredulous. “Don’t you care? Don’t you care about what happened, what you did to him—”
Andthat? The implication that she doesn’t care about what she did to him—it shatters her. It finally snaps this endless exhaustion in two, releasing the immensity of her anger, scalding self-hatred.
“Of course, I fucking care!” Lili yells. She sees the startle in their faces, unexpected. “I fucked up, Ifuckedup so badly—you think I don’t know that? That I’m not constantly—fucking constantly—thinking about that? Imagining how he looked, when he found out? How hefelt? When he came home, and I’d just—justleft?When his fucking friend had to tell him, because I was too much of a coward? And how I have no right to be angry with him, for that picture—thatwoman, and anybody else he’s seen since me, because this is my fault, my fucking fault, and I—I’m—”
She breaks off, dropping her head into her hands.
“Lili...” A hand reaches for her shoulder. She recoils, jerking away.
Breathe, Lili. Breathe.
Except she can’t, anymore.
She brushes past them, towards the house.
“Where are you going?” Amina calls after her.
“Out.”
“Lili—”
She ignores them, and runs into the house.
In her room, she grabs sneakers, workout clothes. She tears her swimsuit off, tugs a sports bra on—pulls her hair into a tight ponytail, a sharp sting over her scalp.
