“Come in!” Inside, her friends are sprawled across their bed, hiding from the afternoon heat. Leaning against the headboard, James reads while Amina sketches.
“Hey,” Lili says. She holds up the paper bag in her hand. The boulangerie still had some stock. “I got some bread and pastries. For dinner, maybe? I, um, thought you might...”
“Oh, love,” Amina murmurs, as Lili starts to cry again. “Come here, come here—” She crawls into Amina’s open arms. Murmurs press against her hair, Jamie’s hand running over her back. Her friends hold her through the fresh break of tears.
Distant wind rushes through the trees; out the window, she can see the sea.
“I tried to call him,” she admits when she can speak again. Lying between her friends, she feels safe enough to confess it. “Back in Paris, I—I wanted to apologize, see if he’d hear me out. But he’d blocked my number.”
“Fuck,” James breathes.
“It’s okay,” she murmurs. “I understand why—I don’t blame him, after... after what I did.”
Amina strokes her hair; hesitates. “Lili. Why... why did you do it?”
It’s instant, the swell of shame. But she leans in, and accepts it. “So he wouldn’t do it first. I thought it was inevitable that he’d—he’d leave first. Or hurt me first. I don’t know, maybe it was—it doesn’t matter now. Either way, it’s...”
A thing that is passing. Moments becoming memory.
“And to you two, I’m sorry—really, I’m so sorry,” she whispers. “For how I’ve acted, ruining this trip, being so selfish. I’m sorry, I just didn’t—I don’t know how—”
“Shh,” Amina murmurs, holding her closer. “It’s not selfish to be in pain. It’s just...”
Lili shifts, looking up at her. “What?” she asks, bracing herself, a little afraid.
Amina sighs. “It just sucks, Lili. This distance that you put up, that you keep between us. Not just now, these last few weeks, but honestly... all the time, a bit? I know this isn’t the best moment to say this—”
“No, no,” Lili insists softly. “I can take it.”
Amina seems reassured by that. She continues: “I feel like I know so much about you.” Her voice is quiet, but she’s talking fast; rushed, as if nervously sharing an opinion she’s kept bottled up for some time, so uncharacteristic for Amina. “All the little things that mean a lot on the surface. You’re one of my best friends in the world, I can literally see something—a headline, a movie, some random-ass interaction on the train—and I know what you’d say, your tone of voice, the exact wrinkle of your nose, or how high you’d laugh as you say it. But you’ve never—not really—let us in? Sure, I know you love Madeira at the end of a night out, like some old man, and I know you can’t sleep with socks on, that you love peonies, that people cooking for you while you’re nearly nonverbal with stress—work or finals—it makes you feel cared for, but you’d never ask us to do it. And you, you knoweverythingabout me: how I grew up, what I want, the wildest, most embarrassing dreams I have for my life—but you’ve never really let us in, in turn? I don’t know any of those things about you. Not really. When it comes to the dark parts, the painful parts, you keep us at a distance, you don’t share, you won’t even tell us when you’re falling in love—”
Tears sting again, but Lili doesn’t interrupt her.
“—and I don’t doubt that you love us. I don’t, I promise. It’s just... I wish you trusted us as much as you love us? I wish you’d stop keeping us at arm’s length.”
“I do trust you,” she protests, weakly.
“Lili, I—” Amina breaks off, choosing her words. “I suppose I mean trusting us enough not to hurt you.”
Lili falls silent, then. She feels the familiar response to close up, to start building walls. But instead of grabbing that instinct—running with it, running away from this—she decides to let it go. Let some of what demolished her on the road, the utter crash of the breakdown seeing him on the magazine page, seep through her here, too. If she’s fallen apart, she’s fallen apart; she has to build something new.
“I’m just... I’m not used to letting people in,” she whispers. It’s challenging, like she’s letting the tiniest bit of air out of an oxygen supply that’s kept her alive, but might also be suffocating her. “I guess I’ve never really felt, or seen, that end well. Letting people in, depending on them.”
“Do you mean your childhood?” Jamie asks.
Lili gulps.
“Yeah,” she whispers. “Yeah.” She swipes at her damp eyes with the back of her hand. “Anyway, look where that got me; I pushed him away, and he still got in.” She stares at the ceiling, fiddling loosely with the clasp of Amina’s fingers between hers. “He still got in.”
After a few moments of silence—almost companionable, broken open on their bed—Amina speaks again. “I know it’s not... great, how you grew up.” Lili tenses, habitual; Jamie’s hand on her back tries to soothe her, sensing it. “Fostered, constantly in limbo. And I know it’s some of the worst pain imaginable, losing your parents young—for both of you, I can’t imagine the pain of that loss,” Amina adds, glancing at Jamie. “Maybe one day you’ll tell me more—no, don’t worry, I’m not asking now, Li. You don’t have to give that to us now. But know that we’re not going to run away, if you tell us horrible, or painful things.”
“I feel like it’s a burden,” she confesses. “And I don’t want to burden you with that—with me. To risk losing you.”I’d rather disappear into myself, than risk losing you.
“It’s not a burden,” Amina insists, fervent. She grabs Lili’s hand tighter. “You won’t lose us, Lili. Having us—letting us in—doesn’t mean losing us. There’s not much you could do to push me away. Even when I disagree with your decisions, even when I sometimes honestly don’t like you—I stillloveyou. That isn’t going to go away.”
Lili shakes her head. “I don’t know if I necessarily deserve that,” she admits.
“That’s the point,” Jamie says; surprised, she turns a little to look at him, nestled in his arms. Over his shoulder, she can see the jasmine she left a few nights ago. “That’s the point, Li—if it was just about deserving it, then, fuck, I guess we’re all shit out of luck? We don’t deserve the bad things that happen to us—we sure as fuck didn’t deserve our parents dying—but we don’t have to earn the good things, too. That’s not how life works—it can’t be.”
