“You stayed with that family until you left for school?”
Lili nods. “Jane and Robert. They fostered many kids. Most came and went—I mean, all of them did, except for me. They’d move on to long-term families, get adopted, or go back to their own families. At first, I thought that meant Jane and Robert liked me best, maybe even loved me. I remember lying awake at night, hoping that any day now, they’d tell me they were adopting me.
“But time went on, and I realized that wasn’t going to happen—whether because they didn’t want to, or it wasn’t important enough, or whatever. That wasn’t coming.
“I just felt like I was counting down to the moment when they grew tired of me and I’d go back into the system, or a worse foster home—because I knew how unlikely this situation was, with them. They aren’t particularly affectionate people, Jane and Robert, but they are kind.
“I was braced for it, the inevitable change. I became really scared of getting used to the comfort of having the same house I walked back to after school, a room that was mine, friends. The more I got used to it, the more it would hurt when I lost it, you know? That yes, things will go well for a time, people will like me, maybe even love me, but just for the time that they do, and I’d have no way of knowing when, or how, it would all changeagain, when the coin would flip... That’s what I thought, that’s what I... what I still think,” she whispers.
“And, too, I felt guilty. Really guilty, as it went on—as I tried to deal with this uncertainty by working harder, and by constantly trying to be good enough. What was I hoping for? Why did I care so much? What did I want—someone to replace my mother, my father? A family to replace mine? Isn’t that—fuck, wasn’t that incredibly selfish?”
“You were a child.”
Lili shrugs. “I guess. It was probably just a way to grapple with uncertainty—thinking that what I do, and think, and believe matters. When you know everything will turn bad, isn’t it better to just... make it happen faster?
“I don’t—I don’t mean to make them seem like bad people, Jane and Robert. They were—are—good, truly. Think of how kind and generous it is to foster children like that, without fanfare, without causing harm. I know that seems like the bare minimum, but it matters. Jane smiled when my report cards were good, and Robert taught me to drive, and there was laughter, more often than not, at breakfast.
“But there was this distance between me and everything—my foster family, my friends. And I was creating it, sure, enforcing that space to protect myself, or whatever—but also... fuck, nobody tried to reach across it? I don’t mean that I was testing them, I really wasn’t, and people did care about me, but still—no one cared enough to reach.
“Even now—in New York, with friends I deeply love—there’s still that distance, between me and everything else. Except now, I think—I wonder—it’s almost entirely me? Like, I cling to it, refusing to let anyone in? You talked about when you were in Paris, my age. Standing at the Métro, that moment right before the train came into the station, and you didn’t want to jump, but you understood why people did. I think I’ve lived in that moment for more of my life than I should have. That I’m still sometimes there.
“With you, though... you were reaching across it. That distance, and I was reaching, too—towards you. I hadn’t really done that before. And that—that terrified me. That I wanted you so much, that losing you might cripple me. So, when you said—about marriage, and implied that... itall hit me, and I—I didn’t know how to handle losing all of that. I just couldn’t. I didn’t think I could live through that loss, if I let myself have it.”
Lili lets out a long, heavy breath. Moments stretch before she lets herself look at him.
And Aleksandr—he’s watching her, like he hasn’t once looked away.
His mouth is parted slightly. “Lili, how—how was I supposed to know any of this?”
She hugs her knees tighter. “I tell you more than I’ve ever told anyone else,” she whispers. Vulnerable, raw, she so badly wants the comfort of him, even as they sit here, with their separate pasts, the moments they shared, and now ahead: their separate futures.
“The woman you’re seeing,” Lili says, unsure if she can ask this; but she has nothing to gain, nothing to lose. “Sanaë. What’s—what’s there, between you two?”
“You saw that?”
She nods. “Yeah, those photographs from the fundraiser. You looked—you looked good. Happy, maybe.”
He frowns. “Is that why you’re here? You saw me with another woman?”
“No, that was actually when I decided to let you go. When I saw how... well, you two fit together. You’d moved on, and I realized I needed to let you go, and accept we weren’t—that this was it, now.”
Aleksandr shakes his head, a weary laugh. “I took Sanaë to that party because I thought you might be there, with Greene’s son, maybe. Because I thought it would hurt you, to see us together.”
“Ah.” Lili nods, deserved hurts. “Is it... is it serious? With her?”
“It’s early on.”
“Are you—are you sleeping with her?”
“I don’t believe you really have a right to ask that.”
Lili recoils. “Right—right, okay, I guess...”
Aleksandr sighs. “Yes,” he says. “Yes, we’ve slept together.”
Lili stares out at the park. Chill of late summer, her sweater missed.
She won’t cry. She can’t cry. She did this to herself.
