“Alright, let’s move this outside,” James says, picking up large serving bowls of food as Amina starts trying to wave away skillet smoke with a dishrag. “Ami, just leave the detectors, it’ll be fine, the windows are open—Jackie, bring the wine—”
“Come on,” Lili tells her friends. “I’ll tell you everything, but let’s eat.”
In the tiny backyard, they drag chairs around the old wooden table, rain worn from several winters. Surrounding them, she can hear the sounds of other apartments, brownstones with open backdoors, early dinners, families with young children running around, neighboring gardens, charcoal scent of grills. Ice clinks in their drinks as they set food down.
The wine is light and floral, and the citrus salad is delicious. Amina grumbles, but they do manage to salvage the burnt asparagus, crisp with chili flakes and fresh garlic.
The grill clicks, gas lit. James starts cooking marinated salmon and portobello mushrooms, while Amina keeps piling more food onto Lili’s plate, and Jackie tells a story about a recent shoot that makes James almost snort his drink up. Cutlery slices across plates, and flames hiss when James drizzles olive oil over the grill.
Throughout it all, Lili catches their tentative, sidelong glances. Hesitantly incredulous, as if reassuring themselves that she isn’t pretending, that her new smiles and laughter last when they look away, that she doesn’t fade. She only smiles more, this growing sense of lightness.
There is hurt in her, but there is also hope.
A little jet-lagged, body still sore, she manages to eat, drinks wine, listens to their stories. All around her: the glow of her friends, evening heat easing as the sun sets, cherished.
Her keys rattle as Lili opens the door to her apartment. It’s dark, no lights on. She toes her boots off, alone. Jackie is staying at Simon’s tonight, and she has the place to herself.
Lili leaves the lights off. Some mail for her is stacked neatly on theircramped kitchen table, tucked against her books. She’ll deal with it tomorrow. Her body still rings with the warmth of dinner, laughter, good food.
She stifles a yawn, glancing at the teakettle. Water, maybe tea, and then sleep, some rest.
A buzz, in her tote. Her phone rings.
Aleksandr Petrov.
It’s immediate, a habitual response—the sharp spike of fear, that it’s about to change for the worse—that he’s about to backtrack; that he’d said,I’ll call you tomorrow,but he is calling her now; that he’d spoken to Sanaë, and it had made him reevaluate.
But—
Breathe, Lili.
Trust him.
She tries to smile, as she walks into her room.
“Hi,” she says, sliding the call open. “How’d it go?”
“Fine,” Aleksandr replies. He sounds tired, but relaxed. She hears street sounds, a car door shut on his end. “Are you at home?”
“Yep,” she says, throwing her keys onto her desk, sitting down on her bed. “Just got in.”
It’s quiet on his end. She waits, staring out her window—dark blue sky, summer nights in New York, beginning of the weekend. She listens to his breath, and hers.
“Come over,” he says, finally.
Her exhale catches. “But I thought you’d said—”
A rough sigh. “I know what I said.”
And her heart—it grows, in the space of what he has and hasn’t said, and what’s happened and what’s yet to come.
“I’ll be there in half an hour,” she says, grabbing her keys.
“Richard is outside.”
“So certain I’d say yes?” Lili teases, because if she doesn’t tease, she might cry.
“Hopeful,” Aleksandr replies, and she loses her breath, again.
