Lili frowns. “I don’t—I don’t know. We don’t really talk. We just sort of... argued that first night? And then last night, we, um—”
“Oh, everyone knows what you did last night, don’t worry.”
“This is slut-shaming!”
“It’s actually the opposite. I was cheering you on, you just couldn’t hear me.”
“I’m leaving—”
“Fine, fine, sit back down. All I mean is maybe see if you like him? I don’t remember the last time you slept with someone twice in a row.”
“Look, I just—it’s great sex,” Lili says. Her defensiveness feels feeble, but she clings to it. “Annoyingly great sex, but that’s all. He actually knows how to properly choke a person, and not, like, grab ineffectually at my windpipe. I actually... get somewhere, when we fuck.”
“What do you mean?”
Lili waves a hand. “You know...” She’s reaching the limits of what she wants to discuss; her friends know she likes rough sex, they don’t need to know more. “Some sense of, like, relief. Like I can clear my mind, for a little bit.”
“Sounds like you should keep him.”
Lili shakes her head. “Catch and release.”
“Whatever you say.” Jackie rolls her eyes but nestles closer into Lili, taking another big bite of bagel. Lili feels her heart soften with affection: the fond familiarity of quiet mornings recovering together after nights out. “Have you decided if you’re going to visit home yet?”
She stiffens. The bite of reality comes back; she had forgotten the cause of last night’s spiral for a moment. She needs to respond to Jane, feign breezy acceptance of her rejection. “No, I’m going to stick around. Focus on my thesis. And there’s a lot going on with the farm’s expansion this summer.”
Jackie makes a contented hum of agreement. “All the better—summer in the city is unbeatable. We’ve got that farm trip upstate, plus Amina’s gallery show is coming up! Next week should be chill for me with work, only one shoot—oh, and my parents invited me over for dinner, they asked if you’d like to come? My mom’s on a new macrobiotic kick, so I’m thinking...”
As Jackie suggests plans, Lili overhears laughter outside their window, people walking dogs and pushing strollers, the distant roar of the M train as it heads up the Williamsburg Bridge, Citi Bike bells ringing.
Lili has firm ideas about ownership: the exploitation inherent in private property; the way ownership reduces the world to the primacy of profit over people. There’s something she tries to form into regret, but is much closer in shape to yearning, straining through her as she distantly listens to Jackie. As she thinks of,I can do whatever I want to you,andhow much parts of her—buried, vulnerable parts—want that; despite her politics, despite her ambition.
To be owned, to be ruined. To struggle, and not be allowed to get away. To not have to ceaselessly try, a temporary surrender of responsibility for her own choices, making up her life—instead, to only be fucked so hard her thoughts can’t exist, her anxieties, and fears, and dreams, and pains, and hopes settling into nothing. Silt at the bottom of some vast, silent ocean. Just her blood coursing, made animal again. Thoughts drained. Emotions simple.
All the rest—gentle brush of fingers against her bare skin, that possession mingling with softness,Let me take you on a date—she doesn’t want that; she can’t have that.
She can’t.
“Oh, that’s cool, economics—so, you’re like, what, getting an MBA?”
Lili winces. “Something like that,” she says, stirring the straw of her fresh drink. “Excuse me.”
She extricates herself from the bar and the twenty-something boy dressed in entirely too much Aimé Leon Dore. Looking over the crowd, she tries to find her friends. Glancing down at her phone, she checks her messages, but no, nothing. Just the text she sent almost two hours ago.
(9:43 p.m.) hey, i’m going to be downtown tonight
Arms wind around her waist, startling her.
“What’re you doing?” Amina asks, starting to sway against her to the music.
“Nothing!” she squeaks, shutting her phone screen. “Just checking the time.”
Amina groans. “No, the night is young. Come on, there was a hot gluten entrepreneur—I think he means baker—over there. He was telling me all about his sourdough starter, I need backup.”
“Does Jamie know you’re suddenly interested in bread baking?”
“James knows I’m an individual of untold depths.”
“That’s a really gross way of telling me you two have started having anal sex.”
