“Take care, Lili. It was good to hear your voice. Look after yourself, yes?”
“Sure,” Lili whispers.
The call ends.
Lili looks down at her phone. The screen goes dark.
After a moment, she lets out a small, shaky exhale.
She’s not entirely sure what she feels.
It’s not—negative? It’s a little like recovering from a bout of vertigo near a cliff’s edge. Similar, too, to the sensation after the last push on along hike, catching her panting breath. She feels a bit dizzy. Like she could tip one way or the other, but she—there’s an unsteady balance, under her feet. Swaying, a little. But there.
She lingers in it for a few moments, this strange new feeling, before she stands, plugging her phone into the wall, and heads back downstairs to her friends.
“Hey, Li, can I come in?” It’s Amina, cracking open the bathroom door, letting out steam from Lili’s shower. “I can’t find my hairbrush, I think it’s in there.”
“Yeah, all good!” Lili calls, wrapping a towel around herself. “I’m just getting out.”
“Sweet, thanks.” Stepping out of the shower, she starts drying off as Amina searches the humid bathroom, opening and shutting drawers. Looking into the small, fogged mirror, Lili starts rubbing moisturizer onto her face, skin scrubbed clean after a full day outside in the dirt and sun.
She hadn’t told her friends about the call with Jane last night, but she’d felt lighter, quieter today—processing. Her hair is twisted up into a loose bun, not enough time to wash it before dinner. Downstairs, she can hear Jackie and Jamie in the kitchen, starting to cook. Amina rustles through their toiletry bags, mascara tubes plunking against bottles of sunscreen—
“What’s that on your neck?”
Fuck.“Nothing!” Lili says, slapping a fast hand over her throat.
But Amina is faster, yanking her hand away from the bruises she’s trying to cover up.
“Li, these are fucking intense.”
“It’s fine—”
“Has Jackie seen these?”
“Jesus, let go of me—”
“When was this?”
“It’sfine,” Lili repeats, tugging her hair out of its bun while simultaneously rummaging through her makeup bag for the tinted sunscreen she’s been using daily to cover up the marks, along with concealer, the collar of her worn flannel work shirts, and her long, dark hair. “It’s just sex, it’s not a big deal.”
“Is that, like, clearly established? Between you two?”
She scoffs, unscrewing the concealer. “Calm down.”
“I’m serious,” Amina insists, crowding between Lili and the sink. “I know you like rough sex, but this is—there’s already, like, a power dynamic between you two—”
“What, because he’s a white man?” Lili mutters. She wipes away the condensation on the mirror and starts dotting concealer onto the bruises. They’re fading, easier now to miss in daylight, but still clearly there under the harsher bathroom light.
“Because he’s older. And he’s fucking rich, Lili.”
“You’re objecting to him on the basis of his money?”
“Are you defending him?”
“Not his money, but the sex I asked for, yeah.”
“He has a lot more money than you.”
