‘Yes.’ I was still paying enough attention to note the tension in Amanda’s shoulders, the way her knuckles were white around her fork. ‘Absolutely.’
‘Making you feel small,’ Juliet-Dylan said. ‘Making you feel worthless. Making you feel like you’re nothing and no one without them.’
Another good answer. No one could accuse Romeo-Dylan of doing that.
‘I can’t believe none of you have mentioned the most obvious one,’ Lily said.
‘And what is the obvious one, Lily?’ Kumiko asked.
‘Die.’
There was nothing heavy in her tone. It was cheerful, almost; upbeat, as casual as if she were telling everyone what was for dinner.
It brought my entire brain to a stuttering halt.
‘I’ll ask the next one, shall I?’ Lily reached into the box, tone unchanged. Smiling. She wassmiling. ‘All right, here we go. What’s the sexiest quality a person can have?’
‘Lily,’ I said.
She ignored me. ‘Far be it from me to state the obvious, but the sexiest quality a person can have is to be good at sex. No one can be sexy if they’re bad at it.’
‘Lily,’ I tried to say again, but her name wouldn’t come out around the lump in my throat.
‘I don’t think that’s true,’ Naya said. ‘There’s plenty of men I find sexy, and I have no idea if they’re good in bed.’
‘Dylan JM, for instance,’ Parisa said. ‘Sexy as hell! That smile! Those hands! The way he rolls up his shirt sleeves and gets his forearms out! I have no idea what he’s like in bed, but that doesn’t mean he’s not sexy.’
‘He’s got to be good in bed,’ Jess D said. ‘He’s so considerate. He’d be generous.’
‘But what if you found out he was bad in bed?’ Lily said.
She leaned back in her chair, gesturing expansively, lips curled in a half-smile, serving perfect reality TV shit-stirrer. ‘Would he be sexy then?’
My heart was pounding in my chest. Blood was rushing in my ears. Cold sweat was beading in my hairline. My brain was ricocheting wildly between different images, different memories, trying to compute exactly what the fuck she was doing.
Die.
What the fuck wasIdoing?
I’d spent all this time and effort and energy on cracking the Lily Fireball mask. I’d been so desperate to get my best friend back – so desperate to get her to finally fuckingtalk to me– that I’d forgotten that I already knew what was under it.
Her sobbing into my neck. Her screaming Jeff’s name, my name, Jeff’s name again. The shattered pieces of her, even as I tried so desperately to hold her together.
Her lipstick, all over my shirt.
‘Lily, if you don’t think Dylan JM is sexy, no one’s forcing you to be here,’ Kumiko said.
‘That wasn’t the question, though. It was “What is the sexiest quality a person can have?” The answer’s in the question, people.’
‘Competence,’ Juliet-Dylan said.
The rushing in my ears was turning into a ringing, so loud I wasn’t sure if it was my brain or whether my earpiece was malfunctioning.
Lily didn’t lie.You knew me, Murray, she’d told me, all those weeks ago in the limo, but I hadn’t heard what she was really saying.
There was no going back. There was no getting my Lily back. She didn’t exist anymore. She’d broken apart when Jeff died.
She wasn’t having a nervous breakdown now, but she’d had one then.
