Distressed Assets #14
Almost his height, close to his age. She’s stunning: absurdly attractive and graceful even on a frozen page.
Only a few inches shorter than Aleksandr, this woman could almost see eye to eye with him.
Lustrous brown hair, high cheekbones, a radiant smile, and kind eyes—sparkling, as she speaks to someone out of frame—but her posture is oriented around Aleksandr—comfortable around him, how her arm rests in the crook of his elbow, palm against his chest. An intimate posture, how good they look together—with her gleaming hair, sleek dress, and his perfectly tailored suit, and his dark eyes—and his hand resting at the small of her back, holding her close against his side.
The sear of Lili’s heart is violent; spilt gasoline, now catching.
She hungrily scans the caption—Aleksandr Petrov, BlackRiver CEO; no, past that, she knows him, she knows him, and on to: Sanae Huang, renowned British barrister . . . specializes in international law, human rights; precedent-setting cases, frequently
represents victims of mass atrocities and genocide before the International Criminal Court . . . senior adviser to special
envoys, groundbreaking convictions, prodigious philanthropy work—until it’s just a blur of impressive accomplishments, war zones, international bodies.
“Lili—” It’s Amina. “Lili, don’t—”
She stands, pushing her chair back, and runs out of the house. Her bare feet slap against the stone steps, past the pool.
She hears her friends calling her name as she stumbles through the orchard.
Breathe, Lili, she repeats, warm bark under her hand. Breathe, come on.
A minute—she just needs a minute.
“Lili!” It’s James. She closes her eyes, resting her forehead against a tree trunk.
“I’m fine,” she says. “I just need a minute—”
“It doesn’t mean anything,” he insists. “No one brings real dates to those types of parties—not unless they’re actually, like,
married or something. Like me and you a few weeks ago, it’s super common—”
“We should get going before it’s too hot.”
James frowns. “What?”
“The headwaters.” They planned to drive to the Luberon hill villages today, the Sorgue’s headwaters. “Before the crowds. It’ll
be too busy by the afternoon.”
“You can’t be serious—”
“Really, I’m fine, just give me a second—”
“She’s fine, Jamie,” Amina snaps, behind him. “She’s always fucking fine.”
Lili stiffens. “I am—I am.”
Amina laughs, a hard twist of sound. “Great, you see? Little Lili doesn’t need anyone.”
She flinches at the endearment, grasping the tree tighter.
“I understand you’re hurt.” Amina, talking. “I do, I really fucking do—and it hurts to see you like this, thinking you can
pretend nothing’s wrong, but you’re—you’re . . . you’re acting like he hurt you! It was you, it was a choice you fucking made, pushing him away like that, hurting him like that—”
“I know,” Lili whispers, “but Ami, you don’t know what happened—”
“Of course, I don’t know what happened!” she yells. “You won’t tell us anything! You’ve completely shut us out! And now you’re breaking everyone’s heart around you, as if what you do doesn’t affect us,
and it hurts, Lili, it really fucking hurts—”
Lili shuts her eyes. “Amina, please . . .”
“No, no. You need to hear this. You’re going to fucking hear this. What you did was fucked up—fucked up, that you’d hurt someone who cares about you like that—”
“I know,” she whispers against the tree. “I know.”
A sound of angry frustration. “Jesus Christ, Lili—be angry, be fucking something! Fight back or talk to me. Just not this—this numbness. You’re killing yourself.”
“I’m fine,” she repeats, the force of a lie she can will to be true. “It’s fine, it’ll pass—it was . . . it was always going
to turn out this way. We just aren’t—we weren’t compatible. Our lives, it’s not—”
“That’s bullshit,” James interrupts. Lili startles, not expecting his interjection. “You’re basing that on what? Your external
impressions of how you appear, what your separate lives look like to other people?”
“It—it wasn’t sustainable,” she says. “We weren’t ever going to work out. This would have happened, some way or another—”
“Don’t do that,” he snaps. “Don’t you dare do that. If you actually believed that shit, you wouldn’t be this . . . this shell of a person. This whole idea that you need to be in the exact same place in life, believe the exact same things, as another
person, all that shit—it’s bullshit. You’re scared, you’re just scared—”
“It doesn’t matter now,” she whispers. “It doesn’t matter—”
“Jesus fuck,” Amina interrupts, incredulous. “Don’t you care? Don’t you care about what happened, what you did to him—”
And that? The implication that she doesn’t care about what she did to him—it shatters her. It finally snaps this endless exhaustion
in two, releasing the immensity of her anger, scalding self-hatred.
“Of course, I fucking care!” Lili yells.
She sees the startle in their faces, unexpected.
“I fucked up, I fucked up so badly—you think I don’t know that?
That I’m not constantly—fucking constantly—thinking about that?
Imagining how he looked, when he found out?
How he felt? When he came home, and I’d just—just left?
When his fucking friend had to tell him, because I was too much of a coward?
And how I have no right to be angry with him,
for that picture—that woman, and anybody else he’s seen since me, because this is my fault, my fucking fault, and I—I’m—”
She breaks off, dropping her head into her hands.
“Lili . . .” A hand reaches for her shoulder. She recoils, jerking away.
Breathe, Lili. Breathe.
Except she can’t, anymore.
She brushes past them, towards the house.
“Where are you going?” Amina calls after her.
“Out.”
“Lili—”
She ignores them, and runs into the house.
In her room, she grabs sneakers, workout clothes. She tears her swimsuit off, tugs a sports bra on—pulls her hair into a tight
ponytail, a sharp sting over her scalp.
It’s high noon.
She needs out.
She needs fucking out.
She hasn’t run in ages, but the instant burn in her lungs, the screaming push of her muscles, are something close to what
she needs. She slips through the gates, down the road. Uneven pace, too fast, but she pushes further and further under the
beat of the sun, high above.
There isn’t any breeze off the sea. It’s too hot, no cars out on the road—this far up, in the hills, the houses are few and far between.
She runs faster. It’s hot—so hot, a fever—it’s a fever, letting herself fully think about him, unable to blink away that photograph on the page, fresh and clear and instant, consequences
careening further and further out from her actions.
Don’t you care? Don’t you care about what happened, what you did to him—
Faster, her pulse pounds harder, feet faster, like panic finally running free, wreaking havoc on her lungs, rabid heart rate
building with abandon; escaping—escaping the sear of her own decisions, biting at her heels—her own actions—
At the thought, anger slams into her again—it hits so hard; at herself, and with such clarity, now. For the loss of it, the
shape of all she’d almost had, the definition building, what they’d been building, what could have been hers. Anger too fucking little a word, for the directionless, raging emotion trapped in her skin, flushed and sweating. That she did
this, that she did this to herself, and now a door, it’s closed, he’s gone—
A wave of nausea assaults her, so strong that she almost stumbles, just making it onto the side of the road before she starts
retching.
Hands on her knees: dry heaves, desperate seizes of her stomach, with nothing to give, nothing to vomit; the acidic burn of
coffee rising back up, because she hasn’t been eating, has barely touched food.
Damp palms cold with sweat. A cry scrapes inside of her chest, the deepest sob she’s tried to suppress for weeks.
I didn’t see myself marrying her.
Because one day—maybe already—she’ll be a woman he says that about.
The shock of it, in the rain of New York, late evening after the gala, offhand words, his suit jacket around her shoulders—how
she’d clasped his hand between both of hers, in the car, holding on, unable to believe it, unable to see it as anything but
potential hurt, a definite catastrophe waiting for her: that he’d give her this, and then take it away; be with her, and then
leave her. That she’d be worse off for ever thinking she could have him, for days stretching into years; that she could deserve
that, the type of happiness that puts down roots, that would be real.
It breaks her heart now—bent over the side of a road in a foreign country, shaking—as she realizes, as she sees, she did deserve it: happiness, and him.
She deserved him, and she let him go—pushed him away, with both hands, with the type of hurt no one should have to weather.
And she wonders, does it change you irrevocably?
Hurting someone who she wanted to be everything to, who could have been—who was becoming—everything to her; all the terrifying, immense fear and hope of that possibility now crippled by her own actions.
Actions.
He’s a man who speaks, and speaks well—who spoke with her, hours of thoughts, of books and ideas and arguments, theories and
contradictions and heated debates—but more than that, he’s a man who acts. Keys left in her bag, an empty museum, a home open
to her, schedules rearranged, I’ll be back tomorrow night. A toothbrush in the bathroom, a Polaroid in his wallet.
They would have gotten there, she thinks. They were already getting there, the edges of their lives smoothing against one
another; accommodating, shifting, growing into the potential for a shared life. Now instead, he’ll have it with someone else.
Lili starts vomiting again. Bile does come up, this time.
She struggles to breathe, but it is clear, it is finally clear—through the blur in her gaze, tears wet on her cheeks: He is
leaving her, already, and one day soon, he will be gone. She will be a person that knew him once, he will be a person that