4. Liliana #2
I try to fill it. Two emails for the foundation board, answered. I stand in front of the pottery wheel I haven’t touched in months and don’t touch it again. The coffee, reheated and forgotten and reheated again.
The penthouse just keeps echoing back the same emptiness, and every hour I spend alone in it makes the conversation Tristan and I never finished loop louder in my head, so when my phone lights up with Hallie’s name and a string of exclamation points about needing to get me out of the house, I say yes before I’ve finished reading it.
Anything is better than one more afternoon rattling around these rooms, waiting to see whether my husband keeps today’s promise or files it in the folder with all the others.
We agreed to meet at the mall.
Hallie finds me before I even clear the escalator, the way she always does.
“Lily, my girl! It’s been a while!”
She latches onto my arm with both hands and tucks herself against my side, and the whole shining personality of her clicks on at once. The wide smile, the warm perfume, the effortless ease that makes every other woman in a fifty-foot radius glance over and quietly reassess herself.
Hallie looks different again. She always looks different.
It comes with the work, the modeling here and there, the influencer thing, a following big enough to keep her in free clothes and comped dinners.
Her whole life is a rotating carousel of hair, outfits, and filtered afternoons so I’ve long since stopped trying to keep track of which version of Hallie I’m getting.
Today she’s some new one I don’t have a name for, and it suits her as everything does.
“You came.” She squeezes my arm. “I was fully prepared to drag you out of that penthouse by your ankles. God, you look like you need this. When did you last leave the house?”
“I don’t remember,” I admit, and it isn’t a joke.
We drift into the current of the mall, Hallie steering, me letting her. She buys us both something iced and overpriced from a counter without asking what I want, presses the cold cup into my hand, and launches into a story about a photographer, a canceled shoot, and a man who ghosted her.
I try to follow it. I really do.
But my mind keeps sliding back to the kitchen this morning, to Tristan, to the way his face fell when I said it’s okay and the way he left anyway.
He’s trying. I want to believe he’s trying.
Yet he can’t see the distance between us which is the whole problem.
He keeps handing me words, I keep needing a husband.
We’re not even having the same conversation anymore, and I don’t know how to make him understand that without sounding as if I’m asking him to give up everything he is.
“…and honestly, I’ve been thinking of switching it all up anyway.” Hallie’s voice swims back into focus. She’s studying her reflection in a shop window as we pass, turning her head one way, then the other. “New season, new me. Maybe I go softer. More natural, like before…”
She trails off.
When I look over, she’s looking at me, not the window, one brow arched.
“You didn’t hear a word of that.”
“Sorry.” Heat climbs up my neck. “I’m sorry, Hal. I’m here. I promise I’m here.”
“You’re not, but that’s okay.” She bumps her hip against mine, gentle, and her expression shifts into concern. “You’re somewhere sad. I can always tell. Come on. I know exactly what fixes this.”
What fixes this, apparently, is a boutique tucked between a jeweler and a shoe store, all soft lighting and softer music, the kind of place where nothing has a price tag because if you need to ask, you can’t afford it.
Hallie pulls me straight to the back and starts working the racks with the focus of a woman on a mission, and before I can protest she’s holding a scrap of black lace up against me.
“Okay, hear me out. I know your marriage has been rocky lately so…” She grins, wicked. “You. This. Waiting for him when he walks in the door. That man would forget his own name.”
“Hallie.”
“I’m serious! There is nothing on this earth that resets a marriage faster.” She drapes it over her arm and reaches for another, one in deep red, holding it up to the light. “Sometimes you just have to remind them what they’re being an idiot about.”
I laugh despite myself, and it feels foreign in my chest, rusty. She takes the laugh as permission and keeps going, piling things over her arm, narrating each one, and for a few minutes I let her carry me somewhere lighter.
It’s easier than the alternative. It’s easier than sitting in what’s actually wrong and I know she’s doing this to cheer me up.
“Can I say one thing, though?” She sobers a little, lowering the hangers, and turns to face me properly. “As your best friend who loves you.”
“You’re going to whether I say yes or not.”
“I am.” She smiles, then softens it. “I think you might be spiraling a little. About all of it. Maybe this whole thing is in your head and you’ve convinced yourself he’s slipping away from you.”
“It’s not just in my head, Hal. The song, the reaction online… Even without that he hasn’t been home for a real dinner in weeks, he missed…”
She tilts her head, sympathetic, reasonable, and warm.
“Don’t be too hard on him, Lil… that man is crazy about you. You’re very lucky, you should know that. Many people would want your place, you know?” She reaches out and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear, so tender it almost undoes me. “He loves you. More than anything. Everyone knows that.”
I just look at her.
She holds my gaze, and her smile shifts by a fraction, into an expression I don’t have a name for, and she winds a piece of her own hair slowly around one finger.
“I just mean…” She lets the pause stretch, watching me the whole time.
“If a person can’t appreciate what they’ve been given, then maybe they were never meant to keep it.
Maybe it’s supposed to go to someone who actually would.
” A beat. Then the warmth floods back into her face as if it never left.
“You know? Gratitude. That’s all. It keeps a marriage alive. ”
Her words catch on the way down, snag on a note I can’t quite name. It’s an odd thing to say, a little off. Although it could be nothing, and I’m just raw and sensitive at the moment.
Before I can settle it either way, Hallie claps her hands together and lights right back up, the moment gone as fast as it came.
“Okay, enough sad talk!” She loops her arm back through mine and gives me a squeeze.
“If you’re not in the lingerie mood… fine, boring but we’ll do it your way.
We are at least buying you a gorgeous outfit for the concert.
Non-negotiable. You are going to walk into that arena looking so good it’s rude. ”
And she’s already tugging me toward the front of the store, chattering about necklines, and the cold spot fades before I have the time to press on it.
She makes me try on four before she’s satisfied.
I stand in the fitting room while Hallie passes hangers over the door and narrates my life through the gap, and somewhere in the parade of fabric I stop fighting her and just let it happen.
I let her dress me like a doll and pick the winner and wave off my card at the counter before I can reach for it.
“My treat. No arguments.” She signs the slip with a flourish. “Consider it a bribe for making you leave the house.”
By the time we spill back out into the bright churn of the mall, there’s a heavy paper bag looped over my wrist that I don’t remember agreeing to and a new dress inside it.
“Okay.” Hallie turns to face me, hands on my shoulders, and kisses my cheek, quick and warm, her perfume folding over me.
“I have to run, I’ve got a thing at four.
But this was good. You look almost human again.
” She squeezes. “Promise me you’ll eat something tonight.
An actual meal. You’re starting to worry me. ”
“I’ll try.”
“That’s not a promise, but I’ll take it.” She starts to go, then spins back on her heel, one finger up as if she nearly forgot. “Oh, wait. Tiny favor… Don’t hate me.”
“What?”
“The concert. Is there any chance you could get me in? Nothing fancy, I swear, just a decent seat where I can actually film. The content practically makes itself, my best friend’s husband selling out the Forum, my followers would lose it.
” She presses her hands together, pleading and playful.
“Only if it’s easy. If it’s a hassle, forget I asked, I’ll watch from the nosebleeds like a peasant and love every second. ”
It’s the smallest thing. After everything she’s done for me these last weeks, the phone calls, the consistent checking on me, the two hours she just spent dragging me back into the land of the living, a seat is nothing.
Besides, she’s one of my few closest friends.
“Of course,” I tell her with a smile. “Don’t be ridiculous, you’re not sitting in the nosebleeds. Leave it to me. I’ll put you somewhere good.”
I’m already deciding, right there on the spot, that a decent seat isn’t nearly enough for the one person who’s actually shown up for me. She deserves the front. It’s just a small favor.
And if I’m honest, it isn’t only for her.
Thousands of people, the cameras, the noise, all those eyes that have spent the last few days picking my marriage apart, I’ve never been good at being surrounded like that.
It hollows me out. Having Hallie down front, one familiar face in all that chaos, someone in my corner close enough to catch my eye when it gets to be too much, would make the whole night survivable.
I want an ally in that arena. I don’t want to feel alone in a room full of people there for him.
So down front it is. For her. For me too.
“You’re an angel.” Hallie beams, hugs me hard, and disappears into the crowd with a little wave over her shoulder, and for a moment, I stand there in the noise feeling almost okay. Almost held, grateful past reason for the friend who never lets me disappear.
Then my phone buzzes.