“Take off your shirt,” the girl said.

“I don’t hook up till I get a name.”

The smooth mask of her face broke into a smile. “Call me Frankie.”

“Is that like ‘Call me Ishmael’?”

“Take off your shirt.”

Her voice hit my skin like a whip crack. I slipped my blouse off, trying not to laugh. God, Ellis. If only you could see this. If only you knew how pathetic I am without you.

Frankie’s eyes ran over me expressionlessly. I always felt more nervous under a girl’s eyes. We know each other too well, our gazes laser sharp, instantly zeroing in on flaws. I watched her take in the ink scrolling down my ribs and inside the low waist of my jeans. I avoided looking at the tats now, avoided my own body in mirrors. It had been so long since I’d let anyone look at me like this.

“Like what you see?” I said.

“Be silent until spoken to.”

I bit my bottom lip deliberately, and she laughed.

“You’ve got spirit. I like that.” She lifted an eyebrow. “Take your bra off. Seduce me while you do it.”

Voyeurism, then. All right.

I maintained eye contact and raised my hands to my breasts. Unbuttoned the front clasp, slowly. “Do you like watching, Frankie? You do. You like to watch.” The cups fell free and cool air grazed my skin and for the briefest moment I felt like myself. In control. The center of someone’s world. “Look at me. Do you want to touch?” I slipped the bra off, flung it aside. Lowered my voice. “Do you want to taste? Do you want to kiss me? On my mouth, my body? I’d let you put your lips all over me.”

I don’t know where it came from. The knowingness in her eyes unlatched a kindred knowing in me. I’d never actually spoken to anyone like this. I stood naked from the waist up in front of a gorgeous stranger and felt—powerful.

“Touch yourself,” Frankie said quietly. Her eyes were wet and dark as ink.

I cupped my hands beneath my breasts, never breaking eye contact. Imagined our limbs tangling, our skin juxtaposed, umber against bronze.

“Do you want to fuck me?” I said.

She touched my cheek again. “Put your clothes back on.”

Instantly, the enchantment dissolved. I glanced at my bra across the room.

“What was this, a job interview?”

She just smiled, enigmatic.

Her guy friend reentered the room as if Frankie had silently summoned him. He pulled a wallet out and pressed a hundred-dollar bill into my hand while I was still straightening my blouse.

“Wait,” I said.

The guy headed for the door. Frankie asked for my number.

I gave it to her, saying, “What just happened?”

“Go to this link. Use the code . . .” She paused, typing something on her phone. Her eyes flashed up at me. “Use the code ‘morganiscute.’ ”

I stared at her text, bewildered.

“Hey.” Frankie snapped her fingers. “Got it?”

“Yeah, got it.”

“Have a lovely evening.”

Then she was gone and I stood there rereading her text.

camwhorez.com/tiana

Oh, damn.

I flung a rock at the second-story window and listened for the whistle and crack, the rattle of glass. Nothing for a good long minute. In the distance the ocean murmured against the shore.

I flung another rock.

Turned out one hundred dollars would buy a fifth of Cîroc and a cab ride to the East End of Portland, Maine, where million-dollar houses gazed over the water with a thousand blind eyes, blank and undreaming. I texted Curt to tell him I’d gone home with someone and turned off my phone. Couldn’t throw for shit lefty so it took me a good dozen rocks before I hit the window again. But when a light finally came on, it wasn’t on the second floor. It was the first. A silhouette eclipsed the golden glow.

“Come fucking talk to me,” I yelled, slurring.

The silhouette remained still. The light flicked off.

I dug a new stone from the gravel path but before I could throw it, the second-story window flew open.

“What on earth are you doing?”

The rock slipped from my hand, the vodka bottle dangling from the other. “Ellis.”

I couldn’t see her face but I knew that tousled rake of hair. I’d run my hands through it so many times.

After a pause she said, softer, “Are you drunk again?”

I lifted the vodka. “It’s my birthday.”

“I know.” In the ocean-brushed quiet I could hear her breathe, each exhale a small sigh. “Why did you come here?”

“Aren’t you going to wish me a happy birthday?”

The window slammed shut.

I tumbled onto the lawn. It wasn’t exactly my decision—my legs had gone on strike.

The front door opened and Ellis appeared, wrapped in a fleece blanket. She glided toward me, seeming to float over the lawn like some sea spirit. This all felt half-real: taking my clothes off for Frankie, showing up at Elle’s drunk as fuck.

“Hi,” I said sweetly.

“Oh god. You’re wasted.”

There was something wistful in her voice. It made me warm. Take care of me, I thought. “I’m twenty-three.”

“Okay.” Ellis rubbed her temple. “I’ll call a cab.”

“I can’t go home. Don’t have one.”

“What?”

The bottle was uncapped but I rolled it carelessly, letting liquid crystal leak into the grass. “Got evicted.”

She snatched the vodka and stood it upright. So like her. Proper, precise Ellis. Everything in its right place.

“What do you want, Vada?” Her voice was brittle. “You ignore my texts, then show up drunk and pick fights. What is this?”

“Technically, it’s emotional abuse.”

This is how much of an asshole I am:

Elle had been texting me. Every day.

I hadn’t actually blocked her number. I couldn’t do it. But I let her plead, and beg, and tell me over and over how much I meant to her, how sorry she was, how she wanted to change.

Then the texts turned angry. It wasn’t fair, she said. We’d both made mistakes.

Then sweet again. Poignant. They came days apart. Weeks.

I’m sorry.

I wish you were here.

I just miss you.

When the texts got sparser I came to her house, drunk, to reboot the cycle. To keep her hooked.

“Is this funny?” Elle said. “Is hurting me a joke to you?”

“Everything is a joke. Especially pain.” I curled my bad hand in the grass. It felt like grabbing a fistful of hypodermic needles. “Pain is fucking hilarious.”

“I think you should leave.”

“I don’t know where else to go.”

“Go anywhere else. Please.”

I was so used to being hurt I barely felt it. A finger on a deep bruise, pressing a little harder.

“You don’t want me anymore,” I said, and laughed. “Nobody wants me.”

Elle’s phone emerged from the blanket. “I’ll get you a hotel.”

“Who’s in your house?”

She turned her back and said, “Do you have any vacancies?”

“Who’s in the house with you, Elle?”

“I’d like to rent a room, please.”

Throwing money at the problem to make it go away. Just like her mother.

I scooped up the bottle and rose shakily to my feet.

“Vada,” she said.

“Fuck your money. And fuck you.”

Ellis followed me as I stumbled toward the street. She stopped at the edge of her lawn.

“Happy fucking birthday,” I said, and took a swig off the bottle, and then, on impulse, smashed it on the concrete. It burst spectacularly, glass and clear liquor flowering into the freezing air. A perfect encapsulation of how I’d felt these past months, jagged and see-through and a complete fucking waste.

I bent to pick a shard from the sidewalk and she rushed to my side. “Do not.”

“Do not what?” It felt so good, being childish. Making her care about me. Making her feel actual concern.

Her hand clamped onto my wrist. I dropped the shard.

And shoved her onto the grass, tackling her.

We’d fought before. Gone at each other savagely with nails and edged words. It was all so familiar: my hands fitting around the grooves of her throat, and hers under my shirt, raking my skin.