They put cream on each other’s backs, exclaiming gently over the softness of each other’s skin. They eat lunch at beach tavernas which are knocked together with driftwood and serve inevitable but delicious Greek salad peppered with oregano. They drink sharp retsina served in small glass jugs, misted with condensation in the heat.

In the evenings they go out to restaurants. They try several and then settle on one they like and go there every night—a small pretty place with tables overlooking the harbor. They dress carefully for these outings, even though the restaurants are only village tavernas—they wear dresses and put on makeup, they thread earrings in their ears.

They grow peaceful on this holiday. They go to bed early. They soak up the sun. They remember how well they live together. It does them all good to get away.

But as the week comes to a close, happiness grows gritty and begins to chafe. Lissa thinks of the call center and realizes she has forgotten to book shifts for the week of her return. This means she will not have enough for her rent, which means she will have to ask Declan again. And Declan is growing tired of these requests, she knows. Just as he is growing tired of her.

On the final morning, Lissa looks at herself in the mirror in the early morning sun. She knows she is beautiful, has always known this, but now, in her thirties, this beauty that once was something abundant, something she threw away on cigarettes and alcohol and late nights and coffee and no real exercise to speak of, lately this beauty has come to seem a finite resource, one she must attend to, take better care of. And this care, it would appear, takes money, money she does not have. More than once, lately, she has come to find herself standing at the counter in a drugstore holding an expensive face cream in her hand. Then putting it back. More than once she has considered slipping the expensive face cream in her bag.

Last week, her agent dropped her.

“These chances, Lissa,” her agent told her on the phone, “they come along once in a blue moon for people your age. I’m sorry. I just don’t think I can represent you anymore.”

She is angry. Angry with Cate. Cannot help but blame her for what occurred. And angry too—though she knows this is unfair—with Hannah, all this generosity, this villa, this holiday. She wishes it were her, able to be generous, able to treat her friends. But Hannah is good. Hannah is dutiful. Hannah works hard, and so is justly rewarded, whereas she is broke. Perhaps it is her beauty that is to blame. Her beauty, this unasked-for gift. Perhaps it has warped her—made her lazy. Made her expect too much.