“You know what I mean.” Marta was so hurt she couldn’t look in Dune’s direction. “It’s been a month. You really couldn’t pick up the phone and call me? Text me? Let me know, let me hear it from you?”

Dune remembered the way Kama had rolled her neck when she heard about Marta’s cheating—you deserve someone who is just thinking about you, baby. Kama had been generous, but she was also loyal.

“I haven’t been on my phone.” Dune didn’t even know where her phone was right now. She felt a pressure come into her chest, a breathlessness. “And ... I didn’t know how to talk about it. I don’t.” With Marta it was better to just be honest, they were too connected for abstraction. But she couldn’t talk about Kama. Not on the phone, not in person, not yet. Dune wished Marta knew that, knew to just shut up now and hold her.

“Dune. I don’t know how to be with you ... but I love you. And I’m here. You should have called me. I shouldn’t have heard about it from anyone but you.”

“You broke my trust.” Dune knew this to be true, but her anger was halfhearted. It all felt so far away from this moment. She had been sure Marta had broken her heart forever. Now that pain seemed so insignificant. Heartbreak for the living is still full of possibility. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It does too matter,” Marta flicked ashes down the steps. “We’re bigger than this…”

“We aren’t anything.” Dune couldn’t listen to this round of arguments again. “I can’t do this right now. I really can’t.”

“I didn’t come here to fight with you. We have different values around this.”

“No. It’s not different values Marta. Lying isn’t a values difference.” Dune couldn’t even yell. She felt like she was explaining something to a child. “You fucked up, it wasn’t just ‘oh our values were at odds on this one thing.’”

Marta was quiet for a long time. She had her face angled away, but her jaw was rock hard, her cheeks wet.

“Don’t cry, Mar. Not over this.” Dune felt an old resentment stirring her body, tightening her joints, making concrete of her face.

“I’m not! I’m trying not to! I’m so scared!” Marta turned then and looked at Dune full on, her voice climbing up and up. “What the fuck is happening here Dunny? We have to get out of here, we have to get out of Detroit!” She grabbed Dune’s wrist, trying to change her. “My grandmother has room in Miami, my parents are leaving tomorrow. We could drive with them, or—I think if we take it slow my car could make it, caravan?”