“If you heard about the pictures, you must have heard the rumors about me and Cass.” Lulu hasn’t said her name much lately. It makes her seem more real, somehow, not just the memory of her, indistinct, but her name like currency, something anyone can use to conjure her.

“I guess I did,” Sloane says.

“And Owen has a new girlfriend,” Lulu adds. Now that she’s got a knife in her own side, may as well twist it a little.

“And you and Cass?”

Lulu shakes her head.

Sloane steps in closer to her. “Do you want me to kiss you?” she asks.

Lulu feels the same sting of disloyalty, the idea that this is wrong, that it will hurt Cass. But Cass is the one who stopped speaking to her. May as well, she thinks. And Sloane is still so beautiful. “I do.”

Sloane kisses her in the hallway. She puts her hands on Lulu’s waist, under her shirt, and now that Lulu isn’t so overwhelmed by the fact that it’s happening, that she’s kissing a girl for real, it’s easier to notice details: that Sloane’s hands are bigger than Cass’s were, but smaller than Owen’s, and softer, that instead of being slick with summer like last time, she’s cool and dry. Sloane touches Lulu easily, certainly, like she’s trying to tell Lulu something, to convince her that she knows what she’s doing.

Sloane is the one who pulls away after a while, takes Lulu’s hand, and leads her silently up to one of the guest bedrooms. Lulu thinks about last time this happened, and all the things she didn’t know, didn’t know how to do. Now she could be in charge, if she wanted to. She could ask for the things she wants.

It feels good, though, to give in. To follow Sloane, to lie down on the bed, to kiss until her mouth is numb. Lulu takes Sloane’s shirt off; she surrounds herself with the distraction of someone else’s skin. She loses herself to the moment and lets it go further than it should. Usually she tries to be careful about things—ask questions about where someone’s been, what they’re doing, should we get a condom or whatever. But tonight Lulu can’t find a way to care, and before she knows it, she’s grinding mindlessly into the pressure of Sloane’s palm. She’s just a body now, something seeking satisfaction and release. No thoughts. No ideas. Just the distance she has to cross between where she is, and where she wants to be.

The thing is, she can’t get there tonight.