“I mean, you’re meeting with strange men. Men who clearly think they can get away with abusing you because you’re young, or because you’re vulnerable, or because they’re paying for it. I saw that mark on your hand; it looks really bad. If you think something bad is happening to women here—women who … see men, don’t you think you should take it easy? Lay low?”

“I can take care of myself,” she said. But she wouldn’t look at me; she only ran her finger around the rim of her glass.

“I know that. But I just think you should be careful, okay?”

I was surprised by how quickly the anger clouded her face. “What do you know about it? You go home to your nice house with your nice mom and live your nice life, and you’re not even grateful for it. All you want is to leave. Well, guess what? So do I. But you know it as well as I do—leaving takes cash. There are no jobs here for someone like me, even if I wanted one. This is how things are.”

“Fine, I just think …”

“Leave it, Lily. Okay? I didn’t come here for a lecture. We just need to make a plan.”

My phone, faceup on the bar, lit up. Matthew again.

Okay, I know you might not want to talk to me yet. But I just wanted to say that I miss you.

Clara snorted. “See? You’re just going to bail again, as soon as you can. Go back to this Matthew guy, forget this whole summer ever happened.”

She sounded so jilted. It made her seem both older and younger at once.

“I’m not getting back together with him. I haven’t even responded to his texts.”

“You’re thinking about it. I can tell.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but she was right. Despite everything that had happened, this afternoon I’d allowed myself to imagine what it would be like to go back. To pretend things could return to how they had been. Parties that lasted until dawn, rooftop views, waking up with my tongue furred from champagne. That hollow, easy life.

“What even happened? What did he do?”

“It’s complicated.”

“So tell me. I’m not stupid.”

“No, that’s not what I mean. It’s just that I’m still figuring a lot of that out.” I took a long sip of my drink. “It wasn’t all his fault. Matthew is brilliant, but he’s not conniving. He never would have thought of all of that himself. There was another artist, a painter, named Ramona. She helped him stage the whole thing. I introduced the two of them. I was hoping to represent her work. I thought I could launch her career. I guess I did, in a way. Now she’s famous, getting coverage in magazines, making a ton of cash.”