“It will feel good, to take something from him. Admit it. To take some of that success for us, to use it to our advantage. Whatever he says, the way I look at it, this show was about you and me, about the conversations we had about our work, our goals. We will be unstoppable after this. We will leave him in the dust.” Her lips were so close that they brushed my ear. She looked down to where my hand was clamped around her wrist, looked back up at me. I didn’t care that she might be right about Matthew. I let go.

I shouldered my way between them, slipping out of my shoes as I walked. One of the shoes slid off my foot. I kicked the other off with a grunt and stopped to pick them up. I could hear that awful tape still running: me and Matthew and Ramona orgasming together. I looked up to see that painting of Matthew, that smug smile on his face, like he could see me coming. Like he’d seen me falling apart, since the moment he posed.

I swung one of the shoes at the canvas, the heel catching in Matthew’s painted neck. Behind me I heard the sounds of people gasping, some cheering. I got one more swing in, this time ripping Matthew straight through the chest, before two men grabbed my arms and led me away. “I left the next morning.”

“Lily,” Clara said. “That’s insane.”

“I know. I still don’t know whose version of things to trust.” It had felt good to tell someone the whole story, to unload. Clara, unlikely as it was, seemed like the right person for it. She didn’t have Emily’s ruthless, withering judgment. She wasn’t going to weep with sympathy the way, say, my mother would. I had managed to hold it together as I spoke, but I could feel that familiar lump forming at the base of my throat. But I told myself it would be insane to cry in front of Clara. Clara, the teenager with cigarette marks on her fingers.

“How about neither of them? Those two both sound like psychos.”

“You’re probably right about that.”

“So why do you still want him?”

“It’s not even that I still want him, exactly. I know I can’t go back to the way things were. But when we were together, I just kept thinking that my life would be better with him, more exciting, more interesting than it could ever be on my own.” It was the most honest I had ever been about Matthew. I was always sure that his life would be better than mine, and that the best thing I could do was stick around for the ride.

“Yeah, you’ll never know when he’s about to cheat on you with one of your friends.”

“It wasn’t cheating, exactly.”