Clara raised her eyes. She was glowering at me and I could feel the heat rising from her body. Luke stepped away from me and pulled her by her belt loop. I still had the feeling that none of it was actually happening, that there wouldn’t really be consequences for what we had set into motion. This summer had long since canted into the surreal. With the liquor, it was easier to tell myself that it was all part of a dream, and when I woke everything would slowly be neutralized by the coming of the day, that I would try to remember the details—the meaty, warm hands on me, the rum breath, the almost melancholy look of the Hawaiian shirt peeking out of the suitcase—and they would already have faded away.

Rob returned from the bathroom, grabbed my wrist, and pulled. The effects of that last drink were coming on and I stumbled a little as he pulled me.

I thought about what it would be like to sleep with this man for money—surely I had been underneath enough bodies in college to know what it was like to be an absence, really, during sex. A man sweating and thrusting but also oblivious to me. Oblivious to anything but his own pleasure. But I hadn’t thought that he would want to kiss me. That his tongue would jab at mine, and how the force and the taste of it would make me feel sick. Strangely cool. Rum-soaked. The only thoughts I had now were stop, wait. I pulled away from him and looked behind me, to Clara. Luke had already pulled her shorts off, and she was in his lap in the chair against the wall. She looked so small against his big body.

“You don’t like that? Fine,” Rob said. There was anger in his voice. Was there anyone angrier than a man rejected? Than a man who had seen repulsion on your face when he had expected to find admiration, lust? Was there any limit to what that kind of man could do to you, the ways he felt entitled to retaliate?

Rob moved his hand to my shoulder and pressed me toward the ground while his other hand reached for his fly. Then his fingers were in my hair. He wound them close to the scalp and pulled. And for a moment, I tried to imagine it, to hover above the scene and wonder, what would Matthew title this one? Lily Punished. Lily on Her Knees. Lily, Hair Pulled.

He was drunk enough that he was having trouble with the zipper on his jeans, grunting and swearing in one indistinguishable string of obscenities. I rubbed my scalp.

“What’s a matter, didn’t like that? Can talk the talk but can’t walk the walk, huh?”