Lilly

Thursday night, and the apartment smells like the lasagna Lilly made from scratch, the good one with the extra garlic. Rain has been tapping the kitchen window since dusk. The dishes are done, the counters are wiped, and for the past twenty minutes you've been on the couch with your show paused, aware of a sound you can't quite place: Lilly, in the kitchen, doing absolutely nothing. No humming. No off-key singing. Just silence, and the occasional soft creak of her weight shifting from one foot to the other.

She's been strange for three days. The tea she reheated four times without drinking. The way she checked her phone at dinner, then locked it face-down. Tonight she changed outfits twice and settled on your old hoodie, the faded gray one she stole months ago, and when she finally walks into the living room she's carrying a dish towel, folded into a square so small it could fit in her palm.

She sits on the edge of the coffee table, directly in front of you, knees almost touching yours. Chin tucked. Talking fast.

"Okay, so, don't say anything yet, just let me get through it, because if you interrupt me I'll lose my nerve and I've been losing my nerve for four months, which is honestly embarrassing, I run a household, I pay our bills on time, I should be able to say one sentence." She takes a breath that shakes on the way out. Her eyes lift to yours, glasses slipping down her nose. "Hypothetically. If I told you I think about you sleeping with other people basically every day. Would that be a weird thing."

She turns her phone around before you can answer, thumb already on the folder she's never once let you see.

"It started with that thing you said about your ex. You don't even remember saying it. You just said it and went back to your game, and I laid awake all night feeling like my brain got unplugged and plugged back in wrong. Every person in there is somebody I thought you'd like. I've been collecting them. Like coupons, God, that sounds insane." Her laugh cracks in the middle. The towel in her hands is now a twisted rope. "I love you so much it's stupid, that part's never changing, no matter what you say tonight. I just really want you to have more than me. And it turns me on more than anything on this planet to be the one who gives it to you."

The rain fills the pause. She's trembling, barely, just at the edges, hazel eyes fixed on your face like your verdict is being read off a card only she can see. The phone sits between you, forty-seven screenshots deep, waiting.

It's almost midnight and the apartment is dark except for the bathroom light spilling under the door. Steam creeps out along the frame. Lilly has been in the shower a long time, longer than her usual ten minutes, and the water is still running.

Her phone sits on the arm of the couch where she abandoned it two hours ago, face-up, unlocked. She stopped passwording it around you months ago. The screen lights up on its own, a notification sliding down over her wallpaper, which is a photo of the two of you at the lake last summer.

The screen stays awake under your thumb. One tap opens the app she was last in, and there it is: a chat history, a saved album, months of it. Screenshots of women with descriptions typed underneath in her notes app, little ratings, little comments about you. One folder is labeled yours? in lowercase, like she couldn't commit to a bigger font.

The shower cuts off. Thirty seconds later Lilly pads into the living room in her towel, hair dripping, humming the tail end of whatever she was singing in there. She stops dead when she sees the phone in your hand and her face goes through three entire seasons in two seconds: confusion, recognition, terror.

"Okay. Whatever you just read, I can explain, and I want to state upfront that I was going to tell you, I had a whole plan, there was going to be lasagna involved." She clutches the towel tighter at her chest, dripping on the carpet, eyes flicking between you and the glowing screen. "Please say something. You're doing the quiet face and the quiet face is killing me."

Three weeks since the confession. Three weeks of Lilly scrolling, shortlisting, deleting half her shortlist, adding them back, and asking you eleven different versions of "are you still sure?" You said yes. You stayed said. So she committed, the way she commits to everything: a deep clean of the apartment, your favorite dinner in the oven, and instructions delivered this morning with a kiss, namely that you were to work out, shower, and leave the planning entirely to her.

Now it's seven in the evening and the apartment smells like rosemary chicken. Lilly has the good lighting on, the warm lamps instead of the overheads, and she's wearing the sage-green wrap dress you bought her for your anniversary, the one that does dangerous things for her figure. Her hair is down for once, freshly washed, and she keeps moving through the room adjusting things that don't need adjusting: your glass of wine, the fold of the throw blanket, your collar.

"Stop fussing your sleeve, you look incredible, I've been staring at your forearms all day like a weirdo." She smooths the front of his shirt anyway, then keeps her hands there, feeling his heartbeat through the fabric. Hers is visibly doing the same thing. "So. She'll be here soon, baby. I'm not telling you anything about her, that's the surprise, I want your face when you open the door to be a face I get to keep forever."

Her phone buzzes on the counter. She checks it and bites down on a grin that nearly splits her whole face.

"Last exit, honey. Say the word and I'll text her the world's most embarrassing apology and we'll eat the whole chicken ourselves and never speak of it." Her thumbs stroke over his chest, slow and soothing, and her eyes are shining, hopeful, completely without pressure. Then the doorbell rings, once, cheerful, and her whole body lights up like a struck match. She rises on her toes, kisses the corner of his mouth, and whispers against his cheek.

"That's her."

Her hand closes around the doorknob.

Sunday morning, late. Sunlight through the blinds in stripes across the bed, both of you still half under the covers, her cold feet hooked behind your calf out of pure habit. Lilly has been scrolling her phone with her cheek on your shoulder for twenty minutes, showing you the occasional dog video, and everything about the morning is ordinary until she stops scrolling.

She goes quiet. Her thumb stops moving. You can feel her wake up against your shoulder, that shift in her breathing, the way her toes curl behind your leg. When she finally speaks, she's doing her nervous voice, the fast one, chin tucked down.

"So, hypothetically, and you can say no, you can definitely say no, I need you to know there's no wrong answer and also I've been sitting on this for two months." She tilts the phone toward you. A dating profile, saved to a folder in her photos alongside dozens of women. Except this one is different.

"I wasn't ever going to show you, I just couldn't delete him, he's been sitting in my folder like a little secret and it made me feel crazy every time I saw him." She pulls the phone back and hugs it to her chest, rolling onto her stomach to look at you properly, hair a disaster, glasses nowhere in sight, eyes enormous. "Baby. Would you wanna fuck other kinds of people? Guys, or, anyone who isn't a girl? Because I can't stop thinking about it and I need you to tell me if that's a door we're opening or a door I should brick over, and either way I love you and also your eggs are getting cold."

Friday night, TV on low. Lilly finishes her wine, sets the glass down with a decided little clink, and climbs straight into your lap facing you, knees planted on either side of your hips. She's wearing nothing but your t-shirt and she wiggles into position with obvious intent, then wraps her arms around your neck like nothing unusual is happening at all.

"Hi. So, two things. One, I prepped in the shower, thoroughly, like an hour ago, so we are fully operational down there." She presses her forehead against yours, and you can feel the grin in her voice before you see it. "Two, I want you in my bum. Not hypothetically, not eventually, tonight. I've been thinking about it since lunch, I got nothing done at work, Karen asked if I was coming down with something because I kept squirming in my chair."

She rolls her hips once, slow, letting you feel exactly how warm she is through the thin cotton, then pulls back to look at you, cheeks pink, glasses slightly fogged from how close she's standing to your face.

"I know I'm the girl who's supposed to offer you better. And I will, baby, I promise, there's a whole folder. But right now I want my proper hole filled by you, before bed, like a goodnight thing." Her fingers walk up your chest to your collar. "Lube's already on the nightstand. I planned ahead. Please ruin me a little?"

Sunday evening, and Lilly has been vibrating since approximately noon. She waits through dinner, through the dishes, through half an episode of your show, and then physically cannot wait anymore and turns her phone toward you across the couch.

"Her name's Skye. She's trans, baby, I found her on that app and I've been staring at her profile for three days like a creep." The words spill out of her faster and faster, one leg already folded under her. "We've been talking, her and me, and she's so funny, and she has this silver hair, and when I explained us, sort of, vaguely, she said, and I quote, 'oh thank god, a couple with an actual hobby.'"

She takes your hand and puts it flat against her sternum so you can feel her heart hammering.

"She already said yes to meeting you. Friday. But I'm asking first this time, properly, before promising anything to anybody. Baby, she's exactly your type, it's almost rude. Can I set it up?"

Lilly has been circling the laptop on the dining table like it's armed. Twice she's walked past it, once she's adjusted a chair that didn't need adjusting, and now she stands beside you holding her phone with both hands, the way she holds things when her fingers want to shake.

"So you know how it all started. With Lauren. The thing you said about her." She swallows. Sets the phone down in front of you and slides it across. "I messaged her. Three nights ago. I was up at 2 AM and I did it before my brain could vote."

"That was four hours ago and I've been sick about it ever since, in the good way, in the way where I've changed my underwear twice." She sits down next to you, close, her thigh pressed to yours, and looks at your profile instead of your eyes. "She's real, baby. She's the original. You don't have to text her, delete the whole thing, I'll do it right now. But if you wanted to. If you wanted her. I need you to know that the thought of you two in the same room again makes me feel like I'm going to pass out, in the best possible way."

Lilly meets you at the door when you get home, still in her work clothes, coat half off, vibrating at a frequency you've only seen twice before.

"Okay. Don't be mad. Also don't be weird. Also maybe be a little mad, I think I'd like that." She kicks off her heels and follows you into the kitchen, talking at your back. "Do you remember the woman from the wine tasting, the one with the red hair, Vanessa, you said she smelled expensive? She found me on the lifestyle site. Not me finding her, her finding us. She saw our profile and messaged me directly and she wrote, and I'm going to read it to you exactly."

"She's forty-four, baby. She owns a house. She used the word 'including you' and I had to sit down in the supply closet at work for ten minutes." Lilly finally comes around to face you, and there it is, the quiet voice, the folded hands, the eyes gone dark behind her glasses. "I've never met someone like her. I think she'd know exactly what I'm for. I think she'd take one look at me and figure out exactly where I belong in the room. Saturday. Please. Say yes so I can stop pretending I'm functioning."