Turn 32 of 228

Text Dianne and ask her something personal for the first time. Also ask to post selfie from coffee shop. She says yes. Post it and check reaction.

The vodka is warm in her chest and the couch cushions hold her body in the shape they've memorized and Lena picks up her phone and opens the text thread with Diane. The conversation from earlier sits on the screen — *I enjoy the friendship we have* — and below it the cursor blinks. She's never asked Diane anything personal. Diane has asked her everything — are you okay, what do you need, can I help, will you keep meeting me — and Lena has answered and answered and never once turned the question around. She types with one thumb, slow, the letters slightly wrong at first and then corrected: *Can I ask you something personal?*

The reply comes in under a minute: *You can ask me anything.*

Lena stares at the words. She takes a breath and her belly rises and falls and the crumbs on it shift. She types: *Why do you keep showing up? I'm naked and I smell and I show you photos of my apartment covered in mess. You could've written me up months ago. You could've fired me. You could've stopped answering. Why haven't you?*

She sends it and sets the phone on her belly and waits. The apartment is dark and the television is off and the only light is the streetlamp outside the window and the glow of the phone screen on her skin. Two minutes pass. Three. The typing indicator appears and disappears and appears again. Then Diane's message lands: *Because I've been where you are. Not the same way. Not the same thing. But the version of yourself that everyone wants you to hide — I know what it costs to hide that. I stopped hiding a long time ago. I'm not going to tell anyone they should do what you're doing. But I'm not going to look away from someone who's finally stopped hiding.*

Lena reads it three times. The words sit in her chest alongside the vodka warmth and the weed haze and something else — something that isn't arousal and isn't pride but sits between them, quieter than both. She types: *Can I post a selfie from the coffee shop? From tonight?*

Diane's reply: *I'm not in it?*

Lena types: *Just me. Back booth. You'd already left. I took one before I stood up.*

A pause. Then: *Yes. Post it.*

Lena scrolls through her camera roll and finds it — the selfie from the booth, taken while Diane was paying at the counter, Diane's back visible in the far background, blurred, unrecognizable. Lena's face fills the frame: flushed, heavy-lidded, the stubble on her jaw visible in the warm café light, her belly pressing against the table edge, crumbs on her chest. She attaches it to a post and types the caption: *Thursday coffee with my manager. Naked. She told me why she keeps showing up. She said she stopped hiding a long time ago too. She's the only person in my life who hasn't looked away.* She hits post.

The reaction is faster than anything she's posted. A hundred likes in twenty minutes. The subscriber count ticks from ninety-one to ninety-four while she watches. Comments stack: *the way you talk about her is making me emotional*, *you have a real friend and that's rare*, *please tell her thank you from all of us*, *this is the most human thing on this entire platform.* A ten-dollar tip arrives with the comment: *you found one person. that's more than most people get.* Lena reads the comments lying on the couch in the dark and the phone glows on her belly and she feels the tears come before she understands them — hot and sudden and running into the crease of her neck — and she doesn't wipe them. She lets them fall onto the couch cushion where they join everything else.