Page 30 of When The Noise Stops

She told us some guy she met on Hinge, a plastic surgeon from Miami, had bought it for her to flaunt how rich he was on the first date.

She was mid-sentence, telling the story, when it seemed like a switch flipped. Her smile stilled and her eyes glazed over.

"Y'all wanna know what made my ex so goddamn evil?" She laughed, and there was no air in it.

"He had a little bitty dick. And had the nerve to be mean. I was a virgin the first time I let him in me and I still knew. I lay there thinking, this cannot be how it's supposed to feel. It didn't even hurt."

Hawk looked at his glass. Sully stared at the wall. Tiny opened his mouth, and I shook my head.

This seemed like something she needed to get off her chest without interruption. And everybody already knew about the ex.

She kept going.

"He used to call me fat while he was inside me. Like that was foreplay, didn't eat no pussy, didn't suck a titty. Said his dick kept slipping out when he tried to fuck me from the back because my hips were too wide, and I had too much ass. He'd shove my face in the pillow and talk about my stomach. He'd call me names and not in a sexy way. Fat bitch. Lazy pussy. He'd claim, 'You make me like this.' Every night it was some version of that. And I'd still cook. Still clean. Still ask him if he wanted it again because if he was on top of me he wasn't swinging."

The room had gone tight. I could see the muscles coiled in all my friends' shoulders and necks.

"Ten years," she said.

"Ten years of shrinking so a man with a little dick and no spine could feel tall. My whole world was his temper and his little limp dick, his needs and the sound of my own voice getting smaller. Then he shot me," she laughed, bitter.

"And I still hear him. That's the part that pisses me off. He's in a cage, like the fucking animal he is, and he's still in my head," she yelled.

She stood up fast from the sofa where she'd been sitting and slipped her fingers under her sundress straps.

"I'm a big girl," she said, looking around at all of us like she was daring somebody to agree or disagree, maybe.

"I know what I look like. I also know my body is tea as fuck though."

"Lila," my voice came out low.

"Stop." I could see where this was going.

She ignored me. Pulled the sundress over her head.

Leaving her in matching pink lace. I forgot how to breathe for a second. And every single one of my boys was looking at her too. Eyes wide in shock.

I stood up so fast the coffee table nearly flipped.

"Get out," I yelled.

Tiny got up just as quick as I had. Hawk grabbed Sully by the back of his shirt. Nobody made a joke. The door shut hard enough to rattle the photos on my wall.

And she just stood there. Breathing like she'd just run.

"Grizz," she yelled to get my attention.

"Look at me," she said.

"I am looking."

"No. Look at me, really. Look at this body. He told me I was disgusting so many times. I'm not disgusting. Tell me I'm not disgusting."

"You're not disgusting."

She held her arms out.

"This is what he called too much. This is what he said made his dick fall out. You see a problem?"