This is How We Change the World Ch. 05

Lyric had changed that. For a short while, she had dreamed of expanding their experiments on videos, getting more professional equipment, maybe considering some kind of a chat or phone sex service to supplement. Her goal had been to get Lyric off the streets, to keep her safe while providing her with the same level of income and whatever she mentally got from it: attention, validation. Then their early videos had been so good, so sexy, that her imagination had whirred into overdrive and she had started to dream bigger.

Maddy sighed again. Whatever she'd dreamed was gone now. Lyric was scraping by again, risking her health, and the videos were a distant dream.

Once she thought about it, she couldn't help herself. She reached for her phone and navigated to the one site they had released one video to, as an experiment in the publishing process.

Lyric's profile was still there. The video was still there.

It was a short, simple one, and didn't reveal much. Lyric's face was off the frame, it just showed from her shoulders to the top of her thighs. She had on a button down shirt and a pair of shorts. Royalty-free music played faintly in the background, and she slowly unbuttoned a few buttons, showed a bit of tummy, unzipped the shorts, and pushed them open and down just enough to show pink panties with a prominent bulge.

As basic as it was, it had gathered a fair amount of views since Maddy had last checked. She wondered if Lyric had forgotten it or had left it up purposefully, but soon she lost herself looking at Lyric unbuttoning, lifting the shirt, unzipping, pushing down.

She didn't quite know when she had started squirming, just that when she forced herself to put the phone away again she was. She was restless, and looking at Lyric had invoked a sense of longing inside her. She couldn't help but to think back to their mutual masturbation days, and how it had then evolved so rapidly. Into something wonderful.

Sex with Amy had always been good, and Frank had added some good opportunities. It had always been satisfactory, and over the years they had all learned how to push each other's buttons. If asked, Maddy wouldn't have come up with anything that could be better.

And yet. With Lyric, it had been better. It had been more... immediate, and passionate, and... real, and... uncontrolled, overwhelming, in a way nothing in Amy's life was ever uncontrolled or overwhelming.

Maddy let her hands slide under the blanket, under her nightie, and onto her skin. How long had it been? How long had the previous dry streak before that been? For all her reservedness, Amy had always had a high sex drive. Maybe she channeled all her turbulent energies into sex.

Maddy didn't want to think about Amy. She touched herself slowly, feeling the desire stir in her loins, and searched for a thought to masturbate to. She thought about the few porn clips she liked, but they slipped away from her mind like oil over water. She thought about the porn playlist they had with Lyric, but it made her think about Lyric. Thinking about Lyric made her sad, and being sad dampened her arousal.

She thought about faceless male bodies, hard muscles, hard cocks, big hands. She touched herself, slowly and lovingly, and wondered if Gertrude would hear if she was too loud.

She wondered what Gertrude did for sex, but that was not a sexy thought, and she pushed it aside quickly. Her pelvis was rocking impatiently, and she couldn't help but to go faster, her fingers making a small slick noise on her clit. She panted, rising higher and higher, feeling it build.

When she came, the cock inside of her wasn't one of the nameless men. It was Lyric's, and the hands on her breasts were Lyric's hands, and the thought that pushed her over was how beautiful Lyric was when she started to come.

Orgasm washed over her, euphoria mingling with sadness and longing, and in fits and spurts she relaxed. Her breathing evened out, relaxation spread into her limbs, and finally Madalyn slept.

***

01 June 2023

Maddy drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. She didn't think she was anxious, but her body disagreed.

Amy's every gesture was so familiar. The way she rapped the tabletop with her fingers when she tried to pick on the exact right word to use. How she attacked her salad with her fork, stabbing it like it had committed some egregious offense.

Amy didn't look relaxed either. She looked perplexed, and annoyed, and like she was on the edge of some emotional downpour, which was so uncharacteristic for her. She was always so strong, so determined, so sure of herself. Now she looked tired and more her age than she had in years.

"So you're not coming back?"

Their eyes met, lingering briefly, and then Maddy shook her head.

"I can't. I'm sorry."

Amy sighed. She looked down into her salad and impaled a piece of chicken unenthusiastically.

"I thought so. I just wanted to let you know, that... that if you do..."

"That's exactly it," Maddy said. "I can't come back. I can't go back to what we were. I need to find myself, and being with you guys gives me this... this... role, and I think I'm done with that."

Amy nodded a few times, lifted the piece of chicken and stared at it absentmindedly. "I thought you'd say that. Frank thought it was still worth a shot."

"How's Frank? How are you guys doing?"

Amy glanced at her, popped the chicken into her mouth and chewed slowly. Maddy sipped her water and waited. She wasn't in a hurry.

Amy sighed. "Well, let's put it this way: we've also discovered the role you played. The... void you filled. Without you, we... we aren't the same."

Maddy nodded. She felt vaguely guilty, and thought how amusing it was that all these years she had felt like Amy was the one taking care of her, but now she felt guilty for not being there to take care of Amy. She hadn't wanted to meet Amy, because she had heard how sad she was over the phone, and had feared that seeing it in person would make her determination crumble. The opposite had happened. Seeing Amy, feeling how it affected her ability to be in tune with herself, assured Maddy that she had made the right decision moving out. She needed the space and the distance.

"I'm sorry," Maddy said. She didn't sound overly sorry. "Do you think you guys will make it?"

Amy shrugged. She looked at Maddy, then shrugged again. "So, what now?"

"We can still be friends," Maddy said. "I'd hate it if I never heard how you're doing. And Frank."

"But you don't want to... like... even, like, date, or..."

"No, I'm sorry but I don't think that I do."

Amy looked at her again. "You've changed."

Maddy shrugged. "Maybe I'm growing. Maybe it's high time I do."

The waiter approached their table, and Maddy waved to get his attention. "Excuse me, can we have the check, please?"

"Certainly," the man said. "All together, or..."

"Separately," Maddy said just when Amy opened her mouth. "Thank you."

They hugged, tightly, when they parted. Maddy's step was light and quick when she walked away. She was late to meet up with Megan.

***

"How about you, Lyric?" Benjamin said.

Lyric looked up, a little surprised to be addressed, and shook her head. "No," she said, softly.

"Are you sure? It's been a while since you shared. You've been showing up, and you know we always appreciate the attendance and support, but you've been pretty quiet for... weeks now? More?"

"I don't know what to say," she said, curling in on herself.

"It's okay. Obviously, no one is going to force you here, but... you know, we're all here for you. It's okay to open up. You're among friends. We'll listen, if you want to try."

Others around the circle followed up with nods, brief statements of support. We're with you. You're one of us. None of it really penetrated.

Lyric didn't answer for a long moment. The truth was that she was dying to talk, but didn't trust that she could string a sentence together without falling to pieces three words in.

"I live a small life," Lyric said, as she stared down at her hands. "Really small. I don't... I don't do things. Eat out. Drink. Like, yeah, money is an issue and I don't have any and it sucks, but... really, I'm scared. I'm scared of getting hurt. I have friends, but I don't hang out with them. I don't put myself out there. I did, once, almost by accident, but I don't think I can do it again. Like, I don't think I can take much more.

"I feel hollow." She coughed, and shook her head. "Ugh. That sounds like a cliche, but... what else can I do? I had someone. I met someone. I took a chance, like... like the biggest gamble of my whole life, a-and opened up to someone, and she..."

Her voice started shaking, so she stopped to cough again.

"It's so hard to meet someone, just, at all. I mean, it's all we talk about, you know? I was fine being alone. I was fine. I didn't need someone. I wasn't looking for anyone, and then... poof. She-she-she shows up! She shows up, in my apartment, and she's... she's perfect.

"And now she's gone, and I... I had no idea what I was missing, and it's so easy to slide into that depression. It's so easy, it happens so fast. That I'll never find that again. That the best three months of my life are already gone, I peaked, and I'll just... I'll never be that happy again, and I'll have the rest of my life to think about that. That I pushed her away. That I got scared, and—"

"Okay," Benjamin said, leaning forward on his chair to physically place himself nearer to the center of the circle, but Lyric just kept going.

"I got scared, and I drove her away, and she's a unicorn!" Finally, Lyric looked up, and looked around frantically. Everyone was looking at her. "She's a unicorn. What am I gonna do now?"

Her voice was thick when she repeated, "What am I gonna do now?"

Rose was next to her before she knew it, and Lyric looked up just in time to see she'd switched seats with someone else. She didn't really want to be hugged right then. A hug wasn't going to bring back Madalyn.

"Why didn't I tell her I love her?" Lyric said, hoarsely, just loud enough for Rose to hear her.

Rose looked at her for a moment, giving her a brief-yet-unconvincing smile, before looking up at Sebastian, who was seated on the opposite side of the circle. She didn't follow Rose's gaze. She could already picture his unimpressed, unmoved expression. She would never be able to match his ironic detachment.

There was something to the way he had hardened himself that appealed to her, as she sat there sobbing in Rose's arms. He might not ever connect with Mars the way she'd thought he would, but he probably also wouldn't end up in a group meeting bawling, with his heart broken.

"I don't think I want to go," she said, half-whispering and half-croaking. "After."

"What?" Rose said, loudly. Everyone in group turned to stare at her, and she quietly mouthed sorry in response. Then, to Lyric, she very quietly hissed, "No! You have to come."

"I don't think I'm up for it."

"It's karaoke tonight," Rose whispered, leaning in very close. "You won't have to talk. You can just sit next to me, and I'll hug you the whole time."

On second thought, a hug did sound nice.

***

Lyric was walking ahead, slump shouldered, with Sebastian.

"This is not good," Rose repeated, in urgent whispers.

Next to her, Mars gave her a very subtle hand wave. Offhand and perfunctory. "It's gonna be fine."

"She," Rose said, pointing at her phone, "said they're gonna be late, and she"—now pointing at Lyric—"is gonna drink. Should I call it off?"

"Of course not," Mars said. "It's gonna be fine. They're both hurting. Seeing that in each other... it's gonna be fine."

"I have such a bad feeling about this," she whined. "Lyric doesn't drink! Seb knows that! Why did he encourage her?"

"He said what he needed to say. We're doing our part of the bargain, we're getting her there. Lyric will be there."

"You weren't in our group this time," Rose continued, still half-hissing. "Lyric is in bad shape today. This is such a bad idea!"

"Seb filled me in. We all agreed, now stop."

Rose put on a smile when Lyric looked back over her shoulder, seemingly confused at how far behind Rose and Mars were lagging. She locked eyes with Mars for a moment, who made some sort of gesture, and that must have been enough to sate her curiosity because she turned back around and started talking to Seb again.

"What are you always going on about? Power of attraction?"

"Law of Attraction," Rose said, with the tired patience of having had to explain this literally thousands of times.

"Right, that. What would that tell you right now?"

"I can't be the positive one all the time," Rose said, sullenly, to which Mars threw an arm around her shoulder, drew her in, and kissed the top of her head, which felt a little patronizing but also like the kind of thing her big sister would do, which was what Rose really needed more than anything most of the time.

"Now is when she needs you more than ever," Mars said.

Rose blinked, taking that in, and nodded. "I know you're just saying what you need to say, but... yeah. Okay."

Mars gave another tug, pulling her in tight again, before releasing the hug. "What if it's both?"

Rose gave her side-eye, but felt the tug of a smile in her cheek all the same.

"It's gonna work."

There was something about Mars' confidence that, once she took a beat to clear her head, she could get behind. She almost, very nearly, believed it herself when she repeated, "It's gonna work."

***

Sebastian came back to the table with drinks for both of them. He looked around questioningly.

"Mars and Lyric are in the bathroom," Rose said.

"Where are they? How much later are they gonna be?"

"I don't know," Rose said, matching Seb's irritation. "I stopped getting updates a while ago. I am choosing to believe that means they're on the subway somewhere."

"We gotta try to get her to stop drinking."

"What if..." Rose frowned. "What if we tell her something like ahh, you can't crash at my place, I've got termites or whatever. All of us. That way, she gets it in her head and knows she'll have to make it all the way back home, so she needs to sober up."

Sebastian shook his head. "That requires her to care about her safety right now, which she does not."

The room lit up with applause. Both Rose and Sebastian joined in, clapping emphatically, even though they weren't really paying attention to the performances at all.

"Termites?"

"I don't know," Rose said, irritably. "It was the first thing I thought of! What would you say, since you're so great?"

Sebastian gave her an arched eyebrow, and said, "You can't crash at my place, I have to summon a demon tonight."

Rose just shook her head. "What if Lyric likes demons? Hmm? Did you think of that?"

"Okay," Sebastian said, rolling his eyes, "this isn't helpful."

Both of them looked up, and then around quite erratically, when Mars returned to the table alone.

"She wants to sing something," Mars said, with the tired finality of someone who had given up.

"Aren't you going to sing with her?" Rose asked, worriedly.

"We did our part," Mars hissed. "We got her here. That was the deal." Then, sullenly, she added, "You go sing with her."

Rose froze. Her voice was a work in progress, and she had not yet gotten to the point where she had that kind of vocal control. Moreover, her voice was a sensitive subject for her, so she did the thing she always did whenever a problem touched a nerve: she went limp.

"Can she be trusted?" Sebastian asked, peering into the darkness around the makeshift stage, a raised space barely large enough for three adults to stand shoulder to shoulder around a microphone.

"To what?"

"Like, what if she gets up there and starts singing something really angry. Like, hateful angry."

Mars just blinked, and looked back and forth between Sebastian and the side of the stage.

Mars and Sebastian were still staring as a simple piano intro started playing, so wrapped up in a mistake they felt they'd made but could no longer fix, and so it was only Rose, seated as she was with a partial view of the front door, that saw Maddy and her friend Megan, their co-conspirator, come in out of the night air.

It's not simple to say. Most days, I don't recognize me.

Maddy paused midway through the action of unwinding her scarf to stare up at the stage. How she pulled off a scarf in June, Rose had no idea. Lyric hadn't gotten out more than a word or two before it got her attention. She stared for a few lines, arm comically held over her head with the scarf in a corkscrew shape, utterly frozen. Next to her, Megan was moving slowly, and looking decidedly green around the gills. Halfway between sheepish and guilty. Maddy turned her head, slightly, to look at Megan. If they said anything, Rose couldn't hear it from where she was sitting.

All she could hear was Lyric.

Lyric wasn't singing. Not really. She was talking, with variations in pitch, which Rose realized in hindsight she could have done as well, and was kicking herself. It was heartbreaking to watch her because the lifelessness, the lack of anything approaching enthusiasm, made what was already a sad song sound so, so much worse.

She's imperfect, but she tries. She is good, but she lies.

Rose kept looking back and forth between Lyric and Maddy. Megan was trying to talk to her, but Maddy wasn't hearing it. She just stared up at the stage, looking just as heartbroken and gutted.

She is hard on herself. She is broken, and won't ask for help.

The song was building in intensity, and Rose couldn't decide if it was supposed to be about someone else, a lost lover, or if the singer was singing about herself. It seemed like it could be about both. Lyric was not building in intensity, though. It felt like every word got a little softer, and where she had been clear above the music at the start of the song she was fading into the background as it progressed.

She is messy, but she's kind. She is lonely most of the time.

"Go," Rose whispered, though she could barely hear herself. "Interrupt her."

At the sound, Mars and Sebastian turned toward her, and then looked in the direction she was looking, and their faces went pale. She couldn't hear him, but she saw Sebastian's lips form the unmistakable lip shapes of O and F.

Megan made another pleading effort, grabbing Maddy's shoulder, but she recoiled when Maddy turned toward her. She couldn't see Maddy's face, but it wasn't much of a leap from Megan's stricken expression to arrive at the idea that Maddy was angry. This had always been a possibility, that one or both of them would resent being ambushed, but everyone, Megan included, had agreed that it was worth the risk.

Friendships were on the line, and the only person who had not realized the point of no return was at hand was the girl crying on stage.

Things happened while Rose was focused on Lyric. Suddenly, there was a scraping beside her, and she looked over to see Megan stealing a chair from a neighboring table and sitting down next to her.

"I'm sorry," Megan whispered, loudly. "We got held up."

Noticing what was lacking, Rose said, "Where did Maddy go?" and stuck her head up.

"I think she went to the bathroom," Megan said, gesturing toward the far end of the bar.

Rose followed her finger, and frowned. "That's not where the bathroom is."

"Clap!" Sebastian hissed, as the music wound down.