‘I think there’s a first-aid kit somewhere. Let me get it. Just a second.’
By the time I’d found the first-aid kit, stashed away at the back of one of the kitchen cupboards, Lily had found a bottle of wine. ‘I poured you one,’ she said, gesturing to a glass on the coffee table.
‘Thanks.’
She took a long swig right from the bottle, and then immediately glared at me. ‘What?’ she demanded.
‘Once again, I didn’t say anything,’ I said, setting the first-aid kit down on the table beside the friend-zone armchair. ‘Do you want me to patch you up or what?’
Her shoulders sank. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s habit. I’ve been in bitch mode for so many weeks now, I don’t know how to turn it off.’
She sat back down on the floor. I opened the first-aid kit, found a sterile wipe and started cleaning the dirt away from the cut on the back of her neck. ‘Do you know how you did this?’ I asked.
‘I told you that I don’t want to talk about it.’ She took another swig from the bottle.
‘That’s not what I’m asking,’ I said. ‘I mean, do you know what cut you? Was it, like, a stick, or a thorn, or was it metal? Because if it was metal, you should probably get a tetanus shot.’
‘Oh. No. Stick, definitely.’
‘This is going to sting. Sorry.’
‘I can take it.’
She was right. She didn’t flinch at all when I started cleaning the cut with rubbing alcohol. Lily Fireball was tough as nails.
There were other scratches all over her back and shoulders too, although none of them had broken the skin. ‘You should take a shower, even if it’s cold,’ I told her, sticking a Band-Aid over the cut and then going back to picking things out of her hair. ‘You look like you’ve been through the wars.’
‘I’ll take it under advisement, Doctor.’
‘Pass me my wine?’
She did. ‘You’re not an actual doctor, are you? Or a nurse? I’ve just escaped one woman with a hero complex. I don’t want to move in with another.’
‘No,’ I replied. ‘Nothing like that. I’m an unemployed uni student.’
‘Please tell me that’s not what you told the network,’ Lily said, turning her head to look at me. ‘Is that seriously what you want on your chyron when the show goes to air?’
‘What’s a chyron?’
‘That little bit of info they put under your name when they air your interviews. Like “Lily Fireball, twenty-five, entrepreneur”.’
‘You’re an entrepreneur?’
She snorted and turned back around. ‘Girl, I’m as unemployed as you are. Maybe more unemployed, because I’m not even a student. But it’s aspirational. If you call yourself an entrepreneur, then people will start believing that you are one.’
‘What do you want to do?’ I asked, dropping another bobby pin into the bowl. ‘Like, what do you want to be an entrepreneur in?’
‘I’ll be an entrepreneur in whatever anyone wants me to be an entrepreneur in,’ she said. She stretched, and the white scratches on her skin stood out in the lamplight. ‘After this show, the world is going to be my oyster.’
‘So this was all for Instagram?’
‘Of course it was,’ she replied. ‘Not just Instagram, obviously. I’ve got a whole five-year plan worked out. It all starts here with becoming an iconic TV villain. That’s going to let me grow my brand as a hard-as-nails bitch. Then I’ll go onJuliet on the Beach, have a redemption romance, get tragically dumped, gain more followers and sponsors, doWherefore Art Thou Romeo?, find my true love, stay with him until the revenue starts to fall and then have another tragic break-up so the whole cycle starts again. Then I’ll transition into someother TV. Maybe switch channels and do a season ofInstaWedor get a gig hosting morning TV or try soaps. Maybe infomercials. I can be agile, depending on what the market is doing.’
I felt a little light-headed. I picked up my wine again and swallowed almost half of it. ‘That’s, uh, quite a plan.’
‘You can’t do shit without a plan,’ Lily said. ‘Sorry about pushing you in the pool on the first night, by the way. I had to do something big and attention-grabbing, and you were collateral.’
‘Oh.’
