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And I think about the gate. The rifles. The cop car driving back down the hill. Misha looking in the rearview and saying He’ll find you like he was telling me the time.

“I don’t know,” I whisper.

“Okay,” Tasha says. “Okay. That’s okay. That’s an answer.” She pauses. “So you wanna find out?”

* * *

Here’s the thing about a cage. You can’t know how big it is till you try to get out.

Saturday afternoon, Tasha comes to visit.

Sasha put her on the list after I asked him to. He looked at me for a long time when I asked, like he was reading my face for something, and then he said fine. So the guards wave her Honda Civic right through the gate, and she drives it up the hill blasting Megan Thee Stallion with all her windows down, and she gets out in the driveway in her sunglasses and looks at the house and says, “Oh, this bitch rich rich.”

She’s got a backpack over her shoulder.

In the backpack there’s a red dress. Strapless. Short. Tight. Nineteen ninety-nine at Ross. I picked it out over FaceTime.

We sit by the pool all afternoon and drink the chef’s lemonade. Sasha comes out and nods at Tasha, and Tasha very politely tells him his house is giving, and Sasha says, “I know,” and walks back inside.

At six o’clock, he leaves.

He’s got business. Something at a harbor. He doesn’t tell me what, and I don’t ask. I’m in the middle of the bed in my old gray sweats, with my laptop, working on my grad school statement, my hair wrapped in a silk scarf. A bowl of mangoes next to me. The good ones.

He comes to the door to say goodbye.

I get up off the bed, cross the room, put my hand on his chest, and kiss him.

I don’t kiss him at the door. I’ve never once kissed him at the door. I feel him go still against my mouth. Just for a second.

Then he kisses me back, hard, and lets me go.

“Behave,” he says.

“I always behave.”

He looks at me a long time. Then he leaves.

I listen to the car go down the drive. I count to five hundred.

Then I put my phone in the middle of his bed, under his pillow, and go downstairs.

* * *

Tasha’s Civic has a trunk.

It’s small. It’s full of junk. Two pairs of her old heels, a phone charger, a box of tampons, and an ice scraper, which makes no sense because we live in Los Angeles. I climb in on top of all of it in my red dress with my gold heels in my hand and curl up in a ball. Tasha throws her beach towel over me.

“Girl, if you die in here, I’m telling the police it was his fault,” she whispers.

“Close the trunk, Tasha.”

She closes the trunk.

It’s black. It smells like old fries and Tasha’s coconut body spray. I hear the car start. I hear Megan Thee Stallion come back on, loud. I feel the car roll down the hill. Every curve. Every bump. Then the car stops.

The gate.

I stop breathing.