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When I finish, Isabella sits there, staring at me. “You’re… you’re saying Colt drugged you? Dosed your champagne and took advantage of you?”

“What? No. Don’t put words in my mouth, Isabella.”

“You said you were disoriented and confused after he gave you that champagne.”

I pull back, coffee cup cradled in my hands. “I said I was tipsy after two glasses of champagne. You remember how I was after less than one glass, right here in this hotel room. Clearly, two was more than I could handle. That’s not an excuse.”

“If you were losing time, that means you blacked out.”

“Have I considered the possibility that someone put something into the champagne? Yes, I have, but there’s no way of proving that now. It really might have just been champagne.”

“Which Colt literally dumped down your throat.”

“I–” I rub my face frantically, my gut screaming for me not to go there, not to remember that part. Chin up and accept blame.

“The point,” I say slowly, “is that Colt kissed me, and I kissed him back. I was tipsy, and I was flattered, and I was an eighteen year-old virgin with Colt Gordon kissing me in a hot tub. He didn’t need to force me.”

“He–”

“The point ,” I say again, more emphatically, “is that I stopped once I realized that what I was doing was wrong – horribly wrong – and a betrayal of your trust. That’s when we discovered we’d been photographed.

You have my version. Get Colt’s. Believe me, I haven’t spoken to him since that day. His will match mine.”

“Except for where he forced himself on you after drugging you. If it happened the way you say, Lucy–”

“No.”

“There was coercion there beyond Colt using his charisma and his fame, which I already knew was a factor. If he did what you say–”

“No,” I say, sharper, gut twisting with anxiety. “You won’t do that.”

She looks at me in genuine confusion.

I continue, “I said that my mother wouldn’t let me use that silly virginity proof.

But when I first told her the story, she was furious with Colt.

She wanted to call the police. Report him.

Insist on an investigation. I was the one who talked her out of that.

Begged her not to. Broke down in tears when she tried. ”

“If it happened–”

“And that is exactly why I didn’t. Those words.

If it happened the way you say, Lucy. If he did what you say.

I had a friend in high school who went to a frat party pretending she was eighteen.

Wore a miniskirt. Drank a beer. Smoked a joint.

Wanted to have some fun and party with cute college boys.

She passed out. Woke up to a guy on top of her with his friends egging him on.

She reported it. A year later, she killed herself.

Do you know what she told me? That everyone – from the cops to the lawyers to h er own parents – couldn’t talk about it without saying if .

If you really were passed out. If the guy didn’t know you were unconscious.

If it happened the way you said. Even people who were trying to be supportive still said if , just like you’re doing.

So I choose to excise that part of what happened to me.

I will not say I was drugged. I will not say Colt used coercion.

I will not say it was anything other than a drunk teenage girl letting her hormones run away with her and making an inexcusable mistake.

That is where we will leave this. Insist on more, and I leave. Say if one more time, and I leave.”

She looks at me. Stares, as she did when I first told the story, and I squirm under that stare and then hate myself for squirming. I want to be stronger. Not tougher, not harder, just stronger. Why is that so difficult?

Because it’s Isabella, and every look, every gesture, every nuance feels like a needle pricking an open wound.

“What?” I say finally, more peevish than I intend. I try to cover it with, “Can we just leave this and–”

“I’m sorry,” she says, “for what you went through. I’m truly sorry, Lucy.”

Now I squirm for real. “I don’t need you to be sorry, Isabella. I don’t want you to be.”

“I still am. I thought I’d had this great revelation.

With what’s happened in Hollywood, Weinstein and the rest, I’ve had friends come forward, and I never doubted them for a second.

I have my own stories. MeToo has been like a splash of ice water, waking me up and making me look back at what I endured and how we just accepted that’s the way things were.

The casting-couch jokes that weren’t jokes at all.

The casual misogyny that wasn’t casual at all.

We never stopped to ask why is it like this?

Why do we accept this b ehavior? Why is it our job to overcome it?

In the midst of all that, a friend told me a story about something that happened when she was a teenager, a one-night stand with a producer.

Afterward, his wife came after my friend .

I was outraged on her behalf. How dare this older woman blame her for her husband’s actions.

And then I realized I’d done the same to you. ”

I say nothing, just sit with my hands folded on my lap, my voice gone.

“I was so proud of myself,” she continues, “for realizing I’d done wrong and resolving to fix it.

To treat you to an all-expenses-paid trip so I can ask your forgiveness.

How generous of me. Yet you come here, and you tell me your story, laying no blame, and when I see blame – squarely on Colt’s shoulders – I still question.

I don’t mean to. I believe you. But I cannot help wording it in a way that implies doubt. ”

“He’s still your husband,” I say quietly.

She sits back. “In name only. We stayed together for the kids. A partnership rather than a marriage. I intended to leave once Jamie turned eighteen… but he’s had some troubles, so I waited.

He’s better now, and I moved out last fall.

That doesn’t mean I spent fourteen years sharing my home with a man I despised.

I love Colt. Always will. I still talk to him every day.

We’re friends. I won’t make excuses for him.

Or I’ll try not to. He’s flawed.” A wry smile.

“We all are. But do I believe him capable of exerting pressure on an eighteen-year-old girl he wants? Yes. Whether he’d have gone further once it was clear you didn’t want that… ”

“I don’t think he would have,” I say. “Men are accustomed to girls protesting. They’re raised to think they have to talk us into sex.”

Her lip curls in a sardonic smile. “We want it. We just don’t realize it, so they need to show us.”

“I dealt with that growing up. I’m sure you did, too.

Not from every guy, of course, but there are always some.

That night, when Colt kissed me, I kissed him back, and when I pushed away, he thought I was playing hard to get.

That doesn’t excuse what he did. But I think, once I clearly refused, he would have stopped. ”

She nods, her gaze down. She agrees he wouldn’t have forced himself on me, yet she fears defending him, so she gives only that brief nod.

“This isn’t about what Colt did or didn’t do,” I say. “It’s about me realizing I hurt you, which I do, and I apologize for that.”

“And I realize I was wrong for not listening to you, for not reading your letter, for presuming you betrayed me, because that was easier than blaming my husband for his betrayal.”

“I understand all that,” I say. “It hurt, at the time, but even then, I understood. You had a family to protect. Maybe the truth could have helped, but honestly, the media circus was just about selling papers. We were the latest iteration of a popular tale – the wicked girl who uses her sexuality to tempt a good man, endangering his marriage to a good woman.”

She nods. “Circe tempting Odysseus, while Penelope keeps the home fires burning. Never mind that Odysseus chose to stay with Circe for a year – and she was only one of many women he slept with on his way home. We are all Circe or Penelope. Whore or Madonna. Never Odysseus. Never the hero of the tale.”

I shrug. “We can be. It just takes more effort than it should.”

She moves to sit beside me on the sofa. Then she hugs me, and I try not to break down into that hug. I accept it. I embrace her back. Then I withdraw.

“I’m glad we had the chance to talk,” I say.

“And now you’re leaving as quickly as you can.”

Before I can answer, she lays her hands on mine. “I want us to take control of the story. Not at Colt’s expense. He is still my children’s father, and he’s still someone I care about very much. This isn’t about demonizing Odysseus. It’s about excising him from our storyline.”

“Okay…”

“I want to go public,” she says. “The two of us with our story. The misunderstandings. The anger. You and Colt had a drunken moment together. Nothing more. If that’s–”

She stops herself. “I’m sorry. Not if . That is the truth.

I know it is. It makes sense for both of you.

You were eighteen and unaccustomed to alcohol.

We encouraged you to enjoy the champagne.

Our marriage was non-monogamous, and what happened may have been – was – a misstep on his part, but the media blew it out of proportion. ”

She gives a tight laugh. “Yes, I realize that doesn’t eliminate Colt from our story, but he’s only a side character. This is about us. Your misplaced guilt. Your experience with the press and the public. My misplaced anger. My experience with the press and the public.”

“I… No.” I pull from her grip. “This isn’t what I want.”

“It would help, though, wouldn’t it? It’s not what we necessarily want, but it’s what we need. We can control the message. We’ll make this about us.”

“About us… or about you?”

She goes still, and I twist to face her.

“You feel guilty,” I say. “You want to make amends. You want to give me this gift just as you gave me a weekend in this hotel fourteen years ago. But I’m not that girl. I don’t need gifts. I don’t want them.”