Lena Dunham’s Verified Strangers , Chapters 16 and 17: “What’s Your Plan?”

It took Ally approximately three seconds to decide that calling her mother and inviting her to Mandy’s funeral was something she was unwilling to do. She could easily envision her mother’s reaction, a low desperate moan followed by a barrage of questions: “How did she do it!? So how long do we think it took??? And literally nobody was there to stop her!?” Then a monologue listing her own tragedies. “My God, if I ever seem that sad, commit me. Commit me. Unless I’m terminally ill, in which case you already know to put drugs in my yogurt. It’s not that I’ve never had reasons to do it, Ana. Lord knows I have, beginning with your father. But I could never be that selfish. Me? What would you do?”

And no sooner had Ally texted Matthew back (a lie, benign enough she thought: “my mom is with my grandma, who is not in the best health.” Her grandma wasn’t in the best health—her mom just didn’t care enough to be there), Timmy emerged from the bedroom, hair messy and full, legs spindly in grey boxer-briefs. They kissed by the refrigerator easily, like two old marrieds, and Ally thought she could get used to this.

And for three days she did. Ally called in sick to work (if Hugo could disappear, then so could she) and she and Timmy filled the house with flowers, chopped construction paper into mosaic pieces to create new covers for vintage books that were falling apart, took slow jogs around the reservoir—a different one than Dan frequented. It felt like a vacation but it also felt like starting an altogether new life.

Ally had always had an uncanny ability to nestle in, to become part of the furniture. When domesticity was offered, even casually, she took it and gave her all to maintaining it. Like right after she had left her home with Matthew, when she had met Wilhelm (yes, his name was truly Wilhelm; hippie parents obsessed with Wilhelm Reich and his orgone machine) and moved directly into the A-frame in the Hollywood Hills where he spent his days not writing screenplays for expensive monster movies. She had met him at the dog park on Sunset where she was, she told herself, simply trying to cheer up. (The fact was, she eyed more owners than dogs, point blank.) Wilhelm had impressed her with his fastidious 1950s style—white tank top, aged denim jacket and high-waisted jeans, loafers, and thick glasses, like a cartoon of midcentury maleness. He was chasing his Vizsla dog, Paris (named earnestly after the city, not Hilton) who had decided she was going home with a B-list actress and her children. “Paris, I too have love to give,” he bellowed and Ally had dissolved into giggles.

But things were decidedly less funny when, a week later, she was filling his refrigerator with all his favorite processed snacks along with heroic quantities of vodka and lemonade. Wilhelm started drinking at 9 a.m. as he attempted productivity on a typewriter as vintage as his look, but the day quickly descended into braggy self-recrimination: “They paid me a million bucks and I can’t even write about a monster eating an alien? I’m a piece of shit, Ally.” Still, she stayed another week that felt like a month, so committed was she to the early promise of their bond, to the feeling on day two when they were cruising across Fountain in his convertible, toward the farmers market and another—she imagined—even cozier home than the one she had just left.

The Ally who moved in with a man she met at the dog park, a man who smelled like pomade and egg salad, was the same Ally who, in eighth grade, started spending every Friday and Saturday at Annabelle Sanderson’s house, where her mother always made cinnamon buns late at night and built them forts in the sunken shag-carpeted living room. Fridays and Saturdays at Ally’s house were just like every other night: the TV never went off and dinner sat out on the counter until the following morning, half-eaten meatballs and picked-at, pre-packaged brownies that Janet never tidied, just pushed toward the wall so that their ancient standard poodle (Melon!) wouldn’t manage to swipe some into her gullet and get diarrhea again.

It had been a heartbreak for Ally, not just a humiliation, when Annabelle announced, “I don’t want to have any more sleepovers. My mom says you’re a grifter.”

CHAPTER 17

It was late on day three, nearly night four, of cohabitating that Timmy asked, “So, what’s your plan?”

“My plan?” Ally wondered with faux cluelessness, laying down a plate of hand-rolled sushi with a flourish. Ally had gone back to Caz’s a few days ago at a time she knew her soon-to-be ex-roommate wasn’t going to be there and collected a duffel bag of essentials, then rushed back to Timmy’s as if she were escaping a natural disaster. Now, it was like she had never lived anywhere but here.

“You know.…” They stuffed a chunk of cucumber roll into their mouth and offered a beaming thumbs up, but would not be deterred from a real dialogue. “Where will you live? When will you move your stuff? And are you going to have a real conversation with Caz?”

“Are you going to have a real conversation with Caz?” Ally snapped, harder than she’d planned to.

“Well, I have,” Timmy said, their lips forming a hard dash. “We talked the day after everything went down.”

“What the…you didn’t tell me.”

“Yeah, well, that’s our relationship. You have your own.”

“Yeah, but don’t you think that the two interface?” Ally asked. “I mean, we both hurt Caz. Together.”

Timmy stood up, as if they needed to assert all five foot three of themself in order to take Ally on. Ally, for her part, could feel that she was about to uncoil her least appealing self, the petulant teen gargoyle who would do anything to win, even if it wasn’t an honest victory.

“I have known Caz for a month,” Timmy said. “I’ve never been dishonest with her about the fact that I just wanted to be friends, and when I became interested in you, I told her immediately.”

“You did?” Ally asked, pouring herself another glass of sake and finishing it, all in one fluid motion. “What did you say?”

“I said I think that Ally and I could have something special.”

“And what did she say?” Ally's voice trembled and she repeated the sake maneuver, tugging at the end of her sleep T-shirt, wishing she had some pants on right about now—this was a level of exposure that was super cozy right up until your intimate partner read you for filth.

Timmy breathed deeply. It was the same kind of breath that Annabelle had taken as she and Ally stood at the back of the dodgeball game, hiding from the offending red rubber balls so they could speak in peace: I don’t want to have any sleepovers.

“She said to join the club, that everybody thinks they have something special with Ally. She said to just give it a couple of weeks.”

“She said that?” Ally nearly hissed, spinning in place, tugging her hair. There was a desperation coursing in her that made just being in her body an act of warfare. “What a…what a fucking bitch.”

Timmy continued to look at Ally evenly, refusing to rise to her level of hysteria. “Please, Ally, don’t prove her right.”

Just as Ally was gearing up to spit a response, there was a knock at the door. They looked at each other wearily—their first fight had been, at least for a moment, stalled—then Timmy went for the door, opening it to reveal not only Caz (who must have felt some kind of energetic buzz, the “they’re talking about me” seventh sense we all believe that we have), but Matthew. It took Ally more than a moment to compute that Caz was with Matthew. Matthew was with Caz.

“Hey,” every single one of them said, forming a chorus of the mundane.

“Hey,” Ally repeated, alone.

“I have to talk to Ally, so Caz guided me over here,” Matthew said. “I won’t be long, is there a place we can speak in private?”

Before Ally could assert that no, no there wasn’t right now, Timmy said, “I’m so sorry to hear about your mom, man. Talk in the back room.” Matthew looked at Ally, waiting for her permission.

“And when you two are done, can I talk to Ally and Timmy together please?” Caz asked. “I won’t take long. Can I just come in?” Caz’s eyes, turned down shyly, darted between Ally and Timmy. The rage of last weekend had made way for a soft, pained expression, the energy of someone who had given in to hurt and now just needed to explain it to herself.

Ally knew she didn’t have the strength or skill to handle both of these conversations and yet she loved both the people asking—when she looked at them, all the rage melted into a familiarity that made her soggy with nostalgia. She wondered how she was meant to balance her desire to comfort the man who had given her the first home she’d ever known and her need to make things right with the woman who had rescued her when it broke apart.

Timmy looked at her like, your call.

Ally dug the heels of her palm into her left eye so that she saw geometric shapes and stars, then did the same on the other side. She hated choices. She was always secretly grateful when they were made for her, even though it hurt. She knew she’d forced both Matthew and Caz to choose for her in the past. This time, she would have to do it for herself.

Okay, readers: Should Ally go to the back room with Matthew? Or should she let Caz in and have the battle for Timmy? Vote today from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. (EDT) on the Vogue Instagram account to determine what happens in Chapter 18. Then come back tomorrow morning to see what choice Ally makes. If you missed previous chapters, you can find them here.

Originally Appeared on Vogue