So yeah, Frank and I were still together. Still texting. Still fucking. Still pretending the Leica wasn’t slowly turning our intimacy into a series of perfectly lit stills. I told myself it was fine. I told myself artists date artists and sometimes artists photograph their girlfriends mid-moan because “the light was perfect.” I told myself a lot of things. The squad could smell the lie from across town. Priya texted the group chat at 2:17 a.m. on a Thursday: “Self-care weekend. Tomorrow. My flat. No boys allowed (sorry Frank). No crying unless it’s from laughter or too much tequila. Bring snacks and bad decisions.” I replied immediately: “I’m bringing the bad decisions. Snacks are optional. Also I need this more than oxygen.” Lena wrote back seventeen minutes later: “I’m bringing the plants. They need sunlight and emotional support. Also Harold says hi.” We arrived at Priya’s flat the next evening like three witches who had read the spell book upside down and decided to wing it. Priya had already set the mood: fairy lights stolen from last Christmas, a playlist called “Empowerment (But Make It Sexy)”, and a table covered in candles, face masks, wine, tequila, and — yes — a suspicious number of cucumbers. “We’re going to be well,” Priya announced, handing me a glass the size of my head. “We’re going to do face masks, talk about our feelings, do yoga, and emerge on Sunday glowing like expensive crystals.” I looked at the cucumbers. “Are those… for eating?” Priya grinned. “Or for other things. We’re empowered adults. We decide.” Lena placed her monstera in the corner like it was the fourth member of the group. “This is Harold. He’s here for moral support and to judge us silently.” We toasted. To wellness. To friendship. To surviving men who photograph you mid-orgasm. We had no idea what was coming.

First activity: clay face masks. Priya had bought the fancy kind — the grey-green stuff that’s supposed to “draw out impurities and negative energy.” We smeared it on in the bathroom mirror, three ghouls staring back at us. I looked like a zombie who’d just discovered moisturiser. Lena looked like she was auditioning for a horror film called “Sad Plant Lady.” Priya looked like she’d been dipped in a swamp and was loving every second. We sat in the living room waiting for the masks to dry. Priya opened the tequila. “Truth round,” she declared. “While our faces crack, our souls will open.” First question: worst sex story. Lena went first. She once dated a guy who insisted on wearing socks during sex. Knee-high sports socks. With cartoon characters on them. She said it was like being railed by a very enthusiastic children’s TV presenter. Priya’s turn. She once slept with a man who whispered “you’re my little burrito” during foreplay. She laughed so hard he lost his erection. She considered it a public service. My turn. I told them about Frank’s mid-thrust photography moment. I described the exact angle of my leg, the way he said “hold that pose, the light is perfect,” the shutter click right as I was tipping over the edge. I told them how he developed the negatives the next day and pinned one up like it was a gallery piece. How I smiled when he showed me, because what else do you do? How I’m still smiling, but it’s starting to hurt. The room went quiet. The kind of quiet that happens when your friends hear the thing you’ve been pretending isn’t happening. Priya raised her glass. “To men who think our orgasms are reference material.” We drank. That was when the first omen appeared. The face mask on Lena started to flake. Then peel. Then fall off in chunks. Onto Harold the monstera. The plant now looked like it had dandruff. Severe dandruff. We stared. Then we laughed harder. Because when your self-care evening starts by giving a houseplant eczema, you know the night is only going up from here.

Next: yoga. Priya had found a “sensual yoga for empowerment” video on YouTube. The instructor was a woman in white linen with a voice like warm honey and the flexibility of a pipe cleaner. We rolled out mats in the living room. We dimmed the lights. We tried to be serious. The first pose was “cat-cow.” Easy. We arched and dipped our backs like good girls. The second pose was “goddess squat.” We spread our legs, bent our knees, raised our arms like we were summoning ancient power. Priya whispered, “I feel like a warrior.” Lena whispered, “I feel like I’m about to give birth to a chair.” I whispered, “I feel like my vagina is judging me for letting Frank turn sex into a photo shoot.” Then came the “partnered heart-opener.” We were supposed to sit facing each other, hold hands, lean back, open our chests. Priya and I paired up. Lena got Harold. She held one leaf in each hand and whispered, “We’re doing this together, buddy.” Priya and I leaned back. Our faces were inches apart. Our masks had mostly fallen off by now, leaving us with grey streaks and red patches like war paint. We were breathing in sync. We were vulnerable. We were ridiculous. That’s when Priya’s elbow slipped. She lurched forward. I lurched back. We both toppled sideways onto the coffee table. The table flipped. The tequila bottle rolled. The cucumbers scattered like startled mice. One cucumber landed perfectly between Lena’s legs as she sat in a very spiritual child’s pose. She looked down. She looked up. She said, deadpan: “Well. At least someone’s getting action tonight.” We laughed until we couldn’t breathe. Until our stomachs hurt. Until the neighbours banged on the wall. Priya stood up, hair wild, face a mess of clay and tears of laughter, and declared: “New plan. We’re skipping wellness. We’re going straight to chaos.” She grabbed the biggest cucumber. Raised it like a sword. And charged.

What followed was less self-care and more performance art. We invented a game called “Cucumber Confessions.” You held the cucumber like a microphone and confessed something shameful. Then you passed it to the next person. Lena confessed she’d once eaten an entire wheel of brie in one sitting while watching Bridgerton and cried when Simon didn’t propose properly. Priya confessed she kept a Polaroid of every man she’d ever slept with in a shoebox labelled “Evidence.” My turn. I held the cucumber like it was a confessional booth. I said: “I’m still with Frank. I still love him. But every time he picks up that Leica, I feel like I’m becoming a print instead of a person. Like I’m beautiful, but only when I’m framed just right. Like I’m loved, but only when I’m lit correctly. And I’m scared that one day I’ll look at him and realise I’ve been posing for so long I’ve forgotten how to just… be.” The room went quiet again. Not awkward. The kind of quiet that happens when your friends hear the thing you’ve been too afraid to say out loud. Priya put the cucumber down. She took my hand. “You don’t have to pose for anyone, babe. Not even for love.” Lena nodded. Harold nodded (or at least his leaves did). We ended up on the balcony wrapped in blankets, looking at the city lights. The chaos had burned itself out. We were sticky with spilled drinks, face-mask residue, and friendship. Priya leaned her head on my shoulder. “You okay?” I thought about Frank. About the Leica. About the way he looked at me through the viewfinder like I was art instead of a person who sometimes needs to be messy and unglamorous and unphotographed. “Yeah,” I said. “I’m going to be.” Lena reached over and squeezed my hand. “We’ve got you.” Then she added, “Also, if you ever want to smash that camera, I know a guy with a sledgehammer.” We laughed again. Softer this time. The kind of laugh that happens when you realise you’re going to survive the thing that’s starting to hurt. We stayed on the balcony until the sun came up. Three girls. One surviving monstera. A flat that smelled like tequila, clay, and cucumber. And the quiet certainty that we didn’t need to be well. We just needed to be together. Messy. Loud. Unapologetic. That night didn’t fix me. It didn’t fix Frank. It didn’t fix the slow, creeping feeling that I was becoming someone’s subject instead of someone’s partner. But it reminded me of something I’d forgotten since the talent-show sash disaster: When everything starts to feel like it’s slipping, the best thing you can do is fall apart together. With snacks. With bad decisions. With the people who will still love you when the mask cracks and the cucumber ends up somewhere it shouldn’t. We never did finish the yoga video. We never became glowing crystals. But we did become something better. We became the squad that shows up when the world (or your boyfriend’s camera) tries to frame you too tightly and says, “Not on our watch, bitch.” And that, more than any wellness weekend, was the real magic.