He shrugged, sat down on the sand. “I’m not sure. I lost her earlier on in the evening.” He ran his fingers through some grains and she suddenly felt awkward standing over him. So she sat down, too, and he inched his hand closer to hers. “I think she wanted us to find each other,” he said slowly, breathlessly, the sound of the waves almost capturing, and losing, his words.

She didn’t know what he meant. But she leaned into him, her head humming with the drugs and alcohol and lightness of starvation and exhaustion from the past few days. And he didn’t back away. Instead, instead, she could feel his lips on hers and it didn’t occur to her until a moment later that it was her doing, that she had leaned in first, had found his face and kissed it.

Gumption, she thought. That took more gumption than anything else ever had in her short, boring, listless, useless life.

Part Three

PART
THREE

1

TOM

1.5 years ago

It was harder than he thought to enthrall her. To lure her in.

He found himself, at first, checking her Instagram, seeing the places she frequented, where she enjoyed having a drink after work. She would often geo-tag the location; he would race over before he thought she’d leave, would sit at the bar and nurse a beer, willing her to come over, to ask for her tab, so he could offer to cover it.

There were easier ways of doing this, of course. Countless ways he could pay to have her information hacked, to utilize his vast network to his advantage, to insert himself in her life without physically having to be where she was. But at first, he wanted the challenge. He missed the challenge. Everything these days was too easy. Accumulated wealth and power made everything seem so boring.

And then finally, one night, it happened. She was out to drinks with her team from work. She was drinking a dirty martini, her hair long down her back, parted in the middle like his wife seemed to favor these days. She got up, smiling back to the group, rolling her eyes at a joke someone threw at her. She walked with purpose, her back straight. Poised. She was poised, that was the word for it, her gaze intent and focused on the task at hand.

When she arrived at the glass-top bar, she didn’t have to call the waiter, waving her finger to get his attention. No, her mere presence commanded that he serve her, the languid, comfortable way she arched her back over the bar implying such an ease with herself that she didn’t just acknowledge special treatment; she expected it.

Kind of like me, he thought as he sipped his scotch on the rocks.