At the club, he’d done a bunch of blow with his coworkers, a few too many tequila shots. But none of it had helped. He still felt like running through the exit door to escape the pounding bass, the scratch of people’s voices as they sang along to the inane lyrics.

She seemed to sense this from the get-go, gorgeous and slinky, all over him, inviting him to get up and dance, her movements like his heartbeat on the cocaine, rapid and hard, pulling him onto the club’s floor from the safety of the booze-lined table his friend had bought. The moment she thrust herself onto him, he felt a bulge like he was thirteen again, watching his father’s pornos, taped over the WWE matches his mother despised, on the VCR in the basement.

“Relaxxxxx,” she breathed into his ear, licking it, her tongue quivering over the lobe, slithering into his actual eardrum. And he had. He relaxed right then and there into her arms, closing his eyes and enjoying the music, the gyrations of her body.

They started dating soon after. She gave him the tools he needed to bring SNAPea to investors. Taught him how to talk to people—how to get what he wanted. She believed in him, believed in his tenacity.

After a while Peri grew bored, even amid the wild, sadistic sex, the fleeting one-night stands the two would have with girls who were too intimidated, too disconcerted, didn’t understand Peri and Tom and what they wanted. Who consented, but barely, their voices merely tremors. She wanted a third, a real third, someone whom she could dominate, but who wouldn’t feel confined by them.

Then she found Odilie.

“There’s something about her,” she had said to him. “Something in her. She’ll be good for us, bring us closer.” She was a perfect fit for what Peri liked, docile and mild mannered, a nice, malleable girl who could be tweaked to her liking. Peri had to groom her first, gain her trust, make Odilie dependent on her.

But then Tom had met Odilie, and Peri lost her power over both of them.

It had happened suddenly, a quake of desire Tom hadn’t experienced in years, that he hadn’t even experienced with Peri. After the night at the beach where they shared their kiss, they began sneaking around, meeting up during Odilie’s lunch hour, having cramped, teenage sex in her car, navigating around Peri’s loose schedule. Odilie was everything that Peri was not: soft and naive and submissive. It was the first time a woman had looked at him like she did. Like he had dominion. There was an eagerness about her, a puppy dog’s need for attention. With Odilie, Tom had recognized what he could be capable of without Peri’s grip on him. He didn’t need her anymore.