warped predilection

London wants her too. Different work. More interesting in some ways, less safe in others. An international economic policy team she applied to mostly because the application existed and Annie has never encountered a competitive process without taking it as a personal challenge. She hadn’t expected to get it. Then she did, which has created the irritating problem of having to decide whether she actually wants the life she applied for simply to prove she could have it.

Then there’s grad school. Four acceptances, one generous scholarship option, several professors who’ve informed Annie with varying degrees of subtlety that she’d be an idiot not to continue. She keeps waiting for one future to become obviously correct. None does.

Her early onset quarterlife crisis comes to a grinding halt when her phone buzzes against the rug.

CONNOR.

Annie considers ignoring it. It buzzes again. Then a third time. Persistence has apparently become a key pillar of every technological advance of the twenty-first century.

“You know, some people interpret unanswered calls as a social cue,” she says when she finally picks up.

“Congratulations.”

“You already called me yesterday to say congratulations.”

“And today I’m saying it again.”

“You want something.” Silence. “What now, Connor?”

“I have a once-in-a-lifetime business opportunity.”

“No.”

“You don’t even know what it is.”

“I know you.”

“It’s a company.”

“Terrible idea already.”

“Can you let me finish?”

“You’ve said less than a dozen words and somehow I already feel financially exposed.”

Connor sighs with the put-upon exhaustion of a man who’s spent his entire life being tragically misunderstood by his twin. Still, he explains. There are investors. There’s a product. There’s a market gap. There’s a partner with engineering experience and another with a vague but impressive-sounding relationship to venture capital. There are projections. Annie knows said projections do in fact exist because Connor sends them while he’s talking.

She opens the attachment despite herself, skims the first page, scrolls through the second and has to physically stop herself from groaning by the third.

“Connor, these financial projections are ass.”

“Thank you.”

“That wasn’t praise.”

“You got as far as opening them. That’s practically an endorsement.”

Annie scrolls farther. “Don’t do this.” Silence. Not normal silence. Connor silence. Annie stops scrolling. “Silence with you is never good.”

“I need my money.”

“What money?”

“My island money.”

Annie frowns. Then she understands. Her eyes leave the screen.

“No.”

“Sissy…”

“No.”

“You haven’t even heard me out.”

“The island isn’t your checking account.”

“It’s half mine.”

“Not half. It’s split three ways. And regardless, the answer is no.”

Connor’s voice changes. He’s not angry yet. He’s careful, which is somehow more irritating.

“Why won’t you sell?”

“We’ve had this conversation.”

“No, we haven’t. I bring it up. You immediately say no. That’s not a conversation. That’s you thinking you’re winning because you assume you can out-stubborn everyone else…Mona’s willing to talk about it.”

Annie sits straighter. That one she hadn’t expected.

“She is?”

“Yup.” Annie says nothing. Connor lets the silence sit for a second before continuing. “She’s in New York. She’s got school. She doesn’t go there. I don’t go there. You don’t go there.”

“I’ve been busy.”

Her body reacts to that statement. A tiny contraction beneath the ribcage. An old instinct reaching for an old wound. Fortunately Connor isn’t there to see it.

“Why exactly are we preserving a place none of us wants to be in?”

The apartment suddenly feels too small. Annie gets up and crosses to the windows. California sunlight washes the buildings below in an almost obnoxious amount of optimism. Her laptop waits on the rug with three excellent futures glowing on its screen. Sterling Point belongs nowhere in any of them. That should make this easy. It somehow makes it more difficult.

Connor sighs into the phone. Loud. Dramatic.

“You want to know what I think?”

“Never. Yet somehow I still do. Constantly. Against my will.”

“I think you don’t want anybody else to have it.”

Annie looks through the glass. She doesn’t refute it.

“I’m hanging up.”

“Annabelle.”

“I fucking hate when you call me that.”

“I need the capital.”

“Then raise it.”

“I’m trying.”

“Try harder.”

“Easy for you to say. You just got offered enough money to become a Republican.” Annie snorts. “Come on. You’re about to start your life. Ramona already started hers. I’m trying to start mine. What exactly are we holding it for? It’s land none of us gives a fuck about full of people we don’t give a fuck about.”

Her brain rebukes that statement so quickly Annie almost resents it for the lack of dignity. She immediately gets flashes of a dock in late afternoon. Wet blonde curls. A crooked smile. A soft British voice turning two ordinary syllables into something intimate enough to belong to only one person. She can hear Oona saying ‘baby’ so vividly it almost knocks the air out of her. Annie kills the thought before it can develop a pulse.

“Give me a week.”

Connor goes quiet.

“A week?”

“I’ll give you an answer in a week.”

“You’ll actually consider it?”

“Yes.”

“Seriously?”

“I just told you I would.”

“Thank you.”

Annie ends the call.

For several minutes she stays beside the window with the phone still in her hand. She forces herself not to think about Sterling Point. She thinks about San Francisco. London. Grad school. She thinks about salary projections, moving costs, visas, whether she actually wants another degree or simply enjoys being excellent at school.

She absolutely doesn’t think about blonde curls. She doesn’t. Not at all…Which is exactly why she walks back to her laptop and books a flight to the last place she ever saw them.

//

Annie tells herself she’s going because selling something without seeing it one last time would be irresponsible. That explanation holds together remarkably well as long as nobody examines it.

Four years is a long time. Places change. People move. Lives become unrecognizable. There’s every possibility the two foreign girls who once lived on a boat at the marina are somewhere else entirely now. Oona could’ve gone off to college. Maple could’ve gone back to England with their mother. They could’ve crossed an ocean, joined a circus, gotten married, become accountants. Annie genuinely has no idea.

That had probably been the point of Oona unfollowing her within twelve hours of Annie getting on the sea plane and heading back to New York. Then subsequently blocking her before the end of the day. Not just Instagram. Annie came up empty everywhere she thought to look during that first humiliating month. Oona was nowhere to be found anywhere she searched on those nights when she’d open her phone at two in the morning and typed her name into some search bar. Not being blocked wouldn’t have helped anyway. Oona’s accounts are private. So are Annie’s. Even the pathetic modern consolation prize of watching someone move on from a safe distance had been denied to them.

Eventually Annie stopped checking. Then she got very good at never letting herself arrive at the point where wanting to check would even occur to her at all.

College helped. Stanford was magnificent for that. There was always something due. Someone smarter than Annie in some room she wanted to be the smartest in which forced her to work that much harder. Some competitive fellowship, research position, internship or professor willing to occupy every cubic inch of attention Annie might otherwise have wasted remembering how Oona’s voice changed when she was turned on.

Annie became pretty good at being busy. Then she became extraordinary at it.

One summer disappeared into an internship people had warned her was nearly unobtainable. She got it. Another disappeared into the thing she was supposedly too young or too inexperienced to get. She beat out 300 applicants for it. Semesters collapsed into papers, exams, interviews, parties and people whose names Annie sometimes remembered after sleeping with them.

She dated. She fucked around. She had relationships that were pleasant enough to hurt no one and brief enough to require very little justification when they ended.

She never compared anyone to Oona. That would’ve been senseless. Her standards were untouchable. So Annie merely noticed things.

A woman who kissed too carefully. A man who asked what she wanted in bed and made the question feel like homework. A situationship whose hands were beautiful but always seemed to arrive half a second after Annie wanted them somewhere. Someone who always said her name at the wrong moment. Someone who laughed when Oona would’ve smirked. A person who tried calling her baby once and accidentally ruined otherwise perfectly good sex.

All observations. Not comparisons. There’s an important distinction. Annie has spent years insisting to herself they're not the same thing.

//

She leaves California almost believing her own bullshit. But the closer she gets to Sterling Point, the less cooperative her body becomes. In New York she checks the weather six times. When the little commuter plane that Ellis still pilots lifts off for the short flight north, she convinces herself the nausea is merely a side effect of the turbulence.

Annie looks out the window. Water appears beneath them. Then islands. Then a familiar crooked coastline she hasn’t seen since “-teen” was still attached to her age. Her entrails recoil.

The businessman across the narrow aisle glances over. Annie twists her face into something polite.

“You ever been before?”

“No,” she lies.

“It’s a great little summer place. I’m looking at some property there.” He leans slightly closer, apparently delighted to have acquired an audience. “Beautiful house. Completely absurd price for something you don’t even own the land under, but apparently the family that owns the island only does long-term ground leases and no one’s ever had an issue. I’ve heard the locals are all hicks and sleazeballs, but it’s easy enough to stay away from them.”

“Sounds lovely.”

He either doesn’t hear the dryness or chooses to interpret it as agreement.

Annie looks back out the window as Sterling Point comes into view. It’s smaller than she remembers, which feels offensive somehow. Four years ago, it had been large enough to contain her entire life. Now she can see it’s edges.

//

This Tuesday has given Oona absolutely no indication it intends to ruin and redirect her entire life.

It’s hot. Bright. Tedious. Obnoxiously ordinary. Oona is dressed accordingly. Old denim shorts, scuffed work boots, navy marina shirt with one sleeve rolled higher than the other. There’s grease worked into the side of one thumb and another streak along her jaw she hasn’t noticed. Her blonde curls are dragged off her neck with a hair tie that stopped performing the bulk of its assigned function several weeks ago.

The sun reaches it’s peak and the marina has become a reflective oven of white decking, windshields and water. Oona has spent most of the morning moving between the rental office and the slips. Fuel delivery. A cracked line on a boat owned by a man who somehow possesses three of them without understanding any of them. Two reservation mix-ups. One tourist who believes the phrase ‘no wake zone’ is a personal affront. And now the printer has decided invoices are less a function it performs than a privilege it may revoke without notice.

The seaplane from New York landed five minutes ago. That usually means money, luggage and at least one person offended by the concept of waiting. Today is no exception.

“Don’t be such a fucking twat.”

Oona smacks the side of the printer. Nothing. She hits ‘PRINT’ again. Still nothing. Oona releases a string of curses under her breath just as the bell over the office door gives its ugly little clang.

“Be with you in a sec,” she calls without looking up.

“I was told there’d be boats available.”

Oona closes her eyes for half a heartbeat, rearranges her face into something half delightful and finally looks toward the counter. A man in pressed summer linen is standing there with the faintly aggrieved expression of an individual unfamiliar with problems money doesn’t immediately solve.

“Were you told that by us?”

“Excuse me?”

“Did you reserve one through the marina?”

“No. My broker said…”

“Then your broker’s a hopeless optimist.” Oona gives him the customer service version of her smile. “We’re fully booked.”

“I need something for the week.”

“Then ideally you needed to ring us about six months ago.”

“I just flew in from New York.” His expression tightens.

“Sounds lovely.”

Right beyond his shoulder, someone says, “Thank you so much. Yeah, this is perfect. Thank you.”

Oona stops breathing. It’s not dramatic. Nothing falls out of her hand. The room doesn’t spin. Her body simply ceases participating in any and all necessary functions for a moment.

Her finger stays suspended above the keyboard. Breath catches halfway into her lungs. Her mind empties with snappy speed.

There are voices people forget. Oona’s forgotten teachers she once saw every day. Customers who spent whole summers telling her intimate details about their marriages. Women she slept with. Men she drank with. People she once assumed would remain in her life long enough that remembering them would never require effort. But she could’ve requested to have Annie Jacobson’s voice surgically removed from her brain and some phantom version of it would still be living in her bones.

Oona’s eyes dart to the doorway…And there she is. Annie is just crossing the threshold into the office with her suitcase in tow. The man in linen keeps talking. Oona hears none of it.

Oona’s eyes catch Annie for perhaps one second. Enough to confirm that her sanity hasn’t finally broken from heat exposure. Just enough to see dark hair and a face she knows better than several parts of her own body. Then Oona looks away. Immediately. Hastily.

The man is still speaking. Something about the house he’s viewing and some arrangement his agent apparently promised. Oona fastens her attention to him with the desperate concentration of someone defusing an explosive.

“Right, well…” she says, although she has absolutely no idea what she’s agreeing with. “There aren’t any self-drives left. We can put you on our share.”

“What does that mean?”

“Like a water cab.” Oona responds exasperated as she wills her eyes to stay locked on this man and not wander to the brunette directly behind him.

“I need to get back and forth whenever I want.”

“Best I can do is suggest you call the number on that card and request a pickup when you need it.”

Oona grabs one of the business cards from the hold and extends it to him. Her eyes go everywhere except Annie’s direction.

“How long does that take?”

“Depends how busy we are.”

“That’s not very specific.”

“Neither is ‘whenever I want’.”

Somewhere behind him, Annie readjusted. Her luggage wheels screech across the floor. Oona doesn’t look. She won’t look. Looking would be catastrophic.

Oona picks up a clipboard, takes his name, makes him spell it twice even though she got it the first time, asks for the property address, the number of passengers, his mobile number, whether he requires luggage assistance. She enters each piece of information with meticulous care because this is what her life has become since the girl who unwound her like no one else had before or since has materialized after four years of total silence. Oona prefers to hide inside maritime admin than deal with whatever that entails.

The printer screeches. Oona nearly jumps out of her skin. The man frowns at her.

“Can somebody just take me now?”

Oona grabs the radio.

“Maple. You copy?”

Static. Then: “Go ahead.”

“I’ve got one passenger for the Carroway viewing, luggage with him. Can you collect from Slip Five?”

“Two minutes.”

“Copy.”

Oona puts the radio down. “Slip Five. Straight out, left at the fuel dock.”

Oona gives him a perfectly pleasant smile. The man stares at her. Then, quite unfortunately, leaves. The bell clangs shut behind him. Her and Annie are left alone in the office. Silence follows.

Not actual silence. There’s a radio muttering somewhere. Dock lines knock softly against masts outside. The broken printer makes a mechanical racket that suggests it’s considering death again.

But the room Oona is standing in has narrowed to one person. And now she has no choice but to look. Really look. And for one awful, glorious, universe-altering second, she genuinely doesn’t understand what she’s seeing.

Annie stands on the other side of the rental desk.

Real-life Annie. Not one of the old Polaroids Oona has stashed inside a plethora of books and steals glances at every so often. Annie laughing with her head thrown back on the dock. Annie waist-deep in the water, squinting into the sun. Annie half asleep in one of Oona’s sweatshirts. Annie kissing her cheek while Oona badly aims the camera at both of them. Annie kissing her properly in another, nothing but dark hair and tangled limbs and the edge of Oona’s stupid grin. Annie caught unaware. Annie deliberately posing. Annie looking straight into the lens with that soft, private expression that had never really been for the camera at all. It’d been for Oona. Every one of them seventeen or eighteen, sunburned and messy and permanently frozen inside the year Oona got her and lost her. But this isn’t a photograph. This is twenty-two-year-old Annie. Flesh and bone. Here. Now.

Oona’s first coherent thought is that this is deeply fucking unfair.

The Annie Oona knew existed almost entirely in cutoffs and old T-shirts. Messy dark hair. Bare face. Scraped knees. Cheap flip-flops. Oona’s sweatshirts dragged down over her hands on cold mornings. She’d watched Annie rotate through the same three pairs of shorts until one of them practically surrendered at the seams. The fanciest dress Annie brought to Sterling Point became a regular island rag within weeks because Sterling Point had a talent for stripping people of whatever they’d arrived with.

Oona knew Annie was rich. Undebiably so. Annie’s life in New York had leaked through in stories. Upper East Side apartments. Private schools. Holidays Oona initially assumed had been exaggerated until she realized Annie didn’t know they sounded fictional. Restaurants mentioned without thinking. Hotels named casually, then Googled later by Oona out of curiosity and discovered to cost more per night than she sometimes made in a month.

But on Sterling Point, Annie’s wealth had been theoretical. The island had taken Annie out of context. Money didn’t mean much when your hair was wet, your thighs were covered in mosquito bites and the only shop within walking distance sold the same sun-faded shirts to everyone. Oona had fallen in love with a girl who swore at splinters, slept with damp hair, stole her ratty clothes and once wore the same faded floral T-shirt for a week because Oona had slept in it first and Annie swore it captured her smell.

That Annie had been breathtakingly simplistic. The version of Annie she knew felt private. Not because no one else saw it. They did. Oona wasn’t blind and the rest of the island wasn’t either. But Annie’s beauty had seemed incidental to Annie herself. Unarranged. Something that happened while she was busy doing other things. She’d walk around with her hair in a knot she’d forgotten to fix, sunscreen smeared badly over one cheek, somebody else’s hoodie hanging off one shoulder. And still people stared. Oona knew that girl enough to recognize her footsteps outside a locked room.

The woman standing in front of her now is the same person and somehow an entirely different visual event.

The face remains. Same enormous eyes. Same ridiculous brows Oona used to trace with one finger when Annie was asleep. Same full mouth, although someone has since introduced it to the sort of lipstick designed to look as though there’s no lipstick involved. Oona can still locate seventeen in the architecture. She knows exactly where that girl she used to know hides. But everything surrounding her has changed.

Her hair falls past her shoulders in polished dark waves, glossy enough that Oona can tell professionals have been involved. Her makeup is controlled to the point of looking almost nonexistent, which Oona has learned from wealthy marina clients usually means it costs more. Cream trousers skim legs Oona remembers almost exclusively bare. A pale blue silk blouse sits perfectly against her body. A beautifully cut jacket rests over one arm as if Annie has arrived from a meeting at a high-rise instead of an airplane.

The bag is Hermès. Oona knows that against her will. Years of rich people abandoning absurdly expensive possessions in boats have given her an involuntary education. She doesn’t know the model. She does know one of the women from the east shore once screamed for twenty minutes because lake water got on something remarkably similar.

Then Oona reaches the shoes. She has no idea what they are. She knows only that they look hostile to docks and probably cost more than her boat’s engine.

But it isn’t really the display of wealth that unsettles her. That would be low hanging fruit. It’s the coherence of Annie now. The way all the disparate things Oona once knew about her have finally assembled in one place. The ambition. The goals. The education. The city. The impossible standards. The confidence Annie always possessed but used to wear with all the subtlety of a teenager has settled into something adult now. She stands differently. Holds herself differently. She doesn’t seem to be asking the room what it thinks of her anymore. Annie already knows.

Oona had known Annie before the world taught her how to present the facts of herself. She’d known her before adulthood gave all that raw confidence tailoring. And fuck, has it tailored her.

Younger Annie had been gorgeous enough to ruin Oona’s judgment for the better part of a year. This version is worse because Oona can see the girl she loved underneath the woman she’s never gotten to know. Familiarity and novelty occupying the same body. Every old instinct in Oona recognizes her while every other part is being forced to meet her for the first time.

And sure, Annie objectively got hotter too. But that thought is also far too outlandish for what’s actually happening. Oona always knew Annie was stunning. What she hadn’t known was what Annie would look like once her real life caught up with her.

On Sterling Point, Annie’s wealth and ambition had been trivia. Abstract facts Oona could ignore while Annie sat cross-legged on the dock eating cereal out of a mug. Now those facts have become visible. They’ve acquired posture. Silk. Professional hair. Four-thousand-dollar skin care routines.

Annie has come back looking like the physical embodiment of every reason Oona once convinced herself she had to let her go. That’s the part that reaches in and twists.

Four years ago, Oona had been able to imagine this woman only in fragments. Annie in cities. Annie in rooms where everyone had degrees and surnames that opened doors. Annie becoming important in ways Oona had never known how to picture because her own life had barely extended beyond a boat that leaked when it rained too hard.

Oona had looked at Annie’s future and seen something vast. Then she’d looked at herself and seen nothng but things that might make Annie smaller. So she let her leave. Now the future Oona saw so plainly has walked into the marina wearing Annie’s face. And it fits her perfectly.

Oona realizes she’s staring. Worse than that, Annie has caught her staring.

A minuscule flicker of uncertainty crosses Annie’s face, so brief Oona could almost persuade herself she imagined it. Then it’s gone, replaced by a polished composure Oona doesn’t remember. Annie has apparently learned, among the thousand other things she learned while Oona wasn’t there, how not to let people read the thoughts that cross her mind.

Oona’s heart is trying to beat itself through her sternum. So she does what she always does when terrified. She smiles. And she talks.

“Annie, baby.”

It was a poor choice of words. But it was also muscle memory masquerading as confidence.

Annie’s face contorts. Only for a moment. Enough for Oona to see her falter. For Oona to sees seventeen again underneath all that polish. And because Oona is a fundamentally selfish person in several highly specific ways, the sight of it makes her feel almost euphoric.

“Hi.”

All this time. And that’s all Annie gives her.

Oona leans her hip against the counter before her knees can betray her. She lets her gaze travel over Annie once more because apparently self-preservation has packed up and left the building.

“You’ve gone corporate.” Oona’s mouth curves.

Annie glances down at herself then back at Oona. Her eyes take their own slow trip over Oona’s body.

“And you’re very…blue collar.”

“Some of us work for a living.” Oona smiles wider.

“Does that prevent you from knowing how buttons work?”

Oona looks down. Her shirt’s buttoned wrong. One side sits higher than the other, apparently the result of getting dressed at five-thirty this morning without consulting a mirror.

Annie’s mouth twitches but resists curving into a full smile. Oona refuses to be embarrassed on principle.

“Only every other day.”

Oona starts undoing the shirt. There are perhaps eight more appropriate ways to fix a misbuttoned work shirt in front of a client who just happens to be your former hookup. Oona chooses none of them. She unfastens the buttons without a shred of modesty, letting the monogrammed shirt fall open while she fixes it. Annie gets an unobstructed view of what years of hauling lines, lifting engines and generally refusing to sit still have done to Oona’s body. Her stomach is cut hard, abs sharply defined, a deep V disappearing beneath the waistband of her shorts. She’d always been lean. This is different. This is Oona being strong. Ripped with intent. Annie’s eyes betray her and drop before she can stop them. Oona catches her looking. So she leaves the shirt hanging open for one entirely unnecessary second longer.

“So…” She taps the counter. “What can I help you with?”

Annie looks around as it the answer to the question was entirely obvious.

“Renting a boat.”

Oona makes a sympathetic face that isn’t entirely fake. “Ah. Bad news, baby…We’re completely out.”

“Nothing?”

“Not one.”

“Fuck.”

“Peak season. First come, first serve. And after breakfast it turns into blood sport.”

Annie looks through the window toward the slips as if another boat might materialize through good fortune alone.

“Nothing?…I remember sometimes ‘nothing’ was a gray area.”

“It is quite black and white today. Unless you fancy a kayak and a very character-building experience with your luggage.” Oona smiles. “We started doing on-demand launch runs a couple years ago tho…Gets messy when we’re slammed, but we can get you back and forth. You just might not get to dictate the exact minute. And they stop at ten.”

Annie studies her.

“Are you the one driving people?”

“Sometimes.”

Annie’s eyes stay on her for another beat. Oona grabs a clipboard before she can become interested in what those brown eyes are doing.

“Fill that out. Name, number, destination.”

Annie takes the form and scans it. Then looks up.

“You don’t remember where I live?”

The question is light. The wound underneath isn’t. Oona feels it. She keeps her face blank.

“We ask everyone.”

Annie continues looking at her. Oona pushes the clipboard slightly closer.

“Insurance loves paperwork.”

Annie lowers her eyes and begins writing. Oona watches despite herself.

ANNIE JACOBSON.

Seeing the name she’s thought about for so long in Annie’s handwriting does something stupid to her. Then comes the phone number. Oona’s eyes fixate on it. Digits she’s not privy to anymore. Not since she deleted Annie’s contact. That lands harder than it has any right to. Annie writes the cabin address next. The same address Oona could reach blindfolded. The same dock she’s deliberately avoided looking at for almost half a decade.

Annie hands the form back.

“For that zone, it’s thirty each way. Cash or card?”

Annie stares at her. Not because of the price. Because Oona has apparently committed fully to pretending they’ve never met. Oona can see the irritation building. She’s okay with that. Irritation is manageable. The alternative isn’t.

“Card,” Annie says eventually.

Annie reaches into her bag. The wallet that emerges looks as expensive as the bag itself.

Oona takes the card. Metal. She shouldn’t have expected anything else. She runs it.

“Thirty even.”

Annie laughs. Actually laughs. It’s the only thing she can think of doing under this most absurd circumstance.

Oona’s brain responds with offending enthusiasm. That sound hasn’t changed. Everything else can apparently graduate, move across a continent, acquire expensive makeup and come back wearing an entirely different life, but Annie’s laugh is still Annie’s laugh. Oona hates the relief of it.

“I can get Ellis to take you in a few minutes. He’s the son of the owner. He can answer any questions you might have about the island.”

Annie is impressed by how set Oona is on the absolute professionalism bit.

“Yeah, I have plenty of those.”

Oona picks up the radio.

“Ellis. You copy?”

Static cracks through the speaker.

“Go ahead.”

“One passenger to the Campbell cabin. Pickup Slip Three.”

A pause. Then: “Annie?”

Silent beat.

“Affirmative…One passenger. Campbell cabin. Slip Three.”

“You can just say I need to take Annie home.”

“One passenger…Campbell cabin…Slip Three.”

“What the fuck is happening in there?”

Oona presses the transmit button harder than necessary. “Do you copy the pickup?”

A longer pause.

“Jesus. Yes, I copy. Slip Three.”

Oona sets the radio down. Annie is openly smiling now.

“Very professional.”

The printer chooses that exact moment to resurrect itself with a violent mechanical wail. Both women jump. Six copies of the same invoice begin vomiting into the tray.

“You vindictive little bastard.” Oona grumbles at it.

“Seems you fixed it.” Annie offers with a smirk.

Oona turns slowly toward the machine. Annie laughs. Oona wants to crawl into the printer and die. Instead she pulls the receipt free, tears off Annie’s copy and extends it across the counter.

“Slip Three. Ellis will be there in a couple minutes.”

Annie reaches for it. Their fingers touch. Barely. Skin against skin for less than a second. Yet Oona’s entire nervous system reacts as though someone has thrown a live wire into her chest. Annie pulls her hand back first. She felt it too.

For one dangerous beat, the proficiency charade cracks straight down the middle. Oona makes sure to quickly mend it.

“Anything else I can help you with, Miss Jacobson?”

The sentence comes out in the bright, polished tone she uses on tourists. Annie stares at her for a long silent beat.

“No.”

Oona nods as though this is a satisfactory customer-service interaction. “Slip Three’s straight out and…”

“I know where it is.” Annie’s reply is sharper than it needs to be.

Annie picks up the handle of her carry-on and settles her bag against her arm then turns toward the door.

Oona has survived the most challenging six minutes of her short life. She should be relieved. Move on. Go about her day. Never think about Annie again. Instead panic begins climbing her throat.

“Annie.”

Annie’s body grinds to a halt. Turns. Oona has absolutely nothing prepared. So she says the first thing that comes to her mind.

“You…Uhm…You’re…” Annie waits. “You can probably just call Ellis if you need a ride. Or text him…If you still have his number…Whatever…He’ll sort you.”

Annie’s expression is impossible to read. Then she gives Oona the same courteous smile Oona has been weaponizing against her for the last several minutes.

“Thank you.”

Annie shakes her head and turns away. The door closes behind her. Oona remains exactly where she is.

Ten seconds pass. Then twenty. The printer spits out another invoice for absolutely no reason. Oona glares at it.

“Fuck off, you piece of shit.”

Oona abandons the counter and walks to the window. She watches Ellis take Annie’s sleek metal carry-on from her. It looks so absurdly out of place against the battered dock. Annie reaches into her bag and pulls out oversized sunglasses. Expensive, presumably. Everything about her suddenly seems expensive.

Oona watches the wind catch Annie’s hair. Watches her look out over the water. Watches the rigid set of her shoulders loosen by degrees. Then Annie glances back toward the rental office. Toward Oona.

Something inside Oona twists painfully. She’d been right. That’s the fucking problem. Oona had been right.

Four years ago, she’d looked at an eighteen-year-old girl with greatness practically vibrating beneath her skin and believed, with the stupid certainty of someone who loved Annie too much and herself not nearly enough, that Annie’s life was going to become enormous. There would be cities. Important rooms. People who knew things Oona didn’t. Clothes Oona couldn’t pronounce. Jobs that required security badges and dinners with six forks. A world that would take one look at Annie Jacobson and know exactly what to do with her.

Oona had looked at herself beside all of that and seen the mismatch. So she’d let Annie go. And now Annie has come back looking like proof. Every fear Oona ever dressed up as selflessness is standing on the dock, looking so perfectly at home inside the life Oona imagined for her that it’s almost unbearable.

But Annie looking wildly out of place somewhere that used to be her entire world isn’t the worst part. The worst part is that Oona still wants her.

Not abstractly. Not nostalgically. Not in the soft, safely historical way people are apparently supposed to want their first loves after enough time has passed. Oona wants this Annie. This polished, intimidating, absurdly pricey adult version she’s never met before, with the same eyes and the same mouth and four whole years of herself Oona knows absolutely nothing about. The wanting arrives with such immediate physical certainty that it feels virtually adolescent. It’s humiliating.

Oona’s phone buzzes against the counter. She ignores it. It buzzes again, and eventually she drags herself away from the window.

TAMSIN: What are you feeling for dinner tonight?

Oona stares at the screen. For the first time since Annie walked through the door, guilt enters the room. She hasn’t done anything wrong. Looked too long, perhaps. Thought several things a woman in a committed relationship should probably not be thinking while her girlfriend is at home planning her next meal. But objectively, Oona has done nothing. If anything, she’s gone absurdly out of her way to treat Annie like any other customer. She should probably be commended for it.

She types that she’s fine with whatever and sends it. Then, despite herself, Oona looks through the window again.