warped predilection

Ellis follows her stare.

“Have you met Tamsin yet?”

Tamsin. Even the name feels wrong.

“No,” Annie says. “No, I haven’t met Tamsin.”

“She’s the best. You’re going to love her.”

Quite possibly the worst thing Ellis could have said.

“Hey! Oona!”

Ellis lifts a hand.

Annie grabs for his wrist. “Why would you…”

Too late. Oona has already followed the familiar voice. Her gaze finds Ellis first, then moves naturally to the person beside him. And stops. Annie watches the moment happen.

Oona was laughing at something Tamsin said. The laugh remains on her face when she sees Annie, but something goes out of it. There’s a microscopic pause, a hitch so brief nobody else would bother attaching meaning to it. Nobody but Annie. She notices.

She’s spent four years trying to forget every expression Oona has ever made. Apparently she’s preserved them instead.

Oona’s gaze drops briefly to the glass in Annie’s hand. Then lower. And this time it stays there.

Annie had changed before coming out tonight for absolutely no reason whatsoever. That’s the story she’s telling herself, anyway. The stark white dress had been buried beneath the appropriate clothes she’d packed for a week on an island. It’s long and narrow and cut close through her body, rising high at the throat before abandoning both shoulders completely. No sleeves. No unnecessary detail. Just one clean line of white jersey that leaves nowhere for the eye to go except Annie inside it.

Apparently Oona’s eye gets the memo. Her gaze travels down the dress before she can stop herself. Slowly enough that Annie catches it. Slowly enough that Oona knows Annie catches it. Something small and vicious uncurls inside Annie. Oona looks back up, and that fucking mouth curves into the smug little smile Annie has always hated. Or loved. She’s never been especially successful at telling the difference.

Annie takes a slow drink without looking away. Oona’s smile deepens. Tamsin says something beside her. Oona turns, breaking eye contact. Annie hates her instantly. Tamsin, not Oona. Well. Both.

Oona starts toward them with Tamsin in tow, which gives Annie enough time to notice something else. Tamsin is wearing a black dress. A black halter dress. Annie blinks. No. Absolutely not…It isn’t the same dress. Annie can tell that much even from here. Hers is Louis Vuitton. Tamsin’s is decidedly…not. Hers is also shorter, ending above the knee where Annie’s falls long. Her neckline dips instead of climbing high against her throat. The fabric is different. The cut through the waist is softer.

Completely different. Obviously different. Except both dresses skim the body in the same spare line. Both leave the shoulders entirely bare. Both reduce the women wearing them to dark hair, pale skin and narrow silhouettes.

And the closer Tamsin gets, the worse the face situation becomes.

Annie turns very slowly toward Ellis. He’s seen it too.

“Oh,” he says.

Annie narrows her eyes. “Oh?”

Ellis looks at her with an expression of strenuous innocence.

“You just said ‘oh.’”

“I didn’t.”

“You absolutely did.”

“I said nothing.”

“You made a sound.”

“People make sounds.”

Ellis takes a drink just as Oona and Tamsin reach them. And Oona finally gets a proper look at Annie. That turns out to be a mistake.

From across the room, she’d registered the obvious things. Dark hair. White dress. Bare shoulders. The fact that Annie Jacobson had apparently spent four years becoming even more offensively beautiful out of pure spite. Up close it’s worse. Seventeen is still hiding beneath the adulthood Annie has grown into. It’s there if Oona knows where to look. And, unfortunately, Oona does know exactly where to look.

Annie has the same enormous brown eyes. Same ridiculous eyebrows. Same mouth that always seems half a second away from saying something clever and irritating. But Annie has sharpened somehow. The softness of adolescence has left her face. Her cheekbones sit higher. Her hair is longer. There’s a composure to her Oona doesn’t remember, something polished and self-possessed that speaks of expensive education, impossible expectations and four years spent becoming exactly the woman Annie had always announced she intended to become. The woman Oona let her walk away to become. And here that woman is.

Oona steps toward Ellis.

“Didn’t know you were coming out tonight.”

She hugs him, but her eyes remain on Annie over his shoulder.

“I wasn’t planning to,” Ellis says. “Annie dragged me out.”

Oona releases him. Her gaze makes the trip down Annie’s body once more before she can stop it. Annie notices. Of course she fucking notices. Something tiny and pleased touches one corner of her mouth. Oona and Annie stare each other down for a beat. Oona relents first.

“Jacobson. Look at you. Slumming it with the rest of us mortals.”

Oona waits. Annie says nothing. That throws Oona for half a second, which is precisely long enough for Annie to enjoy it. Then Tamsin shifts beside her. Oona remembers she exists.

“This is Tamsin.” Oona glances toward her. “Baby, this is Annie.”

Baby.

It never occurred to Annie that Oona might call anyone else that again. Objectively, she knows the word was never…hers. Oona used it before Annie ever set foot on Sterling Point. Oona used it on everyone. Bartenders, old women, attractive customs officers, injured birds. It wasn’t something she’d invented for Annie.

But nearly a year of hearing it murmured against her ear, breathed into her hair, thrown across rooms when Oona wanted her attention had apparently convinced some deeply stupid part of Annie that possession laws applied. Apparently not.

“Nice to meet you, Tamsin,” Annie says. “Lovely name.”

“Thank you.” Tamsin smiles. “I haven’t seen you around before.”

“I just came once. Years ago.” Annie lets her eyes slide toward Oona. “Stayed quite a while. Then I was kind of forced to leave for college. This is my first time back.”

‘Forced’…The word detonates something inside Oona. Her jaw tightens so slightly nobody but Annie could see it. Which means Annie absolutely does. But before Oona can decide whether to take the bait, she takes in the scene before her and dry swallows.

She sees Tamsin standing beside Annie. Really sees them.

For fuck’s sake.

The resemblance is more than a little uncanny. Then she notices the dresses. They’re not the same dress. Oona knows because she isn’t blind and because she very suddenly needs the distinction to matter. They’re completely different dresses on completely different women. Obviously. Except both skim the body in the same spare line. Both accentuate their bare shoulders. Both women look fantastic in them.

Standing beside each other, they don’t look like sisters. That would be less humiliating. They look like somebody had been given Annie as a reference for Tamsin and instructed to make enough changes to survive the lawsuit.

Oona reaches for Tamsin’s hand. Grips it. Annie’s eyes move from Tamsin to Oona. Then back to Tamsin. She sees it. Oona watches her see it.

Annie looks back at her and there’s that almost-smile again. Not enough to accuse her of anything. Just enough to make Oona understand that Annie Jacobson has arrived at the most unbearable possible conclusion and intends to privately enjoy it for the rest of the evening.

Absolutely fucking not.

Oona laughs and slips her arm around Tamsin’s waist.

“She’s Ramona’s sister.” Oona clarifies for Tamsin before placing a soft kiss on the side of her head.

Annie’s eyes drop to the arm. Only for a second. Oona feels the look as distinctly as if Annie had touched her. And because Oona is apparently an emotionally mature woman who’s grown enormously in the past four years, she immediately settles her hand low against Tamsin’s hip. Just on the curve of her ass.

Annie looks back up. That does it. Barely. Most people wouldn’t catch the change at all. Annie’s face remains composed, pleasant, perfectly civilized. But Oona remembers every version of that face. She knows exactly what Annie looks like when she wants to commit a felony.

“Oh! Stanford, right?” Tamsin says. “Yeah, I remember.”

Annie’s attention snaps to her. “Who mentioned that?”

“Ramona. She talks about you all the time.”

“Right.”

Again, barely anything changes in Annie’s face. But Oona catches the microexpressions. The tiny recalibrations. The need to know whether Oona had been the one talking about Stanford. Whether Oona had said Annie’s name inside the house where they shared a bed. Whether Oona had ever admitted enough for Tamsin to understand what Annie had been to her.

Oona is drunk enough already to enjoy denying her the answer.

“T, baby.” She turns toward Tamsin. “Dance with me.”

Then, because she’s petty and apparently interested in setting fire to her own life, Oona leans in and presses a succession of soft kisses along Tamsin’s neck before taking her hand and pulling her toward the crowd.

It wipes the smugness clean off Annie’s face. Oona smiles at her success. And disappears into the bodies on the dance floor.

Ellis is left beside Annie, looking after them. Then at Annie. Then toward Tamsin. Then back at Annie. He wisely says nothing.

“How long have they been together?” Annie asks without taking her eyes off the crowd.

“Couple years.”

Annie’s head whips towards him.

“A couple years?”

“On and off at first. Pretty steady for most of it, though.”

“Hmm.”

Ellis digests. Annie finds Oona through the crowd where she presses her body against Tamsin’s. Smiling. Kissing her. Annie fucking hates that smile. She’s thought about that smile at least three thousand times.

“I’m getting another drink.” She says it too quickly and is already walking before Ellis can answer.

It takes Oona perhaps ten seconds to notice. She looks toward the spot beside Ellis. Empty. Her stomach stupidly drops. Her eyes circle the room until she finds the slim white silhouette leaning against the bar.

“I’m getting us drinks,” Oona whispers into Tamsin’s ear.

Tamsin nods and steals one last kiss before letting her go.

Oona crosses the room.

Annie is waiting for the bartender to notice her when a familiar scent reaches her. Clean wood, smoke, something bright underneath…Oona’s cologne.

Annie turns. Oona is standing much too close. At five-eight, she gets to look down at Annie’s five-four with the sort of pleasure that has always made Annie want to kick her in the shin.

Annie lifts her chin. “Did they not give you a refresher on personal space during college orientation?”

“Never went to college.” Oona’s mouth hooks at one corner. “Couldn’t tell you what happens in orientation.”

Annie hums. There are perhaps twelve things she could say. She chooses none of them. They study each other instead.

Four years becomes a strange quantity from this distance. Impossible and irrelevant at once. Oona has new lines around her eyes when she smiles. Annie notices those. Oona notices the gold earrings Annie never used to wear. Annie notices a row of silver hoops in Oona’s ear. Oona notices the faint scar near Annie’s chin she doesn’t remember. Proof of lives and moments lived elsewhere. Away from each other.

Oona laughs softly.

“Something funny?” Annie asks.

“No.”

“You’re smiling.”

“Am I?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe I’m happy to see you.”

Annie laughs once. There’s absolutely nothing amused about it.

“Sure.”

She turns back toward the bar. Away from Oona. Oona’s smile disappears. Four years. Sitting right between them. Oona opens her mouth, already feeling the argument they’ve been circling since Oona walked in here begin to gather shape.

Then a man slides into the space beside Annie.

“Sorry,” he says to her. “Were you waiting?”

Annie turns.

He’s handsome. Annoyingly so. Tall, dark-haired, broad through the shoulders, with the kind of jawline that suggests God occasionally gets bored and designs men for catalogues.

He nods toward the bartender. “I’ve been trying to get his attention for ten minutes. Think he likes you better.”

Annie glances toward Oona. Finds Oona glaring at him. Interesting.

Annie smiles at the stranger. “Most people do.”

The man laughs. Oona does not.

“What are you drinking?” he asks.

“Tequila.”

“Dangerous.”

“I like a challenge.”

“Then let me give you one and find out.”

“What’s the challenge?”

“Show me how wild you can get.”

Oona’s tongue presses briefly against the inside of her cheek. Annie sees it.

“Challege accepted.”

The bartender finally appears. The man orders four shots of tequila. Oona stands there. Neither of them acknowledges her. That, more than anything, is what grinds her gears the most.

For the first time since Oona walked into the bar, Annie’s full attention has shifted to someone else.

The man says something Annie doesn’t catch. She laughs anyway. A proper laugh. Not the shallow thing she’s been using all night.

Oona feels suddenly and irrationally furious with him. He hasn’t done anything. Which somehow makes it worse. The shots arrive.

He lifts his glass toward Annie. “To whatever terrible decision brought you here.”

Annie smiles. “That’s actually incredibly appropriate.”

They drink. Then Annie reaches for the second drink he’s bought her, turns back toward Oona and finally seems to remember she exists.

“Oh.” Her eyes widen with vicious innocence. “Were you waiting for something?”

Oona stares at her. Annie stares back.

“You dance?” The man whispers into Annie’s ear, completely not noticing Oona.

Annie looks at Oona one last time.

“Tonight I do.”

Annie lets him take her hand. And walks away with two free drinks in her and a new dance partner.

Oona remains standing at the bar like a fucking idiot. For three full seconds. Then she orders six shots. She slams four before bringing the other two back to Tamsin.

From there, the night becomes an arms race.

Tamsin dances like somebody who’s never once wondered what her body looks like from across a room. Loose. Happy. Unselfconscious. Oona moves around her with the lazy confidence Annie remembers with painful specificity, all long limbs and careless rhythm and that infuriating ability to look like she isn’t trying when Annie knows exactly how much Oona enjoys being watched.

And Oona is being watched. By Annie. That’s the entire point. Oona knows it. So she gives Annie something to watch.

A hand around Tamsin’s waist. Her mouth against Tamsin’s ear. Tamsin laughing when Oona turns her beneath one arm and pulls her back in. Oona’s cheek resting for a moment against Tamsin’s temple. Another drink. Another kiss. Another slow drag of her hands down Tamsin’s sides that would look perfectly ordinary to anyone who didn’t know Oona was checking over her shoulder afterward.

Annie knows. That’s the problem. And Annie, never one to lose a competition nobody agreed they were having, retaliates.

The man’s name is Ben. At least that’s what she thinks she heard. He’s twenty-four, from Boston, staying with friends for the week, and blessed with the uncomplicated confidence of a guy who’s never had reason to believe a beautiful woman accepting his drink might secretly be using him as artillery.

He’s also easy to flirt with. Almost insultingly easy.

College has taught Annie many useful things. Econometrics. Behavioral finance. How to survive a full work day on two hours of sleep. How to sit through a four-hour seminar while violently hungover. How to look someone directly in the eye and make them believe she’s fascinated by whatever they’re saying while thinking about something (or someone) else entirely.

Ben buys her a cocktail. Then they do more shots.

Annie laughs too loudly at something that isn’t that funny and lets her hand settle against his chest. Across the room, Oona’s head turns just as Annie does.

Ben mistakes her touch for encouragement. His hand settles at Annie’s waist. She lets it. Oona drains the rest of her drink.

Annie catches it out of the corner of her eye and leans closer to Ben. He’s saying something about Boston now. Or real estate. Or maybe his friend’s sailboat. Annie has lost the narrative almost completely about fifteen minutes ago. Doesn’t matter. He’s useful.

Oona dances harder. Annie can tell without looking directly at her. Oona does look directly at her. Tamsin has her back against her now, laughing, one arm lifted above her head while Oona’s hands sit low on her hips. Oona says something into her ear. Tamsin smiles and turns her face toward Oona.

Oona kisses her. Then looks straight at Annie. Annie feels something vicious and childish bloom beautifully inside her.

Fine. Fire can fight fire.

Ben is in the middle of saying something uninteresting when Annie reaches up, takes him by the front of his shirt and kisses him. He makes a surprised sound before deciding, with admirable speed, to participate.

Annie closes her eyes. For perhaps two seconds. Then opens them. Finds Oona staring. Annie doesn’t find jealousy. It’s worse. Oona is almost wounded. It’s gone so quickly Annie might have imagined it. Then Oona looks away. Annie smiles into Ben’s mouth.

Across the room, Oona turns back to Tamsin and reaches blindly for someone else’s drink. She doesn’t know why the man bothers her more. That’s a lie. She knows exactly why.

Annie with women belongs to the same impossible, secret architecture Oona once inhabited. Something hidden. Something complicated. Something that had required Annie to make choices about herself and what she wanted.

Annie kissing this random hot man in a crowded bar looks easy. It looks like a life Oona could have no place in.

A husband one day, perhaps. Some insufferably perfect man with degrees framed on the wall and a mansion on a hill. Children with Annie’s eyes. Christmas cards. Careers. Dinner parties. All the clean, sensible architecture of a future Oona had convinced herself Annie deserved more than she deserved Oona. The thoughts arrive drunk and ugly and unwanted. Oona kills them with another shot.

//

By midnight, everybody involved is making excellent decisions. Excellently terrible, at least.

Oona is drinking like she’s trying to erase Annie from the room molecule by molecule. Annie has decided that if Oona can turn Tamsin into performance art, she can absolutely do the same with a man whose name she’s already forgotten.

They orbit each other without coming within five feet.

Oona sits on the railing with Tamsin between her knees. Annie leans back against Ben’s chest while he says something near her ear. Oona kisses Tamsin’s shoulder. Annie lets Brent run his hand down her arm. Oona laughs too brightly. Annie takes another shot she doesn’t need.

Every time Annie thinks Oona has finally stopped looking, she catches her. Every time Oona seems to decide she’s finished participating, Annie touches Ben somewhere that drags her right back in.

Tamsin notices none of it. That makes Annie feel worse. Because seems Tamsin lovely. Annoyingly lovely. She’s funny without performing it. Easy with people. The kind of woman who greeted the bartender by name and thanked somebody for moving past her. Annie watches her laugh at something Ellis says and experiences the deeply inconvenient realization that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with her…Except her face. Her face remains unacceptable.

At some point Tamsin ends up beside Annie while Oona is getting drinks.

Up close, the resemblance is obscene. Not exact. Tamsin’s face is a little longer. Her mouth softer. There are faint freckles across her nose that Annie doesn’t have. But Jesus Christ. Same eyes. Same brows. Even the same slightly oversized smile. And in these fucking dresses? Annie could sue.

“I’m glad you came back.” Tamsin offers with a genuine smile.

Something about that gets under Annie’s ribs.

“Me too.”

“Are you staying for long?”

Before she can answer, Oona appears beside them carrying drinks. She looks from Tamsin to Annie. And there it is again. The side-by-side comparison.

Annie sees Oona see it this time. Actually sees her brain spinning. Oona’s eyes move from Tamsin’s black dress to Annie’s white one. From one head of dark curls to the other. From Tamsin’s face to Annie’s.

Annie’s mouth twitches. Oona eyes narrow.

“You look concerned.” Annie declares sweetly.

“I’m not.”

“Good.”

“Brilliant.”

Tamsin looks between them. “Did you guys hang out a lot when Annie was here last time?”

“Yes.” Annie responds.

“Not really.” Oona says simultaneously.

Silence. Then Tamsin laughs. Neither of them does.

Tamsin takes the drink from Oona’s hand and kisses her cheek.

“Thank you, babe.”

The moment breaks. Oona is staring directly at Annie over Tamsin’s shoulder.

Annie lifts her glass. Oona does the same. A private toast across three feet and four years.

Then Oona turns and kisses Tamsin. Not a chaste kiss. Not the absent, affectionate press of lips people give someone they’ve been dating long enough to stop thinking about it. A proper kiss. Oona slips one hand behind Tamsin’s neck and draws her in. Tamsin laughs into it, startled, then melts easily against her.

Oona glances toward Annie. Finds her staring. Their eyes meet. Annie doesn’t look away. Neither does Oona. Then Oona puts both hands on Tamsin’s hips.

Annie laughs quietly until Ben appears at her shoulder.

“You disappeared on me.”

Annie turns toward him. Something in Oona’s face changes. Ben offers Annie another shot. She takes it.

“I was thinking of kissing you again.”

Annie feels Oona’s eyes on her. It would be so easy not to stoop to Oona’s level. She does anyway.

Annie cups Ben’s face this time and kisses him hard enough to make him stumble half a step.

The effect on Oona is immediate. Her entire face empties. No anger. No smirk. Nothing. That frightens Annie more than anger would have. Oona stares for one second too long. Then turns away.

“Come on,” she says to Tamsin.

Tamsin blinks. “Where?”

“Home.”

“Already?”

“Yeah.”

Oona doesn’t wait for agreement. She finishes whatever is left in her glass, takes Tamsin’s hand and starts for the door.

By this point, Ellis had abandoned every attempt to participate socially and sits at the bar watching the four of them like he’s accidentally been seated at the most confusing tennis match in human history.

Annie catches him staring and immediately returns her attention to Ben.

Ellis’s eyes track toward Oona. Then Ben. Then Annie. Then Tamsin. His brow furrows.

Annie sees the machinery beginning to turn. Slowly. Very slowly.

Before it can arrive anywhere useful, Oona reaches the door.

Annie feels Oona’s body brush against hers without saying a word. Feels the pause. She turns. Oona stands beside Tamsin with one hand wrapped around hers. For half a heartbeat neither woman moves. Oona looks wrecked. Not dramatically. But in a way nobody else would see. Annie does.

Then Oona’s face closes. Starts speaking a language Annie hasn’t learned. One Annie can’t decipher. She catches Tamsin around the waist, pulls her in for one last kiss and drags her through the door. The door slams shut behind them.

Annie turns back to Ben. He smiles.

“So. Your place or mine?”

“No.”

His brow furrows, confused. “What?”

“I’m going home.”

Annie reaches for her bag. Ben looks genuinely baffled.

“But I thought…”

“Yeah. Sorry.”

“You okay?”

“Perfect.”

She kisses his cheek, which somehow feels crueler than not kissing him at all.

“Goodnight, Ben.”

“It’s Brent.”

Annie closes her eyes.

Of course it is.

“Right. Sorry.”

She walks away before he can answer.

Ellis catches up with her halfway down the road.

“Annie.” She keeps walking. “Annie.”

“What?”

“Where are you going?”

“Home.”

“You’re going the wrong way.”

She stops. Looks around. Turns a hundred and eighty degrees. Starts walking again. Ellis follows.

“Thank you.”

“You’re really fucking drunk.”

“I’m fine.”

“You were walking toward Toronto.”

“I knew where I was.”

“You absolutely didn’t.”

They walk in silence for a while.

Sterling Point is quieter away from the bar. The music recedes behind them until all that remains is insects, water, the occasional clink of rigging from the marina ahead. The night air is cooler than Annie expected. She folds her arms over herself.

Ellis glances at her.

“You haven’t changed.”

Annie laughs.

“I’ve changed a lot.”

“You’ve at least gotten meaner.”

“Stanford does that.”

“So you liked it?”

“Loved it.”

“Yeah?”

“I loved it a lot.” This time her smile is real. “Best years of my life.”

Ellis looks at her. There’s no bitterness in the answer. No performance. That matters more than Annie wants it to.

“What was your major again?”

“Economics. Double major actually…Economics and public policy.”

“Overachiever.”

Ellis smiles.

For one brief moment, something old returns. Easy. Familiar. A version of them Annie hasn’t let herself think about because thinking about one person from Sterling Point inevitably led to the one she was avoiding.

Ellis shoves his hands into his pockets.

“You could’ve called, you know.”

Annie turns away. Looks ahead.

“I know.”

“Connor did.”

“That’s shocking information.” She thinks about it. “Although he did really like you, so maybe not that shocking.”

“You liked me.”

“I still like you.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

“I was busy.”

Ellis nods. He doesn’t push. That somehow makes it worse.

They reach the marina. Annie slows. Her eyes sweep the slips automatically. Once. Again. Nothing.

“Where’s Oona’s boat?” She hates herself before the question even leaves her mouth.

“What do you mean?”

“Her boat isn’t here.” Annie scans the slips again. “Where is it?”

Ellis studies Annie as she looks toward the water.

“Her and Maple moved it farther down.”

“How far?”

“A few miles.”

“Why?”

“They sort of have a house now.”

Annie turns.

“Sort of?”

“Not theirs. This family from Manhattan bought that massive white place on the west side. They’re hardly ever there. Oona started looking after it a couple years ago. Property, boats, maintenance, all of that. Eventually they told her and Maple they could stay there whenever they’re not using it.”

“And when they are?”

“Oona and Maple move back onto the boat.”

“So she lives there most of the year.”

“Pretty much.”

Annie nods. Silence.

“Does her…” She stops. Ellis waits. Annie hates him for it. “That girl. Does she live there? With them?”

“Tamsin?”

“I know her name.”

“You called her ‘that girl.’”

“Does she?”

“Sometimes.”

Annie’s stomach twists.

“Sometimes.”

“She stays over a lot.”

“How much is a lot?”

“Why do you care?”

“I don’t. I’m asking a question.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m curious.”

“You were never curious about anything just because.” She glares at him. He relents. “Tamsin lives with her family in Port Haven.”

“How far?”

“Twenty minutes by boat. Forty-five if the water’s rough.”

“So she doesn’t live with Oona all the time.”

“I literally just said she doesn’t.”

“But she sleeps there.”

“Sometimes.”

“Tonight?”

“How would I know that?”

But Annie knows. Annie already knows the answer. She watched them leave together. She looks away.

“Forget it. Can you give me a ride to Oona’s… Please?”

She starts walking down the marina. Ellis doesn’t follow immediately.

“Annie.” She keeps going. “Annie.”

“What?”

Annie turns. Ellis is standing exactly where she left him. His expression is strange. Not amused. Not confused anymore either. Just processing. He studies Annie. Then the dark water. Then back to Annie.

“It wasn’t Ramona, was it?” Annie’s heart stops. She says nothing. Ellis takes one step toward her.“It was you…All these years.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You do.”

“I really don’t.”

“Oona.”

Annie’s jaw tightens. Ellis looks almost offended by the revelation.

“She wasn’t fucked up over Ramona.” His eyes widen as the entire history rearranges itself in his head. “She was fucked up because of you. She was a disaster after you left.” Annie says nothing. Ellis stares at her. “Were you two together?”Nothing. “While Ramona was in New York?” Silence. “Annie, were you and Oona together?”

“Lower your voice!”

“How long?”

“None of your business.”

“Does Ramona know?”

“No.”

“Wow…You dated the girl your sister was in love with.”

“Ramona was gone.”

“That doesn’t make this any better.”

“We weren’t trying to hurt her.”

“How long?”

“Ellis.”

“How long?”

Annie looks away.

“That whole year.”

His mouth falls open.

“That whole…What happened? Why’d it stop?”

“People break up.”

“Not like that. She was…” Annie goes still. Ellis stares at her. “You left.”

Her face hardens immediately.

“I went to college.”

“You did.”

“Then don’t say it like that.”

Ellis’s expression shifts. The surprise leaves. Something more serious replaces it.

“She was really bad for a long time, Annie.” Annie doesn’t answer. “I mean really bad.”

“Couldn’t have known.” She folds her arms tighter. “She blocked me.” Ellis looks at her confused, silently pressing for more information. “Instagram. Everything. The day I went back.”

“You two haven’t spoken at all since then?”

“Not one word…Not until this morning.”

Ellis holds her gaze. Then continues more quietly.

“Well, she was fucked up. Barely slept. Drank all the time. She’d disappear for days. Maple was scared to leave her alone for a while.”

Annie’s chest tightens. She tries not to let it show. Ellis sees anyway.

“Then she got better…Tamsin helped.” Annie looks down at the dock beneath her feet. “She’s good for her.”

“Great.”

“She is.”

“Good.”

“They’re actually really fucking good together.”

“Love that for them.”

“Annie.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“I just want you to leave her alone.”

Annie looks up. Ellis doesn’t flinch.

“If you’re going back to…wherever in a week, leave Oona alone.”

“I haven’t decided what I’m doing.”

“You came here to sell the island.”

“I came here to decide whether to sell the island.”

“She’s finally got something stable.”

Annie laughs once without humor.

“Stable.”

“Yes.”

“With my stunt double.” Ellis starts to refute that statement. Annie cuts him off before he can. “She looks exactly like me!”

“I wouldn’t say ‘exactly’.”

“You said ‘oh’ when you saw us standing beside each other.”

“I didn’t.”

Annie scoffs and turns toward the water.

“You’re just as bad of a liar as you were back then.”

The alcohol is sitting hot and reckless behind Annie’s eyes now. She can still see Oona at the door. That face. The blankness when Annie kissed Ben…Brent…whatever his name was.

Four years of silence and Oona still knows precisely how to hurt her. Which means Annie still knows precisely how to do it back.

“Take me to her.”

“No.”

“Please.”

“Absolutely not.”

“I need to talk to her.”

“You need water and a bed.”

“No.”

Annie starts toward the edge of the marina. Ellis grabs her arm. Pulls her back.

“Where are you going?”

“To Oona’s.”

“You’re not operating a boat.”

“Then you operate it.” Ellis shakes his head. Firm. “Fine.”

Annie starts pulling off one shoe. Ellis stares at her.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

“Swimming over.”

“You don’t even know where the house is.”

“You said west side and that they keep the boat there. I’ll swim until I see a giant house and Oona’s boat.”

“That would take hours.”

“Then drive me.”

“I’m not going to.”

Annie kicks off the second shoe. Ellis looks toward the sky as if there might be a god available for consultation. There isn’t.

“Why are you like this?”

“Genetics.”

“I know your family. That explanation doesn’t work.”

“Ellis, please.”

“Nu uh.”

Annie steps closer.

“I’m going over there. You can either help me or not.”

“You’re drunk.”

“Yes.”

“And angry.”

“Very much so.”

“You’re jealous.”

Annie points at him.

“Careful.”

“You know I know I’m right.”

“Take me.”

“What are you going to say when you get there?”

“I don’t know.”

“Great start.”

“I’ll figure it out.”

“And if Tamsin’s there?”

Annie’s face goes still. Ellis waits.

“I’ll be very, very quiet.”

He huffs a laugh.

“Wouldn’t make much difference anyway. She sleeps like she’s dead.”

“What?” Ellis immediately realizes he shouldn’t have said that. “What does that mean?”

“Nothing.”

“Ellis.”

“She’s just a heavy sleeper. Forget I said anything.”

“How heavy?”

“Extremely…We’ve thrown crazy parties in that house that she’s slept through.”

Annie bends and picks up her shoes.

“I’m jumping into that water in ten seconds if you aren’t taking me. Ten..Nine…”

Ellis sighs deeply.

“I hate both of you.”

“You love me.”

“I used to.”

That admission takes both of them aback. They glance at each other. Gloss right over it.

//

Twenty minutes later, they’re cutting across black water. Ellis drives. Neither talks.

Annie sits at the bow with her knees pulled up, shoes beside her, dark hair whipping across her face as the boat slices through the night. The alcohol has moved past warmth and into dangerous clarity, that particular stage of drunkenness where every terrible idea begins to feel not only reasonable but morally necessary.

The island passes in fragments of darkness and expensive houses buried behind trees.

“That one.” Ellis points ahead.

Annie sees it.

The house is, in fact, enormous. Modern. Mostly glass facing the water. A long dock extends into the cove. Oona’s unmistakable boat is moored alongside it. No light burns through the trees save for the single porch light.

“THAT is where she lives?”

“Most of the time.”

“Jesus.”

“Rich people.”

“Disgusting.”

“You own the island the rich people’s house is built on.”

“That’s different.”

Ellis laughs.

“How?”

Annie has no answer. Ellis pulls alongside the dock. Annie is out before he finishes tying off.

“Annie.” She keeps walking. “Annie.”

“What?”

She turns. Ellis looks at her from the boat. For once there’s no lightness in his face.

“Don’t destroy her just because you finally figured out you miss her.”

The words feels like she got struck in the gut.

“I’ve never not missed her.”

Ellis goes quiet. So does Annie.

At least one truth was spoken tonight.

Annie turns toward the house. Climbs the steps toward the house. Ellis mutters something behind her. She doesn’t hear it. Her mind races with too much.

Four years of not calling. Four years of being blocked. Four years of deliberately choosing schools, internships, jobs, people, cities, anything that filled the space where Sterling Point and Oona used to be. Four years of convincing herself that missing someone and wanting them back were entirely different things.

Annie watches until the boat disappears around the bend, mostly because it gives her another few seconds in which she doesn’t have to look at Oona.

When she finally does, Oona is leaning against the doorframe. Staring at her. And that fucking smile is back. Small. Crooked. Infuriating.

“What are you smiling at?”

“I’m not smiling.”

“You are.”

“I do that when I’m tired.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“You wouldn’t know.”

Annie cackles once, sharp and humorless.

“I’ve seen you tired plenty of times.”

Oona’s smile disappears. One sentence and suddenly they’re both standing in another year. Annie glances past Oona before she can stop herself.

“Looking for someone?”

“Is she here?”

“Who? Maple?”

“Don’t play dumb.”

“I’m half asleep, love. You’ll have to narrow it down.”

“The girl whose tongue was in your mouth an hour ago.”

Oona’s eyebrows lift.

“Oh. Her.”

Annie wants to kill her.

“Yes. Her.”

“What about her?”

“Is she here?”

Oona studies Annie for a moment. Really studies her. Then something quietly vicious enters her expression.

“You came all the way across the water at two in the morning to ask whether my girlfriend’s home?”

Girlfriend. The word lands exactly where Oona intended it to. Annie’s jaw tightens.

“Your ‘girlfriend’? Didn’t have you down for domestication.”

Oona tilts her head. “You had me domesticated for the better part of a year.”

“Please. You were always feral.”

“You seemed to like me feral.”

Annie’s mouth goes dry. Oona smiles.

“What the fuck is so funny?”

“You. Standing on my doorstep pissed out of your mind, asking whether my girlfriend’s in my bed.”

“I’m not asking about your girlfriend.”

“You literally just did.”

“I asked if she was here.”

“She is.”

“Okay.”

“Asleep.”

“Wonderful.”

“Upstairs.”

“Thrilled for her.”

“In my bed.” Annie’s eyes flash. Oona’s smile deepens. “Fucking brilliant, this.”

Neither moves. A long second passes in which Annie becomes acutely aware that she has no reason to be here she could explain without humiliating herself.

“This was stupid.”

She turns. Oona catches her arm. Every nerve in Annie’s body fires at once. She looks down at Oona’s hand. Oona lets go immediately.

“You’ve never done anything stupid in your life.”

“Thanks.”

“Wasn’t really compliment.” Annie glues her eyes to hers. Oona steps outside, easing the door shut behind her. “So why start now? Why come here at two in the morning, knock like the bloody police, interrogate me about where my girlfriend sleeps, then disappear because you’ve suddenly remembered you don’t belong here?”

“I don’t belong here.” The answer comes much too quickly. Oona goes still. Annie feels the regret almost before the words have finished leaving her mouth. “Never have,” she adds, because apparently when Annie begins digging a grave she believes in seeing the project through.

Oona looks at her for a long moment.

“No…Suppose you don’t.” Oona adds softly.

That hurts far more than Annie was prepared for. Oona turns and starts toward the side of the house.

“Come on.”

“Where?”

“Somewhere you can continue this crashout without waking everyone.”

“I thought she sleeps like she’s dead.”

Oona stops. Turns slowly.

“How would you know that?”

Annie realizes her mistake.

“Ellis.”

“Ellis told you how my girlfriend sleeps?”

There’s something almost impressive about Oona’s ability to make the word ‘girlfriend’ more irritating each time she uses it.

“He mentioned it.”

“When?”

“On the way here.”

“What were you asking Ellis on the way here?”

“Nothing specific.” Oona squints, disbelieving. “I just asked where you lived.”

“Why?”

“Because I wanted to talk to you.”

“So you asked where I lived.” Annie shrugs. “Whether Tamsin lived with me.” Annie says nothing. “And apparently whether she could sleep through you turning up in the middle of the night.”

“He volunteered that part.”

“Did he?”

“Yes.”

“Christ. Poor Ellis.”

“Why?”

“He’s still getting unknowingly dragged into our shit.”

Our. Annie catches it. So does Oona. Oona starts walking again before it can be discussed. Annie follows.

“Why are you making this weird?”

Oona actually laughs. “Me?”

“Yes. You are.”

“You show up here absolutely off your shit after spending the entire night practically mounting some bloke directly in my eyeline and I’m the one making things strange?”

“I wasn’t ‘mounting’ him.”

“Could’ve bloody fooled me.”

“Why were you looking?”

Oona’s mouth shuts. Annie smiles without humor.

“I was in the same room.”

“You seemed busy.”

“I managed to multitask.”

“Maybe you should’ve devoted more attention to your girlfriend.”

Oona stops so abruptly Annie nearly walks into her. Something shifts. Hideous. Hot. Treacherous enough that both women recognize it immediately.

“Careful.”

“With what?”

“That thing you’ve been doing since I walked into the bar.”

“Use your words, Oona.”

Oona stares at her. For one second Annie thinks she might. Instead Oona huffs through her nose and turns away.

“Still fucking impossible.”

They’ve reached the water now. The house rises behind them in dark planes of glass and cedar, absurdly expensive and almost entirely asleep. A broad deck stretches along the shoreline. Outdoor furniture sits around a firepit no one seems to have touched in months, silvered by moonlight.

Oona drops onto the edge of a lounger. Annie remains standing. Oona looks up at her.

“Why are you here?”

“I told you. I wanted to talk to you.”

“So talk.”

Annie opens her mouth. Nothing comes out. Oona waits. Annie hates her for waiting.

“My brother wants to sell the island again.” Oona doesn’t react at first. Annie keeps going. “I think he can get Ramona to agree.” Something changes in Oona’s face. “I’ll probably say yes.”

The bomb lands between them. Oona nods once.

“Appreciate the heads up.”

“Connor wants the money.”

“Okay.”

“He wants to start a company.”

“Understood.”

“It doesn’t make sense for us to keep it.”

“Then don’t.”

Annie frowns. “That’s it?”

Oona looks at her. “What response were you hoping for?”

“I wasn’t hoping for anything.”

“Bullshit.”

“I’m telling you what’s happening.”

“And I’m saying sell it.”

Annie stares.

Oona spreads her hands. “What?”

“You don’t care.”

“About your real estate portfolio? Not particularly, no.”

“The island.”

“The island isn’t mine.”

“You live here.”

“I’ll survive.”

“You love this place.”

“And?”

“And somebody else could own all of it.”

“Baby, somebody else owned all of it before you.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t fucking know.”

“That’s becoming a theme tonight.”

“You’re being deliberately obtuse.”

“And you came all the way over here to tell me something you could’ve sent in a DM.”

Oona’s eyes sharpen. Annie looks away.

Four years. Four fucking years, and this is what she gets.

She’d imagined seeing Oona again so often that some of the fantasies had acquired the texture of memory. Oona running toward her on the dock. Oona refusing to look at her. Oona slapping her. Oona kissing her. Oona fucking her senseless against the cabin wall. Oona marrying her. Oona gone completely. Oona exactly the same. Oona completely different. Oona standing within arm’s reach with another woman asleep in her bed. Never this.

“Couldn’t have DM’d you, actually. You blocked me.”

“What?” Oona’s brow furrows.

“On Instagram. You blocked me.”

“Four years ago.” Oona adds matter of factly.

“I know when.”

“Then why are you bringing it up like I did it Tuesday?”

“You blocked me the day I left.”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

Oona looks at her as if Annie has just asked why rain is wet.

“Are you serious?”

“Yes.”

“You left.”

“I went to college.”

“You left!”

“I got into Stanford.”

“Congratulations.”

“Was I supposed to not go?”

“I never asked you not to.”

“No...” Annie laughs bitterly. “You made very fucking sure of that.”

Oona’s fists tighten and loosen. Annie sees it. She keeps going because she’s drunk enough that stopping no longer feels possible.

“You acted like you didn’t care.”

“I didn’t act like shit.”

“You barely spoke to me that last week.”

“Because we’d broken up.”

“That’s some lovely revisionism.”

“Oh, is it?”

“YOU broke up with ME.” Annie spits out with venom.

“We were sneaking around behind your sister’s back.”

“I didn’t care.”

“Well, I did.”

“No. You got scared.”

Oona lets out a sharp laugh. “Fuck you.”

“You did.”

“You were leaving.”

“Not if you’d asked me not to.” Silence. Oona’s face empties. Annie hears the sentence after she says it. Really hears it. But there’s no taking it back now. “All you had to do was ask.” Oona stares at her. Annie’s voice lowers. “I would’ve stayed.”

Oona laughs once.

“Jesus Christ. You really believe that.”

“I know it.”

“You’d have thrown Stanford away because I asked nicely?”

“I would’ve at least deferred.”

“For what?”

“For you.”

“For how long?”

“I don’t know.”

“Exactly.”

“That doesn’t mean…”

“No, Annie. That’s the entire fucking point.”

Oona stands. They’re nearly chest to chest now.

“You wanted me to ask you to stay because then I’d be the reason you didn’t go.”

“I wanted you to want me enough to be selfish one time.”

“I loved you enough not to be.” Something fractures across Oona’s face.

“That’s convenient.” Annie’s eyes burn as she says it.

“Convenient?”

“You get to call it love because that makes abandoning the whole thing sound noble.”

“Abandoning?”

“You didn’t fight for us.”

“What the fuck are you talking about? I was eighteen years old, Annie.”

“So was I.”

“You had Stanford. A whole life…”

“And I wanted you.”

“No.” Oona’s voice sharpens. “You wanted the illusion of choice. There’s a difference.”

“You made the choice for me.”

“Someone had to.”

“That wasn’t your fucking decision.”

“Apparently my job was to beg an eighteen-year-old girl to torch everything she’d spent her entire life working for so I could feel chosen.”

“You were chosen.”

“I was never going to be.”

Annie recoils. Oona sees it and immediately regrets the cruelty. Doesn’t apologize. Neither of them has enough pride left for kindness but far too much for mercy.

“You had your internships,” Oona continues, quieter now. “Your plans. Your fucking ten-year roadmap for becoming president of the universe. You had a life that was moving. I had a shitty boat and like…fifteen bucks to my name.”

“You could’ve been part of mine.”

The sentence drops between them with almost no volume at all. It still manages to silence the entire night. Oona looks away first.

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because that isn’t me.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know exactly who I am.”

“We had time.”

“To what?”

“Figure it out.”

“From California?”

“Yes.”

“With you at your fancy school and me here?”

“People do it.”

“People do loads of things. Doesn’t mean they survive them.”

“We never got to find out.”

Oona turns back.

“That’s what you’re angry about?”

“I’m angry because somehow I was old enough to know I loved you, but you decided neither of us was old enough to know whether it could work.”

Oona’s head snaps toward her.

“You don’t get to say that.”

“Why?”

“Because you left.”

“I went to fucking college!”

“And never came back!” That one stings. Annie goes still. Oona’s anger doesn’t. “Christmas. Summers. Easter. Long weekends. Four whole fucking years, Annie.”

“I was busy.”

“Yeah.” Oona laughs quietly. “I know. So busy, baby. The most important woman on Earth. Couldn’t possibly take a weekend.”

“Stop acting like you know what my life was.”

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

Oona looks directly at her.

“No…I’m acting like you could’ve called.”

“You blocked me.” Annie doubles down.

“Phone numbers still work.”

“You changed yours.” That stops Oona. She frowns. “I called.” Something shifts in Oona’s face. Annie presses on. “Some man answered. Really nice guy, actually. Said he’d just been given the number.”

“You called me?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Does it matter?”

“Yes.”

“Three weeks after I left.”

Oona stares at her.

“I didn’t know.”

“Obviously.”

“You could’ve asked Ellis.”

“I wasn’t asking Ellis for your number.”

“Ramona.”

“Definitely not asking my sister for the number of the girl she was also in love with.”

“Why the fuck not?”

“Because you blocked me!”

Annie’s voice carries across the water. Both women stop. Oona looks toward the house. No lights. Nothing. When she turns back, Annie is laughing. She doesn’t know why. Maybe because this is insane. Maybe because she’s twenty-two and standing beside a Canadian lake arguing with the first person who broke her heart about Instagram etiquette like any of this was ever about Instagram.

“I remember I’d had the shittiest day. It was so bad. I thought about quitting every second of that first month. I just wanted to come back. I needed to hear your voice. So I swallowed my pride and I called…and you changed your number.”

Oona begins laughing too. Quietly at first. Then helplessly.

“God,” she says, rubbing one hand over her face. “We’re fucking pathetic.”

“You’re pathetic.”

“You came here.”

“You kissed her like you were trying to climb inside her mouth.”

Oona’s smile disappears. Then she says, “And you noticed.”

Annie rolls her eyes.

“You made sure I noticed.”

“Maybe.”

There’s the smirk again. God, Annie hates that smirk.

“Asshole.”

“You started it.”

“I walked into a bar.”

“You walked into MY bar looking like that.”

“Like what?” Oona’s eyes move over her. Slower this time. Annie’s breath catches. Oona notices that too. “Don’t look at me like I’m one of the random women you pick up when you’re bored.”

Oona’s gaze lifts to hers.

“You never were.” The answer is so immediate Annie has nothing ready for it. Oona smiles faintly. “Besides, you liked me looking.”

“Maybe four years ago.”

“Didn’t look like that tonight.”

Annie steps closer. “So you were watching me.”

“Everyone was watching.”

“Not what I asked.”

“You always this needy now?”

“You always this full of shit?”

“Only around you, baby.”

They’re too close. Both know it. Neither moves. Annie can smell alcohol on Oona’s breath. Soap. Lake water. The woody night cologne Oona sprays on right before bed that she remembers with humiliating accuracy. Oona looks at her mouth. Annie sees it happen. Her entire body tightens.

“You have a girlfriend.”

Oona’s eyes rise to hers.

“I do.”

“She’s inside.” Oona hums. “She seems nice.”

“She is.”

“I hate her.”

That gets a real laugh.

“Quite right to. She’s fucking fantastic.”

“She looks like me.”

Oona’s face changes. “Oh, fuck off.”

“She does.”

“She does not.”

“Dark curls. Brown eyes. Same height.”

“That describes half the bloody planet.”

“She has my fucking eyebrows.”

“Now you’re taking the piss.”

“You’re dating the discount store version of me.”

Oona bursts out laughing. Annie shoves her.

“Fuck you.”

Oona catches her wrist. And doesn’t let go. The laughter disappears. Everything does. Annie looks at Oona’s hand around her wrist. Then up. Oona’s thumb moves once over the inside of Annie’s skin. Tiny. Almost nothing. Annie feels it everywhere.

“You should go.”

Annie nods.

“Probably.”

Neither moves. Oona releases a slow breath.

“Annie.”

“Hmmm?”

“This is the bit where you leave.”

“Is it?”

“Yes.” Annie steps closer. Oona tenses. “Baby…”

The word comes out differently this time. Not flirtation. Warning. Annie feels her knees threaten to buckle anyway.

“Tell me to leave.”

Oona stares into her eyes. “Go home.”

Annie doesn’t move.

“That wasn’t convincing.”

“I’m not performing for you.”

Annie laughs.

“But you put on quite a show for me tonight.”

Oona’s jaw flexes. She looks at the water. Annie steps closer again. Close enough that her toes touch Oona’s bare feet.

“You want me gone?”

“Yes.”

“Look at me and say it.”

Oona does…Or tries. Her eyes make it to Annie’s face and fail somewhere around her mouth. Annie sees the failure.

“Go,” Oona whispers.

“No.”

Oona looks back up.

“Annie.”

“No.” Annie repeats, more firmly.

“This isn’t funny.”

“I’m not laughing.”

“Tamsin is inside.”

“That’s been established.”

“She loves me.” That lands differently than girlfriend. Annie’s face changes. “She’s been good to me.” Annie nods. “She hasn’t done anything to deserve this.” Annie nods again. “If I kiss you, I’m cheating on someone who has never once done anything to let me down.”

Annie’s throat tightens. No alcohol to blame. No accident to hide behind. No pretending they wandered into something before either of them realized what it was. Oona has named the door. All Annie has to do is walk away from it.

“Then don’t kiss me.”

Oona’s expression shifts.

“You stood in that bar half the night trying to make me jealous.”

Annie smiles. “Clearly worked.”

Oona’s mouth twitches despite herself. Then it disappears.

“This is shitty…” Annie’s eyes dart to Oona’s lips then back to the green eyes staring at her. “You’ll leave.”

Annie doesn’t answer. But that’s it. The real reason they’re in this position. Oona laughs once, devastated.

“See? You can’t even deny it.”

“That doesn’t mean I want this less.”

“Makes it worse.”

“I know.”

“You always know everything, don’t you?”

“No.” Annie’s voice falls several octaves. “But I know I’ve thought about you since the day I left. I know I came back and saw you with someone else and hated her before she even spoke.” She swallows. “I know exactly who she is. I know exactly what this makes me.” Oona doesn’t move. Annie steps into the last inch between them. “And I’m still standing here.”

Something breaks behind Oona’s eyes.

“I’m standing here too.”

The last excuse dies. Oona’s grip on her restraint loosens.

For one second they simply stand there, four years reduced to the distance between two bodies that have spent an entire night pretending not to remember each other.

“I fucking hate you,” Oona whispers.

“I hate you too.” Annie retorts while shaking her head.

Oona looks at her. That stupid smile appears. Tiny. Mischievous.

“You don’t.”

“Nu-uh.”

“I don’t hate you either.”

Annie kisses her. Or Oona kisses Annie. Neither could say later. Maybe that’s another lie they’ll tell themselves.

It happens too fast to assign ownership. One second there’s air between them and the next Annie has both hands buried in Oona’s hair and Oona is pulling her in so hard Annie nearly loses her footing.

It isn’t romantic. It isn’t careful. It isn’t anything like the versions Annie let herself remember. It’s four years of anger and missing and jealousy and repression finally losing structural integrity.

Oona breaks away first.

“Fuck.” Annie catches the front of her shirt. Oona pulls back another inch. “We can’t.”

“We just did.”

“That’s absolute bollocks, love.”

“You’re still standing here.”

“So are you.”

“We’re terrible people.”

“Seems so.”

Neither moves. Annie looks at Oona’s mouth. Oona looks at Annie’s.

“That should bother me more,” Annie whispers.

“It will once the sun’s up.”

“Might not.”

Oona gives her one last chance.

“Go.”

Annie kisses her again instead.

After that, whatever argument remained doesn’t survive very long. They stumble farther down the deck, away from the house, colliding with furniture and shushing each other between badly suppressed laughter that keeps collapsing back into kissing. It’s graceless in places. Annie’s heel catches between two boards. Oona bangs her hip against the edge of a table and swears directly into Annie’s mouth.

“You’re still an asshole,” Annie whispers as Oona struggles with the zipper at the back of her dress.

“You crossed open water to tell me that?”

“You talk too much.”

“So shut me up.”

Annie does.

Oona’s hands find her again with the confidence Annie remembers and the hesitation she doesn’t. That contradiction undoes her more than anything else. Oona remembers where to touch, how to tease, exactly where Annie’s body betrays her, but every so often her hands pause as though asking permission from the woman Annie became while she was gone.

Annie gives it. Again. Again. Oona’s mouth finds the spot beneath Annie’s ear that used to make her lose her mind. Annie’s breath catches. Oona smiles against her skin.

“Same as ever…”

“Don’t be smug.”

“Bit late for that.”

Annie catches Oona by the face and kisses her hard enough that Oona stumbles backward. Oona laughs into her mouth. For one stupid, dangerous second, Annie laughs too. And there they are. Not twenty-two. Not women who’ve spent years becoming strangers.

Eighteen again. Sneaking around the cabin. Annie with one hand clamped over Oona’s mouth because Oona always found the exact wrong moment to make her laugh. Or come. Or laugh while she was coming. Oona grinning against Annie’s palm because being nearly discovered had apparently been one of her favorite hobbies.

Then Oona looks at her. Really looks. The laughter dies. Her hand rises and pushes a strand of hair away from Annie’s face. It’s such a gentle touch that Annie almost recoils. Tenderness is more dangerous than hunger. Hunger can be blamed on tequila. Jealousy. Memory. Years without touching the person your body still insists it belongs to. This cannot.

A hundred questions crowd Annie’s throat. Did you miss me? Did you hate me? Did you compare everyone to me? Does she know? Would you have come if I called? Would you come now?

She kisses Oona before any of them escape. Oona reciprocates immediately. Desperately. Good. This Annie can survive.

“I hate this fucking dress.” Oona grows increasingly frustrated with the zipper.

“You liked it at the bar.”

“I liked taking it off you in my head.”

Annie stops. Oona does too. Their eyes meet.

“You thought about that?”

The question is quieter than Annie intends. Oona studies her.

“Hard not to think about you without clothes on, baby.”

The joke is there. Barely. Something far more honest sits beneath it. Annie reaches for the knot at Oona’s waist. Her fingers fail twice.

“Jesus Christ.”

Oona laughs softly against her mouth.

“Stanford education and you’re being defeated by string.”

“Shut. Up.”

The knot eventually loses. So does everything else.

Years of carefully constructed distance begin coming apart in pieces. Clothes abandoned somewhere behind them. Shoes forgotten in the dark. Oona’s fingers tangled in Annie’s hair. Annie’s mouth pressed against Oona’s shoulder because suddenly she’s frightened of what she might say if she lets herself breathe properly.

Their bodies remember each other with an efficiency that feels almost cruel. Every old instinct returns. Every shift in breathing. Every tiny involuntary response that once served as its own private language between them.

There are changes too. That hurts. Annie discovers new reactions she doesn’t remember. Places Oona has learned to like being touched while Annie was somewhere else. The realization passes through her with distinct dissatisfaction. Because someone else discovered these things. Someone else learned these things. Someone upstairs knows them better.

Oona feels Annie tense. Her mouth curves.

“I can feel you thinking about her.”

“Fuck you.”

“I believe that’s what’s happening.” Oona adds with a soft chuckle.

Annie bites Oona’s lip. The smile disappears.

“Still funny?”

“No.”

After that, there’s considerably less talking. They find one of the enormous loungers eventually, or fall into it. Annie isn’t entirely certain. A cushion slides free and lands on the deck with a soft thud.

Both women freeze. They listen. Nothing from the house. Oona’s shoulders begin shaking with silent laughter. Annie clamps a hand over her mouth.

“Do you ever actually just…shut up?”

Oona kisses Annie’s palm. The gesture hits somewhere Annie isn’t prepared for. She pulls her hand away. Oona frowns. Doesn’t ask. For once, she lets Annie have the escape.

Then they’re kissing again. Slower now. The alcohol and adrenaline have begun burning away, leaving something infinitely more dangerous behind. Recognition.

Annie’s fingers slide into Oona’s curls. Oona closes her eyes. Annie remembers how Oona used to love this. She used to lie beside Oona after sex and trace lazy circles over her scalp until the blonde fell asleep. Oona denied enjoying it with almost religious commitment during daylight, then somehow managed to place her head in Annie’s lap again every night.

Annie’s fingers stop. Oona opens her eyes. There are years inside this silence. Other beds. Other mouths. Other hands. Other people asking what they wanted and neither woman knowing how to explain that what they wanted was impossibly specific. Someone thousands of miles away. Someone who hadn’t called. Someone who had blocked them on fucking Instagram.

Oona touches Annie’s cheek. Annie leans into it before she can stop herself. And whatever morsel of composure remained vanished.

They’re less frantic now yet somehow more desperate. The performance is gone. The bar is gone. Tamsin isn’t gone, not really, and that knowledge sits at the edge of everything they do, but neither woman allows it enough oxygen to stop them. They chose this already. That’s the ugliest part. And maybe the most honest. Oona kisses Annie like she’s starving.

Not the playful Oona from the bar. Not the woman who spent half the night making sure Annie saw exactly how happy she was with someone else. This Oona is raw. Her hands tremble. Her breath catches whenever Annie pulls her closer. She keeps breaking the kiss long enough to look at her, as though some part of her still expects Annie to disappear if she closes her eyes for too long.

Annie can’t stand it. She covers Oona’s eyes with one hand.

“You’re a creep.”

“Four years, baby.” Oona catches her wrist and lowers Annie’s hand. “I’m fucking looking.”

Annie kisses her to shut her up. Oona makes a sound into her mouth. Too loud. They freeze. Oona’s eyes widen. Annie clamps a hand over her mouth. For half a second they stare at each other. Then Oona begins laughing beneath Annie’s palm.

“You’re unbelievable.” Annie offers, fake annoyed. “If she wakes up, I’m leaving you here to explain this.”

Oona pulls Annie’s hand down far enough to whisper, “I could easily explain why I’m naked on the patio. Gets rather more complicated when they ask why YOU are also naked on the patio.”

Annie gives her a look. Oona’s grin turns feral. Then she does.

Not carefully. Not elegantly. Nothing about this is elegant. They’re intoxicated and jealous and furious and so hungry for each other that every touch seems to trip over the next one. Each remembers precisely which small things can make the other lose composure and the absurd necessity of keeping quiet turns it into another contest neither of them has admitted they’re having.

A muffled laugh. A bitten shoulder. Annie’s hand over Oona’s mouth. Oona returning the favor seconds later with unbearable satisfaction. Annie has never found anyone more attractive.

The humor eventually burns off too. Everything does. They fall completely into muscle memory. And Annie feels the realization happen in real time. Oona slows. Watches her face. Annie pulls her down and kisses her again, but there’s nowhere left to hide inside it. Every movement has become familiar. Every breath. Every tiny involuntary reaction. Oona still knows when Annie is pretending something isn’t affecting her. Annie remembers the precise moment Oona’s confidence becomes performance because she’s losing control. They learned each other when they were barely adults. Apparently their bodies kept the notes.

Oona’s forehead drops against Annie’s. Annie runs one hand down her back. Oona closes her eyes. Her voice drops to almost nothing.

“Fuck.” Oona pants against Annie’s lips, breathless. “I missed you, baby.”

Annie stops breathing. Oona seems to realize what she said at the exact same moment. She doesn’t takes it back. Annie touches her face.

“I know.”

It’s perhaps the cruelest answer she could give.

Oona laughs once. “Course you fucking do.”

Oona looks away. Annie catches her chin. Turns her face back. Forces Oona to look at her.

“You couldn’t have possibly missed me more than I missed you.” Annie’s thumb moves over her cheek. “Couldn’t have.”

Oona kisses her before the final word has completely left her mouth. After that, time seem to collapse all at once. Not disappear. Nothing so merciful. A complete disintegration. All that distance becoming weight instead.

They keep finding each other and remembering each other at the same time. What hasn’t changed. What has. The things neither forgot. The things they resent having missed.

And somewhere inside all of it, without saying so, both women stop pretending this is merely sex. That makes it worse. That makes it impossible to stop.

//

By the time they finally lie still, they’re tangled together on the oversized lounger overlooking the water, half the cushions on the deck and the first trace of morning beginning to bleach the horizon.

Annie’s head rests against Oona’s chest. Oona’s fingers move lazily through her hair. No words are necessary. They should stop now. Get dressed. Get Annie home. Decide they were drunk, lonely, furious and temporarily out of their minds. Build a neat little lie around the whole thing and live inside it. That would be the sane thing.

Instead Annie lifts her head. Oona looks down. And that exasperating lopsided smile slowly returns. Annie kisses her. Apparently they’re not finished. Not even close.

//

When Annie starts to come to, she’s freezing. Her head hurts. Her mouth tastes like death. There’s a bird screaming somewhere nearby and she immediately decides she hates Canada.

She opens her eyes. Looks around. Water. Sky. Oona. Trees…Backtracks. Oona?

Oh.

Fuck…

Oona is asleep beside her, curled against the back of the lounger with one arm stretched across Annie’s stomach.

Annie stares at the arm. Then Oona. Then the house.

“Oh, fuck.” She says it alound this time.

Oona doesn’t move. Annie elbows her.

“Oona.” Nothing. “Oona.” A groan. “Oona, fucking wake up.”

“No.”

“Your girlfriend.”

Oona’s eyes open. Instantly awake.

“Oh, fuck. What time is it?”

Annie searches for her phone and finds it under the lounger.

“Six forty-three.”

Oona sits up so quickly she nearly falls off.

“Fuck.”

Annie watches her gather herself. Hair destroyed. Underwear goes on twisted and backward. One bare foot searching for a sock that appears to have ceased existing sometime around three.

Despite everything, Annie smiles. Oona catches her. Annie’s smile widens. For one tiny second, Oona smiles back. Then reality returns. Oona looks toward the house. Annie does too.

“You need to go.”

“I don’t have a boat. Ellis drove me, remember?”

Oona closes her eyes. Groans.

“I’ll take you back.”

“You don’t have to.”

“What’s the alternative? You swimming?”

“I could.”

“You’d drown.”

“I’m a strong swimmer.”

“You’re hungover and wearing a dress.”

“I’d take the dress off.”

Oona looks at her. Annie realizes what she’s said approximately one second too late. Oona’s mouth twitches.

“Get your mind out of the gutter for five seconds.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were about to.”

“I was thinking it.”

“Worse.”

They dress as properly as circumstances allow. Neither talks much.

By the time they reach Oona’s boat, the sky has fully brightened. Annie climbs in. Oona unties them. The engine starts and the house begins shrinking behind them.

For several minutes there’s only water and engine noise.

Annie sits near the bow, watching Oona drive. Eventually she breaks the tense silence.

“Are we gonna talk about it?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

Another minute.

“Ever?”

“No.”

“Cool.”

“Brilliant.”

Annie looks toward the shoreline. Then back at Oona.

“Are you going to tell her?”

Oona’s hands tighten on the wheel. Annie wishes she hadn’t asked.

“No.” The answer hurts in a way she didn’t expect. Oona glances at her. “What’d you think I’d say?”

“I don’t know.”

“You usually do.”

“Not today.”

Oona looks ahead again.

“She doesn’t deserve this.”

“No.”

“She’s been good to me.”

“So I’ve heard.”

Oona winces at Annie’s tone.

“Well. Whatever you heard is true.”

Annie flinches. Oona sees it. Regrets it immediately. Doesn’t verbalize it.

Annie’s cabin appears ahead. She stands before they’re fully docked. Oona kills the engine. Annie steps onto the dock, then turns. Oona stays on the boat. There are maybe four feet between them. Feels like four years again.

“Last night was…” Oona starts.

Annie cuts her off. Doesn’t need to actually hear it.

“Obviously.”

“I’m serious about her.”

“Okay.”

Annie’s eyes rise to hers.

“And you’re leaving. So we can’t…”

Oona looks at her. Annie looks back. Neither is remotely convincing. Finally Annie steps away.

“Bye, Oona.”

She turns.

“Annie.”

She stops. Looks back. Oona is staring at her with the same expression she wore the first day Annie arrived at Sterling Point aged seventeen. That same impossible confidence. Except Annie knows her now. Knows what lives underneath.

“Welcome home, baby.”

Oona smiles. Crooked. Soft. So fucking smug.

Annie’s heart stops. Oona reaches for the ignition.

“Don’t go.”

Oona’s hand stops. Annie doesn’t move. Oona looks at her. Annie swallows.

“I wish you’d said that to me back then…So I’m saying it now.” Annie’s voice trembles despite her best efforts. “Don’t go. Not yet.”

Oona ponders for a long time. Annie starts walking up the steps toward the cabin. The boat shuts off. A moment later, Annie hears Oona behind her.

By the time they reach the door, whatever agreement they might have made about the night being over is dead before Annie gets the key into the lock.

Oona steps inside behind Annie. The cabin smells exactly as she remembers. Old wood. Lake air. Dust warmed by morning sun. That nearly undoes her.

Annie closes the door. Turns. And kisses her.

There’s none of the reckless secrecy from the night before. No girlfriend sleeping upstairs. No sister down the hall. No fear that a laugh or breath might travel through an open window. No crowd to perform for. Nothing between them now except choice. And daylight makes the choice uglier. Clearer. Neither stops.

What begins against the front door migrates through the cabin as though they are trying to reclaim the entire geography of what they lost. The kitchen counter. The old couch. The narrow hallway where they once spent a year sneaking past Ramona’s bedroom. Somewhere along the way they start laughing again, not because anything is particularly funny but because memory keeps ambushing them in stupid places.

“You remember that?” Annie asks about something at one point.

Oona gives her a look.

“I remember everything.”

That shuts Annie up.

//

Hours lose definition.

At some point they end up in Annie’s old bedroom. At some point they fall onto the bed. At some point hours pass without either noticing. And eventually exhaustion wins.

Annie falls asleep with Oona beside her and one impossible thought moving through her mind with the soft certainty of a wish fulfilled.

She stayed.

//

When Annie wakes again, the room is different. The light has shifted. Her mouth is dry.

Her body aches in the unmistakable way of having made several catastrophic decisions in rapid succession…And of having had a lot of sex.

For one warm, disoriented second, she doesn’t remember where she is. Then she reaches across the bed. Cold sheets.

Annie opens her eyes.

“Oona?”

Nothing. She sits up. The room is empty. So is the hallway.

“Baby?”

Annie gets out of bed and pulls on the first shirt she finds.

Kitchen. Empty. Living room. Empty. Deck. No boat. Nothing but water. Her heart begins doing something she refuses to name.

“Oona?”

Nothing. She finds her phone beneath a cushion. No messages. No calls.

She looks all around the apartment. No note. Nothing.

Annie checks all of it again. As if Oona might materialize or a message might appear if she refreshes hard enough.

Nothing.

The first feeling is embarrassment. Hot, immediate, childish. Of course. Of course Oona left. What did Annie think would happen? That Oona would wake up after cheating on the woman she had just described as good, kind and undeserving, roll over, look at Annie and decide the last four years had been a clerical error?

Annie sits on the edge of the bed and the second feeling washes over her. Guilt. That one takes longer. It arrives without adrenaline to soften it.

Tamsin’s face at the bar. I’m glad you came back. Her easy smile. The black dress. The way she’d thanked Oona for bringing her a drink. Annie presses both hands over her face.

“Fuck.”

There’s nobody there to answer. The cabin suddenly feels grotesque. Not haunted. Worse. Familiar.

Every room holds some version of Annie and Oona from four years ago, and now they’ve laid fresh wreckage directly over the old. Annie looks toward the other side of the bed.

Cold. No note. No message.

Oona regretted it. And the truly humiliating part is that Annie isn’t angry. She understands. That hurts more.

//

By four o’clock, Annie’s packed.

She moves through the cabin with terrifying efficiency, a skill Stanford sharpened into a reflex. Clothes folded. Chargers found. Toiletries swept into bags. Every object reduced to a task so she doesn’t have to think about what happened in each room.

Connor answers on the second ring.

“You’re alive.”

“Barely.”

“How’s the island?”

Annie looks through the window toward the water.

“Still there.”

“Have you made a decision?”

She thinks of the bar. Oona’s face at the door. Tamsin. The lounger. Don’t go. Cold sheets.

“Yes.”

A pause.

“And?”

“I’m not selling.”

Connor groans immediately. “Annie…”

“I said I’d give you an answer.”

“You said you’d think about it.”

“I did.”

“For one day?”

“I’m efficient.”

“This is insane.”

“Probably.”

“Can we at least talk about…”

“Not right now.”

“Annie.”

“I have to go.”

“Go where?”

She looks at the suitcase beside her.

“To call my new boss. I’m taking the job in San Francisco.”

Annie ends the call before he can answer.

//

Annie doesn’t call Ellis. Doesn’t call Ramona. Doesn’t call Oona. That last one would be impossible anyway. She still doesn’t have the number. There’s something almost elegant about that.

Four years later and they’ve managed to sleep together multiple times without acquiring basic contact information.

//

By sunset, Sterling Point is shrinking beneath her.

Annie sits beside the window of the sea plane and watches the island become shoreline, then shape, then color, then nothing recognizable at all. She tells herself leaving is the decent thing.

Oona has Tamsin. Oona has a life. Annie arrived like weather and tore through both. Leaving now isn’t abandonment. It’s restraint. It’s respect. It is, Annie tells herself with increasing conviction, exactly what Oona did four years ago.

That thought should comfort her. Instead it feels like being cut open.

Annie closes the shade.