With a look on his face like he might be out for revenge.
I turned back to the path, and picked up my pace, and straightened my shoulders, and shifted into the kind of purposeful walking women do when they refuse to be scared.
If I could just make it to the lighthouse, I figured, there’d be someone there. Right? A docent, maybe? A volunteer? A salty old lighthouse keeper? Cooper?
But Pork Pie caught up to me before I could get there.
He strode up alongside me and matched his pace to mine. And then, appallingly, draped his arm over my still-sandpapery sunburn.
“What’s up, pussycat?” he said.
I shrugged out from under him and kept walking. For a second, I let myself hope that the much more good-natured cruise dudes might also be nearby.
“Where are your buddies?” I asked.
“I don’t have buddies,” he said.
Okay. This wasn’t good.
Was there any possibility he was just a lighthouse enthusiast? “Why are you here?”
“Oh,” Pork Pie said, “I spotted you in town, and I followed you.”
“Why would you follow me?”
“Well,” Pork Pie said, falsely friendly, “so we could finish our conversation—from before you stole my cab.”
“I wouldn’t call that a conversation,” I said.
“Have it your way,” Pork Pie said. “The point is, I missed you. And I bet you missed me, too.”
He had a beer in his hand and one tucked into his cargo shorts pocket, and he had that sour smell people get when they’ve had so much to drink that alcohol is not just on their breath, but off-gassing from their skin, as well.
He offered me a sip.
“No, thank you,” I said.
I sped up my pace, but he stayed alongside me, bumping into me over and over and knocking me off the path.
Lighthouse. Maybe there’d be a tour group up ahead when we got there. Or an armed guard. Or a bus full of nuns.
But when the lighthouse came into view, it was heartily deserted. I slowed down with disappointment, and Pork Pie draped his arm over my shoulders again.
“I’m sunburned,” I said, shrugging away, like this might remind Pork Pie of our shared humanity.
It didn’t.
Ashley’s sundress had spaghetti straps that tied in little bows at the shoulders, and Pork Pie shifted his attention to them, alternating shoulders—untying one bow and then, while I was retying it, untying the other.
“Cut it out,” I said—refusing to be intimidated, and summoning dismissive irritation like I was talking to Pete.
“Where’d you get that hickey?” Pork Pie asked next.
Ugh. Why couldn’tthis guythink it was eczema? It felt like the most appalling invasion of privacy. True, I was wearing a spaghetti-strap sundress that left it on full display…
But this hickey was supposed to be used onlyfor good.
I assessed my situation.
