Disadvantages: I was all alone at the end of a peninsula on a cay in a wide ocean with no other humans around—and Pork Pie was definitely harboring some malice.
Advantages?
I was a good swimmer, so I might be able to fling myself into the ocean. He was not sober—so I had more wits about me. My cell phone battery was charged. I wasn’t wearing ridiculous footwear, for once. This was a tourist site, so other people might come along. The lighthouse might provide refuge for me, if I could run that way and get there first. And I had a cross-body purse with a leather strap that, if it came down to it, I could use to strangle him.
Was it hard to strangle someone?
I’d never tried it before.
Pork Pie seemed larger now than he had this morning.
Was that possible? Maybe the beer had bloated him.
I recommenced walking, holding the lighthouse in my line of sight.
I’d taken a self-defense class back in high school, and the one thing I could remember from that class was our instructor telling us that our best bet against a male attacker was to kick him in the “you-know-where.”
And so that’s what I wound up doing.
The more Pork Pie messed with me, the clearer it became that he had no intention of just, say, losing interest and going back. I put up with him and put up with him—until, with the lighthouse still a good two hundred feet away, he decided to try to shove his hand up under my sundress.
That was it. No more polite deflection.
It was you-know-where time.
“Cut it out!” I shouted at a murder-level volume—and then I launched my foot at his crotch with every bit of high school soccer muscle memory I had. I hit the target, and then, as he dropped to the ground, I took off running in the only direction there was to go.
To the lighthouse. As they say.
It wasn’t much of a head start. And Pork Pie didn’t stay down for long. I could feel him gaining on me as I pumped my arms and legs with everything I had, grateful to my sneakers as I hurled myself toward the door of the lighthouse.
I’m honestly not sure what I would have done if it had been locked.
But it wasn’t.
I reached the door, turned the cast-iron ring handle, and scrambled in. I threw my full weight against it to slam it behind me—then found a bolt on the inside and shoved it into the locked position.
For a second, as I leaned back against the door, breathing, I felt a wash of relief.
But that’s when Pork Pie made it to the door—and I guess the pain had given way to rage because he started beating on it. And kicking it. And throwing things at it.
It was a metal door—iron, maybe?—and everything he hurled against it made thunder sounds. And while I didn’t really think hecould break down the iron door… I also wasn’t gonna stick around to find out.
I sprinted for the spiral stairs that wound around the interior walls of the lighthouse, Fibonacci style. The steps were also made of iron, and I clanked up them in double time. That lighthouse was four stories tall—how many steps is that?—but I don’t remember pausing, or resting, or even slowing. I hauled myself to the top on pure adrenaline, entering the light chamber through a trapdoor.
And then I lowered the trapdoor behind me, and I sat on it. For good measure.
NEXT, THERE WASnothing else to do but call for help.
Only when I pulled my phone out and saw it trembling in my hands did I realize how scared I actually was.
I should call Cooper, I thought, commanding my hands to stop shaking and behave.
This time, he answered, and I said, all business, “Cooper, I’m in trouble.”
“What’s going on?” Cooper said, instantly on it.
How to sum it up? “I came ashore looking for you and headed to the lighthouse, but a drunk dude followed me. He tried to get handsy, and so I kicked him in the you-know-where.”
