I thought revenge was supposed to taste sweet.
I burned down everything they built, piece by piece, exactly the way I planned. All that’s left is smoke in my lungs and a hollow space where purpose and hope and ashes once were, like I mistook destruction for resurrection.
Now the fire’s out.
And I’m still the kind of person who’d strike the match again.
Three years later.
The date has lastedtwenty-seven minutes.
I know because I check.
Not obviously. I’m not a monster. I glance at my watch while pretending to consider whether I want another drink. I do not. I want to go home and sit in the dark with my cat like a normal, well-adjusted adult.
Across from me, Jenna—I repeated the name over and over in my head so I wouldn’t forget this time—smiles like she’s reading from a pamphlet titledHow To Date Someone Who Looks Like He Has Emotional Baggage But You’re Hoping It’s Just Aesthetic.
Jenna seems cool. She’s pansexual like me and attractive as hell. Her masc vibes, pixie cut, and black combat boots are totally doing it for me.
I just wish I was better at this whole dating thing.
I’ve spent the past five minutes debating whether I can fake a sudden illness without karmic consequences to save us boththe trouble when I inevitably fuck this up.
“So what do you do again?” she asks.
“I work in IT.”
“Like cybersecurity?”
“Like fixing printers,” I deadpan.
She laughs like she thinks I’m joking.
I am. Kind of.
“Mostly I just convince machines not to embarrass me in front of executives.”
A couple years ago, I went back to work at the Institute, just part time again, still deliberately underachieving. Malcolm offered me the same supervisory position he did before, but after everything that happened with the press and the whispers and the way people looked at me like I was both a victim and a cautionary tale, I didn’t want more.
I still do the odd freelance job here and there—nothing empire-toppling, nothing twelve-minute-blackout-level catastrophic—but I needed something else. I needed an excuse to leave my apartment more than once a week for food, like I was a hideous monster coming out of my cave. I was beginning to forget what human connection looked like.
Because I also stopped logging on for my virtual therapy sessions almost three years ago. After realizing that no amount of therapy or revenge would fix me, it all seemed pointless.
Twenty-five days seven years ago permanently broke me.
Which is probably the reason for my dumpster fire of a dating life.
But Jenna doesn’t know the story. Most people don’t anymore. The news cycle moved on, and my kidnapping became an old tragedy, then trivia. The man who took me died in a police shootout. Heroic officers, terrible criminal. End of narrative.
“So,” my date says, “what do you do for fun?”
“Well, keep in mind fun is subjective.” I grin, but the doubton her face doesn’t inspire confidence. “I do some freelancing. Short contracts. Security. Fixing other people’s messes.”
“You like it?”
“It distracts me from my own messes,” I tell her honestly. “Keeps me busy. Busy is good.”
She nods, but I can tell she senses it now—that whatever emotional ceiling I have, she’s nowhere near it. No one is.
