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Some cute brunette shakes her skirt at you, and you think you can have her? I clench my jaw.
I’m sick of chasing her. She said she wouldn’t put pressure on me. She said we could keep this quiet. I know what she must’ve felt, me leaving her on the street like that, but what was I supposed to do? What would she have done? Let’s not pretend that after years of me treating her like shit, she’s prepared to be seen with me either. How would that look?
We’re not a couple. That’s not what this is.
But we’re also not done. I charge after her. She doesn’t get the last word. I do.
I step up the stairs, the grates vibrating under my shoes, the whole staircase shaking a little with the weight of all the people standing on it. I push past bodies, looking up as I climb and squeeze through the crowd. Windows stack about five feet from each other, one on top of another, letting in what little moonlight seeps through the clouds.
The lantern at the top stopped functioning decades ago, Saber Point Lighthouse falling into ruin like so many lighthouses now obsolete with the invention of computers and radar. The last lightkeeper died the year my mother was born, some of his furniture still sitting in the living quarters that he had shared with a corgi named Archie. Rumor has it he also shared the living quarters with a woman about thirty years younger than him, but no one ever saw her, so I don’t know how the rumor started. Some say she was here illegally and hiding. Some say he rescued her as a girl and she refused to leave him when he tried to send her on her way. All versions of a truth no one would ever know because he died, and as far as I know, the place was empty when they found him.
Except for Archie.
Old places have a way of growing more alive the longer they stand. The stories they house, the memories they facilitate… We can’t meet Elvis, but thousands of people visit his home every year, because to be where he was is like seeing his ghost.
Saber Point erodes more every year, and eventually they’ll tear it down when it becomes a hazard, taking its century-long history with it like the lightkeeper and Archie (and the girl) were never here at all.
Like I was never here at all and about to kill Olivia Jaeger.
The crowd falls away as I climb and climb, and I hear a door slam above me. The service room and watch room are before the catwalk at the top, and I launch up the rest of the stairs, drops of rain pummeling the windows like darts as the music fades to a low beat below me. I jump up to the landing, grab the handle, but then I pause, my heart beating so hard it hurts my chest.
Pressing my other hand to the door, I lean my ear in, listening. But I Prevail’s rendition of “Blank Space” drowns out everything. Even the sound of my breathing.
I should leave. What will I accomplish by ripping both of their hair out? I’m better than that. I can have anyone. She should beg for me.
But my gut twists into knots, and I can’t ignore it. I’ve lost everything that’s important. I’m not losing the only other thing that matters anymore.
Twisting the handle, I inhale and hold it, bracing myself as I open the door and enter the room.
Moonlight casts a dim glow through the fifteen or so small, circular windows spread out around the room that lightkeepers used to watch the weather, the walls paneled with wood, unlike the brick of the rest of the structure.
A blackboard sits on the wall to my right, remnants of chalk still dusting its surface, and a square, wooden table fills the center of the small room alongside a large cannister. The old gears and axles inside the glass windows that once operated the lens are now still and quiet.
Another narrow, spiral staircase leads up through the ceiling, but the small hatch door to the lantern is closed.
No Liv.
I spin around, heading for the service room, but she’s there, stepping around the corner and into the doorway.
I halt. The other girl isn’t with her.
“You dance nice,” she says.
She leans into the doorframe, pulling her gum out of her mouth and sticking it in a piece of foil.
I steel my spine. “None of that was for you.”
“All of that was for me.”
She finally looks up, cocking her head, and even though I can’t see her eyes, I feel the self-satisfaction rolling off of her.
Bitch.
“How much have you had to drink, Clay?”
Not nearly enough. The slight buzz in my head is probably from the hundred bodies downstairs, sucking up the oxygen, rather than the shots I did in the car.
