General Partnership
~ 2023 ~
We head up the last part of the path up to the cliffs, giggling together like schoolchildren. The fog hadn’t let up. If anything, it was worse up here. It boiled over the cliffside like dry ice. It splashed out from our feet with every step we took.
She drove us out that way, to the beach from all those years ago, in her friend’s little golf cart. It felt impenetrable, like a wall of white was coming to swallow us whole. Naia knew the island like the back of her hand though, and we made it safe and sound.
She spins on her heel, laughing, arms outstretched, before plopping down in the center of the open space. Beckoning me over to her with her finger, her hawaiian shirt down around her shoulders, hair messy and tousled over her face.
I march over, sit down next to her. “Do you remember the plan?” She just laughs and nods enthusiastically at me, glimmer in her eye. “Good. We pull it off perfectly, and then hey? Maybe there’s a future here for us to explore afterwards…” I’m not sure if I’m still fishing her in, or if I’m starting to believe it myself. Either way, it’s working on her. Her smile is dazzling, impossibly wide. Damn, she might be the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.
Fuck it. I give in, lean into her, ready to take her, here and now. Open my mouth to bite her lip, hear her moan… I meet her palm. She’s pressing my face away, her head turned. She tisks. “That’s cute, loverboy.” Turns back to me, holding my face still. Gives a piercing look directly into my eyes. “I’m not here for that. You have a plan to execute, right? Focus on that.” Slaps my cheek a few times to emphasize her point.
Embarrassed, I look away. She pulls out her phone, snaps a picture of herself pressed up against me, my face still in her hand, forcing me to look into the camera. Step one.
She lets go, fiddles with the phone. “And sent.”
I back up, huff to myself. We probably have a little time to kill here, but she’s suddenly gone cold. Huddled in on herself. She might be having second thoughts about what we’re about to do. I know the feeling.
“So, loverboy.” She speaks to me, not looking up from her phone. “I have to say, the plan’s a little extreme. What exactly did she do to deserve that?”
I sigh, slumping over into my elbows, propping my head up. I stare into the loose rocks jutting up from the path, the fog thick and rolling around them. “I…” I squint. I can almost make out a figure… The ghastly image of my brother from last night, from behind the rocks. He’s staring at me, hate in his beady black eyes.
“What are you staring at?” I turn away, looking at Naia. Her face looks scared, a little innocent. But her smile says otherwise.
I look back to where I thought I saw Morty, but all that’s there is more rolling fog. “Nothing.” I sigh, rolling my shoulders. “It’s not what she did. It’s what I did, the last time I was here. I have a debt to pay. And I need something to pay for it with.”
She gets up, sitting on the edge of the cliff, legs dangling over the edge. “The last time you were here?” She kicks them back and forth, staring out into the misty sea.
I follow, sitting down next to her. Put my arm around her body. “I… I made a mistake. Betrayed someone.”
“Your brother, right?” I grimace, look away, pull my hand off her shoulders.
“You really do know all my scandals, huh.”
She shrugs, nonchalantly. “That one’s more of a tragedy, isn’t it? Man gets the keys to the kingdom, can’t handle it, and then throws himself into the sea.”
I sigh, looking back out into the rolling mist on top of the choppy waters. “I wish it could have gone differently. If I had just listened to what he was saying, if I had been the man that he thought I was…” I look back down at the pendant, my brother’s pendant, still around my neck. The one he gave me that night. “But I was already trapped. I couldn’t stop things, not with…”
I turn back to her, look into her big dewy eyes. “It’s the past now, though. I can’t change that. All I can hope for is that, with this, he can forgive me, won’t hate me wherever he is now.”
She looks at me, softly, innocently. A small smile breaks through her face, teeth jutting out over her bottom lip. “Don’t worry about it. I know he never would.”
I grab her by her halter, pull her into me. Her eyes dart back towards the rocks, but then come back to my focus. Giving herself up to me. I lean in again to take her.
“Edgar!” A shrill voice, angry, pulls me out of my daze. I look over to see Ronni, still in her dressing gown, marching over to us. “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?”
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