Page 5 of To Have and to Stalk
Eames left the door open as he went to their apartment.
“Here!” Lithie said. “This one.”
“That one?” I frowned.
“You look like you just got fucked,” my sister explained.
It was the day after a book retreat. We’d been up all night drinking, so my lips had that swollen lack-of-sleep quality. My eyes were smudged with eyeliner I hadn’t removed. My long blonde hair had air-dried, the curls messy and slightly unkempt. Freckles visible.
I shook my head, taking back my phone wordlessly.
“Let’s talk about the book,” I said, changing the subject.
“No one wants to talk about that.” Eames came back into the apartment, carrying piping-hot Big Mac wonton cups—something he’d seen on TikTok and wanted to make. “It’s faux meat, of course, for our little vegetarian.” He gave me, the little vegetarian, a look as he set the tray down.
“He’s right.” Olly reached for a themed cocktail. Black charcoal with vodka and lemon and edible glitter. It looked like a galaxy, or maybe the morality of the hero.
“Idon’t want to talk about the book,” Lithie said. “I want to talk about how my sister went from prude to joining a kink site.”
“I’m not a prude,” I said.
It wasn’t that Iwantedto be like this. Clearly I had a lot of fantasies—hence smut book club. But dating was always difficult for me. I didn’t date as a teenager because, at fifteen, I was diagnosed with a chronic illness, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. So when most people my age were giving their first hand job, I was going to the hospital and getting my first ultrasound. And instead of decorating my graduation cap with them, I graduated into another lifelong illness—chronic fatigue syndrome.
I was starting to think I’d never meet someone, and then I met Graham.
“Are you sure you want this?” my sister asked, dark eyes sharp like a dagger. “You don’t need to go from the kiddie pool to the Mariana Trench overnight. You could, you know, use Hinge or something and find a relationship.”
That was the thing—I couldn’tdoa relationship. After Graham, I vowed to wait a conservative eighty years before doing anything romantic.
I’d picked the app out specifically because it was less about dating and more about kinks and no strings attached. Graham had never wanted to indulge in my fantasies. Instead, he’d suggested I go to therapy.
Lithie, Olly, and Eames stared at me expectantly.
“Fine.Fuck.”
Nerves dissipated, and a cool sort of calm washed over me as I typed out my bio. Here I could be whoever the fuck I wanted. Not sick. Not broken.
I turned my phone toward them so they could see the profile. “I’m officially on the market.”
I used the photo my sister recommended.
But I kept the Bullet Cluster as photo two. I didn’t want to fuck someone who didn’t get the significance of that, anyway.
chapter
three
CALDER
A month before the graveyard.
There was something about the woman who ate lunch three tables away.
Maybe it was the million different micro expressions that flitted across her face as she spoke. So even though I was tables away, it felt like I knew exactly what she was feeling. Or maybe it was how she laughed with her friends while trying to eat avocado toast the size of her head andkeptlaughing as egg yolk ran down her palm.
She wasbright.
My life was steeped in darkness, so her light was…intoxicating.
