Tryst Six Venom by Penelope Douglas

trickles down my back. I twist my neck left and right. Where is she?
Where did she go?
And then I tip my head up, seeing her climb the spiral staircase. A girl
holds her hand, pulling Liv after her, but it’s not Martelle.
What the fuck? I stop. Who is that now?
They disappear around the curve of the stairs until I can’t see them
anymore, and my stomach sinks.
“Whoo!” Krisjen squeals, oblivious.
But I fall away from her, stepping back and watching the stairs. How
many girls did she have? She thinks she can just move on? She thinks I’m
disposable? Replaceable?
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.