“I have not.”
“You have to see it. There are these bats—it sounds weird, but it’s actually incredible. We should go now before it gets too late.” He pauses for a moment. “If that’s okay with you.”
Talia crosses one long, skinny leg over the other. “That’s okay with me.”
“Cool.” Townsend paddles with confidence now, pleased with his plan and with the extra time he’s bought himself with Talia. “So. Want to explain how you ended up in my buddy’s boat?”
As they make their way toward the north shore of Town Lake, Talia explains how she ran into Brett in the parking lot, where she’d just been leaving after having a picnic with a friend in the park. “Remember my coworker at Cuff, Meera? With the daughter?”
“Yeah, that name sounds familiar.” Townsend doesn’t want to talk about Meera. “And Brett just invited you to come chill with us?”
“Yep. Kind of a weird coincidence, I guess.”
“What is it they say? Maybe ‘coincidence’ is just another word for ‘fate’?”
“Oof.” Talia rolls her eyes. “Nowthat’sa line.”
“Is it working?”
“Maybe,” she admits with a sly smile. She seems lighter, more carefree than he remembers her being. It’s undeniably sexy—but in amore sophisticated, self-assured way than the likes of Chrissy with her tiny bikini. Was Talia like this when they were together? So cool and confident?
Still keeping a good pace (he wants to make it to the bridge before sunset), Townsend tells Talia about his dad’s recent heart attack, about how his health issues had pushed Townsend to finally launch his holistic health care start-up.
“You told me about this. AutoInTune—like ‘autoimmune’—right?”
“Yes, that’s it. I can’t believe you remember that.”
“I remember everything,” says Talia, and for the first time since they spotted each other in the middle of Party Island, Townsend sees something like mistrust in her eyes.
“Tal ...” He says her name softly, hoping she can hear the apology in his voice without him actually having to say the bitter words.
He knows that, with Talia, he screwed up. He was careless. Arrogant. Easily bored. Everything came easy to him, so he wasn’t afraid to lose what he had. Even after she started to refer to him as her boyfriend, he kept an eye on what else was out there, mindlessly swiping through Cuff, the very dating app Talia worked for, while she slept next to him. He liked Talia, sure, but it was obvious that she was looking for something more serious than he was willing to give at the time. She was always talking about future plans, like what they would do for Halloween when it was still July. She used to show up at his apartment unannounced with homemade cookies, like some cross between a Girl Scout and his mother. So when he came across the Cuff profile of a shapely blond whose bio simply said “Aspiring nepo baby,” he took his chances. He got sloppy. Maybe, deep down, he even wanted to get caught. And eventually, he did.
While he’s been lost in his thoughts, they’ve reached the Congress Avenue Bridge. Townsend is saved from figuring out how to apologize to Talia when, all of a sudden, thousands of bats emerge at once from the underbelly of the bridge, flapping wildly against the darkening sky.
“Oh, look! Look!” Talia pulls out her phone from the sporty little belt bag strapped across her chest and starts taking pictures of the sunset. As she snaps away, he admires her delicate wrists: paper-thin skin, prominent tendons, bluish-purple network of veins.
Talia sighs, her eyes following the bats as they soar in frenzied circles. “They’re so beautiful.”
Townsend watches, too, but mostly he watches her. With her face lit by the glow of the distant skyline, she looks to him like the promise of something new—or, rather, the promise of a second chance at something he once had.
Sitting in his car later that night, staring into the blue glow of his phone in the dark, Townsend finally reads through the dozens of messages he received from her that day.
Your a piece of shxt.
I love you Townsend.
I still know the key code to get into your place.
Ignoring her is the easiest thing to do, but he’s tired of taking the easy way out. He quickly types out a message and sends it before he can regret it.
This is over. We are over,he writes.Leave me the fuck alone, or I will make you leave me alone.
Chapter Two
Talia
Talia Danvers knows what she wants, and it isn’t this.
