Chapter 10: The Interrogation
The salt air did nothing to clear her head. If anything, it mixed with the residual tequila and the pounding in her temples to create a woozy, disconnected haze. Rio sat at the wrought-iron patio table, the cheerful yellow umbrella a stark contrast to the turmoil churning inside her. Her thighs still felt the ghost-ache of kneeling on cold tile, and a deep, secret soreness pulsed with every shift in her chair.
“Earth to Rio!” Chloe knocked her knuckles lightly on the table. “You’ve been zoning out since you came back from the bathroom. What gives?”
Megan leaned in, her grin conspiratorial. “Yeah, you were in there for a while. Touch-up turn into a full makeup revolution?”
Rio forced a laugh, reaching for her glass. The lime and salt were anchors. “Just had to take a call. Work stuff.”
“On vacation? You’re worse than my dad,” Chloe groaned, signaling the server for another round. “Forget work. We need details. You’ve been mysteriously single for months, but you’ve got that… vibe.”
“What vibe?” Rio asked, playing dumb.
“The ‘I’m getting laid but I’m not talking about it’ vibe,” Megan stated. “It’s all secret smiles and your phone glued to your hand. Spill. Is it someone from the office?”
The question landed like a dart. Rio’s phone, resting screen-up next to her coaster, chose that moment to illuminate. The caller ID burned into the twilight: A.T.
Her stomach plunged. The buzzing was an electric eel in the pit of her tequila warmth. She stared at it, at Agatha’s initials, a command in twelve-point font. The memory of her own voice begging, “Please, let me fucking come!” echoed in her skull.
She didn’t pick up.
She watched the screen until it went black, the call sent to voicemail. A bolt of pure, reckless defiance shot through her, hotter and more intoxicating than the liquor. Her fingers were clumsy as she grabbed the phone, pulled up the text thread. The last messages were the videos she’d sent, a one-way stream of submission.
Her thumbs flew over the screen, typing a message fueled by tequila and a brat’s hubris: ‘Phone was busy. Thinking about your taste. Wish you were here to shove three fingers in my pussy and choke me until I cry. My cunt’s still throbbing for you and you’re not here, are you?’
She hit send. The whoosh sound felt like jumping off a cliff.
“Another round!” she called out, her voice louder than intended, slamming her phone down face-first. “Lime, salt, the whole thing. Let’s go.”
The shots arrived in a flurry. They licked, slammed, winced. The burn was a welcome purge.
“Okay, seriously, who has you so rattled?” Chloe pressed, leaning her chin on her hand. “You just looked at your phone like it was a live snake.”
“No one,” Rio insisted, but her smile was all teeth. “Just… a complicated situation.”
Megan’s eyes drifted past Rio’s shoulder, toward the thatched-roof beach bar. “Well, if the ‘complicated situation’ falls through, there’s always the human equivalent of sunshine over there.” She nodded discreetly.
Rio turned. The bartender, a woman with sun-bleached braids and a easy laugh, was expertly juggling bottles to the delight of a group. She caught Rio’s glance and flashed a smile, white and genuine.
“Oh, she’s been eyeing you all afternoon,” Chloe confirmed. “You should go ask her when her break is.”
“Yeah, Rio,” Megan nudged her foot under the table. “Go get yourself a uncomplicated night. She looks like she knows how to have fun. And she is definitely checking you out.”
Rio looked back at the bartender, at the simple, sun-kissed promise of a normal flirtation. It seemed like a fantasy from another planet. Her body was still a written-over parchment of Agatha’s commands, her mind replaying the cold authority in that video-call voice. The bartender’s smile was beautiful. It meant nothing.
“Maybe later,” Rio said, draining her water glass.
The evening deepened. The patio lights twinkled on. Laughter from other tables swelled and receded like the tide. Rio laughed too, at her friends’ stories, but the sound felt hollow in her own ears. She kept waiting. Every passing figure in a dark dress made her breath catch. Every shift in the shadows felt like a potential arrival.
She checked her phone, surreptitiously under the table. No return text. No missed call. Nothing.
The bartender took her break, sitting with some co-workers at the far end of the bar. She didn’t look over again.
The tequila warmth curdled into a dull, anxious throb. Her filthy text hung in the digital void, unanswered. The defiance that had felt so electric an hour ago now felt stupid, juvenile. A child shouting into a canyon.
Agatha didn’t show up.
The expectation, which had tightened every muscle in Rio’s body, slowly bled away, leaving a strange, hollow exhaustion. There was no dramatic entrance, no steely gaze cutting through the crowd to pin her in place. There was just the endless vacation hum, her tipsy friends, and the growing, chilling certainty that her rebellion had been noted, filed away, and deemed unworthy of an immediate response.
The ultimate control wasn’t always presence. It was the unnerving, absolute power of absence.
Rio ordered one more shot, alone. She drank it slowly, the salt this time tasting like the sea, and like tears.