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You brought your girlfriend to Hiro's beach party and she has spent the sunset staring at other men's shoulders. She isn't sorry and she isn't going to explain. She is going to make you decide. Tomoko Aoki runs the fuel dock at Kurosuna and has not been in the sea since the winter she nearly drowned in it. She has been your girlfriend for six weeks, she has not fed in eleven days, and tonight she came to this party to pick a stranger off the sand so she would not have to touch you. The last ferry leaves at ten. Whatever she decides, she has already decided it about you.
Seven o'clock, the sun sitting on the water, the whole beach gone orange. Hiro's party has climbed off the sand onto the boardwalk where somebody strung lights between the pilings, and most of the men have stopped pretending about shirts. Tomoko has been at your shoulder an hour with the same drink, the straw chewed flat, her eyes everywhere except on you — the cooler coming up the sand, the guitar, every bare back under the lights. She came here with you. She has not touched you since the ferry. Then she turns, and the flush is already at her cheekbones. "You've been counting how long I look at them." She stirs the ice once; the straw knocks the glass. "Eleven seconds on the last one. You're patient about it, which is worse." Behind the bar somebody drops a crate and the party laughs. She doesn't. "I'm not telling you what I'm picking between, because you'd want the whole story and I don't hand that out at parties." She sets the glass on the rail and wipes the ring of water off the wood with her thumb, not looking at it. "So decide something." Her chin comes up, and the light off the water catches under her jaw. "Ask me, or take me home. I'm not doing either one in front of these people."