The Revenge Snapshot

Tasha had been on the ferry for eleven minutes and she was already annoyed. The Helsinki to Tallinn crossing was supposed to be a milk run, two hours of grey Baltic and a bad buffet, and she'd taken it dozens of times for work. But today it felt personal.

Her ex, Pablo, had said the thing six months ago and it still sat in her chest, heavy and unmoving. Past her prime, he'd said. At thirty-four. To a woman who had just filed a piece from a Lithuanian sauna that got picked up by three national outlets.

"Past my prime," she muttered, dropping into a seat by the window. A woman two tables over looked up. Tasha waved apologetically and pulled out her phone.

She opened the dating app out of pure spite. She wasn't even going to swipe, she told herself. She was just going to look. Just going to see what the men of the Baltic were offering tonight.

Third profile down. Marc, thirty-eight. Freelance photographer. The photo was... okay, the photo was disgusting. Perfect jaw, stubble at exactly the right length, a squint like he was laughing at something just off camera. Sailing, it said. Former model, it said, which should have made him punchable and somehow didn't quite.

"Ugh," she said, and swiped right, purely to reject him later, she told herself. The phone buzzed almost at once.

*It's a match!*

"Of course it is," she said. "Of course."

Marc: Hi! You're the sauna lady! I read your piece on the Lithuanian smoke saunas, the one where the sauna master threw water on the rocks and you nearly fainted.

Tasha stared at the screen. He had read the article. Nobody read the articles.

Tasha: That's me. Nearly fainted. Wrote it with a nosebleed.

Marc: I loved it! I was on a shoot near Kaunas last year and never got to try one. What are you doing out here? Wait, that's creepy, the app says you're forty metres away. I'm on the ferry too. Never mind, delete that.

Tasha laughed out loud, which annoyed her even more.

Tasha: Two hour crossing. Heading to Tallinn for a story.

Marc: Me too! Well, not the story. The ferry. I'm going to Tallinn to photograph old doors. It's not as boring as it sounds. Okay it's exactly as boring as it sounds.

She typed back that doors sounded fine, actually, and then sat there hating herself a little. The plan arrived fully formed, the way bad plans do. He was too pretty. Too pretty and too charming and he had read her article. Somebody needed to take him down a peg. She would do it with the photo booth.

There was a photo booth on the ferry, squeezed next to the card room, one of those ancient curtain jobs that spat out four grainy pictures for three euros. Everyone looked terrible in it. The flash was merciless. She would lure him there, take a strip of the most unflattering photos ever committed to film, and post them. A review of overrated vacation flings, she'd call it. Annoyingly attractive photographer, ruins the myth.

It was petty. She knew it was petty. She did it anyway.

* * *

They met by the duty-free shop at seven, and Marc was taller than his photo, which felt like cheating. He was wearing a linen shirt that had been slept in and he nearly knocked over a pyramid of whisky bottles bowing hello.

"Sorry! Sorry," he said to the bottles, and then to her. "Tasha? Hi. You're taller than your photos too, which is great, actually, that's great, most people are smaller and it's disappointing."

"That's... a compliment, I think?"

"It is! It's meant to be." He shoved his hands in his pockets. "I bought a chocolate hedgehog. Do you want half? It's duty-free chocolate, it feels wrong, like it shouldn't count."

"You bought a hedgehog?"

"Marzipan one. It was calling to me." He broke it in half over the whisky pyramid and handed her the back end. "So. Smoke saunas. Did you actually sit the full fifteen minutes?"

"I did four," she admitted. "Then the sauna master made me go back in and I lasted six."

"Six! That's brave. I'd have died at two and they'd have written about it in your article instead. 'Journalist found pickled in smoke sauna, marzipan suspected.'"

He was funny. That was the problem. He kept being funny and kept almost knocking things over and kept asking her real questions, actual follow-up questions about her work, like her stories were things worth knowing about. By the time they'd done a slow loop past the crisps aisle she'd forgotten the plan twice and had to remind herself: photo booth, unflattering photos, justice.

"Okay," she said. "Come on. There's a photo booth by the card room. For a laugh. Ferry tradition, I just decided. Take silly photos with a stranger or the trip doesn't count."

"Is that real? That sounds made up."

"Completely real. Very binding. Baltic law."

"Ha. Okay, okay, Baltic law." He let her pull him by the sleeve, and she fed the machine three euros and they squeezed into the booth together, knees bumping, curtain swinging shut. The little light counted down and Marc did not pose. That was the thing. She'd expected him to angle his jaw, do the squint, serve the face he'd clearly practiced in a mirror.

Instead he crossed his eyes. Then he did a horrified double chin. Then a huge open-mouthed grin with his tongue out, and then, on the last flash, he was just looking at her, laughing at whatever her face was doing, and the flash caught him mid-laugh with his whole stupid perfect face crumpled up and happy.

The strip rattled out and Tasha held it in the dim light and felt her plan wobble like a drunk on deck.

"These are great," Marc said, leaning in, his shoulder warm against hers. "Look at yours, that one, you look like you've seen a ghost. Oh that's brilliant. Can I keep it? Is that weird? I'm keeping it."

"You can't keep it, I need it for..."

She stopped.

"For?"

"For a thing," she said weakly. "A review. It doesn't matter." He was still grinning at her, close enough that she could smell the marzipan on his breath, and the booth felt about a third of its actual size.

"A review of the booth?"

"Of... ferry experiences. General." She folded the strip and put it in her pocket very fast. "Anyway. You want to see my sauna nosebleed scar? I have a dramatic story about the duty-free gin."

"I always want to hear about gin," Marc said. "Lead the way. I'll bring the rest of the hedgehog. He should come with us. He's part of the group now."

Tasha walked out of the card room ahead of him, patting her pocket where the strip sat, feeling like the world's worst assassin. The photos were supposed to be ammunition. All four of them had come out adorable.

She'd have to try harder. Or she'd have to admit, quietly, in the part of herself she'd been ignoring since the app buzzed, that maybe the peg she wanted to knock him off of was the one she'd built for him out of one too-flattering photo and six months of bitterness.

The gin story was a good one, at least. She'd tell it, see how he handled it, and then decide.

"Wait," Marc said at the duty-free door, holding up the marzipan