Instead of a cold snap that May, we got incredible heat. All I had was a shitty fan that wobbled on its stand. On the fifth day of the heat wave, I sat on my bed with the fan pointed towards my face, listening to my roommate’s boyfriend struggle to install a window air conditioner she’d bought on Kijiji. It was the evening, but the days are longer in May, and the sun was only just setting. Thunder crackled in the distance.

Maybe it would finally rain and deliver us from this heat and humidity that I hated. I couldn’t stand it.

I was restless. A dark mass had been looming above me these past few months, casting a long shadow. It was here now, circling my bed, and the harder I tried to ignore it, the more its terrifying wingspan elongated. A vulture. It caught the breeze off the fan, and glided. I shut my eyes. Suddenly, there was the sound of cold air whirring and exclamations of joy, of “Oh my God, you did it, you’re the best!” Then lightning flashed. Thunder, closer, boomed, at last followed by a torrential downpour.

I cracked my window open and lay back on my bed. And this moment might have been perfect, might have been my first moment of release since Kimia died, except that my roommate’s boyfriend started up with “Wonderwall” again. “And after all . . .” Water pummelled my window, and once again I couldn’t breathe. That cocky, raspy voice. How could she stand it once, let alone over and over and over again? I grabbed my phone and started scrolling, clicking messages of con­dolence like lifelines to pull me out of where I was heading. Pictures, random posts, and comments weren’t enough. I scanned the DMs I hadn’t yet read. So many of them were the same mundane words of encouragement. I was looking for hot, burning oxygen to wake me from this nightmare.

I clicked on the very last picture posted to my Instagram two months ago. A photo of me in a green and white polka-dot bikini, watching the sun set over the large, crashing waves of the Pacific. My hair was a wind-battered mess. My lips were chapped. It was Kimia who’d taken it and sneakily posted it to my account. We’d been drinking at dinner and afterwards, Kimia had forced me to join her for a walk on the beach on her last night alive. The kind of gift I couldn’t bear to look at.

Underneath my photo, the message read, This reminds me of the sunsets we have here in Iceland. Hope you are well.

Mexico was hot all year round, and Iceland was typically cold. In one, you saw sunrises and sunsets at relatively fixed times; in the other, you had endless days or endless nights. But the person who sent the message clearly didn’t know I was standing by the ocean in Mexico. He had no idea that Kimia was dead, and I felt relief at his ignorance.

His name was Gunter, the first and only man I’d ever had a one-night stand with. I’d been out with Kimia when we’d met, and she was the one who’d insisted that I go home with him.

“But what if he’s a creep? What if he tries to rape me?”

“Can you rape the willing?” she’d said, laughing. We were drunk, standing outside a nightclub on King Street West, wearing very little clothing and lots of makeup. “Okay. Okay. My bad. That’s insensitive. But, like, honestly, Kora, strangers are just people like you and me.”

And so I’d gone home with a strange, well-dressed man to his skyrise condo in Liberty Village, even though I’d slept with only two other people before him: an annoyingly self-deprecating friend from high school who, in a fit of despair three days before graduation, I’d given my virginity to, and later, in law school, a fast-talking, Ralph Lauren polo–wearing classmate whose stupid, ironic smile I’d mis­taken for affection.

But after Gunter and I had sex, we’d viewed the sunrise from his balcony and fallen asleep on his couch watching Sherlock Holmes on his flat-screen TV. I kept thinking how crazy it was that I was there. How people went out all the time and hooked up like this with total strangers. And it turned out to be about more than the sex. We’d talked about our families, our hopes and dreams. We’d laughed. If he hadn’t said that he was moving back to London at the end of the month, I’d probably have seen him again.

Since him, I’d only had sex once, with a shy friend of my room­mate’s, during which, mid-deed, I’d fallen off the bed and knocked my head against the floor.

I clicked on Gunter’s name and found a photo of him now: blue-eyed, wearing a navy tuque. He had freckles on his nose, brown hair and a reddish beard, a dopey, far-reaching smile that echoed in his eyes. His teeth were brilliantly white.

I opened a direct message.

I’ve never been to Iceland. It’s supposed to be really beautiful there, I replied.

“Wonderwall” stopped.

A bubble with three dots appeared under his name. He was typing.

Holy hell she’s alive!