“It’s no one else’s responsibility to save me.”
Tommy snorts. “That self-sacrificing hero-complex of yours is out of control, kid.”
“I don’t have a hero-complex!”
“Always taking on other people’s problems. Always trying to save everyone else. Never recognizing when he himself needs saving. All you need is a blue spandex suit and some superpowers.”
“Hilarious.”
“Not joking.” He looks at me, hard. “Even Superman needs something to live for. And even Superman needs help sometimes. He wouldn’t get far without Lois Lane, I’ll tell you that much.”
“I can’t believe you read comic books.”
“Only the classics, kid. Not a fan of the new age stuff.”
“Fair enough.” I raise my brows. “Still not sure how Clark Kent is relevant to anything in my life.”
“Past time you patched things up with your own Lois, don’t you think?” He looks pointedly at the name plastered across the stern of the boat.
My eyes follow, fixing on the gold and black lettering. “Josephine Valentine doesn’t want to listen to a thing I have to say, believe me.”
He wallops me upside the head a second time.
“Ow! Stop that!”
“There you go again. Lying to yourself. Just like you lied to that girl.”
“Even if I told her the truth, it wouldn’t change anything,” I grit out, rubbing my head. It’s beginning to throb. “We’re from different worlds. I have nothing to give her.”
“Then make something of yourself! Tear up the script you thought your life was going to follow and write a new one.”
“You make it sound simple.”
“It won’t be simple. It will be the hardest thing you ever do. But whatever lies on the other side of that struggle has got to be better thanthis.” He gestures at me. “We don’t get infinite chances in this life, kid. We don’t get unlimited opportunities to fix the things we’ve broken.”
I know he’s thinking of his family again. Of the fire, and the destruction it left behind.
“Some mistakes truly can’t be fixed,” Tommy says starkly. “But yours can. So stop pissing away your days. It’s starting to piss me off.”
We stare at one another. He looks mad as a hornet. I’m feeling prickly as a porcupine. But beneath that surface-level anger, there’s no true fury. There’s a feeling I can’t look at too closely, because if I do I might do something stupid. Like hug him. My glaring eyes might do something crazy. Like tear up.
“Tommy—”
“Oh, don’t go getting all mushy on me now, kid. Just promise me you’ll treat Josephine right.”
“The boat or the girl?”
“Both.”
TWENTY-ONE
josephine
I closethe front door as softly as I can manage, but the click of the latch still makes me wince. My head is splitting. Even through the dark lenses of my polarized Prada sunglasses, the world is far too bright; every sound that reaches my ears is ten times its normal decibel. I haven’t been this hungover since…
Ever.
By the time we fell asleep last night — or, technically, in the wee hours of the morning — we’d put a sizable dent in the Wadell wine cellar supply. When I woke this morning, blinking blearily against a shaft of blinding midday sun, I was sprawled on the white sectional, barefoot in an unfamiliar, oversized t-shirt, my thoughts as fuzzy as my tongue. There was no sign of Odette or Ophelia. They must’ve stumbled off to their beds at some point, leaving me passed out on the cushions. I’d scribbled a short note on a Post-It —Thanks for listening. xx - Jo— and stuck it to their coffee machine before slipping out the side door.