“Why?” I choke out, throat tight. “Of all the names—”
“You know why, kid.”
I shake my head, rejecting his words. “You don’t understand. She’s not— we’re not— ”
“You’re not what? Not together?” He shrugs. “And whose fault is that?”
My eyes narrow. “You don’t know a thing about it.”
“Actually know quite a bit. Or did you forget you spilled your guts out at my kitchen table a few nights back?”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Never is. Love is messy and inconvenient and always arrives at the wrong time. My late wife—” He sucks in a sharp breath, seems to steel himself, as if just mentioning her is enough to cause him pain, even after all this time. “She was the best thing in my life. But before we got together, before we stopped dancing in circles and admitted we wanted to walk the same direction instead… Trust me, it was one long headache. She was feisty as a panther; I’m stubborn as a mule. Led to a lot of miscommunication. Lot of useless arguments. Looking back, that’s the thing I regret most… knowing I wasted even a minute with her. All that time fighting was time we could’ve spent loving each other. Do you know what I’d give to get those minutes back, now that she’s gone?”
My stomach is a ball of lead. “Tommy…”
“Life is short. So goddamn short. And it’ll knock you off balance long before you’ve found your sea legs. That don’t mean you give up. That don’t mean you stop fighting the tides.” His eyes flash with emotion as he takes a step closer to me. Such a show of passion is completely out of character for this reserved man. It rattles me. Shames me. Hits me square in the chest. “You got knocked down, kid. Last summer, everything that happened… everything you lost… it sent you sprawling. But it’s time to find your feet again. Because wallowing in misery, hating yourself, numbing your pain with whiskey every night isn’t going to fix a damn thing.”
“It’s not fixable.”
Tommy smacks me upside the head.
“Ow!” I rub at the spot he walloped. “What was that for?”
“For being obtuse. Your dreams died. You didn’t.” His eyes soften. “You’re better than this. Deep down, you know it.”
“And if I’m not?” I’m horrified when my voice cracks. “What’s the fucking point of standing up if I’m just going to get knocked on my ass again?”
“Then it’s a good thing you’ve got people around you to help. Plenty of hands stretched out, trying to haul you back to your feet. You just won’t let yourself take them.”
“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 than this.” 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 close the 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.
I had to pull over twice on the ride home to throw up.
Serves me right for drinking half my body weight in champagne. It felt good in the moment — each sip washing away the memories of my confrontation with Archer, until my head felt as empty as one of the bubbles in my glass. Until I couldn’t even recall why I’d felt so pathetic and broken and lost in the first place. But now, in the cold light of day, all those feelings have not only returned, but are compounded by the ceaseless pounding at my temples and queasy swirling of my gut.
My ill feelings further amplify at the sound of approaching kitten heels in the hallway, heading my way. I make a break for the stairs, but it’s too late. My foot isn’t even on the first step when she steps into the atrium and brings my walk of shame to an abrupt halt.