Eddie sat down on the wall beside me, his back to the harbour. “You look like you’ve had a rough day.”
“Eh.” I took a sip of tea. “You know, I thought the worst culture shock when I moved here would be no DoorDash, but it turns out that it’s that everyone literally hates me.”
Baby Joe babbled excitedly and reached for me. I smiled and set my mug down on the wall so I could tickle his toes. At least he liked me.
“I wonder what DoorDash would look like on Dauntless,” Eddie mused.
“A bucket of mud crabs tied around a goat’s neck, probably.”
Eddie laughed. “You could be onto something there. I don’t know if goats would make trustworthy delivery guys though.”
“Well, you’d have to change the name,” I said. “DoorSmash.”
Eddie laughed.
A flash of movement on the jetty caught my attention.
Susan Harper was as beautiful as her son; willowy, golden-haired and breath-takingly perfect. Natty’s beauty came with either a smile or a glower, depending on his mood, and it grounded him. Made him real. If you’d told me Susan had slipped into our world from some strange fairy realm, I might have believed it. Her beauty seemed untouchable, which was just another word for unreachable.
She seemed to glide along the jetty rather than walk, her long skirt rippling like waves around her legs. The wind tugged her golden hair out behind her, like the fiery tail of a comet, and then whipped it around her face like a maelstrom. She didn’t even break her stride.
“Would the goats have a special uniform or?—”
I didn’t hear the rest of Eddie’s question. I was already moving, my cup of tea and sandwich forgotten, my boots crunching on the road as I followed the curve of the harbour wall towards the jetty.
Susan was almost at the end of the jetty when I hit the first of the massive boards.
“Susan!” The wind carried my voice away, and I doubted she would have heard me anyway. Wherever Susan Harper was, it wasn’t in the here and now. It didn’t stop me from trying again. “Susan!”
And then she was gone. She didn’t dive off the end of the jetty, like someone going for a swim. She just stepped off, not even pausing, as though she hadn’t even noticed the jetty coming to an end. I heard shouting behind me—either I wasn’t the only one who’d noticed Susan, or my shouting had alerted others—but I didn’t turn around. I unbuckled my utility vest as I ran, dumping it as I finally reached the end of the jetty. My lungs were already aching, and I stopped long enough to see if I could see where Susan had gone into the water—I couldn’t, and I couldn’t see any sign of her—and then I jumped.
The water was colder than I expected, and I had to fight not to suck in a shocked breath—and a lungful of the ocean—when it closed over my head. Salt stung my eyes, and for a moment I couldn’t see anything except a thick curtain of bubbles. The water was deep and murky, but I saw a flash of movement from nearby—pale, like Susan’s skirt. I pulled my way through the water towards it and collided with her. My hands caught the fabric of her shirt, and her hair brushed against my face like seaweed. I hooked an arm around her, and she twisted away. A rush of panic hit me as my brain caught up to the situation I was in—if Susan fought me and I lost her, how would I find her again? The push and pull of the waves above us felt like a washing machine. Were there rips here? Probably something I should have wondered about before now. And also, I needed some fucking air.
I wrapped an arm around Susan’s waist, and she responded by elbowing me in the diaphragm. The last of my air exploded in bubbles in front of my face.
Fuck.
I used my free hand to try to pull us upwards, towards the sunlight. My waterlogged uniform and boots were heavy as shit, and fighting to hold onto Susan was rapidly sapping my strength. I was in good shape, and it was a shock to find myself struggling this much. Susan was thrashing hard against me, and even managed to kick me in the balls. I pulled against the water, my muscles straining and my lungs burning, and, just when I was sure I wouldn’t be able to make the surface and I’d have to let Susan go, she suddenly stopped fighting.
I broke through the surface of the water, sucking in a deep breath that hurt, and then arching back so that I was half-floating, Susan on top of me, and both of our faces were out of the water. I couldn’t tell if she was breathing or not. I couldn’t risk letting her go to readjust our position. Above the sound of my heartbeat booming in my skull and the water in my ears, I thought I could hear distant shouting and a droning sound. I twisted my neck to try to see where the jetty was. We were at least a hundred metres away and drifting further westward by the minute.
Jesus. The current’s strong here.
I uselessly tried to blink seawater out of my eyes as the droning sound grew louder.
“Copper!” a women called. “Hey, copper!”
The little tinnie puttering towards us was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, even if its skipper, Mavis Coldwell, wasn’t. Actually, fuck that. Mavis Coldwell, in her puffy vest and her gum boots and a face that could curdle her precious, exclusive milk, looked like a bloody angel right now.
“There you are, Susan,” Mavis said as she drew closer, her sour expression softening. She cut the tinnie’s motor. “Come on, love.”
The tinnie leaned alarmingly as Mavis hauled Susan in. Susan sat on the seat, soaked to the skin and staring at nothing. I held onto the edge of the tinnie, my arms starting to shake from the strain, and caught my breath.
“Come on then,” Mavis said, and held a hand out to me.
I caught her gaze, and I’m pretty sure we both wondered what would happen if she just left me here to drown. But luckily Mavis decided not to choose violence today, and instead hauled me into the tinnie, where I landed like a flopping fish at Susan’s feet. We were halfway back to shore by the time I got myself sitting upright.
Mavis didn’t take us to the jetty. Instead, we headed for the harbour wall, where a knot of people waited for us. Eddie was there with Baby Joe strapped to his chest. So was a woman I thought was called Verity—a bunch of them were called Verity, so I was probably right—and an old man so frail with age that he looked like a stiff breeze would knock him into the harbour. I hoped it wouldn’t—I was all rescued out already.
