Page 15 of Blue in the Deep Blue Sea

If she was trying to reassure me this was the truth, she was failing miserably. But I think those words were more for her than for me. I swallowed my response as she walked away. My mind spiraled, every piece I tried to fit together refusing to lock into place. The puzzle stayed unfinished, and I was left staring at an empty board.

Gianni and I always told each other everything.

Well,almosteverything.

I never told him how much I despised Oliver, or what he did to make me hate him. But I always knew he knew. He never told me how he and Isabella started dating, but I knew he asked her“wanna be my girlfriend?”question beneath the fireworks at the Light Festival in the summer of 2000. No one knew they’d been dating for a full year, but I did, because Annie told me. Everything else, though, everything about us, about the way pain found us, about how we were falling apart and sinking so deep we couldn’t see a way out, we carried together. We promised each other that if one of us went, we would go together. I knowpriorities change, but not with us. Our family was just the two of us.

Knowing he might be out there, in trouble, hurting, made my heart scream. It cracked into thousands of tiny pieces, and there was no one left to tell. Because he wasn’t here. Annie was miles away, and I was left with a landline that barely worked.

In a world full of people, I was just one person against the whole world.

He started using in high school. One of his friends offered him opioids, just for fun, and before anyone realized what was happening, it wasn’t him taking the drugs anymore. The drugs had taken him.

Oliver paid for rehab. He told us Gianni had been accepted into a student exchange program in London and would be back in a year. Gianni asked him to lie. We only found out the truth when the rehab facility called my mother to tell her he’d tried to commit suicide. Another thing I added to the list of reasons I hated Oliver.

But part of me knows that if I’d known, it would’ve been worse.

When Gianni got out, he met Isabella, and he traded one addiction for another. He became addicted to her. In some ways, they were the perfect couple. But as much as I loved him, and as much as she was good for him, he wasn’t good for her.

That kind of love was poison in its own way. We all knew it. Still, we wanted to be loved the way they loved each other.

My mother’s way, my father’s way, I didn’t believe in either of them. All I believed was that maybe, one day, I might find someone. But every day I prayed I’d never find a man like my father, and I prayed I’d never become like my mother.

Lost in my own thoughts, I didn’t even realize I’d wandered down to the marina. My stomach churned as the smell of seafood reached the tip of my nose from the nearby restaurant, but my eyes settled on a white twenty-one-meterMaiora 20 Flybridgeyacht taking up two berths in the port. On it, across each side of the stern, navy-blue lettering spelled out name:Deep Blue.

Yachts like this were easy enough to charter if you had the money. They sailed out of the harbor for days at a time, disappearing into the open sea before returning just long enough to unload their guests, refuel, and welcome the next ones aboard. Today, though, something else caught my eye. A large sign beside the ladder connecting the stone quay to the yacht read:

“Searching for new staff members. Cook and maid needed.”

Between Gianni and everything else racing through my head, the thought of stepping onto a yacht made my stomach tighten. The idea of nothing but miles of dark, open water beneath me sent panic creeping up my spine.

I shook my head as if I could throw the thought away and tried to back away from the marina. My eyes kept darting from one face to the next, searching for Gianni instead of watching where I was going.

Predictably, my heel caught on the uneven stone.

My arms flew out in a hopeless attempt to save myself. I staggered back two clumsy steps before hitting the ground with a sharp yelp.

“Seriously?” I muttered, brushing gravel from my palms. A groan slipped out as I rubbed the sting from one hand.

Somehow, I’d managed to trip over absolutely nothing.

Again.

A loud burst of laughter came from two men leaning against the wall, cigarettes between their fingers as they looked my way.

“What’s so funny?” I shouted.

My eyes met a pair of familiar green ones.

“You.” He raised a brow, pushed himself off the wall, and exhaled a stream of smoke. “I see you’re still learning how to walk.”

“And I see you still talk like you have a stick up your ass.”

His friend shoved his shoulder with a snort, trying and failing to hold back his laughter.

Oliver, of course. Asshole that he was.

He folded his arms across his chest, dropped the cigarette to the ground, and crushed it beneath the sole of his shoe.