“Holy shit, holy shit,” Tom yelped, hand reflexively caught in his hair before he remembered to move.
He jumped out of the car and ran to the edge of the embankment, looking down in horror as he peered to see what had happened to the Kia. He spotted it at the bottom of the hill.
It wasn’t as bad as it could have been—the car had landed nose first on the concrete lip of the canal, the airbags had deployed, and Boyd’s arms were moving in front of the billowing white shapes of the airbags. He wouldn’t have taken severe injury from the crash.
But the water was flowing around the vehicle, threatening to dislodge the car again and tip it into the growing stream. The black floodwaters were deep and white-capped from their turbulence, more than halfway up the body of the car already.
Even if Boyd wasn’t already injured, he’d drown if he was still in the car when it was pushed off the slope it precariously rested on.
Tom tested the hillside with one toe, and it promptly gave way. He scrambled back a step. It had been a dry summer, and the water was running off the ground rather than saturating it, making the earth treacherous and unsteady. It would probably send him tumbling into the ditch before he made it halfway to the Kia.
Don’t die doing something that gets you described in the papers as“Florida Man.”That had been Rosie’s number one rule, first whispered into his ear as she prevented him from stumbling in front of a Boston trolley on the night they met.
Ximena ran up next to Tom, cursing in a creative mix of Spanish and English.
“I told everyone else to call 911,” she said, breath coming ragged with alarm. “I told them we need a tow. Or a crane. How is a fire truck or anything going to get here, though?”
“It won’t,” Tom said immediately. Emergency services wouldn’t—usually couldn’t—come in the middle of a hurricane. The roads were impassable, and nothing could fly in this.
“I guess we—we—we need to get down there and rescue him?” Ximena’s voice stuttered with fear.
Tom found clarity in the sudden rush of adrenaline. He turned enough to meet Ximena’s wide eyes for emphasis. “What do you meanwe? You’re pregnant! You have a wife and a kid on the way. Get out of here.” He pointed up the hill.
Guilt flashed across her face.
“That doesn’t—I mean—areyougoing to climb down there?” she demanded. She gestured at the car. Boyd still hadn’t gotten his door open.
“Of course,” Tom blurted, looking at the smashed Kia. “I just—shit, I don’t know.”
He didn’t want to die saving Boyd Kellagher, who’d gotten himself into this classic Florida Man situation all on his own. He didn’t want to die atall.
That prime directive was only exceeded by the thought that it would be hard to live with himself if he stood by and watched a man die. Tom had managed to survive his lengthy history ofbig mistakes, bad decisions, and colossal fuckups, but he didn’t think there would be any coming back from this one if he didn’t climb down to the drainage canal.
“Tom?” Ximena asked, shaking his arm urgently.
Tom glanced down at his phone, which was still illuminated in his hand, screen displaying his contact list. How odd that the very next person in his contact list after Boyd was the one person Tom needed to call before doing something stupid and potentially deadly.
I can’t die now. I was supposed to get Rosie back firstwas the delirious thought that bubbled up to the surface of his mind, so fragile it was hard to examine. But it persisted even through the pulsing fear of the moment. How had he let it get to ten years since he last saw her, when he’d always thought he was supposed to get Rosie back?
Acting before he could think too hard about it, he pressed her name with his thumb and lifted the phone to his ear, leaning over to shield it from the wind and rain.
“Hey, Rosie?” Tom said when the call unsurprisingly went straight to voicemail. Who knew if this was still her number, or if she maybe had his blocked. “It’s me. I’m, um. Well. I might be about to die. And in case I die, I just wanted to say I’ve always loved you. And if I happen to live…I’m sorry for everything. I really am. I wish I had the chance to make it up to you. Okay. Bye.”
Tom hit the button to end the call and handed his phone to Ximena, ducking his face away from her shocked expression.
“Get inside!” he told her, even though his throat was closingup from panic, both that he might actually die and that it had somehow beenten years. “Don’t wait for us.”
She nodded shakily.
When he was sure she was going, Tom rolled his shoulders back and focused on the slick ground ahead of him. He wiped all thoughts of the call he’d just made from his mind. He sent a small internal prayer to anyone listening in the sky.
And then he started sliding feetfirst down thehill.
1
January
Boston
