I watched them pack up. True to form, Jo made Sailor clean the deck chairs and table top, and even appeared to be mocking her while she did it. When I came up to him, he was smiling, energized by argument. 

"Hey, help me out: where do all you millennial, zillennial types shop for clothes these days?" he asked me, as if I were suddenly the arbiter of coolness for a generation and a half, and he hadn't just told me that he wasn't Sailor's dad. "I'll admit, I pretty much know everything there is to know about hardshell luggage and Bordeaux grapes, but when it comes to what she's supposed to wear, all I've heard is that Gucci means good for some reason."

I thought about the last time I'd cracked open a retail fashion magazine, and immediately began to sweat. "Well, maybe...the Abercrombie...at Faneuil Hall?"

Somewhere in the distance, Amelia cracked a guffaw that sounded like a bullet hitting its mark. 

"We'll try to go that way," Jo agreed.

"Well, uh, thanks for stopping by this way," I replied, trying to look confident in the advice I'd just doled out to this poor uninformed soul. "And, good luck with the shopping."

He nodded. "Appreciate it, Elliott. I'm glad she could meet you."

...Glad she could meet me? Why?

"In case she ever needs any help when she's in the area," he said, adding to my confusion even more.

Help? How was I supposed to help his little hanger-on?

He instructed Sailor to go back and wash her hands one more time, prolonging my ordeal. And then, after exchanging another hearty round of grievances with each other, they left. 

As Jo stepped gingerly off the raised deck, Sailor wrapped both arms around him from behind, and gave him a peck on the very ridge of his nape that I guessed was supposed to provoke him. 

I watched their tall thin bodies pass over the harborwalk, like visions out of a dream. I guess that's all they were to me. For a moment Jo seemed to graze the boundary of reality, but look at how quickly he evaporated, out of my reach. 

A few hours later, after the café had closed and I could finally sneak off for a few moments to watch the sun set at Long Wharf, I was surprised to see them again on the harborwalk, their arms full of shopping.

They seemed happy. Through the thin fog filtering the light, I could tell that they were clad in identical white t-shirts, with the familiar image of the red brick building of Faneuil Hall emblazoned on their backs. For some reason, Sailor still hadn't changed out of her jean shorts, but she did have a cheerful sprig of yellow flowers in her hair. As they walked briskly in the direction opposite from where I stood, she seemed to point out something on the surface of the water, and he quickly grabbed her other hand. 

He must have really loved her. I turned back, abandoning the sunset before it could show me its grand finale. 

One foot, and then the other. To be honest, I was unsure of where I was headed. Running away required less conviction than running up to them or even trailing from behind, but perhaps more savvy. Shouldn't I have had a plan? 

At first I thought I would vomit, my chest was so heavy. And then, by and by, it was simply empty. It made sense, I figured, since I really had nothing now. 

Soon, I alighted on the café, which bobbed up and down in my field of vision like a buoy in a storm. The chairs and tables had already been collected and brought in for the day - Bullwinkle was going to fix all the chipped paint by hand tomorrow before we opened. Now, there was nothing remaining on the deck to fashion into a seat. Irritatingly, someone had left a stack of burnt-out matches on the cap rail, where they had no doubt been asking repeatedly for trouble.

With no place to rest, I sat down on the asphalt in front of the screen door, feet rubbing against one another as I gingerly loosened my footwear from my ankles. I searched my pockets for anything that could help me relax, and quickly discovered an old joint that I'd hidden inside a spearmint gum wrapper - only slightly flattened. Really, it had been Amelia's, and that day I had been tasked with hiding it while the square-headed narc on our team sniffed her out with a vengeance. 

I flattered myself to think that I really was the best teammate Amelia ever hired. So, there was no reason why I couldn't have this one. I fired up the end with my pocket lighter - pearly white, with a pretty outline of damask roses in magenta - and smoked quietly, as the fog transmuted into small droplets of rain and splattered the walkways.

God, but you really shouldn't get so hung up on somebody. He wasn't even the reason I left home. But now, he existed at the centre of everything, and seemed a fitting thesis for everything wrong with the way I approached my life. My impulsive decision making. The way I loved. My fanciful ideas about fate, and what was owed to a person who tried to be better. 

Maybe that last one was childish. It wasn't like I thought I deserved him, but at least I thought that I deserved to feel better about myself for trying. Instead, my defeat had been total - bloodless, yet ruthless - and I watched my entire self go down, dismantled by the sheer height of my own fall. 

It seemed clear that I had no cachet on my own. At least I could say that I learned the hard truth that all adults learned eventually. I should go back home, and see if Grammy and Grampy have written me out of their wills just yet. Maybe, they could still reconsider.  

The joint wasn't working. What did Amelia put in this thing, flavoured sawdust? I peered into the distance, through eyes engorged with tears, at the ridiculous winter lights still strapped to the sides of the seafood restaurant next door, that now blinked in rhythmic symphony just to taunt me. Nothing changed from last year, nothing. My field of vision was filled with fluorescent bubbles, and raindrops were forced to roll down each of my slicked eyelashes like a figurative walking of the plank. I wanted to cry but I didn't want to look distressed, wanted help but not pity, and wished that no one would see me while I tried to figure out all of these things, that were as unfathomably tangled inside of me as ropes of melted Christmas lights.