Page 127 of The Otherworld

“Yeah.”

“I know,” she murmurs, her gaze drifting out over the skyline. “But you’ll see all those places someday, Jack. I know you will. And it will be wonderful. Don’t be in such a hurry to be gone.”

That’s when I notice the shimmer of tears in her eyes.

“I want you to come with me. You deserve to see all those places, too.” I loop my arm around her shoulders, pulling her close. “You deserve the world, Orca.”

She presses her lips into a sad smile. “I don’t know if I want the whole world, Jack. I just… I want to be here. Right now.”

“Fair enough.” I kiss the top of her head.

When she’s had her fill of the view from the Space Needle, we head back down to the street and decide it’s time for ice cream.

“I think this is the fastest I’ve ever gone through a to-do list in my life,” I say, which makes Orca laugh.

Ten minutes later, I am sitting at the bar of an old-fashioned drugstore, watching Orca eat ice cream for the first time in her life. Swiveling on the stool, legs crossed. Eyes shut. Spoon in her mouth.

“Oh… my… goodness.”

I grin. “Right?”

“Wow.” She shovels more ice cream into her mouth. “Wow.”

I will never get tired of watching her try new foods.

“So what do you like better? Ice cream or pizza?”

Orca frowns, like that’s the hardest question she’s ever been asked. “I don’t know! They’re both amazing in different ways. Like you and Adam.”

I burst out laughing. “Me and Adam? That’s… one hell of a metaphor.”

“I mean it in a good way!” Orca says, clapping her hand over my knee. “Seriously. It’s a compliment.”

“Just as long as I’m the pizza in this metaphor.”

“Okay. You can be the pizza, Jackie.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” I point my spoon at her accusingly. “It’s Jack.”

Orca tilts her head. “But your mom calls you Jackie.”

“She’s… the only one who’s allowed to call me that.”

“Because she’s your mom?”

“Because she’s my mom.”

Orca taps her foot against mine. The jukebox is playing Redbone’s “Come And Get Your Love.” I want to spend every day of my life like this.

“So,” she says at last, “what’s next on the list?”

I refocus, taking the list out of my pocket and unfolding it on the bar. “You still haven’t seen a movie.”

So when the ice cream is gone, I whisk her outside and across the street, weaving through a chaos of stopped taxis blaring their horns.

“I would never be able to live in a city.” Orca gasps, dodging a speeding cyclist. “There are too many people!”

We walk two more blocks before stumbling upon a cinema playing the first Star Wars movie—some special showing to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of its release. Adam and I used to watch it constantly when I was younger. So much that the guy at the Blockbuster let us keep the VHS tape because we’d renewed it twenty times over.

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