lie to me → s.d.

.06 | a convincing push

          By the time Sam's story had ended, the abstract hues of the sunrise had long faded into the bright teal of morning. New Orleans had woken, if it had ever retired for the night in the first place, and the drone of car horns and people shouting and motors reached them over the lapping of water at the dock's edge. Even the water seemed choppier, disturbed by the wakes of boats drifting to and from the port with their deafening motors and chipping rust.

          Theodora was the first to finally speak once the tale had been finished. "Jesus," she said. She had to raise her voice to be heard over the commotion assaulting them from all sides. Accepting Sam's cigarette, she took a drag in attempt to soothe her own thundering heart. "You're as dead as you were a month ago."

          "Thanks, kid." He turned his head to look at her and his brother, a few locks of hair slipping free from behind his ear. "That's why I need you guys. To do what we used to." Lifting his jacket open, he rummaged through a hidden pocket on the inside and produced a series of folded papers, which he delicately opened as if they would disintegrate in his hands if he wasn't careful enough. He held them outwards. "What does that look like to you?"

          Leaning close, Theodora and Nathan peered closely at the images printed on the papers, as if they didn't know from the very first glance they took. It was a picture of a Saint Dismas cross - the very thing Sam had 'died' trying to get. The entire reason the brothers had gotten themselves locked up was because the prison resided on the same island where Henry Avery's first mate was hung for his crimes. And yes, they had found what they were looking for - just not in one piece.

          "It's the Saint Dismas cross," said Nathan, and there should have been a ding-ding-ding and flashing lights above his head. "But this must be a fake. We found the real one, it was broken."

          "Ah," said Sam and wagged a finger. Even from here, they could see the calluses and rough skin on his hand. "It was hollow, remember? This one here is intact. Maybe we were missing somethin' inside." He smoothed out the papers as best he could on the wooden railing, as if they hadn't already seen them and he was preparing for the presentation of a lifetime. "This one is bein' sold at an auction in Italy at the Rossi Estate. If we leave tonight, we can make it in time."

          Theodora's head whipped around to look at him, like she would find that he was joking and didn't actually want them to travel across the globe for him, and then looked at Nathan when she found no evidence of deceit in his features. Her mouth was suddenly dry as a desert and she had to lick her lips to find her voice. "What makes you think this isn't a fake?" she asked, staring at the crinkled papers. "Avery could have only made one - why would there be two?"

          He began to fold up the papers again, snapping them shut, like he was bitter about just the audacity she had to ask the question. "Doll," he said, and her blood lit aflame, "this is the only lead I've got for the three months ahead of me."

          Nathan babbled out a quick slew of protests, saying something about leaving his wife, his job, all to chase some half-assed lead across the world, but Theodora only caught the first few nervous words. She took a step back from the railing and turned, pulling the smoke from between her lips. She stared at the end of the orange-tinted filter, at the place where both her mouth and Sam's had been, and found her chest being constricted and squeezed tight. The smoke dropped to the ground and she smothered it with the toe of her shoe.

          A quick glance at her phone screen told her with a glaring gaze that there were no new texts or calls waiting for her. Roger would have been up and working by now - she wondered if he even saw the note she left for him, or if it was still sitting on the kitchenette counter beside her abandoned name tag. She thought about the small piece of metal, how her name had been too long to stick on the face, so it was shortened to a measly 'Dora', which she hated since the children's show had come out and ruined it for her. That name tag, that note sitting beside it, was the normal life waiting for her back in the little one-bedroom apartment. It was the waitressing job in the afternoons and the listening to old ladies bitch about new technologies and the way she looked.

          But this single lead - the man standing behind her, begging them for their help - they were everything she had left behind. Sleeping sprawled underneath the endless stretch of stars, being unafraid to get mud on her clothes and ruin her shoes. And if she was being completely honest with herself, she knew, deep down, which life she belonged to.

          "Fine," said Theodora. She dropped her notification-less phone back into her pocket and faced Sam, who was watching Nathan on his own cell a few feet away. His eyes flicked to her, filled with something like excitement. She found herself lying. "But I'm only doing this to keep you from being gutted, alright? We're..." She found herself wondering why she was hesitating. "We're done, Sam. Okay? I have someone I care about and I'm not going to throw him away just because we used to have something before you went off and died."

          It seemed that the same wicked curse of dithering poison sat on his tongue, because it took him a second or three to finally reply, "Okay."

          They turned their heads in unison, like meerkats sensing danger in the wild, and looked up to see Nathan pulling his phone away from his ear. "Alright," he said. He nodded his head once, a gesture to them. Twice, a convincing push over the edge for himself. "Let's go to Italy."