Unlucky Like Us (Like Us, #12)

by Krista Ritchie

If you ever find this, you should know there are good people on Earth. He’s worth knowing. He’s worth remembering. And when the world has decayed and all I’ve ever known has disappeared in time, you should know the very best of humankind is him.

Read this. (I hope you understand my language.) He might be long gone with me, but I hope he’s immortalized in this text. Please, keep him alive.

Black pen bleeds into the ripped paper: him and me kissing among whirling planets and stars, all fancifully drawn in one continuous line. Like we’re forever connected to the galaxy of our dreams. I clutch the sketch protectively. It’s the embodiment of us. Of what we could be. Of what I hope we will be.

“Are you on the roof? You’re not trying to get beamed up again, are you?”

Donnelly probably wouldn’t be beamed up with me, and I don’t really want to live on a planet where he’s not there.

“The aliens aren’t coming for you,” she deadpans. “But if you fall off the roof, you will turn into a ghost.”

I remember Donnelly’s words as he called up to me. “That’s what I imagine in the end. You and me and our galaxy. And maybe I don’t want you to forget it.” “I never will,” I told him. I never will.

“Keep going!” Kinney encourages.

I scream and rattle the bookcase, possessed with the rawest rage and pain. It hurts. It’s been hurting, and now it’s erupting outside of me.

The bookcase weighs a million times more than I can brace, and as the entire wooden structure teeters forward, I want it to bury me. I want to live underneath the rubble of my childhood. Maybe it’ll be where you find me.

I blink repeatedly like I’ll finally inherit teleportation. My mom says it could’ve skipped several generations, and we truly don’t know whether Great Grandma Pearl had superpowers or not. She died before I was born, but Dad always disputed the idea and said the woman never left Palm Beach. To which, Mom replied, that we know of.

“I know…” Xander stammers for the words. “I know it feels like it never will be.” I lift my anguished gaze to my seventeen-year-old brother. Xander Hale isn’t a supernova in my sky. He’s not Eliot or Tom or even Moffy. He’s my little brother who was stuck inside a decrepit, often dusty and darkened castle, and if anyone knows the roadmap out of that awful place, it’d be him.

PLEASE I LOVE XANDER SUMMERS HALE SO MUCH

“I know you don’t want to be here…” Xander tells me. “But you have to ignore that voice. Not forever. Just ignore it this minute, this shitty second.” This minute. This second. I inhale slowly. “Small hurdles, you know?” Xander says quietly. “You can do that. I know you can, sis. You’re way stronger than me.”

I know a broken heart when I see one because mine has been pulverized. What has yours been? Fully intact. Never toyed with. No signs of scar tissue. Nothing.”

we’re just going to do nothing?! Let’s hunt him down.” No. “Threaten his stupid mortal life and the lives of his future ugly children.” No. “That’s the least we could do—”

But I pick myself off the ground, Farrow right behind me. All this time, I’ve felt protective over Donnelly. Over us. Over what we share together. And I can’t let anyone in my family think the worst of him. I just can’t. I’d rather they know the painful truth.

“And you didn’t want to be with him?” Kinney asks with confusion. She glances to Dad. “We still might need to hunt him down.”

This isn’t The Hunger Games.” “Thank you, Lily,” Farrow says. “But it could be,” Kinney notes. “Oh my God,” Farrow mutters and then looks at Moffy like, your sister, man.

“Shelve the pitchforks, Kinney,” he says gently and more quietly than softly, but then again, my dad’s voice is almost never soft. “Not pitchforks. A sharpened knife.”

She’s searching for an adversary of my broken heart. In the battle of good and evil, Kinney needs the villain of all villains to attack. “But

But I guess that’s probably true. Farrow knows Donnelly in ways that I might never learn or come to discover. That sucks—the idea that I can’t even voyage deeper into Donnelly’s mind, his heart. That the exploration has limitations and borders, and I’m standing at the No Entry sign.

she gladly lifts her grandchild in her arms. She bops his nose, and Ripley lets out the cutest giggle. I’m a little jealous of the baby cuddles. I just hug my arms around my body.

I told you that he has no bad bone in his body. I told you that he’d give you the last shirt he owns. Right off his back. Shit, I told you he’s been kind towards the women he’s been with, and he would let Luna rule his world if she wanted to. I told you he’d be there for her. I told you they’d be good together.

I think we’re both understanding just how much this would’ve meant something to my dad. He loves Ryke to his deepest, rawest core, and I wonder if he’s reevaluated everything Farrow has ever said about Donnelly. I wonder if that’s ultimately a big reason why his heart has shifted.

“It would’ve mattered. And I don’t know why it is, but the bonds we make matter to other people. I know that Ryke and Rose’s friendship matters to me. Connor and Daisy matter to me. Willow and Daisy matter. Garrison and Lily matter. Just like you and Donnelly are going to matter to me. Hell, you both may even annoy me.”

“But these relationships mean something to the people who love you. And I love you like a son, and I’m…I’m sorry I didn’t take your word beforehand. I’m sorry I’m an ass. I’ve been an ass. You deserved a father-in-law who listened, and I didn’t. But I promise, I’m going to try from now on.”

“Peter Parker,” I say softly. I think about Peter’s tragic backstory and light-heartedness amidst adversity as he swings between buildings with a joke and a laugh. He’s also one of my favorites. “Spider-Man.”

PLEASEEEE 😫😫🫶🏼🫶🏼

“You said you’re going to protect him, Lo. So if your fucking plan is to send him back to South Philly to speak to his father, you better not hang him out to dry. Or else I’ll have a problem with you.” Dad wears another half-smile. “Spoken like a true brother.” “I’m serious.” “As am I.”

“I’m going to protect him. I promise you that.”

I start to picture Donnelly drifting in the dark. I picture him opening a door and drowning in a sea of vipers. My pulse races, and my deepest desire is to run right after him. I think of all the times he’s run after me, and I don’t want him to be alone. But we’re not together, so how does this even work?

Dad bought a Bugatti, and Mom reluctantly loved it more than her old BMW. I remember she said she felt like she was cheating on an archaic thing for the newer model and it felt wrong. Cars aren’t people, love. They don’t have feelings. You’re cheating on nothing. That’s what my dad said. After that, I wrote a sci-fi story on Fictitious about sentient cars with feelings in a futuristic society. They’re not exactly people, but they have a consciousness. Kinda like Herbie and Transformers, but with a Battlestar Galactica feel.

I just stare at the time and a pic of me and Donnelly in our shared bathroom. A mirror selfie: his inked arm is resting on my head while I show off my green tongue piercing. He’s flashing his silver nipple ring.

I like how happy we look. Radiant isn’t a word I’d use in my fics to describe characters that are like me, but I start believing we look radiant together. Apart, do we seem gloomy? Miserable?

I don’t want to be miserable without him, but moving on from him isn’t an option I desire or could even take. I’ve tried to get over Donnelly already, and that didn’t work.

“Dad told me that it’s okay if I never had friends. He said that I’m the queen of my own galaxy, and after so many years, I’ve realized there are people in the universe who make you feel at home. Donnelly has made me feel like my galaxy is the happiest, most exhilarating place to be, even if I’m the only one there.” I drop my head and gaze back at our photo. “He treats me like I’m his moon. His stars. Like I’m the person who makes him glad it’s today and there’ll be a tomorrow, and I don’t know if I’ve ever been that for anyone who’s not my family.”

I’m important to someone. I’m not a failure. I’m not a fuck-up or future screw-up to Donnelly. I’m someone worth something. And he’s worth everything to me.

“You know, it makes sense then.” She wipes at the corners of her eyes with her sleeve. “What does?” “Why he’s trying to protect his moon, his stars.”

You did nothing wrong.” She emphasizes it with her entire being, her whole core, and God, I want to believe in that as powerfully as she does.

I think of Donnelly again, and I wonder how many people will really be in his.

I’d say Mercury is in retrograde—but Luna told me that it already happened back in October. So I can’t really blame this strange turn of events on any planet.

And there’s still a part of me that thinks Papa Hale has a hitman on retainer.

Today’s Focus: show Luna I still love her, even if I can’t date her.

I wanted easy for her. I didn’t want to come between her and her family. I thought maybe I’d get lucky for once in my life and he’d say yes.

My vision gets hazy as tears invade, and I wipe them away roughly.

I should be a hero to Jane and Thatcher’s cats. I held some of them after the townhouse fire. Saved them from singed tails. But most treat me like I’m an empty can of tuna. With nothing to offer, nothing to give. It hasn’t bothered me before, but tonight, it tightens my chest.

“You know, pussies and I have a longstanding history, and they usually love me.” My voice rises. He hisses. “What? You don’t like being called a pussy? It’s what you are, man. A pussy cat. Look in the mirror.”

Being on Lo’s shitlist, I can handle, but if I’m on Lily’s, I dunno…I think I’d still go fling myself off this planet and sob.

She’s the only girl who wants, truly wants, what I can give, and how unjust is it that I have to wait to give her all of me? Fuck me, right? Always, fuck me.

caving. I wouldn’t have left her—if I knew she was this broken up—I wouldn’t have left as fast as I did.

“I won’t let anything hurt her.” I just say it. I believe it. I’d rather be bait and roadkill than let a single soul harm Luna Hale. And I plan to prove it.