“You should stay away,” Valentino says, getting up from the ground. “Just because you can’t die today doesn’t mean I’m not poison. Everything bad is spreading around me. My heart is probably dangerous too. Orion, I don’t know, you should figure out another solution, or find another donor.”

“Fine, fuck your heart! I don’t care about that. You’re not poison or a ship that’s about to crash or whatever other analogy you’re going to spit out to scare me away. I’m your friend, Valentino, and I’m not leaving you alone on your End Day.”

He runs his hands through his hair as he inhales, exhales, inhales, exhales, inhales, exhales. He stares at the brick wall like he wants to punch it but his breaths keep his fists down at his sides. He’s unraveling, big-time, but we’re going to get through this.

“There are millions of things you can’t control,” I say as he breathes. “But you can still regain control of the ship and steer yourself—sorry, I’m going to drop this metaphor. I’m starting to really fucking feel like we’re out at sea.” I step to him, proving I’m not scared of us crashing together in the worst ways imaginable. “You can’t bring the photographer back to life or make your sister appear in an instant. That’s the kind of shit you can’t control. But there are a lot of things we can.”

Valentino’s ocean eyes look up at me. “Like what?”

“You tell me. What have you been bursting to do in New York?”

“The photo shoot was number one.”

“Then let’s do it. I’ll be your photographer.”

“The agency won’t accept that. You heard her.”

“Screw their photo shoot. We’re creating yours now. It can be an album about your life in New York.”

“That doesn’t sound like a very big album.”

“I bet there’s a lot of pictures we can take in one day.”

“Good point. Hundreds get taken during a one-hour photo shoot, even.”

“Hundreds? I was thinking like twenty, but okay. Challenge accepted.”

He wipes the last tears from his eyes and smiles. “Maybe we can photograph a lot of my firsts in the city.”

“Yes!” I’m hyped to see him getting into it; it’s like he’s coming back to life so quickly after thinking he should drop dead. “I know your super handsome face was supposed to be all over Times Square; I get that this is different now. But just because the whole damn world won’t see these pictures doesn’t mean the people in your world won’t.”

“I really love that. I can show Scarlett the pictures when she gets here.”

“I love that too—I mean, it was my idea, but I’m into it.”