Page 61 of Finding Noah

“Noah,” Meg whispered through the onslaught of bad memories and survivor's guilt, “I'm so—”

“Don't tell me you're sorry,” I interjected.

“Well, I am.”

“You know what sorry is?” I asked her, turning my face back to hers. “It's bullshit. It's phony. It's a filler to throw in when there's nothing else to say when, honestly, it'd be better sometimes if people said nothing at all.”

“It's just empathy,” Meg replied.

I screwed my face with disgust as I shook my head. “No, it's not. People say sorry and carry on with their day like that person hasn't had their world turned upside fucking down. There's no compassion. There's no help. It's just … thoughts and prayers and move the fuck on to the next tragedy without giving a second fucking glance at the last guy.”

She blinked rapidly, looking away as she swallowed and said, “Wow. I, um … I guess I never thought of it—”

“It's nobody's fault,” I pressed. “Honestly, I don't think the majority of people are supposed to care so much about everybody all the fucking time. God, every damn day, you get on social media, and you're bombarded with every terrible fucking thing that's happening in every single part of the world. It isn't healthy to have all of that bad shit put on you every single second of every single day. We're not meant to handle so much. We can't. But that's also why it's phony. The sorries, the … the … the crusades people go on all the time, the causes they latch on to for a moment until they're bored and move on. They claim to care about all of them, but they do nothing about any of them. They just sorry you to death and expect someone else to help, and I hate it.”

Poor Meg. She was stunned. At some point in my tirade, her eyes had widened, and her lips had parted. Something like wonder and shock coalesced in the depths of her blue, blue, blue eyes, and when I was finished, she exhaled.

“Wow, okay, so … that's why you'd be Batman?”

It sounded silly, so I laughed and said, “That's why, instead of saying sorry, I want to do something.”

“In what way?”

I shrugged. “I guess … I guess I wanna stop the bad guys.”

“You want to be a cop?”

“Or a detective or … something,” I said with a nod. “But … I dunno. I also look at myself and who I am and I think—”

“Wait, what do you mean, who you are?”

Immediately disheartened, I lifted my shoulders in a deep shrug and said, “You know, I'm my father's son.”

“And you think being a terrible person is genetic?”

“You don't know that it's not,” I challenged, pinning her with my glare.

“I know that a terrible person wouldn't have given me the spiel you just did,” she countered gently, lifting her lips in a smile. “A terrible person wouldn't want to be Batman.”

“I mean, Batman isn't exactly a good person either. He's egotistical and arrogant,” I offered, smirking as I picked at a loose thread on the cot’s edge.

“Oh, so another thing you have in common.”

I turned, shocked by her teasing tone. “You think I'm arrogant?”

“There's nothing small about me,” she mocked, a playful glint in her eyes. “Oh, no, nothing arrogant about that at all.”

“Babe, that's not arrogance,” I said. “That's the truth.”

“Uh-huh,” she murmured. “And, by the way, I'm not your babe.”

“I call all my friends babe,” I lied.

“Oh, I'm sure you do,” she retorted, rising to her feet and stretching her arms overhead.

The movement shifted her shirt, raising it an inch and revealing a strip of skin above her waistband. I bit my lip to keep my mouth from watering, and I quickly diverted my eyes to hers.

“You leaving?” I asked, hoping to keep the disappointment in my tone hidden.