a smile bloomed across josephine’s features, though it didn’t reach her eyes. it was the kind of smile a butcher would wear when a fresh slab of meat had been delivered, ready to cut it apart. in a way, that was who she was here. some sort of sick surgeon trying to cut & prod until she got the result she wanted : his disappearance.
jo had always been more protective than supportive. it was a natural reaction to whatever stumbled through olympia’s door in the dead of night, during those times when she’d decided she didn’t have much, if anything, to lose. when she had found olympia & antonio in his car during a party her family was hosting, she threw a shoe at the window to get them to stop, then yelled at him about it after. there was a warning that if he didn’t walk away, he would hurt her eventually. antonio didn’t listen & it ended the way josephine said it would.
jo’s fiancé, benny, along with all their friends had always found it funny how insanely protective jo was over olympia considering they weren’t biological sisters & jo didn’t treat her actual sister in the same way she treated olympia. emmeline was allowed to date whoever she wanted without jo’s interference, or scare tactics to push people away. but then again, emmeline was already married & had her two children. despite being the younger of the two of them, emmeline had her life all figured out.
as for her brother, josephine had made sure finnigan had exemplary manners toward the women he dated. she’d often lectured him about remembering anniversaries, doing the small things to make her brother’s partners feel important, & overall how to be a good, upstanding boyfriend. she’d hoped that remained, but if she were to be honest, she did not care about her brother’s romantic endeavors & was just ready to wave the next girl along.
olympia was different. perhaps it was because she was orphaned in her teens, or it was jo’s history of babysitting the girl when she was younger, but josephine had always felt like olympia’s heart needed to be protected. if she could, she would place it in a bubble to ensure nothing bad could ever happen to it. but that was not the reality she lived in, & so she’d watched her sister figure live through heartaches that often made jo feel terrible as a result. to watch her act like everything was fine for so long until eventually, she would just crumble, sobbing over a gallon sized tub of ice cream & asking jo questions she couldn’t answer, it made the blonde's heart hurt.
it wasn’t much different when g.i. joe ken over here left, either. when olympia came home for a leave, before she went after him, she was doing her whole charade of acting like she was fine even though it was clear something was eating away at her & making her question things. josephine didn’t want her to go see him, even just to get the closure olympia promised jo she was only after. so, the fact that he was now sitting at her bar trying to talk to her & make nice like he didn’t commit some cardinal sin made her angry. some nerve on this asshole to show up here, of all places, & for what? to try to get some advice so he could get back into her good graces before leaving again?
❝ watch how you talk to me. you’re at my bar & on thin ice as it is. like it or not, right now, your future with that girl is in my hands. ❞ the reminder was served cold as josephine stood up straight. if she were a cringy, more basic type of person, she might have told him that the only person guaranteed to show up to olympia’s wedding out of the two of them would be her. men come & go, but sisterhood is forever. ❝ love is a feeling. it goes away. you might think you’ve changed now but what’s gonna happen in a few years? months? hell, even days? your little fears could come back at any time, & you could just as easily give up on fighting them & walk away again. so, disrespectfully, just do us all a favour & fuck off now. ❞
