“Nice shiner. Goes well with your shirt.” Dad shifted his gaze from my black-purple eye to my indigo dress shirt.
He didn’t ask how I got it. He knew he wouldn’t get an answer. Months ago, I’d run in a circle that attended a betting ring/fight club called The Snake Pit. I sometimes used to fight there, especially to cover for Vaughn when the little asshole would disappear without notice—not often, but often enough that black eyes were the norm. Besides, it was pretty fucking obvious—with Luna making an early exit, and Poppy clinging to the lapels of my blazer all night—that there were hormones and pussy involved.
Things with Dad had been different recently, though. He was snappier and less attentive. Couldn’t blame him. He was busy trying to find a cure for Mom’s illness. It just felt fake to let shit surface now. We were in a different place. We used to share di ganja in the backyard. Now, we were lucky to exchange two sentences without biting each other’s heads off.
The party would have been a good time to break things off with Poppy, but I was so mad at Luna and Vaughn, I couldn’t think straight. Winter break had just started, and if they were going to be making out all over town, they sure as hell were going to get a nice view of my junk grinding all over Poppy.
I knew I was being an ass. Poppy was a cool chick. Just not cool enough for me to curb my asshole ways, apparently. Anyway, she knew what was up, yet she still pursued me. The writing had been on the fucking wall since freshman year, when I’d followed Luna everywhere.
Poppy wasn’t illiterate.
Even so, I’d literally spelled it out for her.
“I’m off.” I threw a baseball cap on my head.
I didn’t feel like sticking around hearing my mom have a coughing fit. She’d been getting worse and worse lately, and sometimes—okay, oftentimes—I just wanted to run away from the sound of her body failing her. Failing all of us.
I wore black sweatpants and a rain jacket and jogged through the woods of El Dorado, heading to the treehouse, the treehouse I hadn’t visited in four years—but hey, who was counting?
Me, actually.
I was fucking counting. Every single hour.
Day.
Month.
Remember when things were easy and simple?
Luna and I had decided we were too grownup for the treehouse when I was fourteen. Well, she’d decided, and I’d agreed. I’d agreed to a lot of stuff in the name of pleasing Luna, and I had to admit, it felt liberating to stop giving a crap. Even if I was just pretending.
When I got to the treehouse and climbed up, I was surprised to see it in top condition. No dust on the mini chairs, plastic table, and little makeshift kitchenette. The drawings we’d made were yellow and curled around the edges on the wall, but still there. There were fresh flowers stuck in a tin can on the table. Sign language books stacked neatly on the DIY shelves. Someone had been cleaning the place, and I wondered if it was now occupied by new kids from the area.
I lay on the shabby carpet that smelled of dampness, old wood, and squirrel shit and closed my eyes.
“You had no right,” I heard a voice from the entrance.
Rather than opening my eyes, I relished her voice, which I was still getting used to.
Soft.
Hoarse.
Sexy and gruff, yet feminine, like Margot Robbie’s.
Luna crawled into the treehouse. It was snug for two grown-ass people. That meant she had to rest her thigh beside mine as she curled against the wall.
I opened my eyes, arching an eyebrow. “She talks again. Maybe all you really needed to start talking was for people to stop giving a crap about you.”
Rewind. Stop. Apologize.
No matter how much I’d tried to get over FUCKING JOSH, I couldn’t. The idea of him would haunt me to the grave. Perhaps even beyond. What if hell was watching Luna’s sex tape with FUCKING JOSH on repeat?
Could you die twice? Thrice? My head was spinning. I needed to start looking into good lawyers. I was bound to kill the bastard.
“Don’t change the subject.” She looked around the room, hugging her knees to her chest. Watching Luna kiss Vaughn, or Vaughn kiss Luna, if we’re being technical here, was God’s way of telling me he hated me on a personal, profound, go-fuck-yourself level. I shouldn’t have cared. Vaughn being Vaughn, he’d done it to piss me off. He obviously had a boner for Lenny. It was all over his face—I’d check the crotch, too, but gross.
Luna wasn’t wrong. I had no right to get mad when minutes before I’d shoved my tongue down Poppy’s throat. I’d been tortured by Luna for so long, tormenting her was now a knee-jerk reaction, though.
“You want to fuck around?” I sniffed. “Be my guest. But if you expect Vaughn to dick you, here’s a friendly reminder: he only does blowjobs. But I can refer you to Hunter. He gives full service.”
“Knight,” Luna warned.
I still couldn’t believe she was talking. It made me happier than a pig in shit and disturbed more than a pig on someone’s plate, as bacon. Because she was becoming someone else, and that someone? I wasn’t her best friend. Or her soulmate. I was barely her goddamn neighbor at this point.
“Fine. Sorry. Yes, I’ll stop being a dick.”
“Now.”
“Old habits die hard, Moonshine.”
“You were never a dick.”
“Hmm, no. I was actually a seven-foot dick. Just not to you.”
She gave me her pinkie silently. A peace offering, without saying so explicitly.
I curled mine over hers. “This place is neat as fuck.” I scooted up to sitting, motioning toward the treehouse with my finger.
“That’s because I’ve been cleaning it on the reg. Or at least I was until I left for college.” Luna bobbed her head.
I swiveled my upper body, staring at her.
“What?” Her nostrils flared.
“I don’t know. I never thought you’d say something like ‘on the reg’, is all. You sound completely…”
“Normal?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah.” She nodded. “I used to talk to myself sometimes, when no one was listening. Like, to see if I had an accent or something.”
That made me burst out laughing. Suddenly, the shitty holiday parties seemed centuries away. A spurt of optimism exploded in my chest. So what if Vaughn had kissed her? It wasn’t like they were going to date. Plus, it meant she was no longer with FUCKING JOSH. So, really, today had been pretty pleasant. Even the shiner was badass.
“I have a question.” I poked her ribs.
“Is it about Vaughn?”
“Yeah, but don’t get cocky.”
“Pretty sure you trademarked cocky, Knight. What is it?”
“Remember when you retrieved my bike from him?”
She nodded.
“What did you do to get it?”
“Told him if he didn’t give it to me, I’d kick his ass.” She puffed her chest, smiling.
I snorted, raising an eyebrow. “That did the trick?”
“Well, no. I kneed his balls when he refused. We were about the same height back then. I grabbed the bike and ran. That did the trick.”
“You kneed Vaughn in the balls for me?”
“Honestly, I would knee Vaughn in the balls for sugar-free froyo, and you know I think that’s the work of the devil. But, yeah, you were upset. I stepped up. That’s what we did for each other, you know?”
“Did?” I bit down on my tongue ring.
She looked down at her thighs. “Do?”
“Do,” I said with conviction. “No matter how hard or stupid shit gets, Moonshine. Ride or die, remember?”
She nodded.
Fuck it. She deserved to know.
“Mom’s not getting a lung transplant.”
I didn’t know what to expect. Probably a bullshit, long-ass speech about how it was going to be okay—even though it clearly wasn’t—followed by an even more embarrassing attempt to find a silver lining.
Instead, Luna’s face twisted with agony I knew took hold of every inch of her body.
“Fuck.”
She never cursed. Even in sign language. It felt good to hear her say that.
“Thanks,” came my equally unlikely response.
“I’m looking for Val.” She changed the subject.
“Fuck.”
It was my turn to curse. Honestly, though, I could count the number of times I hadn’t said that word in a sentence on one finger. It’d be the middle one, by the way.
She nodded again.
“You feel guilty,” I guessed.
“Don’t I always?”
“You do.” Unless there are other guys involved, of course.
Apparently, I wasn’t done being Bitter Betty. Swear to God it felt like my balls had been surgically removed from the rest of my body.
There was silence, the type I’d grown accustomed to since I’d realized Luna Rexroth wasn’t gross after all. I laced my fingers through hers. Closed my eyes.
“We can do this,” she mumbled, trying to convince herself more than me. “We can be friends. We just need to remember we’re not together, and therefore don’t owe each other anything.”
She squeezed my hand, sticking to her eyes-on-the-ceiling strategy, speaking as if her words were written there.
“Poppy is nice.”
I didn’t want to talk about Poppy. Or about how the one thing Luna had said about Val changed my mind about something—something I was going to do tomorrow, something I’d decided on a whim and wouldn’t tell anyone about.
Right now I wanted to just be here in silence with my best friend. And somehow, I don’t know how, but Luna sensed it. So we sat there for what felt like two hours but was probably a lot less, until I opened my eyes again. Her eyes were closed, too. I watched her for a while.
When she opened her eyes, it felt like she took something away from me.
“Let’s jump,” she said.
“I’m quite fond of my limbs, Moonshine.”
“Stop being such a big baby.”
“Big, quarterback baby who just finished a football season in one piece and would like to keep all his body parts intact.”
She crawled out of the treehouse and settled on the branch. It was thick, but I doubted it could carry my muscular ass for more than a few seconds before snapping. I rolled my eyes and settled next to her. She slipped her hand in mine.
“Three, two, one.”
It was a short, sweet way down.
The next day, I sat on a bench, watching the sun slink into the ocean like a wounded animal disappearing into the woods to die alone.
I knew the woman sitting beside me had made one hell of a journey to come here, that she’d been waiting for days, weeks, months—who knew? who cared?—for me to pick up the phone and tell her to come here. Then she’d hopped on the first available flight to do just that.
And still. And still. And still. I was barely able to look at her face, gold-rimmed by the sun.
Pretty.
Young.
Lost.
Found. Maybe.
That was her version of the story, anyway.
She smoothed her summer dress over her thighs in my periphery, sniffing the sea brine in the air. The action was compulsive. And annoying. And too close to the way I chewed on my tongue ring whenever I was nervous.
“I was sixteen.” She still spoke to the hands in her lap.
Sixteen when she gave up on me.
Sixteen when she handed me to my parents.
Sixteen when they asked her if she wanted them to send her updates and pictures.
Sixteen when she replied no.
She’d said so herself, in her letter to me, apologizing and assuring me she knew what I looked like now. I didn’t ask how, because I didn’t care.
“Boo-fucking-hoo.” I flicked my joint between my fingers, throwing it to the ocean and tucking my fists into my jacket.
“I didn’t have a choice.” She shook her head, again, looking at her lap.
“Bullshit. Choices are all we have.” I felt like our conversation had started from the middle. We’d hardly exchanged any pleasantries before we dove headfirst into the real mess.
“But Knight…”
“Really? You drag your ass across the country, and all you have to say to me is a weak ‘but Knight’?”
She burst into tears. I turned my head to watch her, my face dripping nonchalance. She was tall, with blue eyes and blonde hair. I wondered just how dark my dad had been to dilute the Reese Witherspoon genes she was sporting. We looked nothing alike, and that made me happy somehow. Proud.
“Don’t send me any more letters.”
“But…”
“Call me again, and I’ll take it to the police. And never, fucking ever, bypass my parents when you want to get to me, eighteen or not.”
“But…but…”
“Stop with the buts! I didn’t want to open the case. You sure as fuck don’t deserve to make that decision for me.” I stood up, plucking a bunch of bills from my wallet and throwing them in my birth mother’s general direction. “Cab fare back to the airport. Ciao, Dixie.”
