by Shen, L. J.
“Hi.”
The small voice jerked me from my thoughts. I sat upright in my bed. Mom. She was clad in a green robe that hugged her thin waist. Her face looked flush and young. Almost healthy. Happy. Like Luna after I gave her an orgasm.
Note to self: Never put your mom and orgasm in the same sentence. Even in your head.
“Yo.”
“You were early.”
“And you were busy.” I propped my chin on my knee, not giving a damn it was kind of feminine, looking up at the ceiling.
She let out a breathless laugh, pushing off the doorframe and taking a seat beside me. Her leg pressed against mine. She nudged me. It took everything in my two-hundred-pound body not to roll my eyes like a fucking Kardashian.
“How about we don’t talk about it?” I wasn’t above begging.
Was I really above anything at this point?
“Come on. I’m sure you know all about the birds and the bees.”
“Right. So we are talking about it.”
“Sex is natural.”
“Not the type Adriana Chechik taught me.”
“Adriana Chechik, the porn star?” Mom’s eyes twinkled with amusement.
“No, the astronomer. Don’t play coy now.”
She laughed, tousling my hair. “How are you feeling?”
“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?” I arched an eyebrow.
“I’m feeling great, actually.” She chuckled. “And you? How is my son?”
“Fine,” I grumbled.
I’ve been drinking at least a bottle a day since Luna left, but fine.
“Great, great, great.”
I can’t fucking breathe without thinking about life without you.
But unloading on her would be a bitch move. Talking to Dad about it was out of the question. We both needed to cool down. He fucked my mom. With toys. Not cool.
She cupped my face and tilted my head up. Our gazes locked.
“Knight Jameson Cole, you build your walls high and thick, but I see through them. Tell me what’s bothering you. It can’t be my health, because I’m here and feeling better. Is it about a certain gray-eyed girl who flew across the country recently?”
She bunched the collar of my shirt in her fist, lowering me to her. She placed my head in her lap, threading her delicate, pale fingers through my hair, running them back and forth over my skull. Goosebumps rose all over my skin. She used to do this to me all the time when I had meltdowns as a kid. Calmed the hell out of me.
“Talk to your mama, boy,” she whispered.
My words spilled like acid, a tsunami of confessions. I told her everything: About what had happened at the dog shelter. About kissing Poppy in front of Luna. About Luna kissing Daria in front of me. About the night I’d sneaked into Moonshine’s room again (omitting the sexy parts—just because my dinner was ruined didn’t mean Mom couldn’t eat this decade, too) and about how I tried forgetting about her. About how I’d invited Poppy to our treehouse to settle the score with Luna.
“Maybe she saw you.” Mom pursed her lips.
I frowned at the wall in front of me, painted black with the Raiders’ logo on it. “Fat chance.”
“Why’s that?” Mom persisted.
“Because Luna would have flipped.”
She’d almost killed me with her glare when I’d fondled Arabella, who was about as relevant to my life as a thoroughly used condom.
“Would she? Does that sound like Luna? Flipping out on you? Especially seeing as you did nothing wrong technically, simply spent time with your girlfriend?”
Inside my girlfriend. Or that’s what it had looked like, anyway.
Mom had a point. Maybe Luna had seen. Maybe that was the deal breaker. I’d said I wouldn’t rest until we were even, but now, when she thought we were, it didn’t feel too good.
No. It didn’t feel too fucking good at all.
“Do you love her?” Mom asked seriously.
“No,” I shot out.
Yes.
Why was it so hard? Because it was pathetic? Because it was unrequited? Because I wasn’t even sure who Luna was anymore? Talking and fucking and living without me, across the country, while I was losing my mother to cystic fibrosis.
“Well, then.” Rosie threw her hands in the air on a breezy smile. “No harm done, then. We don’t need to talk about it anymore, do we?”
She was about to stand up. I straightened from her lap, sitting.
“Wait.”
“Hmm?” Her lips pursed in a victorious smile.
“I do. I love her.” I paused. “I love her, but I’m not sure I know her anymore.”
“You love her, but maybe despite growing up together, you also grew apart?”
I shook my head. No. That wasn’t it. “I can’t outgrow Luna. It’s like outgrowing your heart. Impossible. It grows with you. What do I do?” I ran my hand across my close-shaved jaw. “What the fuck do I do, Mom?”
“Well, that’s an easy one.” She smiled. “You go after her. You grovel. You win your girl back. Life’s too short not to be with the person you love.”
Going to Boon in the middle of the school year, with my mother sick, was insane. I knew that. But leaving things unfinished with Luna was, somehow, even crazier. How many hits could our friendship take before exploding like a piñata?
I was done hitting the piñata. I didn’t want the candy inside it. I just wanted the fucking piñata. Was that too much to ask?
“I can’t leave you.” I took Mom’s hand.
I was playing a dangerous game, cajoling her into giving me permission to do it. Truth was, I was demented enough to up and leave, taking my chances. I tried to reason with myself. Mom had just gotten discharged from the hospital. She could handle being without me for a long weekend. Or for a day. Jesus. It might just be one day. Maybe Luna didn’t want to patch shit up. Maybe she had finally given up on my sorry ass.
“You must.” Mom squeezed my hand.
“Why?”
I humored her. Rosie Leblanc wasn’t big on having me away from school. As it was, I wasn’t the most accurate dick in the urinal. I wasn’t a bad student per se, but I’d be lying if I said Ivy League colleges were lining up at my doorstep.
“Do you want me to be honest?” She scrunched her nose.
“No. Please lie through your teeth.” Another eye roll nearly commenced.
Mom looked down, flattening her palm over my linen and brushing it absentmindedly.
Bad idea. This shit is ninety-nine percent spunk, one percent fabric.
“I need you to do this for my peace of mind.” Her gaze cut to mine, her blue eyes shining with emotion. “From a selfish point of view, I want you to win Luna back, because knowing you two are together would make me so happy.”
I tried to swallow, but couldn’t. I wanted to tell her to stop talking nonsense, but I couldn’t do that, either. Finally, I got up, tucked my chin, and regarded her with the same cool, lazy expression I’d learned from my father. From his friends.
Nothing gets in. Nothing comes out. If bottling feelings was a sport, I’d be representing my country in the Olympics.
She stood up and took my face in her hands, pressing her nose to my pecs. I froze before wrapping tentative arms around her. I kissed the crown of her head.
“Can I tell you a secret?” she whispered into my shirt, sending warm breath to my chest through the fabric.
I didn’t say anything. Of course she could.
“I love your brother and your father more than I love myself. I would die for them. Fight for them until the bitter end. Go against the whole world for them. But you…” She dragged her face up to look at me. Her eyes were full of tears. “I’ve always loved you just a tiny bit more. My regal, rebel boy. My legendary hellraiser, my sad prince, my unlikely savior, my beautiful, broken Knight.”
I gulped, looking down at her.
Don’t say it. Don’t say it. Don’t say it.
But I couldn’t not say it. The moment seem
ed too real and raw.
She brushed my cheek and gave me a smile so genuine and powerful, I thought it could outshine the sun.
“What if tomorrow never comes?” I whispered.
“Then, my darling boy, we’ll make the best of today.”
I spent the cab drive from Charlotte to Boon drinking mini bottles of whatever the fuck alcohol I could find at the airport and popping a couple Xanax pills. The fake ID, paired with the fact I was running on zero sleep, made me look way older than eighteen. Unfortunately, I was past the stage where a few shots of Johnny made a difference. I was on edge. Agitated. Rubbing my knuckles back and forth against my jaw. I’d busted them open last night punching the treehouse tree trunk. Just for old times’ sake.
“You good?” The driver shifted in his seat, glancing at me in the rearview mirror.
“Fine,” I clipped, tapping an unlit joint on my muscular thigh.
You know you have a problem when, before you meet the driver waiting for you at the airport, you meet a local drug dealer to get a fresh stash.
There was a brief silence as we zipped past green rolling hills, the backdrop of a cloudless blue sky and Charlotte’s towers twinkling in the distance. So this was the place that stole Moonshine from me. Already I hated it.
When the driver pulled up at Boon, I slapped a few bills in his hand and wheeled my suitcase down the cobblestone path. A red-bricked, Colonial building the size of a hotel stood before me, framed with lush, trimmed lawns from both sides. A herd of church-mice-looking girls in matching pastel cardigans and ironed hair poured from the double doors of the college. They stopped and eyed me curiously, exchanging looks and hugging their textbooks to their chests.
“Can I help you?” One of them cleared her throat, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose.
Was it that obvious I wasn’t cut out for higher education? Maybe because I smelled like a liquor store and a dodgy one-night stand.
“Can you?” I flashed my lazy, lopsided smirk that put women in a spell even I couldn’t fully understand.
Their frowns liquefied in an instant.
“I’m looking for the dorms.”
“Men’s or women’s?”
I stared at her blandly. “They’re not coed?”
“It’s a Catholic college.” The revelation was followed by a headshake.
“Women’s,” I clipped.
Shit just got a whole lot more complicated, as shit tended to where my life was concerned.
The girl pointed at a sign with white wooden arrows directing visitors to different sections of the campus. Her fingernails were colorless, thoroughly chewed. “You take a right and walk until you see the building with the pink flag.”
“How misogynist.” I bit down a smile, wondering how Luna had felt about that.
She hated wearing anything pink or girly, the exact opposite of Daria.
The girl flushed, drawing circles on the ground with her toes. “Thank you for saying that.”
“Huh?”
“Thanks for knowing it’s kind of offensive. Beautiful men…I mean, handsome men like yourself are…” she started, but her friends jerked her away, giggling and heading toward the cafeteria.
Are what?
Say, it sweetheart. I could use a little ego boost before I come face to face with Luna.
When I got to the lobby of the girls’ dorm, there was a man about two thousand years old behind the front desk, with a Ron Weasley-orange toupee, flipping a local newspaper that lay flat in front of him. His brows were high as he read a fascinating article about the fish prices in Asheville.
“Wrong dorm,” he said without looking up from his paper.
Instead of gracing him with a response, I dropped my designer backpack on his desk with a thud, fishing my wallet from my back pocket, plucking a few bills, and throwing them his way like confetti.
He didn’t look up from the paper. “Do you understand English?” he grumbled.
“Only when it suits me. What’s your price?”
“Why must there be a price tag on rules? Why can’t we just follow them blindly?” He licked the tip of his index finger, flicking a page.
An impatient smirk tugged at my lips. He was still staring at his paper.
“Because humans are corrupt, and rules are boring.”
“Speak for yourself, young man.”
With an exasperated sigh, I took out a few more Benjamins, boomeranging them across his desk. There was maybe a couple grand in total covering the surface before he finally looked up.
“What’s her name?”
“Rexroth. Luna Rexroth.”
“And your intentions?”
Entirely sinister.
“She’s my girlfriend,” I lied, unblinking. “I came to visit her from California. I want to surprise her in her room.”
I could see his gaze drifting to the row of spare keys under his counter. I didn’t dare breathe.
Do it, old man.
He didn’t budge. I took my wallet out and emptied it on his desk, the remainder of my cash raining in front of his eyes. I didn’t break eye contact.
“How do I know you’re telling the truth?” he asked.
“Do you know her?”
“Yes.”
Casually, I unlocked my phone and threw it into his hands. My screensaver was a picture of me hugging her and kissing her cheek while she smiled into the camera. It was pretty obvious we knew each other and liked each other. He lifted his bushy, white eyebrows, examining the picture before handing my phone back to me.
Finally, he lowered himself to the wall of keys, searching for her name.
“I’ll need you to leave your ID here.”
I slid my driver’s license over the counter.
“No spending the night on the premises. No loitering. Straight to room 601. And if I see you getting anywhere near girls who are not her, I’m calling the cops.”
“I need one more favor,” I said.
He looked up at me, Luna’s room key dangling between his meaty fingers.
“Namely, one more set of keys…and a lemon.”
If you’re ready to fall
Please do it with me
Ten o’clock. Water tower. Is where I will be.
—Broken Knight
I’d found the note under my pillow—where I kept the book I was reading that week—like a tooth, forgotten by the tooth fairy. A wish. A promise. Knight knew I’d lift the pillow, because he knew me. Knew us.
Knight was at Boon.
At my college.
In my dorm.
He wanted me to meet him at the water tower.
He was away from his mother.
His friends.
His school.
Away from his Poppy.
That alone should’ve made me run into his arms. I’d made a promise to Rosie. But only after she wasn’t here anymore. I didn’t have to put my heart on the line just yet. I wanted my heart to be free a little longer.
Before I moved to Boon, I used to organize my time in accordance with Knight’s life. When it was football season, I’d crammed activities into my schedule to make time move faster. I’d volunteered more, taken longer bike rides, and read entire fantasy series back to back. When he was free, I dropped said activities in favor of being with him—even when he’d flirted with other girls, when the rumors about his lothario ways had cut me open and made me bleed green with jealousy.
When I’d left for Boon, I’d needed to fill my life with distractions. I had done so by mimicking life as I saw it worn by other people. To my surprise, I was a pretty good actress—a miserable one without Knight, but decent nonetheless.
I munched on the straw of my fruity cocktail, my legs folded as I sat in the nightclub next to April, Josh, and Ryan. I flipped my phone to watch for the time.
Ten minutes to ten.
I couldn’t make it in time even if I wanted to. Good.
The music pounded so loudly, it felt like it was coming from inside
my head. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to remove the vision of Knight waiting for me on the top of the water tower, in the cold.
It felt a little redundant not to use real words with my friends, now that I spoke them to Knight, Edie, and Dad, but I was still thankful to have people in my life who liked the old me. This was where I belonged. With my new, genuine friends I’d made on my own, not because our parents were best friends.
I checked my phone again.
Eight to ten.
It took about twenty minutes to get to the water tower by foot. Probably ten with my bike, which I didn’t have with me. What was he doing here, anyway? There was only one way to find out, and I wasn’t dumb enough to risk crumbling in front of him and opening my legs again.
Josh and Ryan stood up to get us more drinks. April leaned forward and slapped my knee, scowling.
“That’s it,” she whisper-shouted over the music. “I’m staging a one-person intervention. You’re the most awful datee ever.”
“Datee?” I spelled out each letter. April was pretty good at making up words.
“Person you date.” April rolled her eyes and exhaled, sending a lock of her colorful hair flying.
“It’s not a date,” I signed.
Josh and April had presented this outing as hanging out. Since there was nothing romantic about strangers grinding against each other on a dance floor, I’d believed them. Plus, I didn’t want to stay in the dorm in case Knight showed up. I still hadn’t told April he was here, but I figured tonight, I’d have to come clean about plenty of things to my roommate.
April was so understanding, she didn’t even care that I’d lied to her about my relationship with Knight and told her he used to be my boyfriend.
“Come on, dude.” April patted my thigh.
I was wearing ripped boyfriend jeans and a hoodie, a stark contrast to my friend’s purple mini-dress.
“The guy is legit in love with you. If you’re not going to let him screw your brains out again, at least have the decency to tell him now.”
“I did,” I signed. In the letter I gave Josh, I’d explained I just wanted to be friends.
“Well, then stop dangling yourself in front of him like a shiny prize. He had a taste once, and now I’m sure he wants a rerun.” April barked out a good-natured laugh.