Page 89 of Ash Fall

"Or maybe you don't. Maybe I was never clear enough. Maybe I just expected you to feel everything I feel without me ever saying it out loud, and that's my fault." He stops walking, so I stop too, and he stares into the distance instead of at me. "You have always been endgame for me, Luna. Always. I've wanted you since you were sixteen years old, and I waited. I waited for you to grow up, waited for the time to be right, waited after the accident, waited until I got home. I guess I waited too long." His jaw works. "I'm going to need more than five minutes to adjust to that. I'm sorry if that feels like punishment to you. But I planned my whole life with you beside me. In my head, in my heart. All of it. And it's going to take me a beat to let that go."

He still hasn't looked at me. The words hit everywhere soft and unprotected inside of me. My eyes start burning, and for one second all I want is to fold into a ball. Then the rest of what he said catches up to me. Let it go. He’s already let me go, filed me under lost, mourned me while I'm standing right here. Something inside of me snaps and goes from aching to blazing so fast it leaves scorch marks.

"Huh." I nod slowly. "I guess I missed the wedding ceremony where I became someone else's property because they kissed me. Hope my dress was pretty."

He starts to turn away, and I whirl and slam my palm flat into the middle of his chest. It stops him dead. More than that, it forces him, finally, to look down and meet my eyes, and I watch his go wide, because I can feel it happening as the buzz races across my skin. I don't need to look down to know I've started to glow, a sharp white shine rising off my arms while the anger takes the wheel.

"Here's a wild idea." My voice shaking at bit with emotion. "Has any of you considered how I feel? Has any one of you asked me? Have any of you given it even one minute of thought, what I might actually want? Torrin did, he asked me last night while I was crying over you but what about the rest of you?" I press my hand harder into his chest. "You're all so busy making plans and having fights and deciding things. You planned a whole life with me and never told me. They made moves without warning me. You've all decided how our lives are going to look, together or apart, all by yourselves, and apparently my part is to just find out and go along with it, accept it? Be a good little girl and let the men decide your fate, right? Good to know that’s how it is."

His goes to speak again but I’m done here or I’ll say something that might cause damage that can’t be fixed.

"You know what? I'm not hungry anymore." I drop my hands and step back. "Go enjoy your fucking eggs, Gage. Without me to kick around."

I turn and walk in the opposite direction, steaming, glowing, past pallets, past scaffolding, past every wide-eyed person pretending not to watch. At the smaller open bay door, I stop and stare out at the end of the world.

The ash is coming down steady. It's collecting in the seams of the pavement and along the top of the domed roof of the pen field, dirty grey drawn over everything and it fits my mood perfectly. Above it the moon hangs broken in the sky, and it's getting harder to see, the haze in front of it thickening by the hour. I stand there and watch it blur. Slowly, breath by breath, the buzz under my skin fades and the glow lets go of me as I think it again.

Stupid fucking boys.

I hate that I love them. This situation, how complicated everything has become, all of it can get in line behind that. I’m about two steps from a full descent down the pity party rabbit hole when someone steps up beside me and I almost snarl at him before I catch myself.

It's Cody, with his ball cap backward and a tentative friendly face. He isn't the reason my life has turned into an apocalypse soap opera, so I shut it all down, push it away for later, and find a slightly strained smile for him.

"Hey, it’s maybe not my place but are you ok?" He tips his head at me. "You looked a little. Um. Angry? Upset?" He gives me a quirky look, "Lit up?"

I blow out a long breath and scoff at his lame joke.

"Yeah. Just stupid boy drama at the end of the world. What are you gonna do, right?"

He laughs and glances over his shoulder back into the bay.

"Which boy is causing the drama? Honestly, I can't get a read on who you're with. Out of the guys in your group, I mean."

I groan but shrug.

"All of them. None of them." I lift a hand and do a face palm, mumbling through my fingers, "Short answer, I have no idea right now."

His eyes go wide and he chokes back a laugh. "What would that even be called? Not a love triangle. A love…what's the shape with six sides?"

"Oh my God." Now I cover my face with both hands and laugh into them. "A hexagon. It's a love hexagon. What a mess."

I drop my hands with a shake of my head and steer us somewhere else.

"Okay, enough about the ridiculousness that is my life. What about you? Who do you have here with you?"

The humour drains out of his face all at once. He gives a sad little shake of his head.

"No one, really." He looks down at his shoes. "Tanner hired me last week to work on the crew for the summer. I was heading to university this fall, so I was just trying to bank some money first. I don't really know any of these guys." His throat moves. "Everybody I actually know is gone now I guess. Gone when Delford disappeared. They’re, I don’t know, dead?

My heart squeezes painfully for him. I put my hand on his arm.

"I don't think they're dead."

His head comes up.

"I mean, I don't know. Nobody knows anything for sure." I choose my words carefully. "But a couple of my friends talked to some…people, creatures, from the other side. The world ours collided with, when the moon did its thing. And what they told them is that the ripple went both ways. Some of our world went there, and some of theirs came here. That's why some of us woke up with these skills, or powers, or whatever you want to call it, and why there are creatures from that world walking around in ours now." I squeeze his arm. "I don't think your people are dead, Cody. I think they're somewhere else. And maybe, once we start figuring all of this out, we can find a way to reach them. Maybe even a way to bring them back. I don't know if that helps at all."

Hope breaks over his face so fast it's hard to look at.