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He grins, then tries to climb up. I help my nephew.
“He’s not even two,” Maximoff says to Farrow. “How’d he climb out?”
Farrow shakes his head, combing a hand through his hair. “We’ll get him a new bed.”
“Baby Ripley is a strong one,” I say quietly to him.
“Of Hale stock,” Donnelly calls out, and that really gets to me. Farrow and Donnelly exchange a look I can’t decipher, and I sniff back emotion, watching how my nephew clutches on to my fingers with his little hands.
“Luna,” Moffy says. “Uncle Garrison wants to talk to you.” He hands me the phone.
He tells me to open Fictitious. He tells me to save any stories that I don’t want to lose onto a flash drive. He tells me to print them if I’m not comfortable with saving to an external hard drive.
I tell him I’ve printed everything already, but I’m worried about having a flash drive. Of losing it. I don’t trust myself anymore.
“Some screenshots might float around,” he says, “but for the most part, it’ll all be gone. If you want to ensure it won’t pop up again, I can go ahead and deactivate your account and make sure there’s no backup. It’ll be like you never posted anything, anywhere.”
I skim my profile.
43 fics.
Some have been scrapped after a couple chapters. A lot never gained traction. Others are still ongoing. My longest has over a million words written. The Thebulan saga. It’s messy and covers multiple generations and planets. Something I started when I was little, but I can see the progress of my writing from then to now.
It used to only have a handful of views.
Since the username leak, that one has over 20k. I don’t click into the comments.
But I do check out the comment section of a lesser known work. Radiance Space Corps. It’s so old.
Someone wrote, Love this! Please continue!!! I totally need more!
I click into another work with only two comments.
You write the BEST Marvel fanfic. I <3 Star-Lord.
Gah, I have to have the next part! When’s it coming out??
It reminds me why I started posting on Fictitious in the first place. The little nudges of encouragements were everything to me. I breathe in. “There’s no way to recover it, if it’s gone?” I ask Uncle Garrison.
“No, it’ll be wiped.”
I’ll lose all the good, happy, kind things people said over the years. The things that made me want to continue on. To keep going. To never give up what I loved, what made me happy.
Preserving the good means leaving myself more vulnerable to things I’m not ready to combat. I don’t feel equipped for it, so with heaviness inside me, I whisper, “Delete it. Delete it all.”
“It’s done,” he confirms.
And I watch my Fictitious profile refresh into an error that reads, Page Not Found.
I hand the phone back to Moffy, and then I look up at Donnelly. “I deleted it.” I tell him first because I think he’ll be the most upset that the stories are offline. He reads them there. Maybe they were even a comfort to him.
Donnelly just nods, like he understands what I had to do.
I stare back at Page Not Found.
My stomach is sunken. I did the right thing, but I still wish I could’ve been ready. The loss is still sitting heavy.
And then Donnelly stands from the table. He comes behind my chair. His fingers shift my long hair off my cheeks. He tucks a few strands behind my ears, and his warm touch tingles my skin as he gently fits an AirPod in my left ear, then my right.
Music is already playing.
“Dreams” by The Cranberries.
With Ripley on my lap, I glance at the lyrics inked on my forearm and sentimental tears build. Donnelly returns to his chair further away, and I look around the table where everyone is seated again.
They’re all here for me. Every single person has stopped what they were doing to be here.
My universe might be cursed, but the night sky is lit with bright, burning things who refuse to let the darkness set over me.
36
PAUL DONNELLY
I park in the Hales’ driveway at something or other p.m. (JK, I know it’s 8 p.m.) Late for a Hale family dinner I’d think.
But Luna said they were eating at 8:30 tonight.
Farrow confirmed.
Shutting the door to one of Kitsuwon Securities’ SUVs, I leave my radio in the car, a plastic grocery store bag in my hand. Warm, inviting light glows in the windows of the Hale House, nighttime already overhead.
“Driveway,” I greet while staring out at the house. “You’ve let Loren Hale walk all over you for decades, so you must know how my chances are looking.” I pause. “No comment? Alright.” I sputter out a tense breath.
I’m not on-duty.
And I haven’t really been invited to this Hale family dinner.
It’s not a weekly tradition like the Cobalts’ legendary Wednesday Night Dinner, which is happening down the street tonight. Part of me wishes I could spy in on that blockbuster mystery, but then again, most of me just wants to be here.
