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“Does anyone ever donate toys?” I asked.
“Oh, sure.” Luna beamed. “The kids love toys, they’re always a hit. But the real winner is just your time. They enjoy having someone to hang out with. It can be a pretty intensive process for the women who come here. They usually need a lot of therapy and time to rebuild themselves so they can be the best moms that they can. Job skills, education, drug and alcohol rehabilitation, all those things take time away from the kids, so it’s really nice when they have someone to read to them or play a game or something simple like that.”
I remembered how much Birdie used to love doing those things with me, and how she never complained that we didn’t own a single toy between us. It physically hurt me to acknowledge that part of our past, and I tried to wash the memory away as I acknowledged what Luna said.
“Hey.” Lucian appeared from behind us. “How’s it coming along?”
“Good,” I answered.
He glanced at the clock on the wall, and my eyes followed. It was hard to believe we’d already been here for a few hours.
“We have to get going. I have some business to finish up back at home.”
“Okay.”
I looked at Luna but didn’t know quite what to say.
“Thanks for helping,” she supplied.
“Thanks for showing me around. I’ll probably see you soon.”
She nodded, and Lucian guided me out the door with his hand on my back. He was quiet and distant, and my thoughts were occupied by the possibility of spending time with Luna. I wanted to, but the sudden cold front from my captor suggested he probably didn’t like the idea of it. I waited until we were safely tucked in the car and halfway home before I said anything.
“I think I’ll call Luna this week.”
He didn’t look away from the road, and his response was automatic. “Okay.”
“Okay?” I glanced at him across the seat. That was it? No argument?
He must have been thinking about it because it wasn’t until we pulled into the driveaway and shut off the ignition that he turned to me.
“Just be careful, Gypsy,” he said wearily. “Promise me you won’t go to the community with her.”
“Why?”
His fingers tightened on the keys in his hand. “I’m sure Luna is fine, and you have nothing to worry about. But it’s a different world out there, and it’s not something I want for you.”
AT THE FIRST OPPORTUNITY, I called Luna and set up a time to meet after class. Lucian told me he’d be working late all week, and I didn’t feel like sitting around the house by myself.
Luna was excited that I’d followed through, and before I knew it, we’d set up a lunch date on the Strip. We met at the Shake Shack across from the MGM, and she was ten minutes late. When she showed up with her wild red hair in a mess, she explained her blunder by pointing at the broken flip-flop that hung loose from her foot.
“I swear I go through a pair of these a week in this heat.” She blew the hair from her face, exposing eyes that were lighter than what I expected of the typical Roma. But her skin was coppery like mine, and something was hypnotic about her features.
She was a living, breathing piece of art that left you emptier if you dared to look away. In another lifetime, she would have made a great con artist because I doubted many men could resist the mysterious bombshell. But the longer I took in her features, the more I realized she was better suited to a different life altogether. With the symbolic tattoos on her fingers and the bangles dangling off her delicate wrist, I could just as easily imagine her in a field picking flowers or casting spells in the dark of night.
In a way, her free spirit reminded me of Birdie, and it made me miss my sister. But I tried not to dwell on it when Luna sat down across from me and let me indulge my craving for a bacon cheeseburger while she nibbled on some fries.
“God, this is delicious,” I moaned. “Lucian never eats stuff like this.”
Luna dunked a fry in some ketchup and popped it in her mouth. “He’s missing out. How long have you two been together?”
It took me a while to formulate the correct answer to that question. This friendship thing was a foreign concept for me, and I didn’t know how much to tell her. I could give her a million different scenarios at the drop of a hat, and I’d done it plenty of times. But I didn’t really want to.
I also didn’t want to betray Lucian by revealing too much about our relationship when I wasn’t even sure what was happening myself. So, I settled somewhere on a happy middle ground. “It hasn’t been long. It was somewhat of a shotgun wedding type scenario.”
