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I frown. “That’s awful,” I mutter.
He takes a seat beside me. “I got used to it, but the pillowcase was one spot they didn’t really look too often.”
The last thing I find in the pillow: an old photo. The edges are yellowed and creased, but the picture is clear. A smiling little boy is on the shoulders of a young guy, whose cheeks are a bit sunken but he’s smiling up at the boy too. They have the same chestnut brown hair. Same blue spinel gem eyes. Only, the little boy’s gaze is a billion watts brighter. Livelier.
“Is this you?” I point to the boy.
“Yeah. And my dad.”
I study his father again. He’s really young. “He kinda looks like Ethan Hawke.”
He smiles, scratching the back of his neck. “That’s what you said the first time.”
“You’ve showed me your hiding spot before,” I realize and slip the cash, cigarettes, and photo back, wishing this jarred a memory. Alas, I’m memory-less.
He’s shaking his head.
I freeze. “You didn’t show me?”
“I just showed you the picture. The hiding spot didn’t come up.”
So perfect Original Luna didn’t know every little thing about Donnelly then. I may have a leg up on her in this stupid pseudo competition in my head. I’ve never been competitive, so I don’t know why I’ve decided to compete against myself. Maybe it’s another amnesia symptom: the sudden urge to defeat my alternate version.
I would ratherbecomeher and seep into her memories of him, but that still seems unrealistic.
I place the pillow behind me. “Why show me now?” I ask.
“Guess I’d rather tell you now than later.” He reaches back and reclaims the cigarettes from the pillow. “It’s not easy for me to talk about my upbringing and some deeper things, but I wanted to with you. I meant to.”
“Did I share a lot about myself with you?”
“I think so. I got the sense you did, anyway.” He leaves the bed, digging in his pocket and unearthing a lighter. “But you had limits andnot nowsornot tonights.”
He must not have been pushy.
Slowly, I stand and glance at his drawer.The condoms.Questions spring in my mind again, but he asks if I’m hungry.
“I could eat,” I say.
So after a kitchen pit stop and pantry raid, we end up in my bedroom with three cans of Pringles, cinnamon Pop-Tarts (untoasted), and warm glass bottles of Fizz. He’s lounging on the fuzzy rug, and I’ve occupied this white globe chair that’d be perfect in a NASA spacecraft.
Now that he’s inmyroom, intrigue tries to overtake my appetite. I only munch on a few Pringles and sip my Fizz. I watch Donnelly lean back on one hand. He seems at home here.
Yet, he asks, “You care if I smoke?”
“Did your Luna care?”
He opens his mouth, words caught for a millisecond. “You didn’t.”
“So…why get my permission twice?”
“Because you don’t remember the first time, and I think it’s only right that I ask again.”
I hate the idea that I might change my mind on certain things and be too different from Original Luna, but at least I know, in this, we’re the same.
“You can smoke.” I even switch on the air filter on my nightstand. Back on the chair, I ask, “Where’s the best ham hoagie you’ve ever had?”
“Wawa.” He says it so fast, then smacks the cigarette pack on his palm.
