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“Luna, it’s me,” I whisper, my pulse gradually ascending.
The sheets of her king-sized bed are rumpled. A laptop is folded open on a pillow, but Luna isn’t on the bed. I flip on a light. Her room is empty, but I hear the shower running.
Adrenaline overrides fear, and I sprint to the bathroom. Not even wasting time calling her name, I go for the handle. It’s unlocked, and as soon as I charge inside, the single thought in my head isplease be alive.
I won’t survive if she dies; in this second, I feel that truth radiate through me.
“Luna?” I bolt for the glass shower stall. She’s sitting on the black tile, her head tucked against her knees and thin arms wrapped around her bent legs. Hot water pelts her naked body, steam billowing to the ceiling, and with my heart shredded in my throat, I snag a towel and quickly rush into the shower.
“Luna?” I call out, her head just barely lifting. Her eyes are puffy and bloodshot, and I swivel the faucet, shutting off the cascade of water.
Bending down to her, I wrap the towel around her shoulders, cocooning her, but I’m checking the wet tile for my razor. Blood, is there blood? No—what if it washed down the drain? I see her watching me search, and so I end up sitting in front of Luna, slowing my movements. I edge closer to her, spreading my legs open so she’s between them. She hardly stirs.
Then I gently touch her left arm, checking for cuts. Right arm. Her legs. Insides of her thighs. When I lift my gaze to hers, knowing she’s not harmed, an onslaught of emotion slams against me. My eyes sear, my nose runs, and I wipe it with the back of my hand before I hold her splotchy, flushed cheek, my fingers nestling in her wet hair.
She hasn’t torn away from my gaze, but hers is so wrecked.
“What’s going on, Luna?” I whisper.
She opens her mouth, but she’s choked for words. It takes her a long time to speak, but when she does, her voice quakes. “I just really want my memories back.” She breaks into a gutted noise, sobbing against her knees. “They’re not coming back like I hoped they would.”
I touch the back of her head and kiss her forehead. I weave my arms around her small frame.
Grief rattles her body, but she manages to look up again. “I know it was wishful thinking,” she says in the smallest voice, “but I started believing writing would bring her back. I’ve written and written and written, andnothing, Donnelly.I remember nothing. It’s lost—it’s really lost, or she would’ve come back by now.”
I hold her face while her tears slip.
She’s mourning the forgotten past, and I can’t pretend to know what it feels like to lose three years of my life. I can’t pretend to understand that pain, but I feel hers excavating a space inside me. “I know you expected to remember more,” I murmur, brushing her wet cheek with my thumb, “but what’s the rush, Luna? The past isn’t a place I ever want to live inside.”
It’s where I’ve had to be. It’s what she lost.
“Memories are all we have,” Luna whispers tearfully. “When I’m gone, when you’re gone, that’s all that’s left of us, and I want to remember you. I want you to remember me. I don’t want to leave an invisible footprint on the world.”
My nose flares, talk of invisibility hurtling me to the past and our present and towards the future. I dip my head closer to hers. “You won’t,” I breathe. “We aren’t invisible—you and me. Everyone can see us now, and I see you.” I look into her while she’s looking into me. “I’ve seen you, and even if you don’t have all of the past to hold on to, you can still make new memories. You can livenow, Luna. You can live the life that you get to choose. The universe is yours, space babe, and you’re going to do and experience amazingthings on my planet—I just know it.”
Her eyes well up again. “Dancing in your bedroom at four a.m. Eating homemade turkey sandwiches,” she says, recalling the new memories she’s been creating. “Kissing that makes my whole body sing. Talking so late into the night, I wished morning never came.”
I start getting choked up.
“Loving when I should be grieving. Smiling when I believed I couldn’t be happy. Hopeful when I only knew to doubt,” she whispers. “I’ve experienced plenty of amazing things already on Earth, and they’re all because of you.”
I pinch my watering eyes. Fuck me. Then I cup her cheeks again, this time with both hands. She finally releases her death-clutch on her legs, and she hugs onto me.
I look at her lips, then at her eyes while she’s searching mine, and I breathe, “My heart is a chasm of everything I know and love, and it will always be filled with you.” I can’t look away from her. “I love you, Luna. I love you so bad, not having you just hurts.”
Her breath shortens, more tears cascading.
“Luna?” I try to catch her drifting gaze. Is she sad? Distressed? Can’t tell.
She swallows hard to ask, “If I told you I loved you too, would you even believe me?” It comes out tiny and feeble.
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Because I’m obsessed.” She rubs at her eyes, frustrated. “Because it hasn’t been long enough. Because I don’t have her memories.”
Maybe that’s partly why she feels like she needs them sooner rather than later. She thinks I won’t believe in her love for me if she can’t remember the years we had together.
“I’d believe you,” I tell her. “Truth be told, it’s harder for me to doubt you, space babe.”
