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Or maybe I’m the one isolated and marooned.
“What are we?” I whisper.
It blows him back. He looks to the ceiling, then the wall, trying to hide his face in every direction.
Maybe I didn’t ask that right. I blink a ton. “Are you…my boyfriend?”
Donnelly runs a hand against his neck. “Not exactly.” He returns to my gaze. “We were hoping…but we didn’t get there yet.”
Oh. I search my brain, but nothing is there to unscramble. I keep thinking this new info will crop up a puzzle piece, a memory, but I can’t fill the missing picture if my mind is empty.
“You said…you said you were partly there tonight,” I say softly. “Does that mean you know about…?”
“About?”
I shouldn’t ask him. I could ask anyone else, but if Original Luna hoped to be with Donnelly, then maybe confiding in him is what she would do, most of all. And isn’t she still me?
“I can’t remember anything about what happened, and I had a rape kit done. And they said it came back…I just want to know if you saw anything or—”
“You weren’t raped,” he cuts in and then reaches out a hand. He’s holding my hand. I like how he encases my palm. It slows my racing pulse.
But I blink, emotions barreling towards me at full speed. “Uh-uh, that doesn’t make sense. I’m a virgin. And they said the test came back…” My voice tapers off at the way he’s staring at me. He’s offering the answers in his eyeballs.
I want to scoop them out. Eat them up. Metaphorically. He’d probably think I was a total freak if I mentioned that out loud.
“I….” I grapple for words.
“You aren’t a virgin, Luna,” he says, helping me out.
When did I lose my virginity? I gasp for breath a little. How is this possible? Three years. I’m missing three years!
He adds, “We had sex.”
“We had sex?” Shock widens my eyes.
I had sex. With Donnelly?
Whoa. Whoaaa. I give him a short once-over. I can hardly believe that happened. He’s so much older, probably twenty-six…or twenty-eight? I’m older too, I know, and maybe he’s more experienced. It wouldn’t stop me or bother me. But no way would my dad be understanding of that age-gap. Maybe he doesn’t know.
Donnelly clarifies, “The morning before all of this”—his eyes flit around the hospital room, then back to me— “we had consensual sex. So whatever bodily fluids they found in that exam, they were from me.”
I touch my eyes, real relief hitting me. “So I wasn’t…?”
“You weren’t,” he says strongly.
A tidal wave crashes against me, lurching me back into the pillows. My hands fly to my face, and I sink down to hide this breakdown beneath the blankets. Cocooned underneath them, I choke out, “I thought…I thought the worst.”
“It didn’t happen,” he reassures and pats the blanket lump that is me. “That’s your forehead?”
“My nose,” I sniff, and my lips rise a little just thinking about him patting me. His presence feels needed, necessary, as if he’s the sole light among space and time. I calm myself in two breaths, peeling the blanket off my splotchy face, I ask, “Can you…can you come closer?”
He rises off the stool but stops short. Distraught, he clamps a hand on his head. “Look, I’d already be on that bed, holding you—”
“Then why aren’t you?”
His face nearly cracks. “You don’t remember me.”
“I want to.” I hate that I can’t see what I’ve already lived through.
“I know,” he says. “I know.” He’s looking around the room. Don’t leave.
I prop myself on my weak elbows, fighting to stay more upright. Donnelly is a stranger to me. I have no idea who he really is—no memories, no past conversations floating in my brain. He’s nothing to me now, but he was something.
Original Luna had three years’ worth of failures and mistakes to learn from. She has knowledge, and I trust her.
“Can we pretend for a second?” I ask him. “Please.”
“Pretend that you know me?”
I nod rapidly, and I already prepare my heart for him to say, that’s a bad idea. Or worse, that’s dumb.
Instead, Donnelly is game.
He climbs on the hospital bed without falter, and I scoot to make room. Carefully, gently, his muscled arm curves around my bony shoulders, and I find myself resting my weight against him. My cheek to his heart.
True to his word, he’s holding me.
It feels really good to be held, but the newness of this embrace is tingling my skin, speeding my heart. Do I remember this with him? Is that why this feeling is hyper-sensitive?
I wish I knew. One of his hands is on my hip, and I trace his veins running from his knuckles to his wrist. Maybe being in the arms of a stranger should be more nerve-wracking, but I’ve never been the cautious type. I think it worries my parents more than anyone.
