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“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 in my room, 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.
“Never been…or maybe I have.” I spin in a circle on the chair, rotating back around just in time to catch the shake of his head.
“You haven’t been,” he tells me.
I wonder why.
“I’m gonna take you there,” he adds, putting a cigarette between his lips.
“For a ham hoagie?”
“Whatever hoagie you want, I’ll get you.” He lights the cigarette, taking a deep drag, then blowing off to the side. “It’s a date.”
A date. I start to smile. “We have those a lot?”
“Sadly, no.” He squints like this past is a harsher light. “We never really dated outside our rooms.”
I tap my glass bottle. If we wanted to be together, then what stood in our way…or rather, who? “Was it my dad? Did he forbid us from seeing each other or something?”
“He didn’t make it any easier, not at first,” Donnelly says, “but it wasn’t him in the end. It was my family.”
It takes him several minutes, but he explains how his family has been trying to extort my family. With the downturn of his gaze and the tightness of his voice, I get the sense they’re behind my injury that night. Everything becomes a bit clearer—and not because I remember—but because the nurse’s foul attitude towards Donnelly has context. Especially knowing he’s been undercover trying to rat out his family.
When he finishes, he has a glazed look in his eyes. He sucks on his cigarette, his tattooed forearm resting on his knee.
I haven’t totally considered how hard this must be on him. Partially because I didn’t know what actually went down. Now that I have more pieces, I ask softly, “Can I do anything?”
“For what?” He blows smoke over his shoulder, away from me.
“For you.” I shrug. “You’ve been doing a whole lot for me.”
“This is enough,” he breathes.
I frown. “But I’m not really doing anything.”
“You’re alive, Luna.” He holds my gaze. “And I get to look at you and talk to you and go on dates with you. What more could I want? That’s everything to me.”
It barrels into me in the brightest, most luminous way possible. I’m choked for a second, but I manage to say, “So we’re dating?” Is that what we are? “And we’ve never dated outside our rooms before?”
“You just got out of the hospital.” He looks me over, and I wonder if he’s thinking, you don’t remember me, Luna. “We should take this slow. But I can talk to security about going out in public together. I’m hoping we’ll be able to now that most of my family is locked up. If you’d want to, that is.”
“I want to,” I say with a nod, eagerness brewing in my body. The Pringle can is tucked between my thighs, and I eat another chip, not taking my eyes off Donnelly as he picks himself off the floor. He’s holding the glass soda bottle and cigarette leisurely with one hand, and he comes towards me.
My heart flutters. “I think earthlings have a strange effect on me.”
“All earthlings or just me?” He spins my chair, and I sit cross-legged while I rotate 360.
My room whirls past me. “This is the first real close encounter I’ve had with your species, so I can’t be too sure.”
He keeps spinning me, and my heart keeps flying. The lava lamp, fishbowl, and his tall build blur together as he says, “So you know, I’m one-of-a-kind. There aren’t a lotta humans like me. Just ask the mirrors, the floor, Moondragon, they’d all agree.”
“Moondragon?”
“The little fishy guy over there.” He twirls me in another circle, and I catch a glimpse of the goldfish swimming laps in the bowl.
I intake a sharp breath. I told Donnelly about my fish. Moondragon. It’s not lost forever, which means I confided in someone.
