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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, and nothing, 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 live now, 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 amazing things 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.”
She holds onto my gaze, and I hope she believes me and what I’m saying. Then she whispers, “Will you spend the night? Just to sleep.”
“I was about to ask if I could,” I tell her, then I press a gentle kiss to her lips before I stand. She watches me rise, then she brings the two ends of the towel tighter around her body and follows suit. Back in her room, I mention how I need to speak to her brother for a quick sec.
She might think it’s about how I’m leaving his room and how I’ll have Quinn post up outside his door, but it’s more than that.
I turn on the brightest lights of the hotel room, and Xander groans into a squint. He shields his eyes. “Everything okay?” he asks tiredly.
“I’m getting Quinn to stay outside your door. I’m gonna be in your sister’s room.”
Xander cringes. Can’t be a pleasant feeling being reminded I’ve banged his sister, even if we’re not doing anything now. Surprisingly though, he asks, “Things are better between you two then?”
“I think so.” I hope so. I take a seat on the edge of my mattress, facing his bed.
Xander rolls onto his back and starts pulling himself up. “If all she wants is your dick, maybe you should be playing hard to get.”
Who says I don’t also want her pussy? He’s not the audience for that comment, so I’m keeping my mouth shut. I wanna say I have enough experience to overturn a teenager’s relationship advice, but I don’t. I have as much as Xander does in this realm.
