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Jackson's gaze burns into me as he agrees with a brisk nod.
I avoid looking at him, focusing on the hand stroking Clyde. “Is it okay that I came?”
Out of my peripheral, I see him take a couple of steps towards me. “Why wouldn't it be?”
“I didn't think you'd want to see me.”
“I always want to see you.”
My head jerks up so fast I almost give myself whiplash. “What?”
Jackson shrugs nonchalantly, as if what he just said is nothing. Narrowing my eyes, I scan him quickly. Swaying a little, looking a touch more dishevelled than he did when I first arrived, eyes red-rimmed but I don't think it's just from crying. “Are you drunk?”
Cracking a boyish smile, Jackson holds his forefinger and thumb a small distance apart in the universal sign for 'just a little bit.'
“Jackson…”
“My mom is dead, Luna. I'm allowed to have a couple of drinks.”
Those blunt words shut me right up. “I'm-”
“Please, don't say you're sorry.“ The stall door next to Clyde’s groans as Jackson leans against it, shoving his hands in pockets. “I'm so fucking sick of people saying they're sorry.”
I snap my mouth shut.
“She was in Michigan,” Jackson says after a beat of silence. “This whole time, she was in Michigan.” He kicks at the ground, a sarcastic laugh leaving him as he shakes his head. “I dunno, I just thought if you abandon your kids so you can live your own life, you'd go somewhere cooler than Michigan. Europe, maybe. Or Japan. Her mom still lives there.”
“You ever meet her?”
“I don't think she even knows we exist.”
This would be a great moment,I think to myself,for empathy. To tell him I can relate to that. Family not knowing you exist.
I don’t.
“You know I didn’t know I was Japanese until I was seven? No one thought it was important to tell us.” His laugh, God, his laugh, so bitter and hurt it hurts me too. “I heard her talking in a foreign language on the phone, I asked what it was, and she said Japanese. And that was it. That’s all she ever gave us.”
I don’t reply. I wouldn’t know what to say. All I can do is listen.
“I hate that I care enough to hate her.”
Fuck, and don’t I understand that too.
Jackson’s gaze flicks upward, landing on me, and I shift under the weight of its intensity. An involuntary shiver shoots up my spine when he takes a step forward, hands outstretched ever so slightly. “I'm gonna hug you now, okay?”
I'm pretty sure it’s a rhetorical question because the words barely leave his mouth before I'm enveloped in a strong pair of arms, the smell of hay and horse mixing with fresh grass and spring and a hint of booze.
I don't give myself time to overthink it. I just wrap my arms around his waist, wanting to cry at how my body melts, comfortable for the first time in months. Except for a few days ago when I woke up with him in my bed, before the panic and the gut-wrenching sadness set in, and I chose to be angry instead of relishing in it.
I hate that this moment of pure content is happening because something horrible happened to him, but I don’t think about it right now.
I'm just thinking about him, hugging me like his life depends on it, and me hugging him right back.
43
LUNA
“You're Luna, right?”
