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I'm almost breathless with fury.
The effect of a throwaway comment can have on someone's lifelong view of themselves.
"What did your mother say?"
"She said'fuck them,'" she laughs. "Literally. That's what she said."
"Then she's the one you should've listened to. And now I'm the one you listen to. And you must know that you're exactly my type.You were sitting ten feet away from me on the other side of that door, and I was pining so hard, I talked to stinky armpits about you for three hours. So, forget you ever heard those other things, and just remembermywords."
The grateful look she gives me temporarily calms the rage that anyone would ever say those words to her.
"Do you think that's partly why you don't like staying in one place for too long? Are you running from something?"
She blinks, paling a little. "Er, you know, I'm not sure what that's about. It's part of the privacy issue. It's easier to stay in the shadows if no one knows where to look for me."
Something about the way she says it sews a thread of loneliness into the air, and I pull her tightly against me.
She sighs. "Anyway, back to the questions. I've been waiting a long time to ask you this one."
"Uh-oh. Let me pour myself a stronger drink."
"You're going to need it." she wriggles against me, and it takes me a moment to ignore the way fire spreads from my core, stroking my ever present desire for her and focus on her words. "So, the most serious of serious questions: that night, at the diner - how the fuckdid you know that that guy's underwear was Army Green?"
And I fall back, laughing so hard that she almost has to perform CPR on me to stop me choking.
**
I don't know if she ever looks at the file I gave her on me, but she never mentions it again.
I don't know if I want her to because it means that in some fucked up way that is supposed to make us "even", or just so that she really understands that there's nothing in that file that is of consequence when it comes to knowing the things that make me me.
But over the next few days, I do my best to never take a question she asks for granted.
If she's asking it, I do my best to give her an answer that is as well thought out as possible, even though my life long tendency has been to give as little information as possible.
It's a change that takes deliberate effort for me. But it comes more easily than I expected. I want her to know me.
And slowly the questions start coming slower, and far further between.
As if she's not scared that her chance to ask them will run out, and that my offer will, actually, always remain open.
Thirty-Nine
Luna
"Do you think heknows?"
"Knows what?"
"That he's not alone."
"How can he not?"
"I mean, he's Kingsley. He can be kinda clueless."
"That doesn't bode well for Baxter's future does it."
"Guys, she's moving. She's not a robot!"
