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He is speechless as I storm out of the room and as far away from him as I can get in the same house. I slam the door to my side of the house shut so hard the bang echoes, and I throw myself face down on the bed to cry. I sob silently into my pillow and allow myself to feel all of this. Waves of disappointment and hurt flow over me, and I let them pour out of me in my tears.
If I just let it out, I’ll be able to sort through my emotions and move on. A silly part of me thought this was it, that magic movie love moment. Movies are not real. I am beginning to think love isn’t either—maybe it never existed at all.
I felt alive and wanted when Spencer paid attention to me that way. He saw me. Spencer has looked straight through me all my life, but yesterday he finally looked at me. It felt good to be the object of his affection because he never has any affection for anything. I was special for a second. Until his whiskey wore off and the dickhead returned with his logic and sense.
What is wrong with him?
He can ignore how he feels, like he has no emotions. Other than grumpiness, is that even an emotion? I think it’s some incurable condition.
I hope I can’t catch it from him. I never want to be that miserable. Even now, as horrible as I feel, I can see the joy and accept things as they are. This won’t change me and who I am. There is sunshine, always.
Athena scratches at the door, and I get up to let her in. Animals can tell when we are not ourselves. She clambers onto my bed and cuddles her enormous body up next to me, giving me a lick on the face for extra loving. “You are the only thing I want in this divorce,” I say to the dog. “I will fight him for dog-custody.” I don’t know if that’s a thing, but even if she loves him more, she is my dog. I signed the adoption papers, and she is coming with me.
SEVENTEEN
SPENCER
Luna wouldn’t understand. She has no idea what I have been through in silence. My past is my past. I got married once before without thinking. Fresh out of college, with a start-up business gaining success. I had a giant ego, and a taste of success. I fell for a pretty woman who said she loved me—and then I had to give her almost everything I owned so that she didn’t steal my company. I almost lost everything because I impulsively followed my heart, and it led me straight into a painful, expensive divorce. I cannot trust my feelings—because they lied to me before.
You can never allow anyone so close to you. They will hurt you. Not just hurt you, but fucking destroy your whole damn life. It’s better to be alone than to feel that sort of pain. Rejection is a very sharp knife.
Being married to Luna would leave me in pieces eventually. She is stunning, young, and ambitious in her own way, and eventually, she will look at me and I won’t be enough to make her happy. Luna is happiness, and I can’t be that. I would fall short. Even drunk as a skunk, I am not fun, friendly or happy. I don’t think I’ve ever been genuinely happy in my life. It’s always been about chasing something else, something bigger. More. I need the next thing, and everything else fades into the background noise when I focus on that. Luna is not a background kind of woman, she demands to be seen. And fucking heard. Her opinions are so loud that I can hear them just looking at her sometimes.
I pace up and down the length of the living room, trying to stop being mad at myself. How did I fuck this up so badly? Every single time I try to make sense of it, all I can think about is the sex—she isn’t wrong. That part was un-fucking-real. All of it, even the drunken, fall-on-the-floor sex was amazing with her. There was a connection that made it more than just physical. It was deeper than that.
I’d give anything for another experience like yesterday with her, to be intimate with Luna again. But I have pissed her off so badly that she called me a word I know she hates, and I doubt we will ever get close enough to try again. I know I said we should never do it again, but I can’t stop thinking about it. She is angry and hurt and it is my fault. I am not expecting her forgiveness anytime soon. I am not angry at Luna, even if she called me names—I did this. I am mad as hell at myself.
I accused her of wanting my money. Luna has been around my entire life. I know she has never asked my sister or me for a cent. She is not a money grabber. I was just lashing out, and past trauma surfaced in an ugly way. I judged her by the way I had been treated before, not for who Luna is.
I’m wrong. I know I am.
The pent-up frustration, anger, and overwhelming regret, not over getting married but for hurting her feelings, is too much to process standing still. I have to do something to get it out of my system. While I want to break her door down and kiss her and push her onto the bed so I can show her that we didn’t make a mistake having sex, I don’t think she will let me touch her.
I drag myself down to my gym. Even though I have the tail end of a hangover, I still go. I need to run. I turn the lights down to dim because my eyes hate me for drinking, and my head still hurts. But I have this anger with nowhere to go, and if I just run until it no longer feels like it will explode out of me any second, then I can think about how to fix things with Luna.
Or at least smooth them over. Maybe I can try to talk to her before I go to bed. There isn’t a chance in hell I will sleep if I don’t at least try. I need to sleep. I’m exhausted. Every part of me is tired. I run until the sweat pouring out of me no longer stinks like whiskey, then I run some more so that I can’t breathe through the stitch in my side.
When I have successfully destroyed my body, and it is unable to hold on to any tension, and every muscle hurts to move, I collapse onto the gym floor. I sit in a puddle of perspiration for a while, knowing I need to apologize to Luna. No excuses, just an apology.
I haul myself up off the floor and into the hot steam shower in the gym, washing away the gross sweaty run and easing the muscles that I know will be hating me tomorrow. In the warm water, my mind wanders away to thoughts of Luna…how gorgeous she is naked. The way that damn pink dress teased me senseless all night and I could not wait to rip it off. Why doesn’t she dress like that more often? Show the world how beautiful she is? Then I get a jealous twinge thinking about anyone else seeing her how I have.
I let myself believe she chose that dress just for me, but I think it was more about the loud obnoxious pink color than me. Luna lives loudly, while I prefer quiet solitude. Luna does things for Luna, no one else, maybe that is why she is always so happy. I dry off and pull on a pair of shorts. It’s too hot, and I am too tired to bother getting fully dressed at this hour.
I stand outside her bedroom door. I don’t normally come over to her part of the house—it’s her space. I’m nervous. What if I knock and she won’t open or hear me out? She is probably asleep. It’s two in the morning. The moment I do knock, Athena barks from inside the room, as if I am an intruder. She won’t let up, even when I hear Luna hush her. The door opens a crack, and she looks at me. Her eyes are red and puffy. I made her cry, and I hate that.
The dog nudges the door open with her nose, squeezing out so she can get to me but opening it so I can see Luna too. “Can we talk, please?” I ask her, waiting for her to slam the door in my face. “Please.” I put my hand on the door when she starts to close it.
“Spencer, I don’t know what to say to you,” she says, shaking her head.
“I am sorry, Luna.” I owe her that if I say nothing else. “I reacted badly, and I am sorry.” She opens the door and stares at me. She says nothing, but I still have plenty to say to her. “I was married before, and it ended horribly. She was after money from the start, and that past hurt made me lash out at you.” Luna looks shocked, and slightly confused.
“Audrey never said anything,” she utters, trying to think back.
“Because she never knew about it. That was long before she worked with me. You kids were still in school.” That was back when I didn’t need my sister to survive every day. “Audrey doesn’t know everything about my life, well she didn’t always,” I say to Luna.
“I am not some gold digger, Spencer,” she says. “You said some horrible things earlier.” I did. I know I did.
“I got scared, defensive, and angry,” I say, not as an excuse this time. “I am sorry. I know who you are, Luna.” I have known her so long. I try to think back to when she first came steam-rolling into my sister’s life.
