Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
I’d never raced out of my house and into my car as quickly as I had when Moon called me.
I hadn’t even gotten the chance to change into something different, still in my white undershirt and work pants.
Moon had sounded so upset, so fucking heartbroken, I didn’t stop to second-guess anything except how many miles over the speed limit I needed to go.
Ultimately, I chose to go seven miles over, although I probably could’ve gone faster.
Moon needed me, and I wasn’t about to waste a single second.
Once I pulled into the parking lot, I put my car into park, threw my door open, and ran up the stairs to his door.
I knocked a couple of times, but didn’t get a response.
I thought maybe he was taking a minute to get to the door, so I waited. I waited like a normal person probably would’ve, but the ringing in my ears had picked up in such intensity, I could hardly hear anything else around me.
Knocking two more times, I put my ear up to the door to listen. “Moon? Moon, can you hear me?” No response. None that I could hear, at least.
Trusting my gut instincts, I turned the knob to his door, finding it unlocked.
Flutters of anxiety swirled in my gut, mixing enough to make me sick.
I pushed the door open, letting myself inside and fumbling to lock it behind me.
It was dark, all the lights shut off, not even a single path illuminated for me to watch where I was going.
I fished for my phone from my pocket so I could use it as a flashlight just as I ran into something.
I stopped, stumbling for a moment. When I finally got the flashlight on, I could see it was his bike, just sitting right in front of the door, like he’d left it there in a hurry. I didn’t see him anywhere close, but when I panned the light to my right, I noticed his bedroom door was cracked open.
“Moon?” I called out, walking carefully toward it. As I got closer, I heard sniffling and what sounded like quiet cries. I walked faster, breaching the doorway, and shone the flashlight just below the bed.
Moon was curled up in his blankets, crying face down into the mattress. “Oh, Moon.” I sighed, stepping closer to him.
He peered up from the bed, blinking at me. “You’re really here. You really came.”
“You called, and I answered. I promised I would.”
His lower lip trembled in the darkness just as more tears started to fall down his cheeks. “It’s okay now, Moon. I’ve got you. Can I join you?”
I think he nodded, though I couldn’t be totally sure.
He lifted the blankets, though, and moved just enough to give me room.
I turned my flashlight off, pocketing my phone as I lay down beside him.
He was shaking enough to make the entire bed shake, too.
I wrapped my arms around him as much as I could, letting him rest his head right on my chest. “I’ve got you.
Don’t worry.” I just wanted to comfort him.
I needed to comfort him. This was the only way I knew how—to be with him in the darkness, holding him, making sure he knew I was there, and I wasn’t going anywhere.
“It hurts,” he sobbed. “It hurts so bad. Everything hurts so fucking bad, Em.”
My hands rubbed up and down his back, soothing him gently. “What hurts, Moon? How can I help you?”
He took a deep, shuddering breath. “My heart. My heart hurts so much. I don’t think anyone can help me. It can’t be fixed. I can’t be fixed.”
Hearing him so distraught damn near broke me.
The annoying fucking ringing had calmed down just enough to hear how his voice ended on a whine as he spoke, his breaths little more than harsh pants against my tear-stained shirt.
“You aren’t broken. I promise you aren’t broken.
Nothing needs to be fixed. For right now, I’ll be here for you, but there’s nothing to be fixed because nothing is broken. ”
“You’re wrong.”
“How so?”
“Because.”
“Because why? Hm? Why do you think you’re broken?”
One of his hands came up, gripping my shirt in his fist. He sniffled and gasped, his back rising and falling against my arms repeatedly.
“I’ve been broken since I was fifteen years old, Em.
I don’t know who I am without it. I don’t know who I used to be.
I don’t know who I am anymore. I’m fucking shattered, and no amount of glue can fix me. ”
He rushed all the words out. The vitriol with which he said them prominent, spitting the words out like they’d been lying in wait for years and years, slowly building and bubbling until this exact moment.
“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry for whatever happened to make you think that.
I’m so sorry someone made you feel like that.
I don’t think you’re broken in the slightest, but if you think you are, then I’ll just hold your pieces together for now, okay?
Whatever you need, whenever you need it. I’m not going anywhere.”
I held him as he went silent except for his cries.
I held him tight, making sure I was holding him together while he let himself break down in my arms. I understood all too well how it felt to lose parts of yourself, sobbing uncontrollably to the point you start to wonder if you’d ever stop.
I knew his throat must’ve hurt by this point, and his mouth must’ve felt so dry from how much he’d been crying.
“You know,” I started, rubbing the back of Moon’s head in an attempt to soothe him. “When Harrison died, I didn’t cry for three months. Not a single tear.”
“Harrison?”
“My twin brother.”
Moon gasped into my shirt just as his back started to shake again, more tears taking him over. “The brother.”
I nodded, rubbing circles against the back of his neck.
“Yeah, the brother. I didn’t cry when I found him.
I didn’t cry when I was at his funeral. I didn’t cry while everyone was giving me their condolences.
I thought something was wrong with me. I truly thought I was broken, too.
I was tasked with cleaning out his house and sifting through all of his belongings.
One day, I was going through the final haul, which was this storage shed he had in his backyard.
I’d gotten through all the memories without shedding a tear, but the moment I went into that shed and saw our old fishing poles, I lost it.
Fucking lost it. I screamed so loud, the neighbors called the cops on me, thinking I’d been murdered or something.
I fell to the ground and just fucking lost it.
I punched the floor, I screamed into it, and I cried all three months’ worth of tears, which held decades of love in them.
I went through at least eight stages of grief at that moment. ”
“Did you ever stop?”
“Eventually. I cried for four days straight. I cried for so long, I had to go to the hospital for dehydration. I cried all the tears out of my body. Literally. I couldn’t make any anymore.
” I leaned my head back, sighing as I tried to remember the fuzzy days afterward.
“I’d held it in for so long that when it all finally came rushing out, I was inconsolable.
I refused to talk to anyone about my grief, not even my ex-wife, and we were married at that point.
She tried her best to get me to open up, but I couldn’t.
I think I’d been afraid of something like that happening, and when it did, I realized just how lost I actually felt. ”
Moon had calmed down into sniffles at that point, his head still pressed firmly against my chest. “Lost. Yeah, I get that feeling. I’m so fucking sorry about your brother. I can’t imagine…” He’d trailed off, but I knew what he was thinking.
“Yeah, it’s still really fucking hard. I’ve had to cry a lot, and I’ve had to open up to a lot of people a lot of times because I realized something extremely important. You know what that was?”
“What?”
“That I couldn’t do it alone. I couldn’t grieve like that by myself, or handle all of those hopeless emotions all on my own.
You’re trying to handle a lot on your own, Moon.
You’re going to lose yourself if you don’t let someone in.
When I say I’m here, I mean it with my entire heart.
I know what it’s like to bottle everything up, and I know what happens when it finally explodes. ”
He stayed silent for a little bit. I kept rubbing his back, kept rubbing circles against his neck, and I let him sort through every thought until he was ready to say something. “You’re a light.”
“A light?”
“It’s so fucking dark all the time, Em. So goddamn dark. But you—you’re a light. I can see you, no matter how dark it is, and that’s fucking terrifying. It’s horrifying.”
Was I not supposed to tear up at that? Because I was, and there was no going back from it. I just hoped Moon couldn’t tell, since I had a feeling he wouldn’t like that very much. “Every ounce of sincerity feels terrifying when you’ve convinced yourself you don’t deserve it.”
“I’m really not sure I do deserve it, or you.”
“Would your siblings deserve it?”
“Of course they would.”
“Okay, then. That’s your answer.”
“That’s different.”
“It isn’t.”
Moon groaned, pulling his head away from my chest. My eyes had adjusted enough; I could see his basic outline. “I’m so tired of people saying that! It is different. My situation is different.”
I grasped his cheeks in my hands, holding his face gently.
I looked into his eyes, hoping he could see how serious I was.
“Your situation may be different, but how you deserve to be treated as a human is the same. You deserve to be heard. You deserve to be happy. You deserve to have support. You deserve to have a light at the end of a dark tunnel, or however you may view me. I want to be here for you, I said I’d be here for you, and I damn well meant it when I said that. ”
“Fuck.” He inhaled, shuddering through it. “I don’t even know what to say to that.”
“Then don’t say anything at all. Just listen and take it to heart.”
I pulled him back into my chest, resting his cheek on me.
He didn’t speak, but he didn’t cry, so I took that as a sign of true comfort.
I was afraid that if I had seen him in the daylight—the way his deep, sad eyes would’ve looked, drowning in tears, I’d have collapsed.
Something in my heart couldn’t stand the idea of seeing Moon so distraught, and I wasn’t sure what it meant for me.
I wasn’t sure just how much of a friend I could’ve been for him with how intensely I wanted to keep him safe.
I wanted to hold his heart in my hands, cradling it in nothing but warmth and safety.
It didn’t matter at the moment whether I could be a friend and stay as a friend—all that mattered was if I could be there for him.
I knew I could. I knew I would. I was determined to be in Moon Miller’s life however I possibly could be.