Chapter Twenty-Six
There was no one home. Luna had turned eighteen yesterday and now there was no one home.
‘It’s not good enough.’ Emmett looked around at his caravan. It was late, but the sun hadn’t set yet and the big window let in a sort of orange glow.
‘It’s perfect,’ Luna told him.
And maybe she was being selfish, wanting this when everything else around them was falling apart. Or maybe that was why she wanted this so bad. She wanted to be so entwined with Emmett, to let him into her body in the hope that nothing could tear them apart.
‘Should we?’ Emmett nodded his head towards his bedroom. ‘Or we don’t have to. If you’ve changed your mind.’
‘I haven’t,’ she told him, touching his arm lightly.
They didn’t spend a lot of time in Emmett’s bedroom, for obvious reasons, so it was interesting for Luna, getting this insight into him.
There were two single beds, one filled with neat piles of his stuff.
Mountains of textbooks, clothes, that sort of thing.
He pulled the little curtains closed over the small window.
It only made the room slightly less bright.
Luna swallowed, wondering if she should say what she was about to. She decided that it was an evening for being brave.
‘Emmett, I know you have, but I’ve never done this before.’
He stopped by the curtains, a knee on his bed. ‘You haven’t? We don’t have to do anything, Luna.’
‘I want to. I just wanted you to know.’
Now it was his turn to swallow. ‘We can go slow, and like, stop at any time. If you want to.’
‘I know.’
‘Even if you think we can’t stop. We can.’
‘Thanks Emmett.’ Luna took a step closer to his bed.
‘Thanks for trusting me.’
‘Always.’
Emmett was standing in front of her then, running the backs of his knuckles up her arms. They both watched, fascinated as a trail of goosebumps followed his move.
Then he was sliding his hand into Luna’s hair, kissing her, slow at first and then deeper, more persistent.
Luna always thought that sex was fast, frantic.
But Emmett was making it seem like they had all the time in the world.
And even though they didn’t, Luna wanted to believe, just for tonight, that they did.
‘Can I take this off?’ His hands were running along the bottom of her top.
Luna breathed in, but nodded.
Top off, it was her turn. Admittedly she was much less patient than Emmett, she had his T-shirt off and on the floor in seconds.
Luna had seen Emmett without a shirt on a million times. But it was still novel that she could touch him like this. Flatten her palm and run it up his side and across his peck, where there were a couple of hairs.
He followed suit and when his hand brushed over Luna’s nipple under her bra, she started to shake.
Really, it was a miracle that her legs were holding out.
‘Turn around,’ Emmett told her, and oh, that was easier. It felt so nice, the way he kissed the back of Luna’s neck, along to her shoulder, where he nudged her bra strap down. And then the other side. Then her bra was gone and his hands were snaking over the top of her shoulders and down.
‘Is this okay?’
Luna made a squeak that she hoped conferred agreement. This was better than okay.
‘You’re so beautiful, Luna.’
Luna wanted to laugh, because she wasn’t. She’d never been beautiful, but as Emmett turned her round and then helped her out of her shorts and knickers, she felt beautiful.
It was like an out of body experience, being naked in front of Emmett.
Like, how did they get here? Luna realised that while she was naked, he still had most of his clothes on.
It made her feel extra naked, but he was sitting on the edge of the bed, pressing kisses to her stomach now, and she was a bundle of nerve endings, incapable of speech.
Emmett guided her round to lie on the bed and Luna watched, enraptured as he took the remainder of his clothes off. He had to let her draw him, that’s what she thought. She’d never capture how gorgeous he was, but she’d die trying.
As he knelt over her, she thought that this must be it, but they weren’t there yet.
There were more kisses, in places that Luna never dreamed anyone would kiss her.
A soft groaning that Luna realised was all her.
She was so loose-limbed and away with it that she felt like a fragmented bundle of feelings by the time Emmett pushed into her.
It was uncomfortable, for a short second, and he was whispering into her ear until she relaxed, welcoming the feeling of being so full. It was delicious, the low unfurling of heat in the bottom of her stomach.
‘Does it feel okay?’ Emmett asked.
‘Don’t… stop,’ was all Luna could manage in reply.
That encouraged him and he pushed faster, harder.
Luna clung to his shoulders like they were a life raft in the middle of the ocean, thanking some higher being that one of them was so fit.
They rode the wave of it together and Luna wondered, genuinely, why they hadn’t just been doing this the whole time.
When it was over, Emmett rested on top of her, pressing gentle kisses to her forehead.
Her thighs ached.
He turned his face towards her and she brushed a loose curl back off his head.
‘What did you think?’ he asked, starting to move as Luna pulled him back on top of her. She liked feeling his weight.
‘I think I loved it,’ she told him, alarmed to find that she was close to tears. It was just a lot. Surely she’d crossed some sort of a threshold here. She’d had sex, her, with Emmett.
He kissed the wetness away from the side of her eyes, murmured that it was okay, he had her. Asked if she was okay over and over. And when she told him that she was, for a brief, fleeting second, she let herself believe it too.
Luna wanted to tell Emmett that she loved him. They hadn’t said it. But Luna knew she loved him.
She didn’t say it.
‘What will you do, if they sell the cottage?’ Emmett asked her.
They were laid on Emmett’s bed, Luna’s head on Emmett’s shoulder.
‘I don’t know. Dad said he wanted it, so maybe there’s still a chance…’ She didn’t really believe this to be true.
‘It’s fucked up.’
‘I know. It’s weird, once we’re adults it’s like we’re meant to just be responsible for our own decisions, but how do you leave it all behind?’
Summer would be over in a week. Luna didn’t know what would happen, after.
‘I don’t know.’
‘I guess you try and learn from it?’ Luna wondered. She did know that she didn’t want a relationship like her parents had. She wanted what she and Emmett had, where they were everything to each other. Or he was everything to her, at any rate.
Emmett laughed. ‘I’ve learned not to become a heroin addict alright.’
‘And I’ve learned that dark eyebrows are like catnip for middle-aged women.’ Luna said this because she didn’t want to say what she really felt.
Emmett laughed again. ‘Ah well, at least we have each other.’
She rolled over to face him, traced the outline of his eyes, his nose, his lips with her finger.
‘At least we have each other,’ she repeated back to him and hoped that it would always be true.
‘Should we go check on him?’ Luna asked sometime later.
Earl had been in the studio that afternoon working on what, Luna didn’t know. He was so frail.
He was meant to message when he was done so that Luna and Emmett could walk and get him, bring him back in his wheelchair.
But it was late now. They’d lost track of time and they hadn’t heard from him. Outside the window, blue lights started to flash. Luna knew that something was very wrong.
‘What’s that?’ Emmett asked.
‘An ambulance, I think.’
They got dressed quickly. Luna tried to ignore the sick feeling. Earl had to be okay; he said he’d be okay for a while longer.
But when they got outside and found Zadie, Ahmed and Mae all huddled together, Luna didn’t think that something was very, very wrong, she knew it. They were crying. Luna didn’t understand. Why were they crying? And why was Zadie holding Emmett back? Why wouldn’t she let him go to Earl?
There was a noise in Luna’s ears, like white noise. It buzzed and wouldn’t let her hear anything. But she could see people talking; half the caravan park had come to see what was going on.
‘He’d been sick for ages.’
‘Fucking cancer.’
That was Fred, the one with the horse who had picked Earl up from hospital last year. He’d taken his cap off, was holding it in front of his chest.
‘What do you mean?’ Emmett asked. He’d twisted round to speak to Fred. Next to him, Mae and Zadie were white as ghosts.
‘Picked him up from oncology myself last year, didn’t I? Poor sod.’
There was no time for any more questions though, because the ambulance people were backing out of the caravan then, carrying a stretcher.
‘Why is the blanket over his face?’ Luna heard shouting and then realised that it was her.
‘He won’t be able to breathe.’ They were all fighting to get through then, while some doctor who’d been summoned told them that there was nothing anyone could have done.
That he likely died earlier this evening.
Luna was sick right there in the grass but she still didn’t believe it.
It was an awful, awful thing, shock. It refused to let you believe what you knew to be true, dragging out the pain of not knowing.
But right then, Luna couldn’t believe it. She just couldn’t accept that Earl, a man who lived a life with so much colour in it, was gone.