LUNA #2
“No,” he says, adamant. Frustrated. But when his head shakes, he must see the contradiction. “Master/slave is very popular. Lots of people like that. So yes, people participated in that fantasy, but—”
“But not you.”
“I did,” he’s quick to correct. Though I would have let him off easy. “I’m not claiming I never participated. But it wasn’t because I wanted to. It was because…”
She wanted to?
That could not possibly be his argument.
Yet, I angle my body toward him and latch onto every word. I may never understand, but I can try. I can try.
He rubs along the tendon in his wrist, back and forth.
Grinding into his pulse point until he must feel his heart in his ears.
“I do have a thing… It’s like a…” He thinks for a moment.
“It’s like a form of voyeurism. I enjoy other people getting off.
Especially with kinks because normal sex is fine, but…
when you fuck somebody in a way that is their nastiest fantasy, that, for me, that does it.
The look in their eyes, it just…” He inhales as his eyes close.
“I don’t know. But that’s what I had on the island.
There was a party room at the manor where people could fuck or watch without shame.
Fantasies were unlimited, participation was encouraged, and nothing was forbidden provided all parties enjoy the experience.
And the women did enjoy it, whether you believe that or not. ”
His tone turns defensive at the end. I watch him retreat in his body language, his shoulders subtly pulling in, his hips leaning away, torso twisting to face the moon.
He braces himself for my judgment like he fears it.
And while I truly feel as though he deserves the condemnation for his selfish, greedy choices, for the very first time, I question how it could be possible.
How could this man have committed such a gross crime? This man who offers me kindness and endless understanding. Who came back for me not once, but twice when his guilt was too much to leave me behind.
“Why did you do it?” I ask, my voice soft. Cautious.
Seconds pass while he ponders. He shakes his head. “I don’t know.” He hunches forward and rubs his forehead with the heel of his palm, eyes closing. “I mean, I fucked up. I know I did. But it wasn’t like what you think. I wasn’t some fucking monster who set out to destroy people’s lives.”
“I know you weren’t.”
Palm held in front of his face, he turns to look at me.
I bring the jacket up to my neck and wrap myself in it. “I know you’re not evil, Sawyer. You don’t have to convince me of that… I just want to know what you were thinking. I want to make sense of it. So I can understand you.”
The way you understand me. I don’t speak the words, but I know that he hears them.
He’s quiet for several seconds while he stares at me. I don’t think he’s trying to remember how it all started. He looks like he’s trying to decide something. If he should tell me or not. If he should trust me.
I can’t blame him, but it crushes me anyway.
Swallowing, I move my attention to my coat and snake my hand from under it. The broken shell clips my knuckle as I reach in to retrieve the necklace, and when I pull it out, I don’t even look at Sawyer to gauge his reaction.
I lay the offering on his thigh and slowly retreat, watching his hand to see if he picks it up.
He does. He lifts the shell necklace and quietly studies it while I do the same to him. Without a word, he lays it back on his lap and stares down at the broken shell.
“I know you think I don’t care about you,” I lift my hand to his arm.
Pull it back. Lightly grasp his shoulder.
“But I do. You know me better than any person who’s ever spoken my name.
I have told you things I wouldn’t dream of telling those I owe my life to…
You have more than my respect. You have—”
My heart.
Silence swallows the rest of my sentence while my nose itches all the way down my throat. It worsens as I swallow and pangs behind my eyes.
Sawyer doesn’t make me say it. He fingers the leather string of his necklace and relaxes his shoulder beneath my hand.
“I don’t know a way to explain it that’s succinct.”
“I have all the time in the world.”
“It won’t be good enough for you.”
My hand moves down his arm. I squeeze just above his elbow. “It’s already good enough for me. I don’t need to know why you did what you did to know that you’re a good man.”
He turns his head, then lets at least a minute pass. My bones grow cold as I wait, but the hand that holds Sawyer’s arm never shakes.
“If you really want to understand… you have to know that my mother was my best friend. I didn’t really make friends growing up, and when my mom was ill, I usually skipped school. I skipped a lot of school. And my dad…”
He lifts his head but keeps his eyes pointed forward.
“My father was a prick. Every time he lost his job, my mom and I would spend the days roaming town, the park, the pier, the beach. We didn’t have any money, but she was creative.
” Sawyer closes his eyes and turns his head to punctuate his words, sincerity filling every syllable.
“So creative. She filled the day with these imaginative games and ‘challenges’—which usually involved robbing a hot dog stand.”
Sawyer laughs, a smile lingering in its wake.
“And when we were at the beach, there was this one make-believe game we liked to play most where we pretended we were trapped on a deserted island. But—” He holds up a finger.
“Unbeknownst to us, there were creatures living there already who regarded us with such nobility that they made us their queen and prince… I’m pretty sure she ripped off Where the Wild Things Are, but we had fun and it made the hours pass, so.
” He lifts a shoulder as if it’s meaningless, but I can tell it’s everything by the way his smile slowly falls.
“We called it Paradise Island. And while most of the time it was just a game, a few times, my mother believed it was actually real. But…” He lifts a hand.
“I didn’t care. I didn’t mind her delusions, for the most part.
I was okay to go along with them because they were a part of who she was, and I loved who she was. ”
He stares down at his knees, his mouth shut. I turn fully toward him and cross my legs just to make sure he knows he has my full attention.
“But?” I prod. Then regret it a moment later.
He lets out a breath that quakes with emotion.
I can't see his eyes, but I know they’re watery just by the way his body tenses.
“But I overestimated her ability to take care of herself, and I really hated my dad. When I graduated, I went to a university across the ocean to get away from him and figured I’d just …
come back for my mother. I planned to fly her to London as soon as I could get the cash. ”
He sets the necklace to the side and rubs his thighs.
“But two weeks in, my mom’s blowing up my phone with her fucking imaginary drama, telling me there’s a bomb in my dorm room, and my bunkmate’s trying to kill me…
I wanted a fresh start. I was used to her illness. And I didn’t take it seriously enough.”
My hand loosens its grip as I’m taken back to a newspaper article, the one and only bit of information I could find on the woman.
Oh no.
“A few days later, she stops answering my calls. I wait a week before I fly back home and find out she’d drowned.
” Sawyer slumps forward. “Her body was still waiting at the fucking morgue for someone to claim her. My dad didn’t even…
” A couple seconds pass before he just shakes his head.
“Anyway, the police gave me what they assumed was a suicide note. It said, ‘Don’t fret, darling. I’ll be waiting on Paradise Island. ’”
I let my hand slip from his arm as my stomach drops, my heart lurching into my throat. The article mentioned his mother’s suicide, along with the note. It never occurred to me that it was written to him.
It’s worse than I thought.
“I don’t think she killed herself,” he says, shaking his head. “I think she was trying to swim to some imaginary place we made up when I was a kid. I think she was just trying to escape her head, and she didn’t have me there to help her.”
I shuffle closer to him but don’t reach out. His body language is tense. I know he’d pull away. “It wasn’t your fault…”
He smiles the saddest smile I’ve ever seen. “Of course it was my fault… But thank you.”
He closes his eyes and rubs at his forehead. “Anyway… Fast forward many years later. I’m a millionaire; I buy an island; I meet a girl with serious mental health issues. She’s poor. She’s lonely. She’s got a kid who her ex won’t let her see. And she wants to kill herself.
“I start thinking about that kid… What his life must look like. What it would look like if his mom died… And I just… I knew what I would have wanted for my mother.”
Sawyer inhales deeply. “So I put her up in a mansion. Got her clean. Gave her nice shit, nice food, and what I felt, what she felt, was a nice life. It was luxurious and sunny every day and like nothing she’d ever dreamed of having—according to her.
“And that feeling.” Sawyer puts a hand on his chest. “That feeling like I was… I don’t know, saving her…”
He pauses, hand still pressed to his chest, eyes pointed straight ahead. Seconds pass without him finishing his sentence, and I realize it’s because he doesn’t want to. He’s embarrassed. Or ashamed. Or just … vulnerable.
“You felt like you were saving your mother,” I finish for him.
He closes his eyes and nods.
“So you did it again. And again. And again.”
Hand scrubbing his face, he nods a second time.
“Until eventually, it spiraled out of control. And you weren’t sure why you were doing it anymore.”
He doesn’t respond. But he doesn’t have to.
I know now.
His heart. His mind. His intentions.
The reason he believes he’s a good person.
The reason he is a good person.
The reason I wish, with every fiber of my being, that he was mine.