All I could do was stand there and slow my breathing, inhale and exhale.
“Just thirty more seconds,” I told him, quietly, trying to ignore the ache in my chest.
But he didn’t listen. He moved, and before I knew it, something warm and heavy fell over my shoulders and arms.
What had to be his hands draped themselves on my shoulders, over what had to be his jacket, and slid down over my arms, his hands molding themselves loosely over my muscles and bones. The skin on his palms and fingers eventually landed on my wrists. He was warm. Those palms kept moving downward until they were cupping my hands. His fingers lingered there. Holding them there.
Then they dropped away.
I always knew he was really a decent man.
That was when I forced myself to take a step back. To breathe. There at the cemetery, with Ripley’s jacket on my shoulders, I sniffled and wiped under my eyes with my finger one more time, looking at everything and nothing at the same time.
It wasn’t so hard to glance up at Rip as I wiped at my eyes again. His face was back to that cool, detached expression. Not mean. Not surprised. Just… cool.
“Thank you,” I told him in a voice I was honestly proud of. “Can we go now?”
It was only his nostrils flaring that said something was going through that brain of his because his features didn’t tell any other story.
The only words we shared over the next three hours were when he pulled up to a gas station and asked if I wanted to get something quick from the fast food inside, but that was it.
When he pulled up to my house after all that—my phone telling me I had an hour until Lily got home—I reached over and put my hand over his where it sat on the steering wheel. We hadn’t done more than accidentally brush fingers in years, and here, twice in a day, we had done more than that. Weird how things like that worked.
“Thank you, Rip.” I met those blue-green eyes and told him, “My sister is graduating on Saturday. If you’d like to come over after six, you’re more than welcome to. We’ll have food and drinks and stuff.”
I gave it a squeeze, just one, and then pulled away.
I opened the door and slid out. Then I closed the door, took a step onto the curb and lifted my hand.
He didn’t wave back.
But he waited until I’d opened my front door before he drove off.
I went to my room, changed out of my clothes andthen, then, I cried.
For Grandma Genie.
For my sisters.
For the mom I had never met.
For the past, the present, and the future.
But mostly for myself.
Chapter 9
While I didn’tloveFriday morning meetings, I didn’t hate them on the same level that I did cooked carrots.
But that Friday might have been the exception.
The day before had just been… not the best day of my life, but not the worst either. Even after getting dropped off at home, it hadn’t gotten much better. I’d cried for what I guessed was close to an hour before wiping my face off and reminding myself of how many wonderful things I had.
By the time Lily burst into the house screaming, “LUNA!” at the top of her lungs like she was expecting me not to have made it back home, my eyes had still been red and puffy.
She had run to my room and busted inside. My little sister had taken one look at me sitting on the edge of my bed and crawled onto it behind me, wrapping her arms around me.
“Did it go that bad?” she had asked.
