Not one single thing as another tear escaped my eye and followed the track the first one had left for it.
This croak built up in my throat, and my instincts tried their hardest to keep from letting it out. I even had my mouth closed, but this tiny sound escaped, sounding like a whine. Sounding pathetic and sad and like a note something made when it broke.
And another tear came out.
Then another.
And another closed-mouth noise escaped.
“One more minute,” I slipped out, sucking in a shuddering breath that probably mutilated the words and had them sounding like something totally different.
I heard his “all right” just as I sucked in another breath, just as another tear slid out of my eye.
I had no reason to cry.
My sister loved me, I knew it. She was just… I didn’t know what she was doing or why she was being that way.
Sometimes you outgrew people.
Maybe that’s what she had done. Moved on from her high-school dropout sister who painted cars for a living. Her half-sister since that’s how she thought of me now.
And it was thathalfthat was the prick I needed for more tears to roll out of my eyes. One after another, after another, until I had the meaty parts of my palms tucked into my eye sockets, diverting the flow of one traitorous tear after another.
“Luna,” came the deep, deep grumble of a voice.
“Fifteen seconds,” I tried to tell him as I told myself tostop. Stop.
Stop, Luna.
You’re fine.
Quit being dramatic.
You’re taking this too personal.
Stop it.
I’d swear I heard a muttered “Fuck” from somewhere too close, but I could never be sure.
What I could be sure of was the body that stepped right up to mine. The body that didn’t give me a chance to stop crying or even drop my hands because that body wrapped itself around my own. An arm curled over my shoulder, another right below it, draping itself across my shoulder blades.
The body was warm and hard and molded to mine, crushing my arms between us like they weren’t even there in the first place.
Legs and thighs pressed against me, and something warm grazed my cheek as gentle, almost delicate words filled my ears. “It’s all right, baby girl,” they started.
“You’re a good girl.”
“A nice girl.”
“The nicest.”
“Sweetest.”
And more tears just came right out of my eyes with each thing said into my ear, spilling over my fingers and wrists, down my arms as I stood there, letting my boss, a man who barely talked to me on a good day, hug me and tell me I wasn’t a sad, pathetic person who deserved to feel so small.
You’re such a dumbass, Luna, my dad had told me so many times, it sounded like he spoke the words into a tap that sent him directly into my brain.
“You got your ‘love you’ bracelet on. You’re all right.” The arm closest to the top, directly over my shoulders, tightened, and warmer, soothing words tried to drown the old ones away. “I’ve got you. I’m here,” the man holding me said.
