She cut me off, hand flying up. “Please don’t ‘But Luna’ me. Iknowit was fucked up.”
I nodded slowly. A lecture wouldn’t help, and it wasn’t my place anymore. She already knew she’d fucked up. She wouldn’t be bringing it up now if she didn’t.
“I’m glad he’s doing well,” I said quietly.
She looked down at her hands, thumbs fidgeting against each other. “Was it hard?”
I tilted my head. “What?”
“Getting sober.”
I stared at her for a long moment, the noise of the restaurant fading out behind her words.
“Hardest fucking thing I’ve ever done—and not because of the drinking. That part... I could white-knuckle through that. It was the sitting with myself part. The silence. The shame. The shit I did to you. To him. To me.”
She swallowed, her lips parting slightly like she wanted to say something, but didn’t.
“Some days it still sucks, but it sucks less when I remember why I did it.”
She looked up then. “Whydidyou?”
“For me, and maybe, somewhere under all that, for the chance to be sitting here like this.”
She blinked fast, like she was trying not to cry, then reached toward the small basket of bread that had been waiting at the center of the table since we sat down. She tore into a piece like it gave her something to do with her hands. “Don’t get soft on me, Jeremy.”
I smirked. “Wouldn’t dare.”
She snorted, and for a split second, I swore I felt that old magic again. That spark that lived in the cracks of our broken past.
We were tucked in the pasta section, warm lights glinting off silverware, the smell of garlic and butter clinging to the air. The waitress brought our steaming bowls of pasta over.
I reached for my water and cleared my throat. “So... what made you come back?”
“Will.”
I stilled. “Will,” I repeated, careful not to let it come out like a punch.
“Yeah.” She gave a hollow laugh. “We were together in London. Almost four years.”
I swallowed. “That’s a long time.”
“Felt longer.” She poked at her pasta, not eating. “He was good to me. Stable. He made it easy to stop thinking, stop reaching, stop... dreaming.”
“You loved him?”
She hesitated. “I loved the idea of him. The quiet. The safety. But not him—not the way I needed to.”
I nodded, jaw tight. “So why stay?”
Her eyes flicked up to mine, stormy and brimming with something I couldn’t name. “Because I was tired. Because it was easier to be someone else than face the version of me that got left behind when everything fell apart.”
“Luna . . . ”
“He never hurt me,” she added quickly. “But he didn’t see me. Not the way you did. Not the way Dirks does.”
My chest tightened.
“I stopped laughing. I taught, I came home, I existed. One day, Dirks called. I don’t even remember what he said, but his voice... ” She looked up, tears glassing her eyes. “It pulled me out of whatever fog I was in. Like—like I remembered I had a heartbeat again.”
