“Come here.” He waved me forward, hopping onto his bed, knee-walking closer to the window beside it. Curious, I followed him, kneeling right by him. He pulled the curtains away, revealing a stained-glass moon hanging in the window. A sun catcher. “We all have one in our rooms that coordinates with our names. Because, you know, our parents have no chill.”
I reached out, tracing a piece of the glass with my finger. “It’s so beautiful.”
“It stayed with me my entire life. When I was a kid, I used to watch the room turn colors when the sun hit it just right. I was mesmerized, always trying to catch the color with my hands. After everything happened with my ex, I kept it covered. It didn’t feel right having something so bright and beautiful when everything felt dark and painful.” He tugged the curtains further until they rested at the very edge of the window. “Since then, I’ve just seen it as an inconvenience. When I come to stay here, I keep the curtains closed during the daytime and ignore the occasional shine. It just didn’t feel right.”
We sat back on the bed, watching it sway from side to side in the gentle air from the AC. I wrapped my arm around Moon, needing to keep him close to me, wanting to steal all that pain he’d bottled up for so long and take it in as my own. If I could feel it instead of him, I would. I’d take every tear and every stab to the heart for the rest of eternity.
He was still staring at it, barely even blinking. “I don’t know. I was so hurt for so long, you know? I could see the light, but I didn’t think I deserved it. At some point, I’d convinced myself that isolation was the only way to go. Fake isolation. Like, the emotional kind, because I was really extroverted all the time, but nobody really ever saw anything outside of that. I wouldn’t let them.
“It makes me sad, thinking back. Sixteen-year-old me deserved better. He deserved light. He deserved friends and family and laughter. I was so fucked up in the head, I hid the light I used to chase when I was a kid and let myself forget it even existed.” I pulled my arm away as he turned, running his hand beneath his pillow before pulling something out.
When he put it in my hands, I squinted, trying to figure it out in the dark.
“I didn’t think this through very well. Hold on.” Moon shifted until he could pull his phone out, turning the flashlight on and shining it over my hands.
He’d handed me a round piece of stained glass, with a beautiful sea below a gorgeous lighthouse. The sky was dark, with a couple of clouds overcast. A yellow light was coming from the lighthouse, illuminating the water surrounding it. “Moon, this is fucking beautiful. How did you even do this?” It looked so intricate—it must’ve taken him hours. He had to have made it while I was at work.
Taking it gingerly from my hands, he set his phone down on the bed, flashlight facing up, and dangled the glass by the metal chain attached at the top. “I’ve gotten better at it. It took a lot of planning, honestly. Wanna knowwhyI made it, though?”
“Of course I do.”
He hooked it onto the window, looking back at me over his shoulder. “Because of you, Daddy.”
Fuck, his eyes. Oh, god, his eyes. They were so bright. So, so bright and full of everything he’d always deserved to have again. I wasn’t getting lost in them because they were empty and cavernous—I was getting lost in the hope within them. True, unguarded, genuine fucking hope. “Me?”
“Your eyes are really blue. Like the sea.”
“Are they?”
“Yeah. But the waves are really calm. Always calm. Always gentle. And the light in you… Oh, Daddy, the light you are. The light you have.” He turned, taking my face into his hands. “I told you from the beginning, didn’t I? That you were my light?”
I nodded, swallowing as tears started to build in my eyes.
“Even in the darkest times, even with the most chaotic waves, you’re always there. You’re always shining bright enough for me to find my way out.” He leaned forward, pressing a kiss on the tip of my nose as the first tear fell down my cheek. “I want to leavethis here, next to my moon, as a consolation to my younger self. If he could’ve seen the light we were going to find, he would’ve fought harder. He wouldn’t have felt so alone. I want to give that relief to the ghosts of my past. I want to let go of the skeletons that have been hiding in my closet for fifteen years.”
My hands were made to hold his heart. My arms were built to carry his sorrow. My soul was created to guide his to mine, shining bright enough for him to see. I existed to love Moon Miller—not despite, not even though, but through every moment that brought us here.
Pressing our foreheads together, I closed my eyes, whispering to him. “I love you. I love you so much. I love you through the good. I love you through the bad. I love you when my light is dim, and yours is barely there. I love you when we’re shining bright enough to light up the entire world. I love you, my brat.”
“I love you, Daddy. God, do I love you. Thank you for holding all my pieces together. Thank you for being so bright.”
“There was never anything broken.” I held the side of his neck. “But I’ve still loved every piece of you. From the moment our eyes met, to now, I have loved you fiercely. Completely. I think I saw my future in your eyes a long time ago. Beneath all the pain you were hiding. All the secrets that were never meant to stay a secret.”
When he pressed his lips to mine, I could see it. Everything. I could see the future we would spend together. The eternity that would pass us by far too quickly, while holding each other in our arms.
And, oh, how bright that eternity would be.
Epilogue
1 Year Later
Snow had fallen.It was the perfect white Christmas everyone always wanted, but never wanted to deal with the aftermath of. Like how, when the snow melted, it would leave water on the roads, turning into ice overnight. The beauty and awe of it would last approximately one day before the annoyance would set in.
Christmas had been chaotic, the entire Miller family plus some, taking up all the space in our living room that the tree didn’t. Elio and Crescent had sat on the floor to let Star and her boyfriend sit on the couch. We’d opened presents with a ten-hour video of a burning yule log playing on the TV, eating the Oreo balls Olivia and Kelly had made. There was chocolateeverywhere. Mom and Dad were somehow the worst of them,their cushions covered in the most crumbs. It was going to be a major bitch to clean up in the morning.
I looked at our tree, now bare after Daddy and I bullied everyone into helping us take the ornaments and lights down. All the gifts we’d left beneath it were gone, the wrapping paper strewn across the floor, just like when we were all kids. Christmas had always been so magical, despite how overboard Mom and Dad always went with the incense every year.
Daddy and I had exchanged one gift each. He’d gotten me a new set of stained glass to use, and I’d gotten him a new pair of running shoes. He still liked to go on runs when he could, and his old ones were breaking apart on the sides.
