Gage: I’ll grab some on my way home
Luna: Thx
Jules: What’s wrong with the ones we have?
Luna: BRB need to Google what’s a more painful death, arsenic poisoning or bludgeoning someone
Luna has left the chat
Jules: WTF is her problem?
Reid: It’s that time…Red Wave
Gage: She probably ate the whole jar that we had
Torrin: I heard her crying this morning before I left for practice. Go easy on her J
Jules: Fine, I’ll get the pickles and add in some ice cream too. One of you hit up Starbucks and get her favorite drink.
Reid has added Luna to the chat
***
Chapter 23 - Luna
I fucking hate getting my period. It’s been getting worse and worse the older I get. I can barely tolerate myself when the mood swings hit; they’ve become so extreme. My inside voice is screaming stop with the crazy while my outside voice reaches higher levels of ridiculousness in the fun mash-up of blubbering emotion and manic rage. It’s exhausting, not to mention the nasty cramps and extra heavy flow I need to live through for six days.
Kara keeps telling me to get an IUD but I’ve been on the fence after reading all the horror stories of extreme pain during the insertion. She says the key to getting it as pain-free as possible is to go to a clinic that specializes in them and not let my regular family doctor do it. She says that most clinics like that are all lady doctors who get it, that kind of shit really does hurt, so they offer all the pain meds you need. They also do a lot of them, so they are pros at putting them in and taking them out, unlike GPs that hardly ever do them and just painfully poke around, guessing where it’s supposed to go.
The idea of not getting my period or most of the symptoms for the eight years the IUD is good for sounds like a dream at this point. Sign me the fuck up. I wince and roll over at both my bad language and a sharp cramp. I need to get back on my no swearing streak… right after my period finishes.
Eight years… I would be almost twenty-eight at that point. Right around when I imagine I would like to start having kids. My mood immediately flips to devastating sadness thinking about that. How can I even think about having kids when my mom won’t be here to hold my hand through all of it? My dad would have been the best grandpa and Atlas…
I choke on the sobs that roll up from my chest and ruthlessly push thoughts of my family away. I know from these past months that I can’t let myself think about my family when the red wave of hormones is riding me hard, or I’ll sink into a deep depression that will hold me in its grip for days if not weeks. Some days I feel like I’m barely holding on by my fingernails. So, I focus on other non-important things, like what an asshole Jules is.
I fucking know we had a new jar of pickles in the pantry! But when I couldn’t get the stupid lid off, I took a fucking hammer to it. Even a desperate period craving wasn’t going to let me eat pickles with glass shards in them. Am I being completely irrational… yes, and I don’t fucking care!
A knock at my bedroom door has me flipping the covers over my head even as I yell, “Go away!”
The jerks ignore me and come in anyway. One of them tugs the blankets down enough so my eyes peek over the top and I see all four of them surrounding my bed. Jules shoves a huge jar of pickles at me. I fumble for it, miss, and it lands on my tender stomach, causing me to wail like I’ve been mortally wounded. His eyes go wide with fear and he bounces onto the bed to snatchthe large jar back up. I let out a whimper and Gage grabs Jules by the back of his shirt with a growl and yanks him off the bed.
“Are you okay, sweetheart?”
I sniff back my tears with a pathetic little nod.
“We got you some ice cream and your favorite Starbucks too, Luna,” Reid tells me as he moves to sit on the side of the bed.
Now I feel like an asshole. I look to Jules and offer him a halfhearted apology. “Sorry about the pickles. I broke the last jar.”
He nods cautiously and asks, “Did you drop it?”
And just like that, my emotions go from a three to a twenty-six on the crazy scale. “I couldn’t get it open, so I hit it with a hammer!” I wail. I suck in a ragged breath and continue, “I don’t want to adult anymore and, and, and… I miss my dog!”
That gets me confused looks from all of them. It’s Torrin who is brave enough to ask, “I didn’t think you guys ever had a dog, did you?”
I nod with a dripping face and wail again, “We didn’t and it’s just so sa-dddd!” and then I burst into uncontrollable sobs.
Everyone takes a step back from the crazy lady except Gage, who leans over and scoops me up from the bed.
