MOON

by Lindsay Becs

I’m glad to see you found a way

  Flying, soaring high above

  I’m glad to see you filled with love.

  “Is that the last of it?” Endy yells up the steps to me.

  I’m moving in to a small house with him today. The whole thing has me feeling nervous and excited, but I’m ready. The house is a modest two-bedroom on the outskirts of Gulley Hollow. I’ll still be able to work at Pot Meet Kettle.

  Endy had been working driving trucks for a construction company over the past year. A couple of weeks ago, he got a call from his old boss who wanted to hire him back. He negotiated to work out of their east coast office instead of the west and only agreed to take it if I’d ride along with him. At first, I said no because I had my job to keep, but my boss said he’d work with me and give me flexible hours as long as he had a heads-up. He hired a new girl to fill in when I was gone, and that was that.

  So, today we move into our house, and tomorrow we take off for our first road trip together in his rig.

  It’s been two months since we saw my parents on that bittersweet visit. The only things that I left feeling positive of were my feelings for Endy. My love for him is the only certainty I have most days. We still haven’t talked about the fact that I have a child out in the world, but I’m not really sure what I’d say about it anyway. For now, us just being us is enough.

  “Yeah. That’s it,” I yell down before taking one last sweep of the place I called home and my own. I smile at the empty space, grateful to have had it. I’ll always be happy that this is where I got my footing.

  I hear Endy behind me before his arms snake around me. His lips kiss the side of my neck as I say my final goodbye to this apartment. “Ready?” I nod, and we walk out hand in hand.

  We make our way to our new house, and when we get there, he insists on carrying me in. I laugh, telling him how ridiculous it is because we aren’t married, but he just tells me we’ll have to fix that. Next thing I know, we’re standing in the courthouse applying for a marriage license and scheduling a time to come back to get married.

  “You two can come back in an hour if you’d like. It won’t be official until your license is done, but you can have the ceremony if you don’t want to wait. Then the judge can sign the license before you pick it up next week. Up to you, hun,” the clerk says to Endy, who looks at me with an asking smile.

  I glance up at him with wide eyes before my smile grows even wider. “Looks like we’re getting married!”

  I text Tara and tell her to get her butt here to be our witness, and she rolls her eyes when she takes in my ripped jeans and long-sleeve tee. Endy isn’t much better in a flannel shirt, jeans, and a beanie on his head. I just laugh because I don’t care. It’s us and that’s all I want. Us.

  Thirty minutes later, after we’ve sworn on the moon and stars to take each other as husband and wife, Endy is kissing me while Tara claps and catcalls from behind us. We run out of the courthouse hand in hand and are kissing again when we feel a sticky rain falling on us. We turn to see Tara spraying us with champagne. “Congratulations, suckers!” she cackles.

  Drunk on love and each other, Endy and I drive home and this time, I don’t give him a hard time about carrying me into the house. Our lips are fused together as he lays me on the bed and hovers over me. We frantically remove our clothing, and when he drives into me, it’s the best feeling being one with him in every way possible.

  Our bodies rock in perfect unison as our lips are melded together and our fingers are laced above my head. We’re of one entity as husband and wife, belonging to one another. It makes every movement of our bodies that much sweeter. When the release of pleasure hits, I can feel our souls dancing together in the flames of our love.

  We slow our moving, panting and breathless. “I love you, Endy. Only you.”

  “I love you.” He kisses me soft and slow, our tongues making love on their own as our bodies get heated up again before we even catch our breath.

  We spend the rest of the day making sweet love filled with promises of a lifetime of more. Once we shower and make the bed in fresh sheets, we climb back in and wrap around each other.

  “Tell me a story,” I say with my cheek on his chest. My fingers make lazy lines up and down his body.

  “Do you know what your name means?”

  “Moon?”

  He chuckles, turning my cheeks pink. “No. Your real name, Selene.”

  “Oh. No.”

  “Selene was the goddess of the moon.”

  I shift to look at him. “How did I not know that? That’s why you call me Moon.”

  “The goddess had a great love affair with a mortal named Endymion, who is thought to have been an astronomer who studied the moon and her movements.”

  “Endy,” I whisper, kissing his chest before laying my cheek back down, wanting to hear the rest.

  “Selene thought Endymion to be so beautiful that she begged his father, Zeus, to grant him everlasting youth. Zeus put Endymion in an eternal sleep. Not able to stay away from him, Selene visited the sleeping Endymion to watch him. Some say it was because she wanted to be able to kiss him whenever she wanted. They say that Selene and Edymion had fifty daughters representing the fifty lunar months of the Olympiad.”

  “That’s a lot of daughters,” I giggle. “But I can understand wanting to be able to kiss him whenever she wanted,” I say leaning up and kissing him.

  “Selene also had a daughter with Zeus,” he says when I lie back down. I stiffen from his words. “Her name was Pandia. It means all-brightness.” Tears spring to my eyes. “Moon, we need to talk about this.”

  “I don’t know what to say. I keep thinking about it, but I just keep going around and around in circles.”

  “I was mad when your mother first told us. But the more I’ve thought about it, the more I see it as exactly what I just told you. She came from you. She has to be nothing but the brightest star in the sky.”

  “Do you really think so?” I sniff.

  “I do. When the time comes, if she reaches out and wants to meet you, I’ll be there to support you. And if you want to do it yourself, I’ll be here when you get back.”

  “I’d want you with me. She’s a part of you, too, you know.”

  “It’s different though. She’s your daughter.”

  “I don’t even remember being pregnant. How messed up is that? I grew a baby, gave birth, and I have no memory of any of it.”

  “It’s not your fault, Moon.” He kisses my head.

  I shift again to look at him, wanting to see his face. “I think I might want a baby. With you.”

  A smile slowly grows on his face. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah,” I say, biting my lip. “I want to make a baby with you, Endy.”

  “Right now?”

  “If you want.” I laugh, “Or we can wait a while. But one day. Yes.”

  “OK.”

  The next morning, we dragged ourselves out of bed and into Endy’s rig. I was going on the road with him. I was going to be seeing more in the next two weeks than I ever had before, and I couldn’t be happier. Endy honked the horn as we pulled away, making me laugh at his childishness. I love it when he abandons all doubts and questions and lets himself go. In those moments, he looks happy, content, and at peace. I think I do, too.

  This was our honeymoon. Driving in a semi-truck, delivering a haul, across the country. It was wedded bliss.

  “What’s this?” I ask him one day, pulling what looks like a scrapbook out of the small bookshelf in the back.

  “Fuck. I forgot about that,” he says nervously, grabbing the back of his neck. “It’s you.”

  “What do you mean it’s me?”

  “Open it.”

  I do and inside are newspaper and magazine clippings of articles and pictures of me after I was found. I’d never seen or read any of them before. Mostly because I was sedated and not allowed such things at the time. It’s weird. The world saw me and read things about me that I didn’t even know
or remember.

  “Why did you keep these?”

  “It helped me see that you were alright, at least as far as I could tell. It also helped me feel less guilty about leaving you, that I did the right thing. I read and found anything and everything I could on you through the years.”

  “Why?”

  “I missed you. I loved you. Isn’t it obvious?”

  “Why didn’t you come looking for me before?”

  He runs a hand down his face and over his beard. “I didn’t want to disrupt your life. All I ever wanted was for you be happy, to live a normal life. I truly did believe the last thing I said to you, that we’d find each other when the time was right. And I think we did.”

  “I don’t know if I’d say I lived a normal life.” I laugh beside him, feeling happier now with him than before without. “I think we did, too.” He lifts my hand and kisses it, sending butterflies to my stomach.

  “Do you think you got closure with everything that happened? Before, I mean,” he asks after a while.

  I think about that. Closure. Is it possible to ever really feel closure after living through what we have? I don’t know.

  “I have peace, and that’s enough.”

  “I went to visit his grave.” I look up at him shocked. “When the police took me to the house, they asked if I wanted to see his grave. I don’t even know why I said yes, but I did.” I squeeze his hand, wishing again that I had been able to be with him. “He was buried in an unmarked grave next to other horrible people.” He huffs a laugh. “I wasn’t sure if I wanted to spit at him, piss on his grave, yell at him or cry over everything I’d lost. I stood there just staring for so long, all the things he’d done playing over and over in my mind. I saw you then. That’s when I really got mad. I kicked the ground so hard I broke my toe.”

  “Oh, Endy.”

  “It’s OK, Moon. I know he got what was coming. He may have chosen the coward’s way out by shooting himself, but at least he couldn’t hurt anyone else.”

  “Did it give you closure? Do you have peace?” I ask as I feel a tear fall down my cheek.

  “I do. Because I won in the end. I got you out. There were others that were saved. And we won because we’re here now, together. We’re giving him the ultimate ‘fuck you’, don’t you think?”

  I can’t do anything but laugh at that. “I guess you’re right. But really, are you OK?”

  “I am because I have you. I do have peace, I think. It still just stings sometimes, you know?”

  “I understand that.”

  He kisses my hand again. “I know you do.”

  That was the first and last time we talked about Zeus in that way. And that was fine with me. He couldn’t hurt us anymore. I’d be damned if I’d ever let him try to keep us apart again, and I’m fairly certain Endy felt the same way.

  Peace.

  Home.

  Content.

  Comfort.

  Those were the things we both had now, and it was because we were together. No one would take that away again. Least of all Zeus.

  23

  Endy

  After years of constant loneliness filled with darkness and monsters dancing around inside me, I finally feel the peace and contentment that Moon exudes. Driving down the highway with her sleeping beside me as night falls is the most perfect feeling. This is how life was supposed to end up, of that I’m certain. There is nothing I want more than what we have right now.

  I’m not sure why I told her about going to my father’s grave that day, but I’m glad I did. I’m glad she feels peace about it, too. I guess we couldn’t really be in this place now if we didn’t both feel that. Darkness has a way of seeping into the cracks and fissures of our lives if we let it. I’m determined to keep mine filled with light and hope, but most of all Moon.

  I may have told her stories of the stars throughout the years to give us a place where we could escape. A world that was far away and filled with anything we could imagine as the devil tried to dance on our happiness, but now we get to make our own. We get the chance to rewrite the stars with our own stories. We’ll always be Moon and Endy to each other, but now we can give birth to a new universe of truths about love and light and hope.

  I hope when the day comes for us to become parents, I can be a father who shows love and affection to my child. I know that Moon will be the best mother; I have no doubts about that. I only ever fear that I will fail. I’ll have her to help guide me. She’s always been the one to teach me about love anyway.

  I rub my eyes as they start to blur from being tired. It’s time to stop for the night. I find a truck stop a few miles farther down the road and pull in for the night. Gently shaking Moon awake, I help her stumble to the back where our small bed sits. We both pull off our clothes and climb in under the blanket, cuddling close together.

  I’m about to nod off when I hear her voice her revelation. “You don’t smoke anymore.”

  “Took you that long to realize, huh?” I chuckle.

  “When did you stop?”

  “After I went back.” She shifts to look at me, asking me to elaborate without words. “When we walked inside all I could smell was him. The stench of the cigarettes still permeated the stale air. It brought back so many horrible memories. It was enough to make me not want to smell a cigarette ever again. It was the last part of him that still had hooks in me. When I left that place, I left shedding the last piece of him from me.”

  “Was it hard to quit?”

  “Surprisingly, no. I think it was just because of what it represented.”

  “You still cover your face with a beard though. Are you still afraid to see yourself?”

  I take a minute to think about that. At one time, it couldn’t have been truer. “Maybe a little, but not like before. Why? Do you want me to shave?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Will you do it for me?”

  “If you want me to but only when you’re truly ready.”

  I pull her back against me. I love her so much. She knows I’m not ready, even if I don’t understand it myself.

  Who would have thought that a frightened seven-year-old girl would change my life? What she didn’t know was that I was just as afraid as she was that day. She never looked at me like I was the monster but as the source of protection. She told me she saw the blue of the sky in my eyes, feeling like I was the light of day. But she slayed me with her stormy moonstone eyes that bore into me, cracking open my broken heart and lighting up my darkness for the first time in my life.

  She’ll always be my Moon, shining bright like she was meant to.

  Epilogue

  Moon

  5 Years Later

  “My hands are shaking. Are you sure you want me to do this?” I ask Endy as I stand in front of him in the bathroom.

  “Yes. I’m ready. I want you to do it today. It feels right.” I can tell he’s nervous, but this is important to him.

  “OK then. Hold still.” I reach up and trim the hairs of his beard down before lathering his face with shaving cream and shaving the hairs away from his face. This will be the first time I’ve seen him without a beard since we were kids or at least teenagers.

  I bite back my smile when I wash the last of it from his face. He looks younger. His strong jaw is sexy as hell, and when he opens his eyes, I melt right there. They are striking. This man is a god among men, and he’s mine. Now I understand why Selene wanted Endymion to keep his beauty for eternity.

  I kiss him quickly on the lips and step back before I do more. “All done.” I smile now, not able to hold it back any longer.

  He stands and slowly turns to look in the mirror at his clean-shaven face. Leaning in, he studies himself, brows furrowed at first, and then he smiles when his eyes catch mine in the reflection.

  “By the look on your face, I’m guessing you like it.” He smirks.

  “I like you any way I get you, but yes.”

  “It’s not as bad as I thought it would be.” />
  “Endy, this is you. Your face, your life, not his.”

  “I want to say it’s the last part of him I’m shedding, but with today, I’m not sure.”

  I wrap my arms around his middle and lean my cheek against his back. “I know. I’m scared.”

  He reaches around to pull me in front of him so he can see me. “You have nothing to be scared of. She’ll love you. It’s hard not to.”

  Nothing could have prepared me for the emotions I felt the day I got a letter from my daughter asking if we could meet. I never thought she’d want to, so I pushed the notion out of my mind years ago.

  “You ready?” Endy asks when we arrive at our meeting place.

  “No,” I laugh.

  He kisses me on the head before taking my hand as we walk into the park where we decided to meet. I rub my belly, nervous that it’ll add an extra layer of awkwardness.

  I spot her before she does us. I cover my mouth with my hand to bite back the sob threatening to wrack through me. “She’s so beautiful,” I whisper to Endy.

  “She is. She looks just like you.”

  “But with your blue eyes.” I look at him, squeezing his hand. “All brightness,” I add.

  He smiles at me, kisses me on the head and we continue our way to meet the brightest and most beautiful thing that could come out of such darkness.

  “Hi,” she says nervously, standing to meet us. “I’m Phoebe.”

  “Hi. I’m Selene. Can I hug you?” I ask, not able to help it.

  She smiles big, and it lights up her eyes. “Yes.” I hug her tight. It’s the last piece of my brokenness put back together.

  “You are so beautiful,” I say, wiping tears from my eyes.

  “So are you. I can’t believe I’m meeting you. It’s so surreal.” She shakes her head like it’s a dream. “You’re my brother?” she asks Endy.

  “Yeah, I guess so. I’m Tavin.”

  “I’ve seen weirder family dynamics,” she declares, making us all laugh. “Thank you for meeting me,” she says with a smile. “I’ve had dreams about you. That may sound crazy, but all my life I’ve had these dreams of stars dancing with the moon, and it was always us.”