Series: Like Us Series by Krista Ritchie
Total pages in book: 177
Estimated words: 174544 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 873(@200wpm)___ 698(@250wpm)___ 582(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 174544 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 873(@200wpm)___ 698(@250wpm)___ 582(@300wpm)
“It’s your lock screen?” Mom asks.
“Yeah.”
“Don’t delete it,” she says fast like I’m already on the verge, but I haven’t even unlocked the phone yet. “Just change the lock screen to something else while this thing is going on.”
This thing is the vague stand-in for dealing with the Donnellys.
She flicks on the wipers as light drizzle pelts the windshield. “What’s the pic anyway?”
“I’m showing off my tongue ring. Donnelly is flashing his nipple piercing.” I already feel defensive, so I add quicky, “He’s cool.”
Cool?
That’s the best I could come up with? Sure, he’s inked and pierced, and he’s spent part of his life as a tattooist, but that’s the very surface of Donnelly. It’s not even underneath the skin. He deserves more, maybe more than I can give, but I’m going to try.
I sit up straighter in the passenger seat. “That’s not why I like him. It’s not because he’s cool.”
She’s just listening with a tiny smile. It encourages me to go ahead.
Very quietly, I ask, “Do you remember the slumber party at Jeffra’s house? When I was little?”
Her round face blotches with red marks. I think in anger—though, my mom is rarely furious. Her brows bunch together. “The one where the girls played a prank on you?”
“Yeah, that one.”
They wrote Weirdo on my forehead while I’d been sleeping, and my dad came and picked me up with Uncle Ryke.
I watch the streetlamps fly past us like floating orbs in the darkened sky. “Dad told me that it’s okay if I never had friends. He said that I’m the queen of my own galaxy, and after so many years, I’ve realized there are people in the universe who make you feel at home. Donnelly has made me feel like my galaxy is the happiest, most exhilarating place to be, even if I’m the only one there.” I drop my head and gaze back at our photo. “He treats me like I’m his moon. His stars. Like I’m the person who makes him glad it’s today and there’ll be a tomorrow, and I don’t know if I’ve ever been that for anyone who’s not my family.”
I’m important to someone.
I’m not a failure. I’m not a fuck-up or future screw-up to Donnelly.
I’m someone worth something. And he’s worth everything to me.
I hear my mom’s hitched breath before I turn to look.
Tears have flooded her reddened gaze. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted for you, Luna.” She smiles tearfully over at me but quickly focuses on driving. “You know, it makes sense then.” She wipes at the corners of her eyes with her sleeve.
“What does?”
“Why he’s trying to protect his moon, his stars.”
My heart fills, but it’s a little cracked, leaking. “I want to protect him too.”
“Then this is the best way.” She nods resolutely and adjusts her grip on the wheel, her lanky arms a bit constricted. “Everything will work out how it’s supposed to. Yep.”
I don’t even know what this really entails. Am I on a break with Donnelly? Can we be friends-with-benefits in private? We didn’t have long to work out the details on the roof, and I’m aching for a certain kind of clarity that only we can give one another.
I squint at the window as flash bulbs suddenly explode in the night like glaring headlights, right near my mom’s side. Paparazzi. They’re snapping photos of my mom from their car.
We go quiet, until she says, “I’m gonna call our bodyguards.” She phones our security tail while paparazzi hug us too close. My mom is one of the best drivers, so I’m not too scared. While they’re talking about switching lanes, I go into my settings and change my lock screen.
I remove the pic of Donnelly and replace him with one of me from the Halloween Hellfire Gala. I’m outfitted in the green bell-cut dress as Polaris, and I’m holding Baby Ripley in his Lockheed purple dragon costume.
Moffy took the pic for me. It’s a cute one, and I try not to overanalyze how I literally just erased Donnelly off my phone.
He’s still here.
He’s not gone.
Should I text him? Just to hear from him?
No, no. I’m about to go see him. I try to channel patience, and my finger hovers over a social media app. Maybe the uproar over my leaked fics has died down. Maybe checking the temperature of the social media waters will make me feel better.
I click into Twitter.
My feed is a hot mess, and my stomach instantly nose-dives at a tweet.
Luna Hale writing alien porn 100% proves that she’s a sex addict. You all are living in a fucking fantasy if you think differently.
The tweet has over 10k likes. A student from Penn that I follow retweeted it. Great. I slump down in the passenger seat.
Returning to a college campus after this public blow-up sounds not fun at all, but I also hate the idea of hiding away forever. Everything just majorly sucks right now.