Luna and the Lie

by Mariana Zapata

Even with my fingers still a little shaky, it only took a second to slip the chain around Rip’s neck and redo the clasp to keep it on him. I pulled back just enough to see the ice cream charm on it fall right on top of the notch of his throat. It looked ridiculous there, but I patted it down in place anyway. “Look. See? It has a little ice cream cone on it. To make you feel better.” His whole body tightened for a moment before a loud burst of a noise exploded from his chest. And in the time it took me to process the sound, it was gone, and his muscles had relaxed even more. I’d swear his breathing slowed too. “There we go,” I told him, putting pressure on his back and neck again. “You’re good. You’re all right.” For some reason, that only made me want to hug him tighter. He was so big, it was hard to try and wrap him up; my arms could barely reach. I palmed the back of his head and lightly scratched at his scalp the way Lily used to like when she was little. She had done it to me too every once in a while when she’d been falling asleep, and I had loved it too. From the way his body loosened, muscle by muscle, I figured he did too. So I kept scratching. Slowly but surely, that big body relaxed against mine, not totally, but it was something. “You okay?” I asked when the only movement I felt come out of him were deep, deep breaths. Part of me expected him to snap at me, to shove me off his lap, to tell me to fuck off. But none of that happened. One of the arms he’d had at hi...

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