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“Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift.” —Mary Oliver
“Always. Whenever. Forever,” she signed.
I didn’t want to kiss her. I wanted to zip open my skin and tuck her into me. Hide her from the world and keep her mine.
“My heart broke, not because I was sad, but because it swelled so much at the sight of you, I needed more space in it,” he once told me.
There were two Knight Coles. One was mine. The other everyone else’s.
“Moonshine,” he whispered. “You fill up the empty, dark space—like the moon owns the sky. It is quiet. It is bright. It doesn’t need to be a ball of flame to be noticed. It simply exists. It forever glows.”
He wasn’t nothing. He was my everything.
Luna Rexroth was going to be my girlfriend, then fiancée, then wife.
“I love you, Knight Cole. More than anything. Maybe even more than myself. But I don’t trust you with my heart. And when you hurt me like this, I feel little and vindictive. So vindictive, you shouldn’t trust me with yours. Whatever it is, we need to kill it before it kills us, you understand? We can’t be together.”
“But…” “Friends.”
“The first words she ever speaks to me in her life, and she decides to break my heart with them. For the longest time, I wished I could unthink you. Unlove you. Unbreathe you. I think I finally can.”
She took off her nightgown. Just like that. The entire thing. No bra. Just a pair of white cotton panties. Her nipples staring back at me. Dark and tiny and pebbled and fuck. Dear Santa, I always knew you were real. Thank you for giving me the gift I wanted, even if it’s three years and one week late. Yours, KJC
“I’ve missed you,” she whispered. “I’ve missed us,” I admitted brokenly, my heart crumbling inside my chest.
“You only get one life, Luna. One stab at this thing called happiness. Why deprive yourself of things you want just because they weren’t given to you the way you hoped for them to come? Life is like a book, a long chain of scenes threaded together by circumstances and fate. You never know how thick or thin your book is, so you better make the most out of every scene, enjoy each chapter.”
“If you think you’ve found something good without anything bad in it, it just means you haven’t examined it close enough.”
“I love your brother and your father more than I love myself. I would die for them. Fight for them until the bitter end. Go against the whole world for them. But you…” She dragged her face up to look at me. Her eyes were full of tears. “I’ve always loved you just a tiny bit more. My regal, rebel boy. My legendary hellraiser, my sad prince, my unlikely savior, my beautiful, broken Knight.”
“What if tomorrow never comes?” I whispered. “Then, my darling boy, we’ll make the best of today.”
“That once you’re with me, you won’t be able to touch anyone else. Want anyone else. Feel for anyone else.”
“You’re mine,” he stated. “Always fucking have been, Luna. Say it.”
I’m not ready to lose my best friend, too. I’m not going down without a fight, Luna. I’ll take whatever you’re willing to give me. If it’s friendship—so be it.”
“We’re everything.”
“Ride or die, Moonshine.”
“I will always be in the right headspace to be inside you. You’re my home.”
“Ride or die,” he whispered. “Ride.” I closed my eyes, smiling. “Always ride.”
I assure you, I love you. I’m in love with you. I’m crazy about you. Have been since age four. It was always you. Never someone else. Not even for a fleeting moment.
Our love always had a pulse. Sometimes it was faint. Sometimes it was beating so hard I couldn’t hear anything else. But it would never die. It can’t. I won’t let it.”
We’ll stay close to the street we grew up on. Where we fell in love. Where we fell apart. Where we broke and pieced ourselves back together.”
“Always. Whenever. Forever,” he mouthed, his lips still on mine. I decided to complete his sentence, the way I’d imagined it in my head so many years ago. “I choose you.”
