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Chapter Eighty-Three

LUNA

We separate, clean each other up, and say nice things in his green bathroom.

He bandages my throat, even though it’s already closing.

He hands me a new toothbrush and lets me choose a toothpaste I like.

I observe him carefully for any outer change after what I did inside him. Too carefully, obviously.

“What’s the problem?” he asks after spitting into the sink.

“Waste of good venom,” I say around my brush, then spit my toothpaste.

“Why are you watching me like that?”

“Like what?” I know exactly like what, but I admit nothing.

“Like you’re waiting for me to do something. Is there some twenty-first century human habit I’m missing? Something I need to do?”

“Oh. Uh. I wasn’t trying to make you feel bad. But…”

“But?”

I clear my throat. “Your coil? The plucking thing I did?” I’m still naked.

I didn’t even realize until this moment, and now he’s looking at me with concern and curiosity.

I’m going to have to finish this thought before I put on anything.

“We did the blood-lock thing and I didn’t think anything of it except it’s, like, really nice.

But… so I was there and I saw the coil and I…

more or less… I’m pretty sure anyway… that I fixed it. ”

“Excuse me?”

“So when we blood-lock, I don’t know if you know, but it’s really great for me.”

“Start at the end. You fixed it?”

The disc in the center of his chest is such a part of him, I forget to notice how it changes the landscape of his body, or how, if I look carefully, I can see it pulse with the beat of his heart.

“I did. What I did, I undid. It’s just that, I was in there and I couldn’t come out to ask if you were really sure and so?—?”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Hundred percent.”

“Huh.” He looks away to put the hand towel on the vanity.

“Huh? What does huh mean?”

He purses his lips, taps his fingertips on the marble, laughs to himself with another huh. I motion with my hands that he should get on with it.

“That’s strange,” he says.

“So I fixed it or no?”

Brush in cup. A swipe at the counter. For a split second, he stares at his fingertips with fascination, then drops his hand.

He’s stalling. The bottom falls out from under me. I am so stupid. He’s probably mad at me for not getting consent, and worse… he doesn’t love me anymore.

“I just ruined everything.” I hide behind my hands. “So stupid.”

He takes me by the wrists and pulls my hands away, reading my face as if he’s seeing it for the first time, and with the expression of a man completely perplexed, says, “I still love you.”