Cyrus
“Are you tired?” I asked Luna after we got settled in the backseat of the Uber.
Her hand was in mine, but her gaze was fixed on the passing city lights as we drove. She seemed to be deep in thought about something, and once more, I wondered what was going on in her head.
I’d seen Peter saying something to her before we left, but I didn’t know what it was. I was curious, though.
Knowing my brother, it was probably something Luna wouldn’t have wanted to hear. Like how I had the capacity to love or how she shouldn’t give up on us. Some matchmaking bullshit like he’d tried with me when we’d first arrived.
The second he’d laid eyes on her, he’d pulled me aside to comment on how beautiful she was and how I shouldn’t let her go. Rolling my eyes in the relative darkness of the car, I tightened my grip on her hand and lifted it to my lips to get her attention.
“Hey, you okay?”
She nodded, the expression in her eyes still slightly absent when she looked at me. As if she’d snapped herself out of her thoughts, she suddenly focused on me and blinked. “I’m sorry. What did you say before?”
“I asked if you were tired.”
“Oh.” She rocked from side to side, then shrugged. “No, not really. It’s only just past ten.”
“I know, but they’ve got an early bedtime for obvious reasons.” Both of them started work at the crack of dawn and didn’t often get home until after sunset. “They liked you, though.”
“I liked them, too.” A soft smile curled on her lips. “I really admire Jenny. How she can be as loving and cheerful and carefree as she is with her line of work, I don’t know.”
“Yeah. I’ve never really understood it either.” I sighed as I angled myself to face her. “I might not like the idea of Peter getting married, but if he’s got to do it, he sure chose well.”
“It’s good to hear you say that.”
I chuckled. “I might be a cynic, but I’m not blind. If you’re not tired, do you want to go grab a drink before I take you back to your place?”
“Sure. I wasn’t really ready to say goodbye to those margaritas anyway.” Her eyes stayed on me as I leaned forward between the seats and asked the driver to drop us off at a cocktail bar near her apartment.
When I sat back, she frowned and fidgeted with the material of her dress in her lap with her free hand. “This is none of my business, but what happened to Jenny’s parents?”
I sucked in a breath and rubbed her knuckles with my thumb. “She told you about them, huh?”
“Just that they chose their wedding date because it was her parents’. She said they were the example she wanted to follow in her own marriage.”
“Well, the date makes a lot more sense now.” Peter hadn’t told me why that date was so special to them, and I hadn’t thought to ask. “It might not be any of your business, but it’s natural to be curious. Especially since you’re putting in so much work to make the wedding happen on that date.”
“I probably should have asked her. I just didn’t want to upset her.” Guilt crept onto her expression. “You know what? Never mind. I’ll ask her myself the next time I see her.”
“No, it’s okay. They won’t mind me telling you.” I exhaled a deep breath. “Her father died suddenly of a heart attack. Her mother followed about a month later. She didn’t have a heart attack, but Jenny believes she died of a broken heart. There was nothing really wrong with her.”
Luna blinked as her eyes became watery. “She lost both of them suddenly?”
“Yeah. It was a terrible time. Everyone in our old neighborhood knew and loved them. Peter had only just started dating her, but it hit him hard, too.”
“They’ve been through a lot together then.”
“You have no idea,” I said softly. “The three of us have faced just about all our toughest times together.”
“But you still don’t want him marrying her?” she asked just as the driver started to slow.
He dropped us off at the bar and I clicked into the app to give him a good tip. It wasn’t often I found a driver who had given me as much of an illusion of privacy as he had.
Taking Luna’s hand once I was done, we walked into the dark, crowded bar and found a table near the back. Pool balls clinked nearby, loud voices nearly drowning out the sound of the jukebox in the closed-off area a few feet away.
Raucous laughter rang out from all around us. People were obviously enjoying their Friday night.
It felt like Luna and I were in our own private bubble. We were also enjoying ourselves because we were getting to know each other better, but our conversation was anything but light or carefree.
After a quick stop at the bar, we took our seats and continued with the conversation as if it had never paused. I let my beer dangle between my fingers as I closed my eyes.
“It’s really not about her. It’s just the concept of marriage. Those two adore each other. They’ve loved each other almost half their lives, but I just can’t shake the feeling that getting married is going to spell the beginning of the end.”
Luna leaned across the table and took my hand in hers. “It’s okay to be scared for him after what happened to you, but I disagree. I don’t think it’s the beginning of the end. It’s a new beginning where they get to write their own, hopefully happy, middle before eventually the end comes for us all.”
“That’s a cheery thought.”
She chuckled, but there was no humor in her eyes. “That doesn’t make it any less true.”
“Maybe. Let’s just say my experiences with marriage haven’t given me much reason to think there can be anything happy about them.”
“What about your parents?” She cocked her head, her fingers running along the length of my wrist and hand. There was nothing sexual about her touch. It was meant to be comforting, and strangely, it was.
“They had a good marriage at times, I guess.” I lifted my shoulders and shook my head.
“Where are they now?”
“They died in a car accident when I was eighteen. That’s why Peter and I are so close. We haven’t had any family but each other since. My parents were both only children, so we didn’t have any extended family.”
“I’m so sorry.” The pain in her eyes told me that she wasn’t just saying that. She bowed her head forward, tears shining in her eyes again when she lifted them back to mine. “I lost my parents when I was twenty-one. Legally an adult, emotionally still very much a child in need of her parents to help her through it.”
“Sucks, doesn’t it?” I let out a humorless laugh, then slapped the hand not holding hers against the table. “Enough of this. It’s making me too sad and it’s Friday night. Friday nights weren’t meant for melancholy. What’s an item on your bucket list you wish you could check off tomorrow?”
Surprise registered in her expression at the abrupt change of subject, but she didn’t skip a beat. “There’s this huge flower show in Dallas every spring. It runs for six weeks and it showcases more than five hundred thousand types of plants. I’d love to take off for Texas tomorrow and not come back until I’ve seen every plant they have to offer.”