Even the Moon Has Scars (17 page)

I lay back, waiting for sleep to overtake me, but it feels like it’s just not going to happen.

I open my eyes and stare at the canvas that I left up on my easel yesterday afternoon. The middle is still bare. Still waiting for something inspired. I tilt my head and I know exactly what the center will now hold. It won’t be a city, or landmark or face.

I’m going to paint the moon. In all of its resilient, scarred glory. I’m going to mark it with the gashes and scrapes that haunt it nightly. I’m going to paint it a beautiful shade of silver and white and make it full of light. I’m going to paint it the way it feels to me: full of hope that I’m going to be okay. Anywhere. With anyone. And even with just me.

I tiptoe down the wooden staircase and into the kitchen to grab a bottle of water when I hear a light knock on the front door.

It’s morning, but it’s still too early for anyone to pop over, and we definitely aren’t expecting anyone. I wonder if it’s Brian, here to make up with my sister. I glance up the stairs and Kaydi’s bedroom door is still closed.

I pull the paisley print curtain near the front door back and see Gabe standing on the front porch. I toss the bottle of water that I’m holding onto the chair near the entry and struggle to unlock the door quickly enough. I glance up the stairs once more before yanking the door open and then step outside.

“You didn’t lock that did you?” he asks, just as I pull the front door closed behind me.

“Very funny,” I say. But I turn the knob anyway just to be sure. “No, my sister’s back, she’s sleeping.”

“Oh,” he says, rocking back and forth on his heels. He looks like he’s showered and changed as well. “Is everything good with her?”

“Yes,” I say. “Everything worked out.”

“Good,” he says. He glances around the front yard, his eyes darting all over the place. Everywhere but at me.

“Is everything okay?” I ask.

“Yeah, I just—” he shoves a pile of paper at me. “You left this at my house. Earlier. Before, I mean.”

“Okay,” I say, taking the mail from him. “Thanks for bringing it by.”

“You’d better go back in, your hair is wet,” he says pushing a strand off of my face. “You’ll freeze.”

“Eh, I’m used to it by now,” I joke, running a hand through my still-damp hair.

This is not the same mellow Gabe that left my house an hour ago.

“Are you sure you’re alright?”

Gabe shoves his hands into his pockets.

“Look,” he says. “I know that I said the next move is yours, but dammit, I had to see you again.”

His words hit me, twist around me and leave me stunned.

“I’m glad you did,” I say, unable to hide my smile.

He picks up my hand and kisses my palm, my wrist and then steps in closer.

“Can I come by tomorrow? Take you to lunch or something?”

“I’ll have to see when my parents get home.”

“Okay. Or, I can maybe just come by and hang out with you here—”

“My parents will be home,” I say.

“Right, I meant I could maybe meet your parents?”

“Wow—okay—”

“That’s weird, right? I’m sorry—”

“No, it’s not that, I just, I’ve never brought anyone to meet my parents before.”

“There’s a first time for everything, right?”

He’s right. But last night wasn’t about the adventure of trying new food, or seeing new sights.

It was the adventure of seeing myself—the person I could be.

It was about seeing inside someone else and seeing that his pain mattered too. The adventure could have happened just as easily right on this doorstep or in any city in the world.

The adventure is the way Gabe is looking at me right now.

“We’ll see,” I say.

“So that’s how it’s gonna go, huh?”  Gabe picks up my hand kisses each of my knuckles. “You’re going to make me wait before I sweep you off of your feet?”

I bite down on my lips to hold back the stupid, girlish squeal that bubbles up.

“You’ve already done that.”
Over and over.

Gabe grins, then reaches out and touches the stack of mail in my hands.

“Are you going to open that one now?” he asks, pointing the letter from Endicott College. “I can hang around while you do if you want me to.”

I hold it up and stare at my name on the envelope.

“I think I’m going to wait on it, actually. See how a few other things pan out first,” I say.

“Good,” he says. He pauses before saying, “For what it’s worth, Lena, I think you were right,”

“About?”

“Things happening for a reason.”

He leans into the door frame and stretches one arm above my head.

Trapping me. I never want to get out.

“Oh, yeah?”

“I feel like for a long time, my life has been in a million pieces. I’ve been scrambling trying to figure out what to do, how to make things right. How to take care of my grandma, how to find my dad and make him want to come home, how to relate to my mom, how to—-how to just be
me
. But now? After last night? I finally get that I’m in charge of figuring out how I want those pieces to fit back together.”

His hand clutches the back of my neck and he dips his head low.

His kisses my hair just over the curve of my ear and every nerve ending in my body is on high alert from that simple touch.

“And
you’re
one of those pieces,” he says. “So don’t go too far, okay?”

I’ve been so focused on my own issues. My own scars, so big and always present. I didn’t bother to think about the ones that other people have that can’t be seen.

Ones that aren’t big enough to make everyone take notice.

The invisible ones that can be far more painful than the physical one I carry with me.

They aren’t the kind of wounds that need a team of surgeons.

They’re exactly what Gabe said earlier. They’re the tiniest hairline fractures on our hearts, but they still have the power to change us.

They can turn us cold, like Gabe’s mother. They can make us do crazy things, like Jemma.

They can prove to be too much and you can try to outrun them like Gabe’s father did.

They bring you to your knees, and you don’t know how to get back up afterward like my parents experienced.

They make you think you’ll never love again, like the one my sister carries with her now.

But all of them: big ones like mine, and the ones that are nearly invisible like Gabe carries are still breaks.

And when your heart is broken, it feels like it’ll never heal. But it’s
the heart
. It proves to you over and over again that it will.

With every beat it proves that you’re okay.

And Gabe is right.

We
both
will be.

He kisses me once more before stepping off the porch.

It’s long, and soft, and has the promise of more to come. Soon.

EPILOGUE

from: Gabriel B. Martinez <
[email protected]
>

to: Lena Claire Pettitt <
[email protected]
>

subject: WINTER BREAK

Hey doll:

Just checking in. I’ll be at Babci’s Friday. What day are your parents driving in to pick you up?

I’ll bring cannolis home. You bring a pizza.

Dad will be in town. We all can’t wait to see you.

Gabe

ps. I love you.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Huge thanks, love and lifelong gratitude to Dr. Joseph Caspi, Dr. Timothy Pettitt,

and Dr. Jamie Dorotan.

Thanks to The Cover Lure for creating the most amazingly perfect cover I’ve ever seen. You captured the feel of Even the Moon Has Scars so perfectly and were a dream to work with. THANK YOU.

Thank you to awesome writers, and even better friends: Nyrae Dawn, Jolene Perry and Christa Desir, for encouraging me to return to my roots: YA, and pushing me to write the book of my heart.

To Liz Reinhardt for always ‘getting it’, for telling me to write on my own terms, to do it my way, and for checking my apostrophes and falling in love hard. ;)

1 out of every 100 babies is born with a congenital heart defect (CHD).

Raising awareness of
the most common
birth defect will always be a cause close to me and my family, as our youngest daughter, Britta was born and diagnosed with TAPVR in 2011. She underwent emergency open heart surgery and remained in the Cardiac ICU for several weeks.

For more info on CHD, TAPVR or Britta’s journey, you can visit her blog at
dearbabybritta.blogspot.com

About the Author

Steph grew up in Southern California, moved to the Bayou State for a decade and most recently resides in the Northeast. She has one husband, four children and a serious nail polish obsession. When she's not writing or taking care of her brood, she's reading or scouring travel sites, always ready for life's next adventure.

More books by Steph Campbell:

Delicate (Risk the Fall #1)

Grounding Quinn (Risk the Fall #2)

Friend is a Four Letter Word (Risk the Fall #3)

Beautiful Things Never Last (Risk the Fall #4)

My Fate for Yours with Jolene Perry (Crawford Series 0.5)

My Heart for Yours with Jolene Perry (Crawford Series #1)

Lengths with Liz Reinhardt (Silver Strand Series #1)

Depths with Liz Reinhardt (Silver Strand Series #2)

Limits with Liz Reinhardt (Silver Strand Series #3)

Ties with Liz Reinhardt (Silver Strand Series #4)

Riptides with Liz Reinhardt (Silver Strand Series #5)

Drift with Liz Reinhardt (Silver Strand Series #6)

Almost Lover with Liz Reinhardt

Golden Hour with Liz Reinhardt

A Toast to the Good Times with Liz Reinhardt

Chapter One

QUINN

My mother is totally nuts. I say this with complete certainty, and with the backing of fourteen medical professionals’ opinions. They’ve filled her head— and our medicine cabinet, with enough bottles to make a CVS jealous. Lithium, Darvocet, Prozac, Xanax- they’re all present and accounted for, happy little tablets to curb her unruly moods.  So, what
did
come first, the meds or her major personality defect?
If you ask me, I don't think my mom started off certifiably emo. I think she was unhappy and my dad knew it’d be easier to partially sedate her to keep her quiet than attempt to make her life better. So between him and all the whack job doctors with their happy little concoctions, they’ve made her schizo on their own.  But whether it was before or after the pills, my mother’s now bat shit crazy just the same.

I tap my fingers lackadaisically on the heavy walnut door, as I stare in to the overflowing medicine cabinet. Mom’s insanity at least has one perk. There’s a sea of countless bottles seemingly smiling at me, begging me to pick them.  I spin the Lazy Susan until I find a winner. Grabbing the dark, amber bottle, I roll the cool glass back and forth in my palm. My parents are too self-absorbed and preoccupied with my younger brother that they’ll never realize that it’s missing.

I chug a mouthful of Tussionex (pre-spiked with hydrocodone for your convenience), savoring its warm, syrupy goodness as it coats my throat and flows down into my stomach. I know that in minutes I’ll feel blissful and alert. My mother’s flakiness and my dad's patronization will cease to bother me. Yes,
now
I’m ready to start my day.

I should be dreading this. Going to summer school is not at all how I envisioned spending the summer before my senior year. I should be off on some drunken Mexican vacation with everyone else in my class, not making up math credits in order to graduate. Too bad I’m galactically inept when it comes to math. I don't care what anyone thinks, I just can't wrap my mind around numbers; they taunt me, and laugh at my stupidity.  Maybe if I had something else going on, summer school wouldn’t have appealed to me in the least, but sadly, I do not. My boyfriend Daniel and I broke up the day before he left for Cabo, and my two best friends, Sydney and Tessa, are both out of town, so that helps raise the depression factor a bit.

The halls at school are empty for once, just the way that I like them.

Stepping into the deserted administrative office sort of makes me feel like I’ve made a wrong turn and ended up on the sun. Between the bright fluorescent lights, and intense yellow paint job, it wouldn’t be an unrealistic assumption. The cheeriness of the room leaves me grimacing. I’m tempted to set the attendance sheets of the summer school students that I’ve been charged with delivering on the office desk and leave, but I decide against it. With my luck, they’d get overlooked and I wouldn't get credit for this damn class. I try to be patient and amuse myself by looking at the class panoramic pictures from previous years. Decade’s worth of happy graduates crammed into the school bleachers showing off their commencement attire. I scan the alternating colors of caps and gowns that so creatively spell out our school’s initials, and find my dad in one of the yellowing, framed pictures. He looks so pompous, even at eighteen. It’s nice to see some things never change. I root around in my purse until I find a black permanent marker and scribble out his smug head.

“I don't think you're supposed to be doing that,” an unfamiliar voice says, followed by a light laugh.

Shit.Shit.Shit.

The marker slips from my hand as I spin toward the voice.

I don't recognize the guy standing in the office with me. To say that he’s huge would be an understatement. His massive frame occupies most of the doorway. He looks like a linebacker, or is it a quarterback I’m thinking of? The point is, he’s a total Sasquatch. His t-shirt and preppy knit cardigan clash with his gargantuan body. Still, he’s decent eye candy.

“You weren't supposed to see that,” I mutter.

He laughs as he reaches down to retrieve my marker. “Apparently. So, someone you don't like?”

I grab the marker from his hand and shove it back into my purse. “Something like that.”

“I'm Ben,” he says, extending his hand.

“Quinn.” I glance sideways and shove my hands into my pockets. I don't shake hands. It's not a germ issue, it’s just that handshakes are for grownups. They’re too formal for people my age and I don't like them.

Mrs. Niño appears from the back room, wiping her mouth with a rough, brown paper towel.

“What can I help you both with?” she asks. Her eyes dart back and forth between me and the yeti.

He pushes up his sleeves and motions for me to go first.
Polite and cute.

“No, go ahead. I'm not in a hurry,” I say. It couldn’t be any more true. I stare down at my
Peru-B-Ruby
nail polish, pretending to be distracted and totally
not
eavesdropping.

“My name is Ben Shaw. I’m supposed to pick up some registration forms,” he tells Mrs. Niño. His voice has a deep, raspy quality to it that is
muy delicioso!

“Sure, sure, sure,” Mrs. Niño says. She rummages around her cluttered desk, and picks up a dozen paperweights before pursing her lips to the side, looking confused.

“Do you think it could be that envelope there?” he asks. I detect a hint of faux politeness in his tone.  Ben points to a large manila envelope. BENJAMIN SHAW is written on it in thick block letters.

I stifle a chuckle.

“Oh, my,” she says. “Here you go.”

“Thank you.” Ben says and envelope in hand he turns for the door. I don’t know this guy from Adam, but I do know that my heart picks up pace and I wring my sweaty palms as he leaves.

"What do you need, Quinn?" Mrs. Niño asks me. Her tone is way more harsh when she addresses me, as if I spend so much time in here— which I
totally
don't for the record. I narrow my eyes into my best glare, lob the attendance sheets on to her desk and bolt out the door after Ben.  I have no clue what my motive is for following him, maybe I’m just bored. Maybe it’s just so easy to cyber-stalk hotties on Facebook that I’ve moved on to doing it in real life. Either way, the fact that I’m acting like a complete idiot is not lost on me.

He’s already in the parking lot when I get outside, leaning against a shiny black car as I approach him.

“Nice car,” I say.

“Thanks. Here to deface more private property?” Ben asks with a laugh.

“Ha,” I mutter. “Actually, I just came to see, um...”
Actually I’m not sure what I came to see...
Actually,
normal
girls don’t chase after strange guys they’ve just met.

“Did you come out here to hit on me?” The sarcasm drips from his voice.

“Absolutely.” I try to sound sarcastic too, and hope the hitch in my voice doesn’t give my nerves away.

“Well good, saves me the effort.” He gives me a quick wink, and my instincts tell me I’m in big trouble. The very best kind.

“Well?” he says. He’s standing at the passenger side of the car with the door wide open, tapping his foot. I'm not clear on the question or implied invitation, or
whatever
.

“Well what?”

“Are you going to stand there, or are you going let me take you to lunch?”

“No way,” I tell him. His confident smile twitches downward at my words and I immediately feel guilty. I slide onto the smooth leather seat on the passenger side of his car. Ben arches his left brow in confusion before rounding the side of the car to climb into the driver seat.

“You can drive, but I’m taking
you
to lunch.” I say and without giving it any thought, my lips form a rare, genuine smile.

He lets out a raspy chuckle. “All right then, where to?”

***

“So, you’re sure your parents won’t be home soon?” Ben asks, glancing over his shoulder into the living room.

“Positive,” I say. I add another scoop of coffee to the filter, and flip the switch to “on”.  I pause to inspect the dark liquid drizzling into the pot. I'd lost track of how many scoops I added while talking to Ben and making lunch. The liquid filling the pot is extra dark and thick.

“They’re at a baseball tournament with my little brother, they’ll be gone all day.” I qualify.

“Is that you in that picture?” Ben points to a small frame on the edge of the telephone stand. It’s a photo of me in a leotard wearing my best
I just want to please you
smile. I was nine.

“Yep.”

“Do you still do gymnastics?” he asks me.

“Not often. Where’d you move from?” I say, changing the subject.

“The booming metropolis of Bowling Green, Kentucky.”

I ladle out some lentils and pasta into two bowls and push one across the kitchen island to him.

“Thank you,” he says with a smile. Goosebumps prick up on my arms in response.

“Have you lived here all of your life?” he asks.

“No. We moved here when I was like eight. My dad had an offer to start an accounting firm with an old friend, so lucky me, here we are.”

“Where’d you used to live?” He crosses his arms over his sturdy looking chest. The tendons in his arms flex, and I silently tell myself to close my mouth, which is hanging open. I know I said he was only decent looking, but scratch that, after spending just a short time with him, I want to gobble him up.

“California.” I take a sip of my coffee which is outrageously strong and bitter. I hope he doesn’t notice how I wince. I try to be nonchalant as I swirl extra cream into it, trying to dilute it.

“Ah, that explains it,” he says.

“Explains what?” I glance over my mug and he winks.

“Nothing.” He shakes his head with a smile. “Do you plan on staying here after high school?”

“God, no.” I love that he seems legitimately interested in all of these lame details about me.

“Favorite musician?” he asks.

“Bobby Long, you?”

“Nice choice. Mayer Hawthorne.”

We’ve been going back and forth with this game of question and answer without pause for over an hour, pretty much since we arrived at my house.

“So, what else can you tell me?” he asks.

“What do you want to know?”

Ben tilts his head and appears to be weighing his words carefully before asking his next question. My spine prickles with nervousness over what he might ask. It’s standard protocol with me not to divulge much.

“Pet peeves?” he finally says.

I tap my fork on the countertop. “When people say, ‘irregardless’. Is that even a real word? I hate it.” Ben leans back in his chair and laughs.

“How about you?” I ask.

“High fives.”

“That’s a good one.”

His eyes meet mine for a moment, and I fight the urge to look away.

“Vices?” he asks.

Pills.

“I don’t really have any,” I say, with a shrug.

“Oh, come on, everyone has
something
.”

Stealing.

“Oh, yeah, what’s yours then?” I say desperate to divert his attention. My cheeks ignite and my head screams:
Deflect! Sidetrack! Distract!

He cocks his head to the side and smirks. “Snarky ass women.”

Once I realize he’s not trying to bully me into divulging some deep dark secret, I humor him and answer. “Carbs.”

“This pasta is amazing,” he says, stabbing at a piece of Farfalle.

I prop my elbows on the island across from him, and rest my face in my hands.

“Really?” I ask.

“Yeah, where did you learn to cook like this?”

“Some from my mom. Some from Bobby Flay.” I flash him a smile and he lets out a low chuckle. “Mostly I taught myself. I cooked a lot for me and my brothers growing up. I only mess around with it, though.” My throat feels like there’s a Brillo pad lodged in it. Talking about myself makes me feel like I’m having an allergic reaction, especially when compliments are involved. “Cooking is about the only thing that I don't manage to fuck up,” I add.