Sliced Trees and Dead Words

4 - Two birds. One stone.

- WOLFE -

Just who the fuck does this woman think she is?

'That title is mine'?

What kind of self-absorbed, unfeeling person says something like that at a time like this?

Christ, I hate her.

I've hated her for four fucking years anyway, but this . . . This is just the icing on the cake that is my supreme hatred for the infamous Luna Martone.

Dalen never shut up about her. For four years I've heard nothing but the highest praise for Luna. Nothing but gushing accolades about her beauty, her intellect and her tenderness. How much he adores her. How he can't wait until he can see her again.

How utterly crushed he was whenever he did, and came back to meet me even more depressed than when he left to go visit her in the first place.

That dude loved this girl more than anything. And she strung him along, even more a lost puppy than Medusa is now without him, for almost ten years. Giving him hope that he would one day possess her heart, which was unlike any other according to him; then shoot him down and plummet him deeper into the darkness than ever before.

When he was happy, he spoke of Luna and wished her happy too. When he was sad, he wanted nothing more than to hear Luna's voice. When he wrote songs about love, he sang them to Luna. When he was drunk, he cried about Luna.

Luna was his everything.

And yet it was Wolfe Prescott, not Luna Martone, who actually did everything. Made sure he was eating every day. Ensured he stayed off the hard shit as much as possible. Kept an eye on him so he didn't get into too much strife down at the bar. Kept him in work so he had money to buy her endless gifts to send in the mail. Dropped him off at the airport when he felt like a spontaneous visit. Listened to him whine and complain about how unrequited his love for her was.

I swear, Dalen mentioned her name no fewer than ten times every day at a bare minimum. His face would light up like a Christmas tree whenever he got a text from her. He would jump up from wherever he was and whatever he was doing to take her call, and giggle like a little schoolkid while he spoke to her.

I never actually thought I would miss hearing him mention her name every second word, but after the last seventy-two hours, I've apparently been proven wrong.

I miss him. So fucking much. Already. I can't even imagine how much worse it's going to get as the days go by and I start forgetting things about him.

I ended up pulling out Dalen's phone to message the dreaded Luna, just to see if I could get some of whatever she apparently possessed that was so magic it made even the most depressed person I knew happy. To see if she could somehow make this better like she always seemed to do for Dalen when he was at his lowest and I'd hear him crying to her on the phone over in his swag, assuming I was asleep and couldn't hear him. I always heard him. We'd spent so much time together it was hard not to notice these things.

But when she replied saying nothing other than 'how did he go?' the rage that swallowed me was indescribable. If she knew he was so bad that this would happen one day, why didn't she do more to help him? Why didn't she come see him when he spent hours begging her over the phone? Why didn't she force him to get help and talk to someone who actually knew what the hell they were talking about, rather than me or her? Why wasn't she here with him? Why was it me who had to find him like that? Why couldn't I have been spared and it be her instead?

As soon as that last thought floated into my angry brain, I cursed myself for it. I would never wish that on anyone, no matter how much I hated them. Meaning I got even more pissed off about this whole messed up situation, so much so that I refused to reply to her until I had calmed down enough to not come straight out and tell her I blamed her, at least in part, for me losing my best friend.