Sliced Trees and Dead Words

5 - I needed her home, but my home was the road.

- DALEN -

Luna very quickly became the girl I compared all other women to.

If they had brown hair, it was in reference to how much longer or shorter, and straighter or curlier it was than Luna's. If she had green eyes, it was just how many shades lighter or darker than Luna's forest green they were. If she made a joke, it fell on a scale of 0-Luna. If she smiled, it was measured against how wide and bright Luna's were, and the prominence or lack thereof of her dimples that used to drive my balls insane. As did her body, which showed evidence of just the right balance of chocolate cake and low yoga planks, (another feature of Luna that immediately made my dick twinge with desire.)

That first night on the beach, I learned so many things about Luna.

I learned that she smiles involuntarily whenever someone looks her in the eyes, unable to help the corners of her mouth from hitching upwards. I learned that she has a similarly dark humour to my own, and doesn't shy away from topics that others would find too uncomfortable. I learned that she's just as chatty and eager for conversation as I am, but that she can do it and still listen intently, unlike me.

But above all, I realised that Luna has absolutely no idea how beautiful she is.

No clue as to how her smile can mend even the most broken of hearts. How her laugh can be heard in the depths of someone's stomach. How her eyes see through all surface-level things to what really lies underneath. How her ears hear things you haven't even said aloud to yourself.

She never saw her obvious physical beauty either. No recognition of how her hourglass turned heads, or how hypnotic her wide hips were swaying side to side as she walked along the beach. How something as simple as breathing becomes sexy when it causes her chest to rise and stretch the fabric over her heaving breasts. How the extra she has around her hips and waist and thighs, which she hates so much, just makes her more alluring, more enticing, and more desirable than any other woman in the room.

Luna Martone could turn even gay guys straight for an hour or two. I'm sure of it.

The night I met Luna she was nineteen and very recently heartbroken. She aimed to surprise her boyfriend at the time by bringing him pizza and beer after she finished work late, but walked into his house to find him balls deep in another woman on his couch. A woman who looked nothing like Luna in any way. Blonde, petite, pale. Nothing at all to compare with when you've been with Luna.

It broke the poor girl's heart, as well as her already unreliable self-esteem.

She had ditched the pizza against the living room wall above the couch just as he nutted on the unnamed, inferior girl out of shock, though she did retain the forethought to keep the beer for her walk home. After our meeting on the sand, I did what I could to help her feel better. I took her to a video store and hired every Looney Tunes DVD they had, then swung by Woolies to pick up packets of popcorn, chocolate ice cream and a second six-pack of beer. Then we went back to her place to pig out in front of the TV, laughing at old cartoons.

She thought it was ridiculous that she just found her cheating slimeball of a boyfriend fucking another girl, then met some random twenty-year-old dude camping on the beach with his dog as she walked home; then found herself now kind of drunk and hanging out with said random dude in her bedroom.

I wanted to kiss her. To touch her and make sure she knew how perfect she was. But I wasn't self-destructive enough (at least not back then) to not know better than to take advantage of a grieving drunk girl I just met. Especially one as important as Luna.

And Luna was important. I didn't need to know everything about her yet to know that she would be one of the most important people in my life.

She's the type of woman who needs to know her importance. Not in an attention-seeking kind of way—Luna hates any and all spotlight on her, trust me. But she does need to feel wanted for who she really is, not what people expect her to be based on her appearance.

I tried to show her how valued and respected she was. How much her presence in my life was the best gift I could have wished for. How completely it changed the trajectory of my life for the better.

We fell asleep on her bed together that night, Medusa laying between us and snoring as loudly as she always does. And when we woke up, I offered for her to come with me as I travelled south down the coast through Sydney and on towards Melbourne. With her judgment clouded by the betrayal of her now ex-boyfriend and the unexpected knock to her self-confidence, she agreed. And even though I never expected her to follow through with it, she did.

I had my two best girls riding shotgun with me in my beat-up station wagon for a month as we travelled up and down the coast.

When I reluctantly dropped her off home, the pain of separation was unbearable. I couldn't imagine what it would be like to not wake up and know she was there with me. To not have her critique my hair on a daily basis and offer me haircut after haircut so she didn't have to look at the parts near the back of my neck that had become matted with how lazy I'd been to wash and brush it. To not smell her perfume the second I got into my car, or hear her sigh before she started lecturing me on how much I smoked.

But Luna Martone is not Dalen Rivers. She doesn't need to run away constantly from life. Her place is Byron Bay, where she has a life she is content with and a family who loves her and needs her home.

I needed her home, too. But my home is the road. And the road was only ever temporary for Luna.

To keep her with me while I was gone, moving from job to job as I had ever since I was seventeen, I would speak to her almost every day, and pick up any and all moon related things I'd find and send them to her in the mail. She'd text or call me after each package arrived on her doorstep, and I would be able to hear her beautiful smile on the other end of the phone and practically see her dimples right in front of me.

It was never about buying her love or affection. Every crescent ring, moonstone necklace, book with the night sky on the cover or moon in the title, and celestial themed tarot set was for Luna. To let her know that even though there were douchebags around her at home that stuck their dicks in other girls when they should have been reserved for her, there was at least one other somewhere in the country thinking of her grinning at her mailman and ripping the package open excitedly.

Feeling valued and knowing her importance.