Sliced Trees and Dead Words

26 - Stay.

- LUNA -

He'll still insisting this is a date, but he doesn't seem anywhere near as excited about it as he did five minutes ago when he was calling me out for saying it wasn't and pretending that I didn't feel anything for him.

I do. That much is clearly evident, though I really don't want to. He's Dalen's best friend, and I only just met him. I shouldn't be feeling anything for him, but I just can't help it. He's kind, and sweet and takes better care of me that anyone ever has, including my padre who has always been incredibly protective of Siella and I. He's attentive to me in so many ways I can barely even count them all, and knows what I need better than I do. Yes, he's a stubborn cazzo and frustrates me more than anything, but he also seems to make me more brave while doing it, and forces me to face issues I've been avoiding for years.

Take, for example, the issue of this bare face I am now wearing out of my house for the first time since was probably sixteen. I'd worn no makeup since yesterday when I had washed half of it off in the water, then the other half crying after Dalen's parents and with what happened with Medusa. I hadn't expected that we would be staying anywhere yesterday, so didn't bother to bring anything with me to fix my face, being so hungover that it hadn't even entered my mind to think about. I would say that Wolfe never once looked at me differently for it, but he absolutely did, in every way that I've wanted a man to look at me. With lust and desire and veneration and awe, in a way that was even more intoxicating than my zio Tomasso's vino was. The very same vino Nella just poured a glass of and handed to me. She's been buying bottles of my zio's home brew for years, and had a decent collection in her house for occasions such as this—maybe double dates with her husband, best friend and a guy they barely know but have welcomed into their house much quicker than they have with any one of my actual boyfriends in the past.

But Wolfe isn't my boyfriend. I don't know what he is. I don't even know who he is; even less so when he isn't being the Wolfe that I do know.

He said he wanted to talk to me later about whatever is on his mind, but I really don't have that kind of patience, especially when I'm feeling self-conscious and vulnerable going out to dinner with a man who somehow convinced me the world wouldn't end if I did so without any foundation. Nella and Mason couldn't believe it when they opened the door to see me there fresh faced. I don't think Nella has seen me like this since the beginning of high school, except maybe for the day of their wedding when we were getting ready together, and I know for certain that Mason never has. Their eyes were as wide as I've ever seen them when they saw me standing on their doorstep with Wolfe, and Nella has been crying and gushing at me for it ever since, and about how much she loves Wolfe already for his supernatural powers in getting me to do this—the impossible.

I'm sure she and Mason will have a lot to talk about after Wolfe and I go home; though now I don't even know that Wolfe wants to come home with me anymore. Prior to coming here, I would have said definitively that he did, and that, were I a luckier woman than I am, I would be having his overconfident hands all over me for the rest of the night. But now, he won't even look at me in the eye, or look my way at all for that matter, which is just so not him.

I tried. I tried to get through the night and the conversational interrogation that was Nella and Mason's line of questioning over scalloped potatoes and raspberry and maple cheesecake. I tried to ignore that his arm remained still across the back of my chair, and that his fingers never once grazed mine. I tried to ignore how he spoke about his fathers Tobias and Micah Prescott, who both passed away consecutively about four years ago, just before he met Dalen. About them both being in the building industry too, though Tobias Prescott was an architect and Micah Prescott a civil engineer, who met and fell in love and lived together with their son Wolfe, who was born via surrogate almost thirty years ago. How proud they were when Wolfe decided to follow in their footsteps and work in building and construction too, just in a much dirtier, blue-collar kind of way. How devastated he was when they both died, and how opportune and timely it was for him to get away from it and meet Dalen. How much he enjoyed Dalen's companionship and miraculously never tired of his endless bullshit given how much time they spent around each other. How almost every night was spent around the fire playing music or reading, or getting into endless discussion about the deeper meanings of life. How liberating the nomadic life has been and how much better he has come to know himself and how he relates to other people through living so simply.