Only the Moon Watching

Chapter 24: The Apology

One of the questions in the back of Shiv's magazine was, If you could see into a crystal ball that would tell you anything about the future, what would you want to know? I hadn't asked it of Steak, it seemed too personal. I hadn't even wanted to answer it in front of Shiv. (She'd volunteered that she'd want to know if she would be a famous murder mystery novelist one day, but I wouldn't ask a magical crystal ball about something as trivial as my career.)

I also wouldn't ask it if I was going to be rich, or have a nice house, or like my job, or ever have a real relationship with my parents... I wouldn't care how many kids I'm going to have or how old I'm going to be when I die or anything else tangible that you can measure or qualify or count...

What I'd want to know is: will I ever really, actually, fall in love? I don't want to know if I'll find someone who I love, who I get along with and share hobbies and interests with and all our beliefs and morals and desires line up. I want to know if I'll ever be in love, in a way that knocks me off my feet – and not because he's what I pictured in my dreams or because he has the perfect voice or says the sweetest things... I want to know if cave-girl love is a real thing, if love can exist like a craving, like: I need food and sex and sleep and someone extra special to be with.

Someone I couldn't replace if something went wrong. Someone I'd never get over if he died in the apocalypse. Someone who couldn't fault me for having been imprisoned because when he meets me he'll know, the same way he knows that he'll need to go to sleep tonight and eat tomorrow, for the rest of his life he'll also know that needs me...

I don't know if love like that is a real thing, but that's what I'd ask an all-knowing magical crystal if I had the chance. Especially now that I've been to jail (because I really do think that will hinder my dating options when I'm back outside, again), undeniable, unquestionable love is something I really, viscerally want. I want to need someone...

I want loyalty and understanding like I never got from my parents. Not a neediness but a knowing: I could only scratch this itch with you. Anything else is else, other, less than you. Only you and I are unquestioningly in love...

Shiv elbows me in the ribs, hard.

"Don't get your hands out!" I hiss. Luckily, Garda Girdle looks distracted.

We're on our way back from the library, single file behind her and her mystery man. It's the first time I've ever seen Girdle look genuinely happy, and I would be more curious about him if I hadn't been thinking–

"Hey space cadet, you're completely out of it. What's going on in your head?" Shiv whispers. "Better not have fallen for one of the other guys in there, Tangler would–"
I cut her off, shuddering, not wanting to know what would happen to me if I came between Tangler and her man, Chet.

"It's not that," I say, digging my hands into the skin below my waistband, trying to stop my pulse from racing, there. "I was just wondering who Garda Girdle's talking with–"

"Oh stop," says Shiv. "You weren't even looking at them. And you zoned out way before we left, it looked like you were reading the same sentence over and over in your book. Was it a really smutty one? Let me hear it, I need some new material."
"It wasn't that either," I say, struggling to invent a new lie on the spot. "I'm just tired today I guess."

"Up all night thinking about your man, then?"

We reach the cafeteria and the group splinters. Garda Girdle and the male guard head upstairs while Ripper and her friends reclaim their seats under the far window. Shiv pulls her hands out of her waistband and puts them on my shoulders, shaking me.