Page 24 of Moonshine Lullabies

I admit I spent a long time under that hot shower spray. It felt good, nice and warm, my muscles loosening up. I shut off the water after I was sufficiently clean and stepped out, snatching a towel off the bar, and ran it over my hair to keep it from dripping on me.

I dried off and pulled on a pair of boxers out of the pack. I tore the tags off the sweatpants and peeled the size sticker off the leg, tossing them back in the bag it all came in. Finally, I pulled on a pair of the thick crew socks I’d bought.

I stopped before opening the bathroom door and realized the noise from the living room had stopped. When I went out, it was just Cy and Axe still talking. Everyone else had left.

I dropped my shit at the end of the couch and Cy looked up.

“Your sister still up?” I asked.

“Fuck if I know, why?”

“Need to know what time I need to get my ass up.”

“I don’t keep track of that shit. Go ask her,” he said with a shrug.

Axe was laughing. “You’re such a dick,” he said, and all Cy did was shrug. I was grinning, I couldn’t help myself.

I went back up the hall and stopped outside Jessie’s closed door. The light was on underneath, so I knocked.

I heard her lilting voice but I couldn’t make out what she said, so I figured it was safe to assume it was something like “come in.”

“Oh, hey,” she said, lowering her book into her lap. She was on one side of her queen-sized bed, propped up and sitting with a pile of pillows behind her. She was beautiful with her hair down like that, fanning out around her face and over her shoulders.

Stunning, actually.

She stared at me brown eyes, wide and lookin’ like – I don’t know what. Almost like a deer in the headlights, I’d say.

“You alright?” I asked.

She fumbled her bookmark out of the back of her book without taking her eyes off of me and shoved it unceremoniously in her place.

“Fine! I’m fine,” she said a little quickly.

I took a couple steps into her room and crawled up onto the unoccupied side of her bed, dragging a pillow under me and clutching it comfortably under my chest to prop me up.

“What time I need to be up tomorrow?” I asked.

She folded her hands on top of her book in her lap, so prim and proper, and I realized that it was what she did when she was nervous.

“I don’t have to be at work until ten, so like nine or nine thirty. It ain’t but fifteen minutes away.”

“Ten?” I asked.

She nodded.

“Ten to four. It’s only a part-time thing in the off season like it is.”

“Oh, well shit. Not gonna lie, I’m glad to hear that.”

She smiled. “You look tired.”

I nodded and laid my head down, looking over at her. We were quiet for a time and it was nice. I was struggling not to doze off. To keep myself from doing it, I reached over and took her book. She let me pluck it from her lap and I opened it up.

I read out loud…

I sat up, panting and sweating from the most terrible dreams. Dreams of falling, down, down, and down. Of fire and grotesque creatures, twisted and hateful. Of fighting, endlessly fighting, and the sense that I was fightin’ for something a lot more ‘n just this war. Through it all I was haunted, haunted by a pair of solemn green eyes spitting flecks of golden sparks.

I clutched the thin blanket around my shoulders and sat up. It was cold, my breath fogging the air and little eddies of steam a risin’ up from my exposed skin. I held my hand in front of my face and blinked.

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