Page 73 of Eat My Moon Dust
Hunar wrapped his big arms around my shoulders and waist, and I buried my face in his chest as I wailed, overwhelmed with relief. His tendrils surfed through my hair as his coding echoed from his chest like a deep, soothing drum.
“I know how hard the last couple days have been. I’m sorry, but I promise… I mean Ihope…it was worth it.”
I reared back and smacked his shoulder. “No, it wasnotworth a lousy stocking!” I sniffed. Hunar chuckled as I wailed on him a few more times.
“You don’t like the stockings?” he asked.
Brushing my cheeks on my shoulders, I pressed the collection to my chest protectively and huffed.“No,I love them.”
Hunar’s grin softened, and though he didn’t reach for me with his hands, hissentiwrapped questioningly around my wrist, as if I might pull away. Paint splotched its length, and the faint scent of drying paint filled my nose as I sighed.
That’s when I really looked at Hunar’s loving expression. His eyes were uncharacteristically sunken, as if some of the luster of the coil had withdrawn from his exhaustion. He wore his usual coveralls, but wrinkled and dirty. His hands were in bad shape too. A few scrapes with avocado-colored scabs and smears of blue dried over his knuckles.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t answer your vid comms,” he admitted, his tendrils reaching for me. I leaned into them, recognizing the starvation in his tone. He shuddered, tired shoulders rounding out with solace. “If I heard your voice or saw your face, I would’ve gotten tangled up in you and never left.”
“You look like you haven’t slept for days.”
He laughed, placing an affectionate palm on Ladh’s shoulder. “I haven’t. None of us have. It’s been all hands on deck.”
“All hands for what?” I asked, bewildered. Surely they hadn’t spent all this time quilting their own stockings or something. He was covered inpaint…
With a tick of his jaw, he looked over the festival. “Do you need to stay until people leave?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Good,” he sighed. “Let me show you then.”
With a nod to his kids, Hunar wrapped one arm around my elbow, and led me towards the home towers.
27
?HUNAR?
I’d hurt Tinsley, no question. Sure, she cried quick, but she wasn’t ashamed of it. She bounced back fast with a signature Tinsley smile and sense of enthusiasm that never tired. So when I’d seen her hugging herself as she tried to slink away from the festival, I’d felt like the moon’s worst asshole.
Needless to say, the nerves were hitting me hard. I should have thought this through better, but I was more comfortable with action than with talking it out. Planning for the future had never really panned out for me in the past. I’d rather build it with my own four hands.
“Where are we going?” Tinsley asked, looking over her shoulder at the tower I’d spent the afternoon vacating with my brood, where her unit sat untouched.
“To see what I’ve been working on. It’s on one of the upper floors.”
I avoided calling it a gift. It wasn’t. It was bribery of the first order. My fingers had itched all day wanting to move her things myself. The idea of putting all of her stuff inourunit was reassuring in an instinctual way. Her taste mingling with mine… I led her to Home Tower 03, catty corner to where we used to live. Hopefully.
“All this time, I thought you were going to make it up to me by ripping my clothes off,” Tinsley laughed hesitantly. Her tone was careful, as if she were walking on eggshells. Mysentirumbled, stripes flashing at the thought.
If she liked what I was about to show her, that’s exactly what I’d planned.
Human holiday music just the same as the other lobbies wafted through the doors as I swiped my fob against the access panel. The lift was already on the ground floor, so I ushered her in.
As soon as the doors were closed and we accelerated upwards, Tinsley wrapped her arms around my middle and buried her face in the divot between my sternum and abdominal wall. She breathed in, her protruding nose scrunched up against my filthy tabard. Attuned to her coil, I felt the bump of her heart calm down, the creak of loosening tendons and ligaments, as she drank in the scent of my hard labor.
Fuck me, but slithering right up against her bare skin and decorating her arms and legs with marks again was a painful need gnawing away at my civility. Pearls crowded my reservoir with a delicious ache. I couldn’t tell which was more dire: the need to douse my painfully dry semi-aquatic skin in water, sleep, or rededicate myself to mypriya.
When the doors opened, I almost swore, mysentisneaking down the length of her spine.
Later. Hopefully.
I took a deep breath and pulled back. Tinsley swallowed hard. “We’re still together, right?” she asked. “I mean, our… ourcoilis real-real. I didn’t read that wrong, did I?”
