Page 11 of In the Light of the Moon

And she wasn’t alone. There was an older, shorter version of her pushing their half-full cart.

The woman looked almost afraid while they made their way toward me, her companion none the wiser. Her delicate hand reached up to smooth the wild, bountiful ringlets that shot out from her scalp and framed her head and upper back. Her eyes kept cutting to me, then the shelves on either side of us while the old woman stopped just beside me. She struck a line through something on the handwritten list before starting to reach up to the top shelf.

The woman who’d tended to me when I was injured those weeks ago flitted one last glance to me before scolding at the older one and gently maneuvering her out of the way.

“Orion, are you even listening to me? I said that we’ll be—” I clicked a button on the left side of my headphones to end the call and started forward without thinking. Though the younger one, who attended the college where I taught, was at least a head taller than her companion, I was a good amount taller than her still. I reached up and snagged the white box of crackers that was up top and shoved back aways.

“Oh, thank you,” the older woman gave me a warm smile when I transferred the snack to her slender hand, and a strong scent of lavender and berries wafted off of her skin. She tossed the box unceremoniously amongst the rest of their things. She continued to look at her list, grey brow furrowed, and tapped her pen down the length of the page, “Sweetheart, we need more peanut butter if you want me to make more of those cookies you like. I’ll meet you over by the cleaning supplies.”

I moved out of the way for the older woman to make her way down and out of the aisle.

And then it was just us two. She had been avoiding me on campus. It became fairly obvious after I couldn’t help but memorize the times her schedule intersected with mine. She always took the same route throughout the buildings.

Until she didn’t. Until my body couldn’t help find her in the sea of students and faculty, only to watch her turn away each time.

Now, though, she didn’t leave. We faced each other, only a few steps separating us, and I couldn’t help notice her fresh cherry scent. I took another long inhale to try and take in as much of it as I could, and as I did, my eyes went to her face. With large eyes and a round, full mouth, I didn’t have to wonder or parse through her facial expression.

I knew that she was uneasy around me.

“Uh, I just need to squeeze behind you,” she gestured toward the shelf behind me, but I stayed where I was.

“What’s your name?” My mind once again went back to those moments I spoke with her—that night was still too much of a fog—and felt a churn of guilt. In the student lounge, it was evident that I’d offended her, though it wasn’t my intention. And when I asked if she was following me, I had just been surprised. And ashamed that she had seen me that way.

But she needed to understand that I appreciated what she’d done for me. Though kindness, like what she’d shown, didn’t come naturally to me, my father’s voice in my mind wouldn’t stop chastising for how I’d acted toward her.

That second time we spoke, I was feeling irritable due to my office being painted and forcing me to hold office hours in the noisy student lounge. Though I enjoyed teaching, at least when the students were engaged and interested in more than just passing the class, my time in my office was a break from the inevitable overstimulation.

Still, I could see now that I’d been irritable and ineffective at hiding it. When I replayed those moments later that day, trying to figure out why her mood had shifted so fast, I realized that I’d acted rudely. Usually, I didn’t much care about my lack of social graces, but I recognized hurt when it wafted off of her.

“Why?” She pulled her hand back toward her side, and looked me up and down.

“Because I want to know it. And you know mine.” I still didn’t know what to make of her saying my name to herself that afternoon. At the time, I’d been more stunned than anything, and the warm curling in my stomach when her smooth voice said my name made me stop in my tracks.

Now, she scoffed and passed a hand over her hair, and I tracked the movement, eyes trailing down her bare arm and then down the curve of her waist. When she finally spoke, though, I felt my whole body snap to attention then shiver with some sort of settling. “Sylvie.”

Sylvie, my soul hummed. I inhaled, twining her scent with her name, and tried to steady my mind into one train of coherent thought.

“I owe you a debt Sylvie. For helping me.” Her name felt right on my tongue. I said it over and over in my head, only because some of the sense my mother ingrained into me kept me fromdoing it aloud. Had that been what Sylvie was doing at the coffee shop? Did she enjoy the sound of my name as much as I did hers?

“Look, dude, I just need to get to the peanut butter. No debt here, but thanks for the sentiment.” She spoke with a lightness to her words, and had I not learned to look deeper, I would have been fooled. She was feeling skittish, and I immediately recognized the excitement I felt at that fact.

I was enchanted by her, and I had to breathe through the dominating instinct. To feel her fluttering pulse beneath my teeth, if only to let her know that within their razor edge, she was safe.

When I didn’t move, trying to think of what to say to her with my mind buzzing, she just rolled her eyes and started toward me. I was in a plain black shirt, and when she reached behind me for the shelf, her bare skin touched my sleeve. Then, when she withdrew, her hair brushed my shoulder, narrowly missing my nose, and I had to fight very hard to keep myself still.

Cherries and cool mornings. That’s what she smelled like, and I needed more of it.

But Sylvie just edged around me and my shopping cart, heading the way the older woman went, and I was alone again. This time, though, it didn’t make me feel relieved. I focused in on the heightened beating of my heart, the flaring of my nostrils as I tried to draw more of her scent into me, and, admittedly, the swelling of my cock. My face felt hot with interest but also frustration.

Of course she wouldn’t understand the compulsion to repay this debt.Ididn’t truly understand it, but I kept telling myself that it was what Da would have told me to do. What he would have thought was right. Especially after I… hurt her feelings. After she’d seen me injured and immediately stopped to help me.

And then there was the familiar surge of anger. A psychologist my mother hired during my teenage years, in an attempt to keep me in line, no doubt, taught me a breathing exercise that I begrudgingly found myself still using all these years later. The plundering blows and stinging bites had healed by the next morning, but I still felt them under my skin. I breathed through the rage, trying to focus on my list and getting back home, and rejected another call from Meredith.

The ding of a text message rang in my ears, but instead of an irritated one from Meredith, it was Juno.

Wanna get a beer later? I’m already exhausted and the semester’s barely started.

Sure

---