Page 3 of True Hearts

Not as though Graham is a super common name, but it’s all been in passing, and in all fairness, things have been a bit of a whirlwind with his friend group and mine. We are more tangled than I realized.

My friend Nat is now married to Dylan Wolfson. They had a quick courthouse wedding. Now Dylan’s friend Kaden, who I’m guessing is also friends with Graham here, has a thing for Frankie, which has been rather amusing because I think Frankie has a thing for him too, but she’s not letting that football star anywhere near her endzone.

“Never thought I’d see the day a woman had Kaden chasing his tail.” Graham chuckles, putting the picture back down.

“Frankie can run circles around anyone.” She’s a lawyer working in the law department of a steel production company. It’s all men. “I’m surprised we haven’t met more formally.” I sit down on my bed.

It’s then I realize I have this man I barely know in my bedroom. I mean, it’s the living room, but still. What would my fiancé think? I’ve never even let him up here. Not with how he’d turned his nose up at the building. This is my space where I can be me. I wouldn't have invited him.

“I remember you. You’re hard to miss.” He gives me a charming smile. I feel my cheeks start to warm. He’s not flirting, only being kind. “And your name, it’s different but very fitting.”

“Right.” I force myself to smile. I never thought it was fitting. Luna is the goddess of the moon. Always beautiful and regal in her white chariot drawn by horses. That is so far from where I came from, but I always find myself striving to be at that level.

“You don’t agree.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Your eyes say it all.” I didn't think I was easy to read. In fact, I thought I was rather good at hiding my emotions. I should be an expert by now.

“And why is it you think the name is so fitting?”

“I told you. I remember you, Luna. You light up a room. Even the darkest of places. That is what the moon does.” His answer is beyond anything I could have imagined. I don’t think a man has ever said such a kind thing to me before.

I drop my gaze down to my lap, where my hands are. My giant ring reflects the light. “It’s fake?” I hold up my hand.

“Now that is definitely not very fitting for you, Luna.”

I’m not sure I agree with that either.

ChapterThree

GRAHAM

I’m not the kind of guy who poaches another man’s woman. There’s bad karma there because if a woman is so easily lured away from one man, who’s to say she’ll be faithful to you? That said, no woman should be with a man who gives her a fake rock unless it’s something the couple agreed to in the first place because of, say, ethical reasons.

“You don’t have the real one at home in a safe?” I don’t want to be jumping to conclusions.

“Does it look like I have a safe here?” Luna waves a hand around the small space. While neat, the place is bursting with things. There are silly sculptures of animals dressed as humans next to fruit shaped like animals. There’s a garland of mushrooms made out of yarn strung across a cabinet front. A number of design, color, and architecture books are stacked in a tower next to the bed. Her multicolored dishes in reds, pinks, blues, and yellows rest on a shelf above the sink. It’s bright and cheery and very pleasing to the eye. I can see why she likes it.

I lower myself into a blue velvet overstuffed chair.

“Maybe in the closet?” I suggest, angling my head to get a better look at her bedroom that she converted into storage but all I see through the crack in the door is a splash of color.

“No.” She twists her ring, holding it up to the light. Little rainbows dance on a nearby lamp shade. “Are you sure? Look at the refraction.”

“Yeah, I could be wrong.”

She makes a face. “Don’t lie to me.”

I come over and lift her hand up so the sunlight can hit it. “A real diamond will have mostly white light refractions. Rainbows indicate a cubic or moissanite, but there’s nothing wrong with that.”

Luna takes her hand back and stares at the ring, tilting her hand to the left and the right. “When Michael proposed, he said that he spared no expense in getting me the biggest diamond in the store because a woman like me deserved a rock this big and shiny. Now that I know it’s a fake, it’s like he was laughing at me. Calling me big and shiny but really meaning I’m a plastic phony.”

Luna’s voice quavers at the end. Tears are imminent. My dislike for Montclair grows.

“The only fraud here is Michael. He probably has money problems and can’t afford a real rock that big.”

“The Montclairs don’t have money problems,” she scoffs. “They live in an enormous apartment that overlooks the Park, and everything he buys is design—” She stops and jumps to her feet. I follow her as she races into her closet. The walls are lined with clothing rods, and the outfits are sorted by color. There’s a collection of cabinets forming an island in the center, and on top are a number of bags. She grabs the first one with two interlocking Cs and shoves it into my chest. “Is this fake?”

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