Page 33 of Charming Like Us
A Secret about Luna Hale:at 13, a boy left a note in her locker that said,close your legs, slut.
Sometimes I feel like I’m their therapist listening to their darkest days and thoughts, but I’m not even close to being a licensed professional. It’d be a lie to say that it’s not hard on me. I’m a filmmaker, a producer, a guy with a dream, but I don’t want to profit off their pain.
What makes it okay for me is knowing I can be a friendly, familiar safe place when they need one.
Luna waves at me. “Hey. Hi. Heidi. Ho. Howdy.” Purple feathers poke from her light-brown hair. And glitter is painted on her arms like a kindergarten class played arts and crafts on her body.
“Like the hair. Looking cool as ever.”
She smiles, about to reply.
“Luna from Planet Thebula,” Tom calls, using the microphone on stage. “Get up here. Gotta fill you in.”
She waves a second time. “Nice to make contact again.” And then she slinks to the stage.
I conclude fast that Luna Hale’s entrance wasn’t on Oscar’s radar. He stares down her 24/7 bodyguard, who happens to behistwenty-two-year-old brother Quinn.
Quinn is busy shutting the double-doors. Tall and muscled, his floral shirt is tucked in olive-green pants, making him look like he stepped out of a PacSun catalogue. It’s a stark difference from the casual east coast look of his older brother.
But they both have tiny scars on their faces from boxing blows.
“What?” Quinn asks him.
“A heads up would’ve been nice, little bro,” Oscar says lightly. He mimes picking up a phone. “Hey, big bro, I’m on my way with Luna to the same venue you’re at. Thanks, Oscar, bye.Click.” He hangs up the imaginary phone.
I smile and immediately want to film Oscar—for no one but me. Quinn isn’t as amused by him.
He fixes his earpiece. “Bro, you’re not the lead. I don’t need to inform you where I’m going.”
“So you told Thatcher you’d be here?” Oscar wonders.
“God, stop naggingme.” He watches Luna while he speaks. “That’s all you do lately.”
Oscar holds up his hands. “I’m legitimately just trying to talk to you.”
Quinn scratches his jaw. “It doesn’t feel like you are.”
“I’m telling you I am.”
Quinn shakes his head, his eyes downcast. “I’m on-duty, so…” He mutters something in Portuguese and then walks away. Leaving a motionless Oscar in his wake.
I come closer. “You okay?”
He nods, and then a second later shakes his head. “I swear he’s the nicest person to everyone but me. He plays with kittens and puppies like he’s a gold-hearted boy next door, won’t utter a curse word in front of a child, and paradoxically, he can punch a motherfucker in a ring like no one I’ve ever seen.” He shakes his head again in thought. “But somehow, I’m theonlygum on his shoe he’s trying to scrape off. For…I don’t know how long. I thought we were fine when he first joined security.” He glances at me. “You know we requested to be separated to avoid in-fighting, and he was put on Jane’s detail in Philly while I was in New York. It was going fine too. We put the past to bed.”
The past?“Did you two duke it out over a girl or something?” I don’t know why that knots my chest.
His shoulders rise. “If we did, he can have the girl. I’d rather just have my brother.” He laughs at something.
“What?”
His eyes hit mine. “I just remembered, he slept with the girl I was sleeping with during the FanCon tour. I think it was a shot at me.”
“But that’s not the past beef?”
“I don’t know what is.”
I frown more. “So you have no idea what the core of the problem is between you two? Like, what you’re actually arguing about?”
