Page 8 of Lavender Moon

It started when I noticed him staring a little too long at us when she and I were on lifeguard duty together. I couldn’t quite blame him as she was a sight for sore eyes in her royal blue one piece swim suit, with the sun glinting off her silky, tanned skin. I had to hide my hard-on by holding my buoy in front of me. But seriously, dude, move the fuck along. Then he just had to demonstrate good lasso throwing technique to the kids by tossing his rope around her, followed by a joke about keeping her. While she humored him with a laugh, the accompanying smile didn’t reach her eyes, and any moron could read that she was just being polite and not swooning over his flirting attempts.

He was all over her during a cornhole tournament, pretending to be scared and hide behind her during the water balloon wars, and I damn near blew a gasket when he wiped a smudge of marshmallow off the corner of her mouth from her S’more the other night. He kept touching her a little more than he had to, and I was ready to knock his lights out. And with each interaction he’s talking, talking, talking.

The idiot clearly knows nothing about her like I do. For example, if she wants to know something about you, she’ll ask you.

I’ll admit, I’m kind of enjoying the sour expression he’s shooting our way as she and I sit at the end of the picnic table while her campers and mine write out letters to their families. He needs to get the hint that when Luna and I are here in this place, she and I belong to each other.

Seeing her when I first rolled up last week took my breath away. I tried to tell myself it’s just because another year had gone by, and because this was our last time at this place I was getting nostalgic about the first time, and comparing how much she’d changed.

She’s still slim and lithe, I’d wager about 5’7” to my 6’2” now. Her face is all high cheek bones and a delicate jaw, while her eyes hold a certain maturity that I must have missed gradually building over the years.

And her body has not gone unnoticed. Toned, smooth legs, breasts that are just the right size for both her frame and my hand, and a dynamite ass. And don’t get me started on her skin. The smooth canvas is both begging for ink but also looks so damn good as it is; perfect and untouched.

“Do you think you can help me out in art later?” she asks, jarring me out of my lusty haze, but instead of looking at me, her brow is pulled into a scowl as she looks down at something she’s trying to draw in her notebook. I’m not sure what it is, but it looks like a partially deflated soccer ball with flippers.

“Yeah, with what?”

“I have this great step-by-step painting of a beach for the kids to do, but I want it to have a baby sea turtle crawling towards the waves and - uggghhh! I just can’t get it right,” she grits out, flipping her pencil over to furiously rub at her drawing with the eraser.

“What do you want me to do? Draw a turtle on their pictures for them and they can paint it in?” I ask, coming around to her side so I can get a look at the poor turtle she’s deforming.

“Yeah, would you?” She huffs out a breath, blowing a wisp of brown hair from hanging down in her face.

“Sure thing,” I assure her as I sit down close to her, straddling the bench, my crotch flush against her hip. “Here,” I hold out my hand across her. Looking up at me over her shoulder she tries to hand over her pencil, questions glowing in her honey-brown eyes, but rather than take it from her, I guide her hand back down to the paper. “Hold it like you’re going to draw,” I instruct and she obliged with no hesitation. I chance a quick look up to Michael, who’s still giving me a death stare while he’s supposed to be working with his campers on knots.

This is what years of bonding and trust looks like, fucker. Get the fuck back to your ropes.

Looking back down at Luna’s notebook, I grip the pencil just above where her hand is. Without verbal instruction, I just start drawing a sea turtle the way I see it in my head, and it just appears naturally on the paper. Luna, however, is taking in every single movement and it’s resulting mark on the page. For sure, she’s going to try it on her own later. She’s forever striving to further perfect her craft.

I continue with the general outline, pretending I’m focusing on the picture, when really, I’m letting her scent cast it’s spell over my senses. Sunscreen mixed with florals and the musk of her shampoo make up my favorite scent on earth, and I never knew it. Our closeness gives me a dreamlike feeling that’s having an effect on more than one part of me, and I just hope to God she doesn’t feel it against her hip.

When I glance up from the paper to the side of Luna’s face, I see that she’s smiling down fondly, and I wish I knew if it was our turtle making her happy, or the act of doing something like this; our hands touching while they create something together. Despite myself, I hope to hell it’s the latter.

Luna has no idea how close I hold her inside. She’s special to me, and it’s because of that I’ve never let her all the way in. Don’t get me wrong, she knows a lot of things about me that no one else does, but when it comes to emotions, I’ve been very reserved. It’s one thing to know facts about someone, but something down in my self-conscious must think that because I’ve worn my armor so long, I’m afraid to be something other than what she’s always known.

To her, I’m Kaleb who will take any dare before he tells any truths, and she seems to be fine enough with that to still be here.

“Voilá,” I announce in a low voice when the turtle is complete.

Luna is still looking down at it smiling when her lips part and her eyes dart off in the distance for moment. “Wait a minute…” she says, turning in her seat so that she’s facing me and grabs hold of my left arm. The warmth of her hand sends a pang through my chest I’m sure she’s oblivious to as her eyes scan up and down the artwork on my arm.

“You did these tats, didn’t you?”

“Guilty,” I quirk a smile at her and feel that thrill again when she looks up and down between me and my arm with a radiant smile. “I’ve been helping out at the tattoo parlor back home, and they’ve let me practice on myself.”

“Oh my God, K, you should do this! Like, for a living…” she shakes her head in awe and my heart swells at the sight. This is why she’s my Luna. Cheyenne sneered at the idea, not that I gave any fucks what she thought.

“Well, after boot camp, I may go back there and do an apprenticeship unless I get stationed somewhere else,” I shrug, not missing her blink at the words boot camp.

“I want a tattoo,” she mumbles softly, rotating my arm a little so she can see more of the designs.

“Why don’t you have any? Will your dad kill you?” I tease, raising an eyebrow.

“No, blockhead, I just don’t know what to get. I have too many ideas.” She’s watching her language in front of the kids. Normally she’d call me something else. It’s the mark of a true friendship when you can give each other shit.

“Ah, the life of an artist,” I lament. “The struggle is real.”

“Looks like you have the same problem, only you just decided to go with them all,” she quips taking one last look, but before she lets go, her mouth goes slack as her eyes widen. “Oh my God… Kaleb?” She looks up at me with a look of wonder I’d been waiting to see on her face since I etched the crescent moon into my skin. “That’s the moon. I mean, obviously, but the moon you drew on my hand! This is the same one! Exactly!”

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