I’ve barely blinked, but Mrs. Moon has already made her way to where Kattar is sitting and leans on the back of his chair with a motion so silent, I don’t think he even notices her presence until she rests her chin on the top of his head, caressing his face with the most dove-like coo anyone on planet earth has ever heard from a human tongue.

If she IS human.

He almost flinches.

“Shall we open the presents now, mi precioso, and have dinner afterward?” Mrs. Moon murmurs in her treacle-y sweet, babying voice that would embarrass the most self-assured of adults.

But not her prince, it would seem.

Kattar smiles up at her with an innocent, questioning raise of his eyebrows and eyes that are almost impossibly blank, like he has to assess what he thinks she wants before daring to have an opinion. To be anything or anyone at all.

Is he…still…?

Or was he ever…?

Mine?

“Why not?” he finally smiles.

But his laugh is just a little too affected, as Mrs. Moon steps off toward one of the spare rooms to grab the presents, and I shrink further into myself, feeling way too-

Useless?

Extraneous.

Accessory.

Like someone or something nice to have, but who would dare believe they NEEDED anything else if they had Mrs. Moon.

It would be irreverent…

Maybe it’s wrong or misguided somehow to believe that anyone is truly ‘yours,’ and if so, that was my mistake.

But Kattar definitely belongs to Mrs. Moon.

There’s an unnaturalness, a desire to shiver somewhere in Kattar’s body that rises up the second his mother stops touching him and seems to translate into mine.

He resists it…smiles like an angel but…I’m…less good at that.

I’m so confused…and…worried…and confused by that feeling too.

But he looks…fine-ish…

It seems that tonight, I’m feeling everything in his stead and he has feelings, or feels for, nothing and no one.

Not even himself.

The guys are chattering again.

It’s groundhog day. 

The party. Another party. Almost seems like I've spent more time miserable at parties than I’ve spent outside of them. Maybe it’s just cuz I actually remember that I’m supposed to be happy. Never remember that…or am…delusional enough to think that…any other time…

“Why isn’t our little sister over here with everybody else?” I hear Holy Star ask, and my skin seems to grow a little colder, if that’s even possible.

Discomfiture pours over me disquietingly, like water over frozen fingers - but I barely even feel it.

Oh, okay, I know this feeling. I’m going into shock. The part where even my own agony starts to feel irrationally funny.

I really REALLY don’t want to go over there. But I’m stuck whether I like it or not. Isn’t that just amazing?

I want to go home. But I don’t have the energy to want anything that much other than to go to sleep.

Please.

I just need-

To go home.

Seriously.

Just let me hold out a little while longer without snapping- if I have it in me to snap - or melting down and making a scene.

I’d rather shut down, but I can’t do that on command, or maybe I’m already doing that. I’m not sure.

I want to cry, and I’m not even sure what part of my twisted feelings is probing that tonight. Maybe a combination of humiliation and shattered pride.

But that feels hilarious.

As if I’ve ever had any reason to be proud…

Maybe I thought things had changed and I’d evolved to a point where I could be something more than my boyfriend’s mother’s charity child.

I’m such a dunce.

You win.

I’m completely defeated. Trounced. Destroyed.

Just let me go home and lick my wounds.

She will always win.

But being surrounded by this level of greatness that I know I couldn’t have matched in the first place only makes this all more painful. It’s adding incense to injury, as I continue to fall painfully short of her divinity.

I thought I could impress him...

What a weak attempt at splendor I am.

But what can I say to explain why I’m feeling so awful and excuse my escape without inviting more questions?

I’m not allowed to tell his mother why I feel bad.

Because my emotions are no longer my own.

They’re ‘ours.’

And so existing has become a game of Taboo.

At least, if I could have avoided becoming a topic…a part of a conversation, I’d have been able to avoid the risk of saying anything compromising and get through tonight with my emotions as close to intact as they ever - usually are.

Why does it make everything worse to know that today was going ‘okayish’ up until now?

It wasn’t

But then it was.

And I thought I’d be okayish.

Now, it seems I was just the punchline of a cosmic joke.

Ha ha.

Someone pinch me and tell me this is a nightmare.

What were the odds?

One of those nightmares where your brain tries to remind you of everything that could possibly go wrong right before the big moment you’ve spent days and weeks waiting for.

This is everything - almost every horrible thing I could imagine.

So why don’t you just spit in my face now and check the last thing off the list?

I wish I’d never gotten up today.

I wish I’d caught a cold or had a fever when I woke up that made me have to stay home.

I wish I had other plans.

I do.

Or I did, anyway.

I still have two different reservations going to waste right now as the night wastes away and I don’t want to have to pretend that I’m happy about watching everything that I planned - even if it was sub-Moon standard - even if it wouldn’t have impressed Kattar, and I’ll never be as good at this as his mother - slip through my fingers like so much salt water while people laugh and try to get me to metamorph into a social butterfly.

I TRIED for my prince.

I can’t remember the last time I tried for anyone.

I wanted him to know I loved him that much.

Instead, I’m stuck here, listening to him try to convince everyone that he couldn’t care less about my presence.

I wrap my sweater around my shivering little frame like a cocoon and try to turn into a wallflower, as he turns back into her prince, like some crooked kind of Cinderella spell at the stroke of 7:30 p.m.

I’m wilting. Stuck in the corner where my ‘sweetheart’ threw me away like feminine contraband.

The discarded little doll goes back to collecting dust…

The other guys glanced over in my direction at Holy Star’s words, and though it can only have been a second, it feels like they’ve been staring at me forever.

I’d do anything in my power to be able to turn invisible right now.

I don’t turn my head, so hopefully they can’t tell that I can see them all looking at me.

Well, not all of them. 

Kattar won’t even glance in my general direction.

His expression alters just the tiniest amount at Holy Star’s suggestion like he wants to say something to stop him from including me.

But he can’t just blow me off…not completely anyway, without making everybody question…

…Why he’s acting like he doesn’t want to be around me tonight.

Are we not friends anymore?

Does he not ‘like’ me now? In that cheerfully platonic way we’ve had going strong for more than a decade.

It’s sad that they would have to - I would have to ask - when we should be closer now than we’ve ever been.

But I guess that’s my fault, or as much my fault as it is his.

I gave up the luxury of being loved in the open when I agreed to become his little secret, and even the friendship we used to have gets muddied and tied up in this tangled web.

Too late to regret it. Or try to take it back. Un-agree. Unsign the promises I sealed with a dozen affirming silences.

This is the best I’m gonna get.

Something like begrudging tolerance, maybe ‘for old time’s sake’ in his friends’ imaginations.

And that doesn’t seem fair.

It’s not fair. Not fair to me-

And I’m going over there.

I…deserve better. I think.

I don’t know why. 

My body gets up of its own volition, stiffly, like a plastic ballerina, and I make my way to where Holy Star is sitting, plop down on the cushions beside him, and smile dismally up at the friendly blue eyes, right where Kattar can look me in the face.

I want you to remember this moment, my love. Right now.

When I decide NOT to be angry with you.

I’m not going to snap. I’m not going to paint over my hurt by being abrasive and bitter.

I’m going to let you watch my heart break.

Maybe if you still have one, you’ll feel guilty.

An unusual color comes into Kattar’s face as his eyes meet mine for that fraction of a second and his expression alters like someone broke a spell - or just cast a spell-

I have…never seen a panic attack start that quickly.

And believe me, I’ve been through hundreds.

Dread drains the light out of Kattar’s eyes so completely that even his face seems to turn a dull, almost lifeless hue of human and his gaze collapses instantly to the floor. His focus darts between everything and nothing anxiously like trying to look any other human being in the eye would be the shattering of him.

What on earth in that ocean of carpet are you looking for? Your integrity?

His right hand begins fidgeting nervously with his watch strap as his left hand opens and closes slowly and he sets his jaw tight, his breathing starting to look troubled though the pace stays the same-

So to the untrained eye, the only visible sign that anything is amiss is the fact that his face has turned bone white. His hands are a little unsteady, but they almost always are nowadays. 

Ryan and Holy Star both glance in his direction and ask, “You feeling alright, dude? Should we ask your mom to turn the heat up?”

But when Kattar shakes his head they assume it’s fine.

He is most definitely not fine.

I can see the white in his face rapidly being replaced by a furiously sanguine shade of agitation that burns up to the roots of his hair as he squeezes his hands together repetitively, obsessively.

Just as Mrs. Moon makes her way past his wheelchair, he turns to her suddenly, almost sharply, and he looks like he’s within two seconds of losing all semblance of calm as he says hurriedly-

“Mom, I’d like to talk to you for a second. Please.” 

He says it dead-seriously, and I can hear him trying to keep his voice steady though his breathing is audibly fretful.

Mrs. Moon doesn’t even look at him, just smiles in her sweet way and laughs majestically as she sets the boxes down. “Of course, dearest. But a little later. Let’s do the presents first.”

His mouth opens, dumbfounded, his black eyes looking up at her like full moons shining on the verge of tears. 

Then their lights go out, and he lowers his head.

But he doesn’t say anything.

“Would you like to go first, Ryan?” Mrs. Moon smiles.