I’d see him in school, his cocky swagger and whiplash-witty comebacks making girls drop their guard and panties. Tossing his shiny, thick mane as he showed off his pearly whites and endless dimples.
There were two Knight Coles.
One was mine.
The other everyone else’s.
And although he always spent recess with me, continuously protected me, forever treated me like a queen, I knew he was everyone’s king, and I only reigned in a small part of his life.
One night, when the moon was full and peering in at us through my window, my Knight kissed the sensitive skin beneath my ear.
“Moonshine,” he whispered. “You fill up the empty, dark space—like the moon owns the sky. It is quiet. It is bright. It doesn’t need to be a ball of flame to be noticed. It simply exists. It forever glows.”
He’d called me Moonshine every single day since.
I called him nothing, because I didn’t speak.
Maybe that’s how he knew, all those years later, that I’d lied—by omission. He wasn’t nothing. He was my everything.
Knight, 18; Luna, 19
“She’s not here. You can tuck your vagina back in, Cole.” Hunter Fitzpatrick yawned, flicking a red Solo cup against some tool’s head.
Said douchebag turned around from his conversation with a sophomore cheerleader, ready to talk smack. As soon as he saw that it was Hunter, he bit the inside of his cheek, glowering.
“Ew. Why so constipated?” Hunter growled in the Joker’s why-so-serious voice.
Downing the last of my fifth beer of the night, I pulled my gaze from the front door, tucking the empty bottle into the back pocket of some girl’s jeans. She turned around and laughed when she saw it was me.
I cupped and lit my joint, sucking on it as I watched the amber flickering under my nose. I passed the joint to Vaughn, releasing a plume of smoke and sinking back into the plush couch until it swallowed most of my upper body.
“Suck a dick,” I told Hunter, my voice hoarse from the smoke.
“Any tips from a pro?” he teased, mumbling “Sláinte” and knocking back a shot of something electric blue.
“Let me call your mom and ask,” I quipped.
“Friday is a busy night for her; better call Hunter’s sister.” Vaughn, who somehow still held the title of my best friend, had a profile like an eagle and a voice so low it felt like black smoke seeping into your ears. “Side note: Knight wasn’t looking at the door.”
I had been. But I was also high and drunk, and a little off guard. Nothing a few harmless flirts couldn’t fix.
“Sure, sure,” Hunter said in his Boston accent.
I pulled him into a headlock, messing his perfectly moussed, wheat blond hair.
There was just one crack in my unshakable, good-natured, billion-dollar smile, and hot-motherfucker-jock stereotype persona. A barely noticeable chip. You could see it from one angle. Only the one. And only when Luna Rexroth entered the room and our eyes met—for exactly the first half-second, before I rearranged my features back into my usual smug grin.
Other than that—as far as anyone else knew, at least—you couldn’t rattle me if you tried. And, seeing as I was an untouchable legend among the mortals inside the walls of All Saints High, many people did. Often.
Why I thought she’d be here was beyond my basic-ass logic. The shit I was smoking was obviously more powerful than a nice tall cocktail of bleach and antiperspirants. Moonshine didn’t frequent parties. She had no friends other than Vaughn and me, and she only hung out with us when we were riding solo, sans our harem of fangirls and shit-for-brains entourage.
Maybe I thought she’d come because summer break was crawling to its inevitable end. My eighteenth birthday had come and gone, and Luna was still dragging her feet about college.
Her dad told my dad he was trying to convince her to go to Boon College in North Carolina. It was highly populated with gifted students who had mild disabilities. She fit the profile perfectly. But she’d been accepted to Columbia, Berkeley, and UCLA as well. Personally, I found it damn near offensive she’d think about moving out of Todos Santos at all. There were a few academic establishments in San Diego, a stone’s throw away from us, that should do her just fine. Luckily, I knew Moonshine, and she’d never leave home, so it didn’t really matter.
“I’m in the mood for some ass.” Hunter slapped my thigh, probably sensing I was spending too much time in my head. He leaned toward the coffee table to grab his beer, elbowing Vaughn in the process. “You in?”
Vaughn stared at him blankly, as if the answer were obvious. With his icy, pale eyes and raven black hair, he looked like a dropout from a Twilight movie—a vibe a surprising amount of girls dug. More than anything, Vaughn had perfected the art of making you feel like a dumbass for asking him a simple question, the way he’d done to Hunter right now.
Fitzpatrick swiveled to me. “Cole?” He wiggled his brows.
“Bouncing chicks is my side hustle.”
That was my official statement, anyway. Also that I wasn’t hung up on Luna Rexroth, who’d friend-zoned me so fucking hard even my nocturnal emissions were platonic at this point.
Hunter, an Irish polo prince—too posh to play football like me and too remarkably untalented at anything to be an artist like Vaughn—put two fingers in his mouth and let out a whistle that pierced through the music. The guys around us clinked their beers, trying to bite down their excited grins. When we wanted a piece of ass, that meant they were in for a treat, too.
“Ladies, line up toward the entertainment room. Make it neat. No cutting in line. Chop, chop. If you’re lovely, daring, and willing, you’re an applicant we want to see. Just be sure to remember—we won’t call you tomorrow morning, won’t follow you on social media, and won’t acknowledge your existence in the hallways. But we will carry you with us forever, like hepatitis B.”
A herd of junior and senior girls scurried up the stairs of Vaughn’s mansion in pairs, whispering and giggling in each other’s ears. Vaughn threw parties every other weekend while his parents were in their Virginia castle, probably fucking the memory of their devil spawn out of each other’s minds. The girls lined up outside the entertainment room, spines rod-straight against the textured gray walls. The line started at the base of his spiral stairway, snaking all the up way to a heavy set of black doors.
Vaughn, Hunter, and I strolled past them silently, lit joints clutched between our teeth. I wore white, destroyed Balmain biker jeans and a shabby I Fucked Your Girlfriend and Didn’t Even Enjoy It tee that had cost me a grand, paired with vintage Gucci sneakers and a beanie I was pretty sure was made out of real unicorn fur or some shit. Vaughn still wore his painting attire and looked just a little dirtier than a third world-based hooker looking for her next fix, and Hunter was wearing a full-blown suit, bless his Great Gatsby, weird-ass heart.
Our names, moaned and whispered like a prayer among the buzzing girls, drowned in the angry tune pulsating against the walls.
“A Song for the Dead” by Queens of the Stone Age vibrated in my stomach as we glided the length of Vaughn’s hallway, which was complete with Gothic, high ceilings and giant paintings of his family members. It was actually creepier than a Stephen King book: Vaughn’s scowling face staring back at you, life-sized.