- MILES -
I thought it must have been divine intervention when I ran into her at the café earlier this morning, but even more so when I was on my way back home from a run and swim with Echo down at the beach and I saw her yet again, this time being engulfed with affection by the entire scissor-wielding crew out the front of my hairdresser.
She looked different, even from earlier today when I held the door open for her and who I'm presuming was her family. Her hair is much shorter, but I know it's definitely her. Long, slender legs and same Docs in thirty plus degree weather like a mad woman.
I haven't seen her at Moonlight before, and I get my hair done there pretty religiously, so she mustn't be an employee. But only a fool would imagine that she isn't close to them all. Luna and Nella especially if their tears were anything to go by. Add in the fact she jumped in Nella's car while her lips quivered waving goodbye to Luna, and I’m more than just a little convinced that they must be friends, and so found my legs jogging across the road to meet Luna, wiping away a final tear in front of the entrance of her store when I reached her.
"Growing ever closer to a full moon, I see," I said, sliding onto the sidewalk next to her.
She laughed, which was a relief because instantly after the words came out of my mouth, I heard how someone who wasn't pregnant and named after our divine lunar overlord could have interpreted that the wrong way.
"You're lucky I'm sad, and that comment reminds me of my old friend, that I'll let you walk away with your legs still intact after effectively calling me as round as the moon, Miles," Luna said, smiling her gentle, sassy smile at me and opening her arms for a hug. "I’m sitting uncomfortably between a first quarter and waxing gibbous at this point."
I snorted, ever amused by Luna. I've known her for years now, having been a former client of hers. I still go to Moonlight to get my hair cut, but it's a skinny and just as sassy queer boy that now owns my hair apparently, not a fiery Italian. I'm also good mates with her partner Wolfe, who is a regular client of mine at my gym. He loves an early morning boxing class, though that dude must get enough daily exercise lugging bricks and cement around all day. I'm surprised he has any energy at all for a rather intense boxing class a few times a week.
"You and the mini Wolfe doing okay in there?" I asked, trying to make obligatory small talk before I channelled back to asking about the girl who just left, which was my main intention of this greeting. I mean, I also genuinely care that she and the baby are doing okay. Luna and Wolfe have always been great to me and I'd consider them both two of my closest friends, but I’m also chasing fate in this very moment.
"You know, it could be a Wolfess?" Luna said, laughing at her own awful joke. "Not sure why everyone is convinced it's a boy and not a she-Wolfe. But yeah, I think we're both doing okay."
"Luna, you can keep hoping for a girl as much as you want, but just imagine Wolfe as a girl dad. That poor thing would never be let off her lead, and a very short one at that."
Luna laughed hard, the wolf/dog puns presumably getting too much for her. "But I'd know what to do with a girl. I am one. I know how they work. I have no idea about boys."
"Yeah, you do. Same thing but replace boobs and vagina with a dick and balls,” I joked, causing Luna to laugh even harder and threaten to pee her pants if I keep her laughing with her compromised bladder. “Besides, you've had heaps of practice with Heath."
Has she ever. I feel like every time I'm in getting a cut or a shave, she's chiding him for some inappropriate thing or another, just like my mum still always does me. Most of the time I don't blame her---Luna or my mother, that is. He can be a handful, as I know well, basically getting manhandled every time I walk in the door. I almost feel bad that I don't swing that way and aren't about a decade younger to be closer to him in age because I'm sure it would please Heath to no end.
"And what a headache he has been!" Luna smiled a lot more gently than her tone, presumably reflecting on her journey with Heath. From what Luna and Heath have both said to me over the last year and a half of him working at Moonlight, Luna extended him a few kindnesses when he was still living rough, including setting him up with a social worker to help him find housing and offering him a job so he could pay to keep it.
"But look how well he's doing now," I challenged, remembering back to the Heath I first met. While a lot hasn't changed---namely his proud and excessively confident queerness---he's much more settled, sober, and stable in many other areas of his life compared to the kid he was when Luna first took him under her wing.
Luna beamed, clearly very proud of Heath and how far he has come. As should she be. He’s a great kid and he works hard, both for Luna at the salon, and himself in tackling his earlier life hardships head on and being brave enough to step out and try again. I admire the guy a lot. Everything he’s said about his childhood and adolescence fucking sucks, and I’m stoked to see him growing out of all that with Luna’s help, which I admire her for too. Not many people would give him the opportunities she has, and I’ll forever consider her nothing short of a complete legend for it. More people should be like Luna.
"So... you looked like you were crying when I headed over?" I asked after a few of Luna’s deep sighs and rubs of her growing stomach. It’s definitely a roundabout way to segue into asking about the woman I saw her with just now, but it worked nonetheless.
"Oh,” she said, looking a little embarrassed that I had caught her teary-eyed. “One of my best girlfriends was in town for a short visit from Melbourne," Luna said, crushing both my libido and the hopes of it being satisfied into a thousand pieces. She lives in Victoria? How is life this unfair? I'm more disheartened than I should be. "I hate her living there, and I wish she'd just come home."
Luna is genuinely miserable about her friend going home to Melbourne, and I instantly give up on my mission to find out more about her. I don't want to, because I want to hurl a ASIO-level inquisition Luna's way to find out everything I can about her friend and how I might be able to secure a date with her. But, seeing how deeply saddened Luna is by her departure, it just doesn't feel right to subject her to my interrogation anymore. Plus, I suppose it's now redundant seeing as she doesn't live around here, or even anywhere near here anyway.
I'll probably never see her again.
"I hate her living there, too," I said instead, taking the pseudo man-slut route of feigning my own somewhat-real disappointment in an attempt to pull Luna out of hers. "She looked hot, at least from across the road. I was hoping for an introduction."
"Ugh, men!" Luna scoffed at me with a smile. "Go on and get out of here, you filthy manwhore, before Heath spies you and drags you in for another boundary-crossing, borderline-sexually-harassing head, neck, shoulder and pectoral massage," Luna chuckled to herself, slapping playfully at my arm.
"What can I say? The boy has good hands," I smirked at her as she leaned down with what looked like a lot of difficulty to bid Echo farewell. Pregnancy sure doesn’t seem like a whole lot of fun until you are no longer pregnant and instead have a sweet little human to hold and play with instead. I know Luna is as balanced and flexible as they come considering how many hours of yoga she does a week, but even just bending down to pat a very tall dog is getting harder for her now. Poor thing. "He's probably the best masseuse I've ever had, in fairness, and I employ a bunch of them at the gym. Hell, I am one myself."
"Then off you go and flirt with them instead of teasing my smitten apprentice," Luna said, struggling a little to get herself upright and grabbing for my arm to help her before turning on her feet back in the direction of Moonlight's front door. "Lovely, as ever, to see you, Miles."
"You too, my favourite satellite," I laughed as she shook her head at me and called me ridiculous. "Say hi to Wolfe for me, and let me know when your hot friend is back in town."