and quite frankly, the thought of being a mother scared me shitless. I had just barely started college. I wasn’t ready to give life to another human being, let alone raise him or her.
Except I didn’t tell them the whole truth about the night I got pregnant. For reasons that, even now, I don’t quite understand, I never told my parents it was End who got me pregnant. That he was the father of my child. Subconsciously, I think saying it aloud would only hurt more, so I kept it a secret. My own shameful secret.
As expected, the news of my unplanned pregnancy only caused the fighting back home to worsen. I was just glad I wasn’t there to witness it firsthand. My mom took a flight out to Pasadena to see me. When she rented a duplex out there, it didn’t take long to realize she had no intention of going back home. Apparently, the years of constant fighting had caught up with her. She was done and over it.
My mom was quick to jump into full-on grandma mode, but my dad…he had a harder time accepting it. We didn’t talk for three whole months because of how disappointed he was in me. Our relationship over the years dwindled. I was always a daddy’s girl, but I guess for a father, watching your baby having a baby was a hard thing to accept.
Mom stayed out in Pasadena with me for a few years. She helped me with the baby while I went to school. I had to drop out of Caltech for Pasadena City College. With a baby, it changed things. The road to becoming a chemical engineer seemed out of reach, so after much consideration, I decided not to pursue it. Instead, I lowered my aspirations to something more doable. Because reaching for the stars? That wasn’t an option anymore.
It wasn’t until I got my business degree that I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to open my own metaphysical supply store, fully equipped with crystals, custom-carved candles, and the like. Moonchild did well for a while, but where we lived, a small business that wasn’t popular or part of a chain didn’t really see too many customers. After twenty months of staying open, I had to make the tough executive decision to close. We slowly started to fall behind on our house payment. Then, because bad news always comes in threes, my world was turned upside down when my dad called my mom and asked her to come home. Though it wasn’t because he loved her or missed her. It was because he was sick, and he needed help.
Gavin Drake was as stubborn and prideful as they come. I know this well because I’m the same way. I knew him reaching out to Mom for help couldn’t have been easy, which meant he must’ve been really sick. And I wasn’t wrong.
My dad was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and it was like a blow to the chest, realizing someone you thought would be around forever wouldn’t be around for much longer at all. It made me realize how foolish I was to let our relationship dwindle, especially when I didn’t know how much longer I’d have him in Luna’s and my life.
So Mom and I made the decision to go back to Dunsmuir for a while. I hadn’t kept up with the town since I’d washed my hands of Endymion and everyone else when I left for college. The only person I kept in touch with was my longtime friend, Julia.
We made time for weekly calls and Sunday FaceTime chats. Next to her grandfather, Julia is Luna’s favorite person on the planet. Not that I blame her. Julia has always been the loud to my quiet, the vibrant to my dull, the goddamn peanut butter to my jelly. She’s flown out to Pasadena on rare occasions. Though I don’t see her half as much as I’d like to. Whenever we talk, we steer clear of the subject of Endymion. She’s known about my crush since the moment I came home from the bakery and called her, word-vomiting every single detail. Julia knows all about my heartbreak. She just doesn’t know the man who fathered my child is, indeed, Endymion Black.
To avoid dealing with the mistakes of my past, my father almost always flew out to see us. It was too hard to go back there, but now, we had to. Luna doesn’t know much about her