THE LUNA CHOOSING GAME - Season 6 Episode 83

Julian immediately took another step backwards, adding more space between him and me. We both nervously glanced at Nicholas who mostly seemed confused by his own reaction. He cut off his growl with a sharp grunt.

“Sorry,” he said.

“Don’t worry,” I replied.

“It’s my fault,” Julian said.

“No,” Nicholas quickly corrected. “I don’t know what came over me.”

“I knew this game was a bad idea,” Bridget says, rising from the couch. “I tried to warn everyone, but no one takes me seriously.”

I distinctly remembered Bridget championing the idea for charades so much that she took to mostly organizing it herself. Now, suddenly, when something had gone wrong, she didn’t want anything to do with the idea?

“We should definitely stop,” Bridget continued, “I, for one, am out totally.” She looked around at everyone, expecting them to agree.

Maybe she wasn’t wrong in this instance. The joyful mood I had been attempting to cultivate seemed utterly at waste now, with only thick tension in the air.

Jessica worried her bottom lip. Veronica looked down at her lap. Julian apologized. Nicholas said, “I’m the one at fault.”

Everything really did seem like it was falling apart.

Then Elva raised her head, looking up from her coloring books. She spotted the empty spot between Nicholas and Jessica on the couch.

“Can I be on Nick-lass’s team?” she asked.

And just like that, the entire mood shifted. The tension broke and everything brightened. Jessica laughed. Veronica’s lips twitched in an almost smile. Julian smiled outright. So did Nicholas.

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“Of course you can,” Nicholas said. He glanced at me. “If it’s okay with your mom.”

Elva turned her doe eyes on me. It would have been fine with me anyway, but having her look at me like that would have melted even my coldest moods.

“You can,” I told her, and she cheered. Cóntent belongs to NovélDráma. Org

“Now wait a minute,” Bridget said. She placed her hands on her hips. “This unbalances the teams.” “I don’t see how,” I said.

Bridget narrowed her eyes. “With Elva on my team, we now have four, compared to your team’s three.” “My team’ she says,” Julian scoffed. “Didn’t you just tell everyone that you are quitting the game?” “Yes, but -”

“So Elva volunteered to take your place,” Nicholas said.

“I had thought we were quitting the game,” Bridget said.

“Don’t be jealous of a child,” Julian told her. “Just sit this one out without making a fuss, yeah?”

Bridget glared at all of them, even Elva. I sidestepped into her line of sight, blocking her from seeing my child and looking at her that way. Elva was innocent in all this. If Bridget wanted to be mad at someone, let her be mad at

me.

She could be furious at me and I wouldn’t care. Not anymore. The moment she pushed me off that boat was the moment she forfeited any right to my feelings. I should have stopped caring what she thought long ago. When she left me in that pit on the jungle island? Or maybe even before that.

Bridget has been showing me her lack of empathy for a long time. It was past time that I believed what I saw.

“Fine,” Bridget eventually snapped. Then she turned at stormed off towards the kitchen.

When she was gone, the fun began once more.

Everyone decided that Elva should go next, so she hopped to her feet and rushed to the bowl to pick out her word. I decided to stay with her, while Julian returned to his seat beside Veronica. Neither of them seemed to care that I was technically helping the other team.

Everyone, by now, I think, was rooting for Elva.

Elva dug out a slip of paper with a word and looked at it. Then she showed it to me. The word was ‘home’.

Home was a concept more than a thing. It would be a trickier word to try to act out. But Elva seemed confident about what she had to do. She had an idea before I could even suggest anything.

She took her place in front of her team. I stood nearby, ready to assist her if needed.

“Timer!” she called.

Julian counted down from three, then said, “Go!”

Elva immediately ran over to me and hugged me. Tears welled in my eyes at once, but I blinked them back. I dropped down to one knee and immediately hugged her back.

“Mother!” Jessica called. “Daughter? Hug!”

Elva squeezed me, with her noodle arms around my neck, then she let me go. Turning, she rushed across the room to Nicholas, where she threw her arms wide.

Nicholas moved to the edge of the seat, in time to catch Elva’s hug. He wrapped his arms around her in tum.

“Family,” Nicholas said.

Elva shook her head a little.

Nicholas considered.

“Father?” Jessica asked, slightly taken aback. “Parents?”

Something seemed to click within Nicholas. An understanding flashed behind his eyes.

“Home,” he said.

“That’s it,” I said. My heart hammered in my chest. How had he known?

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Elva leaned back. “You got it, Nick-lass!”

Nicholas smiled so fondly at Elva that I thought I might melt into a puddle right there in the living room. Elva so wanted Nicholas to be her father. To see them interact like this…

God, if only I could make her wish come true.

Meanwhile, Julian had been hard at work fashioning a piece of paper into a crude sort of crown. It was entirely makeshift, with jagged mismatched edges and fastened together only with tape. Yet when he stepped toward Elva, holding forth her price as if it was something precious, Elva’s eyes went wide as saucers.

Julian lowered it down onto her head. Her smile was so bright it could have lit the entire room.

You would have thought Julian handed her a prized possession, not just some paper and tape, with how bigly and

brightly Elva was smiling.

“Congratulations on this victory, little princess,” Julian said.

I was tearing up again. I didn’t want to cry in front of everyone, so I searched for something to do to keep myself busy. I noticed that several of the ice cream pints were empty. I gathered them up.

“I’ll go get us some more from the kitchen,” I said in a rush.

“Piper?” Nicholas asked, standing.

I gave him a smile. It did little, I was sure, to hide the dampness in my eyes. “I’ll be right back.” Nicholas seemed to understand that I needed a moment to myself. He nodded as he slowly sat back down. Leaving the room, I walked into the kitchen. Headed toward the trash can, I didn’t notice the person standing just inside the door, or the foot she put into my path until I tripped straight over it and toppled to the ground.

The empty pint containers rolled out of my hands, dripping melted ice cream all over the floor.

I glanced back at my attacker as I pushed myself up to my knees. “Bridget?”

“You should watch where you are going,” she said. She leaned now, her back against the face of the fridge. She crossed her arms over her chest. “You are always so clumsy, Piper.”

Clumsy? Clumsy?

Oh, that was the absolute last straw. I was at my wit’s end with Bridget. I was always trying to be nice. I always

tried to do the right thing.

And where did it get me?

Left in a hole. Pushed off a boat. Making an ice cream mess.

“What’s the matter, Piper?” Bridget mocked me further. “Have something to say?”