Beckett’s chest squeezed so tight he thought he might not be able to breathe. “I love you. I want you to know I’m thinking about you when I’m not there. Every minute.”
“Me too. Plus, the Monarch constellation.”
“Yeah. Look Luna, I have to go. I’m being called to dinner.”
“But it’s early afternoon.”
“Oh yeah, um, but it’s time for me to go.”
“But you’re in the same time zone, aren’t you, Beckett? Just down the coast?”
Chickadee said, “Tell him we can drive down there, we can come for the weekend, anytime.”
Luna said, “If you can’t come home we can come see you on the base. Whenever you have a day off. . .”
“I think our connection is bad again, I’ll call when I get a—” He hung up the phone and tossed it in his lap.
Crap. Six months. This was too much. He tried to think about Luna walking up the front steps of his home, Luna sleeping curled up in his bed, Luna smiling in his living room waiting for him to come home after a long day — but it all seemed imaginary, fake, like a photograph of a perfect life before all this bullshit.
He picked up his helmet and put it on his head. Grabbed his gun and surveyed the scene — this was one bleak shit storm of a disaster.
