The Moon He Could Never Reach

My boyfriend, Jordan Gilbert, was a hollow man. He had almost no wants, no feelings, none of the things that move ordinary people.

In six years together, I had never once heard him say I love you, and I had never felt a single ripple of emotion in him.

His kisses were cold. His embraces were going through the motions. Even in bed, in the most intimate moments two people could share, his eyes stayed as still as dead water.

Then one day, after a company team outing, I walked out of the haunted house with him.

His eyes were red, his voice choked and trembling. "Carrie, I finally understand what it feels like to be alive."

I cried with joy, thinking six years of ice had finally begun to thaw at one corner.

That very day I bought a year pass to the haunted house and told him, "Let's come here often from now on, all right?"

After that, every other day, Jordan would go and run the whole thing again.

I thought he was just chasing that rare flicker of feeling. What I didn't expect was to catch him at it. The man who was distant and cold to every outsider was smiling at a haunted house actress, some young woman playing an NPC.

Humbling himself, all just to beg her to stay for one meal.

"Penny, I don't care whether you can speak, because it's only when I'm with you that I can feel my heart beating!"

I slipped away quietly, my face streaked with tears.

That night, after the usual, I did what I always did. I curled up against Jordan's bare back and asked softly, "Jordan, when we finish, does your heart pound hard?"

"Or is it that it only bothers to move when you're looking at her?"

...

His arm slid off my waist. "You went to the haunted house today."

His voice was flat. That face I'd looked at for six years had gone cold as early-winter frost.

"Why didn't you just come in and ask me?"

I looked at him and swallowed hard, forcing everything down.

In six years, the times he'd shown me any love could be counted on one hand, and every time I coaxed the word "love" out of him it came out like a block of wood.

Only in bed did the faintest ripple ever cross his face.

I understood that. I accepted all of it.

Until today, backstage at the haunted house, when I saw him smile at that girl, the one called Penelope Pruitt.

Like all the winter snow had melted at once.

That was when it hit me. He wasn't a man without feelings. He'd just built a wall of ice in front of me.

Then Jordan spoke, a little faster than usual.

"The story in that place is just so good! I got so deep into it that I projected all those feelings onto the NPC. Let me apologize, all right?"

"But I can cry now, I can laugh. Aren't you happy for me? Carrie, I can feel things now."

I couldn't smile.

Those feelings, good or bad, love or hate, all of them existed because of another girl.

Robert Bishop, who owned the haunted house, had told me long ago that Jordan asked for Penelope Pruitt every single time he came. The scenario changed by the day, but all he needed was Penelope standing in that one spot.

"You have no idea. Penny is incredible. She always shows up right where I need her, like she knows exactly where I'm going to run into danger every time! I've never felt anything like it. Like she's my savior. Do you understand?"

Jordan was talking more now, rambling as he described his new discovery.

I opened my mouth. My throat had gone tight.

But every one of those scenes that made his scalp prickle, I had written them.

Penelope was only an NPC, a mute both on and off the stage. All she had to do was hit her marks and follow the script I gave her.

What Jordan believed was some deep bond with Penelope came from nothing but how well I knew him.

My phone buzzed.

Robert, the haunted house owner, had sent a video. "Don't say I didn't tell you. This is the clip your Jordan specifically asked me to shoot for him. I figured you should see it first. He still doesn't know it's you."

The footage was dark, but clear enough. Jordan Gilbert reached out and took a girl's hand, and a moment later she pulled him into her arms.

It was that same day.

When he came out of the haunted house, he looked at me with red-rimmed eyes, his voice breaking as he tried to steady it. "Carrie, I finally know what it feels like to be alive."

But the woman who held his hand inside that place was me.

I have a panic disorder. For him, I forced myself in, swallowing triple my dose beforehand.

I was afraid the story beats would be too much, that they'd make his condition worse, so even choking on my own fear, I went in to stay beside him.

But I was afraid of wounding his pride, so the moment it ended, I hurried back out.

And let Penelope Pruitt take my place.

I never imagined I'd been sewing a wedding dress for someone else all along.

In the few short minutes it took me to watch that video, he'd said Penelope's name at least ten times.

"Could you please stop saying her name?"

My voice cracked.

Jordan paused, and his eyes went hollow again. "What's wrong? Did I do something wrong again?"

That line again.

Six years, and every time we touched anything close to feeling, this was all he had. Like he used his emotional disorder to trap me, to force me to drop the subject every single time.

"Jordan, who is your girlfriend, exactly? What has a mute girl like Penelope ever done to make you happy? All of that was a script. Do you even understand what a script is?"

He looked at me, and for once something surfaced in his eyes.

"Caroline, when did you get so cruel?"

I thought he'd fight with me.

But after two seconds of silence, he picked up his coat, opened the door, and walked out.

An hour and a half later, Robert Bishop messaged me. "Why'd your Jordan show up in the middle of the night?"

"Oh, right, you still haven't sent me the new script. He's stuck running an old one tonight, so no promises on the effect."

I wrote back, "Okay. Is Miss Pruitt still with him?"

A thumbs-up came through from the other end.

"You called it exactly. No wonder you're our top-selling writer!"

I let out a faint scoff and turned the screen dark.

It isn't that I can predict him. It's that I know Jordan's nature too well.

Six years ago, when we first met, I'd already heard about the famous Golden Boy Gilbert, and especially about his condition.

He looked like some finely carved statue, and inside he was cold to the point of emptiness.

After we got together, I thought love could fill those hollow places. But it turned out a hollow man isn't a man without feeling. His heart simply refused to beat for me.

"The penthouse suite you reserved at the Lakeview Hotel is ready. Seven o'clock tomorrow evening."

When the text popped up, I froze for a second.

I'd already guessed Jordan meant to propose at tomorrow night's anniversary. I just never thought he could be careless enough to leave the confirmation linked to my number in the app.

So the message came straight to me.

Even before that, I'd been getting a surprise ready myself.

Two red lines I'd found half a month ago. I'd meant to announce it on the anniversary.

To tell him, too, that there wasn't nothing between us. That there was at least one life we could bring into the world.

But now it all felt pointless.

Did Jordan actually care?

The year I met him, I had a speech disorder. I was a "little mute" too.

No one in class wanted anything to do with me. Even talking to me seemed like too much to ask. Only he did. Everyone called him cold, yet he was the one who stepped in when I got cornered in the stairwell and nearly bullied.

He looked out for me for half a semester, until I transferred away.

Later, when we met again, I fought my way back to speaking, and I was certain of the warmth underneath his silence.

Once I mentioned offhand that a pair of shoes rubbed my heels raw. The next day, someone had lined the heels with blister pads.

After we got together, I never had to order for myself. Every time we went to a restaurant, he'd read through the whole menu first, then rattle off the dishes I'd casually mentioned wanting over the past few days, pushing them across the table with a blank face. "See if it's these."

I thought that was liking someone. Caring.

I also thought I owned a little patch of ground in his heart. But now I wasn't sure.

Maybe it was just the gentleman's manner carved into Jordan's bones. He'd have done the exact same thing for any girl.

To put it bluntly, the two of us were more like roommates who had no business being together. Different habits, different values. The only thing in sync was that bit of business in bed.

A wave of nausea surged up my stomach. I clapped a hand over my mouth and dry-heaved a few times, and then the cold spread through me.

It was past midnight when Jordan came home.

He changed his shoes. His face carried a rare irritation. "Why aren't you asleep yet? Waiting for me?"

"Tonight's script was terrible. So flat it put me to sleep. I could tell what would jump out next with my eyes closed."

He went on to himself, as if the earlier fight and awkwardness had quietly passed.

"And Penelope was strange today. The second she came out she got right up in my face to scare me. I tried to say hello and she acted like she didn't know me and just kept doing it!"

He kept griping about how cold Penelope had been, and the disappointment in his eyes was plain to see.

It was the first time in six years he'd poured this much emotion out to me. Yet I sat there and felt like my ears were wrapped in a layer of something.

Hollow inside.

That familiar feeling came back, a thousand words jamming up in my throat.

Then Jordan glanced down at his phone, and I caught the contact name at the top of the message thread.

Penelope again.

"Penny says she doesn't dislike me. She just had no choice, because she was working, so she had to do the job strictly by the book."

Jordan lifted his head, his tone full of urgency. "I think I need to go clear things up with her. When I left just now, I treated her really badly."

When he said "Penny," the ends of those two syllables shot up wildly. It wasn't simple excitement.

I raised my eyes and, without thinking, looked at the back of his neck.

Below the collar, that faint blue-green glowing stamp was still there.

Seven days ago, when the haunted house game ended, the staff pressed a stamp onto the back of every player's neck. And Jordan's had been stamped by Penelope's own hand.

"What's that? Why is it still there? Jordan, aren't you a germaphobe?"

Jordan paused, as if he hadn't expected me to notice such a small detail. Then he slipped back into that usual look that gave away neither joy nor sorrow.

"Forgot to wash it off. It's just a stamp. Are you really going to make an issue of this too?"

Before, when we kissed, even if my lipstick smudged onto his face, he'd wipe it again and again with a disinfectant wipe.

And that stamp had been pressed onto who knew how many people.

I nodded. I was smiling, and then the tears came down.

He couldn't even be bothered to humor me.

I threw the cup off the table. Glass sprayed everywhere. The emotion overwhelmed me, and my stomach churned again.

The next second, I bent over and dry-heaved.

Jordan quickly caught my arm and pulled out a tissue and handed it to me, fast, the motions of someone who was nervous.

But his brow didn't so much as furrow. He looked utterly unruffled.

It made me sick to watch.

"Where's your ring box?"

His pants pocket had been bulging these past few days. I'd guessed long ago what was inside, which was why I'd known he meant to propose.

But now it lay flat, hollow, empty.

"Stop pretending. Just tell me the truth, okay?"

Jordan wouldn't meet my eyes. He fumbled for the words. "There's a scene in the haunted house that needed a ring as a prop. To make it feel more real, I gave it to Penelope."

"But it doesn't matter. That was just a rehearsal. I already ordered a grander wedding ringthat's the one I actually want to give you."

By the time he finished, my mouth was full of bitterness.

"You rehearsed a proposal with a haunted house actor? Then what am I?"

Jordan looked bewildered. "What do you mean, rehearsed a proposal? I already told you, it was an accident!"

I waved my hand again and again, refusing to keep talking about it.

"Jordan, I honestly don't know how to talk to you anymore."

The low pressure hung over the whole night.

The next day, a childhood friend of Jordan's, just back in the country, asked him out to dinner.

To break the cold war, Jordan told me to come along. Halfway through the meal I went to the restroom to touch up my makeup, and coming back I stopped outside the door of our private room.

The door hadn't shut all the way. Dudley Sanchez's voice drifted out, clearly needling him. "Jordan, why is it that for all these years you only ever fall for mutes?"

My fingers were already on the handle. I didn't move.

"First there was Rebecca Fox, your one great lovedeaf and mute, and you wouldn't let her go, still carrying a torch even after she died."

Dudley was grinning through it. "And this Caroline now, never mind heryou kept her around long enough that you basically nursed her back to health. But then where does Penelope come from? Man, are you running a shelter for the disabled?"

I heard Jordan laugh once.

"It's not as dramatic as you make it sound."

"Caroline really does look like Rebecca. When we first met, even the way she talked was exactly the same."

"Later she slowly got her voice back, and I honestly couldn't get used to it. Looking back now, the reason I was willing to get close to her back then was probably that mute quality. It overlapped with the person in my memory."

Dudley whistled. "So Caroline was just your stand-in? Then what about Penelope?"

Jordan's voice went flat. "Penelope was an accident."

"You know the feeling I get around Penelope? Like my heart's been silent for a long time, and then she showed up, and all at once there was an echo again."

"Once Caroline was cured, I never felt that anymore."

"She's too normal. More and more like an ordinary person. Sometimes I look at her and I miss that little girl who used to hide in the corner, unable to make a sound."

Dudley asked, "That diary of Rebecca's do you still have it?"

"Mm."

My fingers slid off the handle.

That loss of speech from when I was fourteen was crawling back, inch by inch.

I fled home like a refugee.

I dug out the diary Dudley had mentioned. The first page, all of it, was Rebecca.

I don't know how long I turned pages before I finally found my own name.

"A new girl transferred into class today. Her name is Caroline Butler."

"A little mute. Another little mute."

"I asked the teacher if I could sit with her, and the teacher was surprisedsaid I'd never sat with anyone before."

"Maybe it's because there aren't many girls like Rebecca, and she's one of them."

I closed the diary, tears breaking loose, my whole body shaking beyond control.

"Why aren't you back yet? Does the restroom really take this long?"

Jordan's call came through. I fought to force out a single syllable to answer him, pressing frantically at my chest, and no sound would come.

I wanted to ask him who Rebecca was.

Whether he'd sat down beside me back then only because, like her, I couldn't speak.

"Still sulking? Come on. There's a big event at the haunted house tomorrow. Penelope texted me asking if you'd come, so I signed you up. Let's go together, get your mind off things."

My knuckles went white around the phone.

He'd forgotten again.

I had night blindness. I was afraid of the dark.

Somewhere on his end people were pushing drinks on him. Jordan said, quick and careless, "That's settled, then. If you get home first, just go to sleep."

The dial tone hummed in my ear, and I broke down all over again.

The next day, at the entrance to the haunted house, Jordan walked ahead, holding my hand.

Penelope trailed behind us. Today she wasn't playing one of the actors. Today she'd come as Jordan's invited guest.

The first time an actor lunged right up into my face, my whole body seized and I flinched back on instinct. Jordan pulled me in to steady me.

"Don't be scared. None of it's real."

Beside us, Penelope let out a low little whimper.

Almost at once, Jordan's head turned toward her, and his grip on my fingers went slack.

"If you're scared, say so. You all right?"

Penelope shook her head. Before she could get anything out, we hit the fork in the path, and the crowd began to shove.

Penelope stumbled from the press of it.

I clutched Jordan's fingers, but he left me without a flicker of hesitation.

His arm went right past me. He turned, put himself in front of her, and gathered her into his arms.

The crowd was still splitting and scattering. I was carried along, pushed deeper inside.

When I looked back, Jordan and Penelope had already disappeared into the entrance of the stairwell on the right.

When he came out through the exit, Jordan narrowed his eyes for a moment.

Then he looked down at Penelope. "You're not hurt, are you? You lost your footing back there. Did you twist your ankle?"

Penelope was just starting to gesture when a staff member came rushing past them.

"There's a girl who didn't come out on that other path. Call the others, quick. Somebody's going back in to find her."

"Is it that girl with the flaxen curls?"

"Yes, that's the one! On the security feed it looked like she fell, clutching her stomach"

"She's not pregnant, is she? You can't let that kind of thing wait."

The moment Jordan heard it, the color drained from his face.

Only then did he realize Caroline was gone. When had they even gotten separated?

With a shaking hand, he dug out his phone.

"The number you have dialed is switched off."