⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5 stars. this was a masterpiece, a work of art, the best kind of love. ellis and lucky are so pure, individually and together. it was so sweet that lucky was the one person who always understood ellis, never judged him, he wholeheartedly accepted him. this was definitely a unrequited requited love and friends to lovers. I genuinely can’t describe their love as anything other than true pure-hearted love. they are definitely soulmates, perfectly matched, destined to always come back to each other. 

Lucky was so cute, as soon as he heard about Ellis’ date, he immediately decided he needed to go back home 👏👏. Oh and sweet Ellis, he’s been making glass statues of the jars he’s been collecting about all of the adventures Lucky goes on. It was his way of being close to him 😭. AND he made glass fireflies in the silo—now his glass studio—they used to hang out in, to represent Lucky. ”They’re you. The closest I could ever come to capturing you”😭😭.

Y’all, that bonus epilogue in Luna's pov made me cry 😭. It was so cute, different, amazing, and sweet. It was their 10 year anniversary and there was a BLUE MOON!!! And the color blue represented their love. Through lucky's eyes, through the blue boutonnières, it WAS lucky 😭🫶. ”Blue is love. To me, it’s love. And that’s always been Lucky.” Ellis’ mom was still alive and well, and Riley and gabby are together and have a son, a nine year old son—not too long after they got together 🤭👏—all thanks to wingman Ellis 😊. 

“And… have you ever wanted other guys?”

“No.” 

“We’ll never be done. Me and you, we don’t have an ending.”

“Lucky has always heard me. From the very first time we met, he’s heard me. He knows me, unlike any other.”

“I was ten years old when I met Lucky. I knew it then, and I know it now. He’s a firefly. Luminous and wild. He was never meant to be trapped. Not here and not with me. And in a few days, I’ll finally watch him fly away.”

“Then there was Ellis, and he made me feel like everything was going to be okay. I was safe, and I had someone who was just mine, and… and he was always there for me. Even still, he’s always there for me.”

“He’s your anchor.”

“No. He doesn’t fight the tide. He controls it.”

“How would I explain my heart doesn’t know how to beat for anyone but him?”

“He is a mountain of a man but the gentlest soul I’ve ever met. And he’s…He’s beautiful; I can’t even deny that. He’s lovely in the way the natural world is lovely. Imperfect but vital. Roughly hewn and uniquely himself. He’s just… Ellis. He’s my Ellis.”

“It’s a million memories in one, that smile, and I’m swamped by them, overcome by the history we share. There are strings connecting us, so many of them. I don’t think we could ever be unraveled.”

“If I could, I’d bottle it in a jar—every glance of your hand on my arm, every small squeeze and brush of your fingers, every press of your chest to mine. I’d save them all so I could feel you when you go.”

“This… the glass… was supposed to be…Mine.”

My way to keep Lucky close. My way to keep him here with me, even when he was in New York or halfway around the world. It was—is—my coping mechanism. But it’s more than that, too. It’s my heart. A love letter I was too afraid to show Lucky.

“Have you ever wanted someone so much,” I say slowly, “that it feels like your atoms are vibrating when you’re away from them? Like you’re half of a whole, and your body knows it. And until you’re in their arms again, every single piece of you is straining toward them because… because they’re your home. They’re part of you. Your beginning and your never-ending.”

“I want him to splinter apart in my arms. I want to give him what he needs, want to be what he needs, what he wants, what he craves with every fiber of his being because he’s that for me. He’s not just a crush. He never was. He’s the man no one else has ever measured up to.”

“Gold,” he says, reaching up and twining a piece of my hair around his finger. “Sands and… sun. Light. Camels.”

“Is that all?”

“Here,” he says, touching the corner of my eye, his focus absolute. “Ocean. Sky and sea. Smith Falls. Great… Blue Hole. Sails,” he says, tracing the two arches of my lip. “Birds in flight. Palaces and… windmills. All the life in you. That’s what I see.”

“Lucky wasn’t mine to covet, mine to have. And yet here he is. Somehow, mine, by his own choosing. Mine to hold and treasure and cherish. Mine to love freely.”

“What is it?”

“Looking.”

“You’ve seen me a million times.”

“Never enough.”

“It’s that feeling of home I’ve only ever had with him. It’s the rumbling of mountains and the kiss of wind through the fields, and it’s love. God, is it love, wholly, pure, and absolute. I won’t ever love another the way I love Ellis, and I don’t want to. He’s it. He’s always been it. And for the first time since we’ve known one another, I know, as I look into his brown eyes, that whatever piece of me is tethered to Ellis has a counterpoint. An equal pull. Mrs. Cole was right. No matter what, nothing will keep us apart. We’ll always come back to one another, time and time again.”

“I could do nothing but kiss Lucky until the end of time, and I would be content. I’d swirl with him in the sky until we were one, binary stars gravitationally bound to one another.”

“There’s history here. You can practically feel it in the earth and the air, like an imprint left from those who came before us. I can’t help but wonder what imprints we might leave behind. Me. Lucky. Us.”

“What do you see for us, El?”

How do I tell him I see everything? In my most vivid waking dreams, I see everything he’ll give me. A life with him, in whatever form that might take. Years of loving him because I know I’ll do that no matter what. I see snippets of days just like this one, where we hike or share meals or simply enjoy one another’s company. I see him. Always him.

“Happiness.”

“I think about what we did have, and I wouldn’t change a thing. I’m so glad you’re my best friend, El. Even if it took us a few extra trips to get to where we are now, I’m so glad it was you. Is you. Will be you.”

“Always.”

“The memory of us will be left in the pictures we take, the glass we repurpose. It will be in the wind and the floorboards and the walls of the silo. We’ll leave our mark on this world, and we’ll do it together because we’ve always been tied.”

“Lucky came into my life at ten, but he’s not leaving. And when I think of it like that, I realize there’s nothing to fear when it comes to us. Adventure can call. Time can, too. But neither will take Lucky from me. He’s already written himself into my heart.”

“I break and bend old jars for you because I won’t ever trap you in glass. You’re my firefly, and you deserve the life you’ve always strived to live. You won’t lose me just because you’re gone. I’ll always be here waiting. I just ask that you come back to me. Keep flying back to me.”

“You beautiful man. I love traveling. I love my job. But at the end of the day, all I want is to share it with you. You’re the one I want to come home to. You’re the one I miss every time I’m back in New York. You’re the one who makes me happy, who makes my pulse jump like no other high.”

“I love you, too. I have for years. I loved you then, and I love you now, and I won’t ever stop. I’m not capable of it. You’re it for me, El. You’re my big goddamn romance. And there’s nowhere else I’d rather be than here with you.”

“We had so far to travel to get where we are, but maybe each step was one needed to perfect our song. Have we? Perfected it? I think, maybe, that’s a journey we’ll keep traveling together.”

“And every time I stayed away a little longer, it felt like I was losing my breath. Like I had less oxygen in my lungs. I was starved of it without you, El. You don’t make me feel trapped, okay? Never. You’re the air I breathe.”

“He told me he would have stayed for me, but I couldn’t have asked him to. Not then. He was just spreading his wings. I missed him while he was gone, the same as he missed me. But I’m not sure I’d change it. He was worth the wait.”

“His eyes are bright and on my person, looking at me as if I’m worth being his sole focus. As if, maybe, out of everywhere in this vast universe, there’s nowhere else he’d rather be than here with me.”

“Promise me something. Promise we’ll still do this when we’re sixty or eighty or a hundred. I want a lifetime with you, El. Me and you. ’Til the end of time.”

I draw an X over Lucky’s heart. Promise.

“Are you ready to get married?”

“Are you kidding? I’ve been ready for a good long while.”

“You’ve only been engaged a month.”

“Dani. I would have married that man the day he asked.”

“I bend toward you no matter where on this Earth you are. I feel your pull, and if I am your moon, as you say I am, then I promise to always call you back home. You are my world, Luck. And even when all goes dark, I will look for you. I will find you, blinking for me in the endless night, and I will be with you always. My brilliant firefly. My love. My Luck. Forever, I’ll be waiting.”

“I like staying up late. Papa said I was named for the night, after all. He said the moon is his most favorite thing.”

“Happy anniversary, El. Did you ever imagine all this? It’s…”

“Everything.”

“It is. I’m so lucky I get to share this life with you, Ellis. I love you. More than I can say.”

“Love you always.”

“Yeah. Me and you, El. We don’t have an ending, do we?”