It worked. The smell was heady, intoxicating, and Felix leaned down, rubbed his mouth over Arturo’s neck, took in another whiff. His lips traveled upward, and the fear was gone. Maybe his parents would catch him, but he had wanted this for a long time. It had been five weeks, and he’d only been guilty of wandering hands. But this…this was right.
He leaned down into Arturo’s lips. They were soft. Tasted sweet, like…peach. Maybe honey. It was his lip balm, and then Felix didn’t know what to do with his tongue. No one taught him that. But he kept his eyes closed, and he pushed closer, and he felt alive….
Felix opens his eyes, and there’s a shadow before him, but it fades away gently. He sees Mirella, still sitting there, her breaths heaving her chest and shoulders up and down. Rune magic. Again. He thanks her for it.
“No problem,” she says. “Just part of what I do.”
He tries to stand, but a wave of dizziness pushes down on his skull. Mirella rises quickly, keeps her hands out. “No, no, take a second,” she says. “This is how it usually feels on your end. Just breathe for a bit.”
He rubs at his temples. “What’s it like for you?”
She sits back down. “Depends on the memory. It can be more intense if I’m dealing with deeper trauma. But mostly…I just get vague images, these hazy feelings from the other person.”
His heart beats furiously in his chest. “What kind of images?” Had she seen everything?
“Don’t worry,” she says. “We’re bound by confidentiality laws, just like anyone else working in the mental health field.” She smiles again. “Trust me, I’ve seen so much worse. So much weirder.”
He laughs. “Yeah? Like what?”
She crinkles up her nose. “Confidentiality, remember?”
“Ah, right. So…what happens now?”
“Well, we can move on to a few new locations if you want, but basically? The memory isn’t permanently gone. It’s just no longer triggered by this location. I’ve ‘unmoored’ it from this place. You can still think about it if you want, but this helps make the world a little more livable.”
“Wow,” he says. “Just like that?”
She nods at him. “It’s a stopgap, of course, not a full solution. Living day to day is a little easier for those who’ve gone through the treatment. There are high-demand spells that I’ve done for those dealing with more intense trauma, and they can be far more permanent, too.”
“So…” He pauses, lets another wave pass. “You could do that for me?”
“For a standard Heartbreak Package?” Mirella shakes her head hard enough that her blond streak comes loose from behind her ear. “No. Too much. And too expensive. I doubt you could afford it.”
Well, maybe this will be enough, Felix thinks. Maybe I can finally move past this.
He guides her to the next room, only stumbling once. His energy is slowly returning, and he otherwise feels exactly as he did when he started. It’s hard to tell if this is working when all he can think about is him.
But he wants to do this.
He has to do this.
They stand in the silent kitchen, next to the corny thermometer that Mamá found at a yard sale long ago. There are no numbers on it. It just says TOO HOT or TOO COLD on opposite ends, and Felix hates it because it’s never wrong.
The memory is already coming to the surface, so he tells Mirella to begin.
Arturo stuck his hand out. He was a full head shorter than Felix’s papá, but he carried himself as if he towered over everyone in the room. He puffed his chest. His grip must have been firm; Papá’s eyes bulged a little when Arturo squeezed.
“Nice to meet you,” Papá said. “We’ve been looking forward to meeting the one who’s got Felix all distracted.”
While Arturo went red in the face—and he looked so cute when he did it, goddamn!—he changed the subject. “What’s that thing on the wall?”
Mamá swooped in on them, swallowed Arturo in a hug. “I’m so glad you asked,” she said, and Felix groaned. “I found this up by the Ashby BART station. You know all the people selling stuff there on the weekends?”
“Of course,” Arturo said. “That’s where I got my kicks.” He lifted a foot to show off the Jordans he’d copped from some dude there.
His mamá beamed. “Sometimes, we do brunch there on Saturday mornings,” she said. “Just hopping from stall to stall.”
“Yes!” Arturo exclaimed. “My mom used to bring her ube cupcakes to sell there after we moved here from Manila.”
Ah, thought Felix. He’s going for the immigrant angle. And sure enough, Felix’s parents opened up immediately, and it was over.
Arturo had said the right thing, and a calmness radiated out of Felix, starting at his chest and spreading through his veins. They liked him. He needed them to like Arturo, and he’d already passed their tests.
Felix floated.
He gasps.
Mirella steadies him, her hand on his back. “Deep breaths again,” she says, her voice low. “Tell me if you’d like a booster at any time.”
He shakes his head, though he is impressed she knows how to do runework that can change chemical relays to the brain. Where did she learn all this? Felix wonders.
He breathes out. “There’s one more here,” he says. “That okay?”
“Sure. If you think you can take it.”
“I have to,” he says.
She frowns at him, but they begin.
It was dark. Middle of the night. Felix could not sleep. He crept into the kitchen, edged open the pantry door, and grabbed a package of Oreos. He floated them the rest of the way to the counter once his two working brain cells were ready for thought, then dug into the packaging. Golden Double Stuf, his favorite.
He popped one in his mouth. Sugar wouldn’t help him go to sleep, but it gave him comfort, and hopefully it would stop his mind from buzzing. He found himself staring at that damn thermometer. Had he imagined it all? Was he just too sensitive? But Raquel wouldn’t tell him something like that unless it was true….
He swiped in the air in front of him, and his phone lifted out of the rear pocket of his pajama pants, then dropped down in front of him. He pulled up Arturo’s Twitter page, then went to the Likes tab, just as Raquel had instructed.
“It’s just weird, that’s all,” she had said before leaving his house that night. “I mean…you guys are together, right? Like, together together?”