Tearing at the corners, Felix pulled the paper open.
He read it.
Then read it again.
What the hell?
The bubble snapped back without a sound. Should he turn around? Should he even look at Arturo? Was this just a joke that one of his homies set him up for?
Felix tried to pay attention to what the teacher was saying, but the words he’d just read repeated in his head:
Think you’re cute. Hopefully you think notes passed in class are too.—Arturo. <3
He couldn’t resist. He turned around.
Arturo winked.
Felix was in another world for the rest of class.
A wave of sadness floods Felix, though he keeps himself upright this time. In his mind, he sees the image of Arturo winking, and then it begins to fade away, and he stares into the classroom. Looks to where Arturo sat that day. Tries to remember.
It is hollow. Something should be there, but it is not.
He puts a hand to his chest. Is he leaving a piece of himself behind with each memory?
“We can stop, Felix,” Mirella says, her voice piercing his thoughts. “This is far more than enough for one session.”
“No.” He breathes out. “I want to keep going.”
“I can do another session next week,” she says. “On the house.”
“No,” he repeats. “You need the money.”
“Not at your expense,” she shoots back.
He shakes his head. “We keep going.”
She stops trying to convince him otherwise.
They wait at the corner across from the school, and Felix floats up a lighted signal with a spell, notifying the bus driver that they need to be picked up. They board and pay, then sit in the middle of the bus without a word exchanged between them. Felix has a lot he wants to say, but he says nothing at all. This next location…it’s going to be the hardest.
The Night Market is up near Berkeley, nestled in a neighborhood that is just on the edge of Oakland, before the street signs change color from green to brown. It’s tucked in between rows of colorful houses, and the bus lets off right at the entrance. There is already a large crowd milling about, and the sounds of a drum circle clash with the din of voices negotiating. Mirella pulls her cloak tighter against her body as they squeeze through pockets of people.
“It’s this way,” Felix says.
He points.
He leads her to a jeweler, one who enchants her pieces with a magic that pulls light in, that gives her gems a sparkle, no matter how little light there is.
“Here,” he says.
Felix can see Mirella trying to hide it, but the pity slips over her face long enough that he catches it. “Oh, Felix,” she says. “You didn’t actually—”
“Can we just get started?”
She sighs.
They begin once more.
He handed the charm back, though he knew it would look good on the chain that Arturo wore. The jeweler smiled. “Is this for someone special?”
“Yes,” he said. It was the truth.
“What makes you hesitate?”
He wasn’t sure he should answer that truthfully. Could he tell a stranger that he was trying for a gesture of peace, of promise, of reconciliation? He just wanted to believe in the potential of him and Arturo again.
Instead, he gave her a smile. “Just the cost, that’s all.”
He did not buy anything.
When he opens his eyes, he realizes that Mirella has damped the sound around him. The Night Market comes back to life, and she breathes out. “Okay,” she says, “I thought you had bought him a ring or something.”
“No,” he says. “I wasn’t that in love.”
“So that was the last one?”
He bites on his bottom lip. He’d saved the worst for last, and so he shakes his head at Mirella. An exhaustion has settled into his bones, and he wants nothing more than to go home and bury himself under his cobija.
But he has to do this.
“One more,” he says.
“No.”
It’s a complete sentence. She glares at him, her hands crossed in front of her.
“Just one more, I promise,” he begs, and he knows his voice sounds pitiful.
“This is way past the—” she begins, but then he is crying, and he knows it’s manipulative, but it’s also real.
“I need this one gone,” he explains, wiping at his eyes. “More than the others.”
She raises an eyebrow.
“Fat. Ass. Tip.” He says each word with force. He means them.
She closes her eyes. Opens them again, nods her consent, and they glide through the crowd, Felix’s heart flopping and dancing in his chest, a scowl permanently etched on Mirella’s face. He knows she wants to stop. But then he can see the stringed lights, the sparkling orbs, the enchanted birds flying about, and he brings Mirella to La Estrella Mágica and stands off to the side of the outdoor patio.
“Here?” she says. “La Estrella Mágica?”
“Yes.” He stills. “I want to be able to come back here someday, and right now…I can’t.”
The memory is pulsing in his mind, the images flashing over and over.
“This has to be the last one,” Mirella warns. “Even I am starting to get tired.”
He agrees.
They begin, for the final time.
Felix sucked air through his teeth. It had taken him two weeks to get this reservation, and Arturo didn’t seem to care. His phone was floating just in front of his face, and he swiped down in the air. Scroll. Scroll. Scroll.
“Arturo,” Felix said.
Arturo looked up over his phone. “Damn, sorry,” he said, and with another swipe, the phone was turned off and floating down to the center of the table. “I’ll leave it there for the rest of dinner.”
He smiled then. It sent a pang of desire through Felix. He wanted to leap up and over the table, to take Arturo in his arms, to feel his tongue in his mouth.
But then the waiter arrived. Arturo ordered first, and the waiter scribbled runes in the air as Arturo spoke. Then he waved the order toward the kitchen and turned to Felix. He studied the menu, unsure of what he wanted, and when he looked up, he caught it. A short glance at the waiter’s ass and then Arturo licking his lips. He probably thought he got away with it.