Unable to help myself, I lean down, run my fingers over his now-pink hair, and press a quick kiss to his forehead. But when I try to pull away, to stand and go out the door, he reaches up, his hands finding me and pulling me down to him.
“Felix,” I laugh, pushing at him. “Felix, stop! You’re going to mess up my hair—”
He laughs, getting his warm, sleepy lips on my forehead, too, before he releases me. “You thought you were going to get away without a kiss,” he murmurs, half-asleep into the pillow. “Have fun, Maeve.”
My heart is still thudding in my chest when I get to the coffee shop. In the past two weeks, Felix and I haven’t been able to keep our hands off each other. Our three sleepovers a week have turned into nearly every night now, with him over at my rental more often than not. It’s convenient, right in the heart of downtown Silverville.
And Felix has kind of fallen in love with the hot tub.
I order a dirty chai and a chocolate muffin, then find a seat in the corner of the café. Phina, Valerie, and I have beenmeeting for coffee pretty frequently, with the intent of figuring out the events of that night. Mostly, though, we end up chatting about our lives. I told them about my clothing line opportunity, and Valerie and Phina told me about their work with magic, how they’ve both been getting better at controlling it.
My magic has never been as strong as theirs, but after our conversations about it, I found myself lying in bed, reaching for things across the room. Lighting candles with the flick of my wrist.
Either Felix hasn’t seen me doing it, or he doesn’t care.
Phina is the first to arrive, her blond hair cut into a short bob around her shoulders, the tips lighter than the roots. She wears a baby-blue blouse and a pair of white pants, looking like a senator. She’s without the baby stroller today.
She falls into her seat and proclaims, “Nora is babysitting. So if I get a call, I’m going to have to answer it.”
“She’s old enough to babysit on her own?” I ask, raising my eyebrows. As far as I know, Nora is only fourteen.
“Well, Xeran is there, but he’s working in his office,” Phina says, dropping her purse over the back of her chair and turning to me. “So it’s only kind of her babysitting on her own.”
Valerie arrives next, her green hair curled, her eyes lined with eyeliner. She’s wearing a little black leather jacket, a white concert tee, and a pair of ripped black jean shorts.
“Alright,” she says, settling in. “I have to tell you about this dream I had last night. It was about that night.”
Valerie’s dream accounts for most of what I remember.
“Sera!” Aurela screamed shrilly for Seraphina when the first spark caught in the trees.
I was on the ground feet away where Tara had pushed me down, crying, trying to rally myself to stand, to do something to stop everything.
But I’d never been a hero.
And when I lifted my head, I saw Tara standing near the ridge, her arms raised, her cackle ringing out across the water as she was engulfed by blue-tipped daemon flames.
“When was the first time you saw her?” Phina asks, her voice with an edge to it.
“Tara?” I ask, swallowing.
“Yeah,” Phina says, watching me.
“I was—” I hesitate, swallowing down my embarrassment of the moment.
Other people being fatphobic is not your shame to bear,I tell myself, steeling myself to tell the story.
“It was at lunch. I walked past the guys’ table at lunch, and I heard—” I swallow, looking down. “I’d just had my first heat. And I heard one of them say I was a waste of an omega, since I was too fat to ever have kids.”
“Felix said that?” Valerie asks, her eyes widening.
“No,” I admit, that familiar press of a sob rising up to the back of my throat when I remember that moment. “But he laughed. Didn’t say anything in my defense. And up until high school, we’d been friends. I was humiliating.”
Valerie sucks in a breath. Phina’s lips tighten, her anger on my behalf showing clearly.
As much as I appreciate their anger, their surprise, sometimes all it manages to do is make me feel more alone with the knowledge that while they both went through their ownbullying, it was not the same as mine. The experience could never be the same for them, as thin girls.
“So I was in the bathroom. Trying to throw up,” I say this simply, not wanting to draw it out. “That’s when Tara knocked on the door. She said, ‘You’re really going to hurt your body over some shithead boy?’”
