Was Amor "done"? If she were, she would have already spiralled out of the void, carrying with her a boundless hurricane that would have tipped Felix's patience over the edge of a cliff. But no... there was no sign of her.
She had simply evaporated, propelled by a singular, holy mission and the crumpled fifty-peso note clutched in her palm. She had sprinted toward the corner bakery, her slippers slapping frantically against the pavement.
She couldn't find the pandesal in her own kitchen if it were screaming her name—not without her mother's supernatural ability to point at an empty cupboard and make a bag of bread appear out of nowhere—so she had opted to chase the scent of yeast and hot salt across the neighborhood instead.
Inside the house... nothing.
"Amor?" Felix's voice echoed off the high ceilings..
No answer. Only the hum of the refrigerator, the gurgle of the water dispenser, and the distant barking of a neighbor's Aspin. He groaned, a low sound of genuine grievance. Of course. She had vanished just when things were getting to be too much for him.
He slammed the front door behind him—not out of anger, no... he wasn't even close to it... OH, who was he kidding! Of course he was! He marched toward the gate, turning on his heel with steps heavy enough to rattle the pavement.
"What the hell?!" Matthew shrieked from the porch. He jolted, his entire body rebounding with the kinetic shock of a cat startled out of a deep sleep. "For fuck's sake, you're gonna shake the hinges off the frame!"
"Amor," Felix said, mustering the very last dregs of his patience as he walked past him, "is not here."
Matthew's eyes widened. He did a sharp, urgent double-take of the empty house, his gaze darting as if he expected her to be hiding behind a curtain. When the reality hit—that their buffer had deserted them—Matthew began reciting a comprehensive library of curses in his head, before furiously shuffling back to his seat like an angry toddler.
"Jesus Christ..." Matthew muttered, the weight dropping onto his shoulders.
Felix ignored him. He needed to dry off, but more importantly, he needed to control the distance between them.
He marched toward the edge of the property, finding his paradise on the ledge of the flat stone fence. He sat there, cloaked in a towel that felt far too thin against the sudden chill of the breeze. He was close enough to be seen, but far enough that he didn't have to... to... marvel at the way the afternoon light caught the intricate tattoos sprawling across Matthew's shoulders.
No!—Nope!
But he could feel Matthew's eyes glued to him. It wasn't the wide-eyed stare of a soap opera lead. It was the steady, inevitable gaze of someone watching a star fall because there was simply nothing else interesting to look at.
Felix stared into the horizon, chin tilted up, gazing at the sunset, which he had considered his friend for many years.
In the fading light, he looked less like a frustrated housemate and more like a creature of myth—a salt-drenched mermaid perched on a reef, waiting for a lover lost to a shipwreck. Or perhaps, more accurately, a sailor waiting for the courage to return for his beloved...
At least, that was how it looked in Matthew's eyes.
The more Matthew gazed, the more the world fell away, leaving only that image in his mind. It held him with awe. Felix looked... quite similar to a dream. The best kind. The kind that felt as if it was stolen from a better world.
Matthew shook his head, dredging his imagination back to reality. He drew a sharp breath, clearing the gravel from his throat, and stood up. He took a step closer, his body quickly kissed by the afternoon fires.
"Not scared to get a cold?"
Felix didn't even look at him. He simply rolled his eyes.
Matthew felt a little sting from being ignored. It prickled at his skin more than the cooling breeze did. He reached out, his fingers brushing against the damp, thin fabric of the towel draped over Felix. With a sudden, jerky movement, he snatched it away.
"Hey!" Felix exclaimed, his gaze finally snapping away from the horizon.
But Matthew was already there, shaking out a much thicker, plushier towel he'd brought from the spare room. The air between them suddenly smelled like fresh laundry detergent.
He draped the heavy fabric over Felix, his hands lingering for a second too long on the curve of Felix's shoulders.
"Thanks," Felix muttered. He didn't look back up. He just pulled the edges of the new towel tighter around himself, retreating into the warmth... and the hypnosis of the sea.
Matthew's jaw tightened. Thanks. That was it? No annoying retort? No sharp-edged jab about Matthew's sudden domesticity? The lack of friction was almost worse than a fight.
One day Felix was just—he was stopping in the middle of the road during a jog, forcing Matthew to halt, just to watch him squirm—and then—God!
It made Matthew feel—what was the word again? Well—he made him feel something! This guttural, weird, angry something!
Frustration bubbled up in Matthew's chest, as if he were a kettle already whistling, aching to blow. He turned on his heel, ready to storm back into the house and leave Felix to his sunset and his peace. But as his foot hit the grass, a question he hadn't permitted his brain to ask clawed its way out of his throat.
"What is your deal, Felix? Seriously."
Matthew gulped, and Felix stiffened, his profile silhouetted against the bruised purple of the coming dusk. "My deal?"
"Yeah," Matthew snapped, turning back, his hands gesturing wildly.
"You do these things," Matthew continued, his voice dropping into a frustrated, frantic register. "You're all over the place, and I'm the one who has to deal with the fallout in my own head. I feel like a victim of whatever the hell is going on with you!"
He swallowed hard, his pulse thumping behind his ears.
"Like when I went on a jog," Matthew blurted out, the memory hitting him with the force of a physical blow. "And the time when you—when you tried to..."
The word kiss died in his throat, replaced by a sharp, panicked breath. Matthew felt the heat climb up his neck, a frantic flush that had nothing to do with the sunset. He felt exposed, pinned under the weight of Felix's attention.
Felix didn't move. He clutched the plush towel Matthew had given him, the fabric bunching under his white-knuckled grip.
He felt a strange, uncomfortable knot tighten in his throat. From little time they've spent together, Felix already registered Matthew to be so... sensitive.
He'd always figured Matthew viewed their thing as a...a series of skirmishes? to be won or lost... that's not right...whatever they had? If it was something, he certainly hadn't expected him to admit to feeling like a victim.
The idea that his own internal chaos was actually bleeding out and staining Matthew's peace made Felix feel suddenly, sharply small.
"I..." Felix started, his voice cracking before he cleared it. He finally looked at Matthew. His eyes were wide, flooded with a rare, genuine uncertainty.
"I'm sorry, Matt. I... I don't know what came over me. In the living room. It was just... a moment. I didn't mean to—"
"Bullshit."
The tension didn't vanish; it shifted, turning from something jagged into something heavy. Matthew's mouth opened—a rebuttal, or perhaps another question hovering on his tongue—but the universe had other plans.
"I HAVE SECURED THE BREAD! WITNESS ME!"
Amor materialized at the gate like a chaotic spirit summoned by the mention of awkward feelings. She was heaving, her hair a bird's nest of frizz from her sprint, but she triumphantly hoisted a translucent plastic bag. The heavenly scent of Spanish bread and ensaymada cut through the heavy emotional atmosphere like a sword.
"I had to run to so many bakeries! Can you believe not one of them sold plain pandesal?! But anyway, I survived!" she chirped, completely oblivious to the fact that she had just walked into a minefield.
"Who wants—"
She didn't get to finish.
Matthew didn't even look at the bag. He didn't look at Amor. He just turned, his face a mask of simmering, unresolved issues, and stormed toward the house. He moved like a man trying to outrun his own thoughts, his silhouette cutting a sharp path through the twilight.
He walked straight past Amor, the wind of his passage fluttering the plastic bag in her hand.
SLAM!
The sound of the front door echoing through the quiet neighborhood was the final punctuation mark on the conversation.
Amor blinked, her arm still raised in a victory pose. She looked at the closed door, then at Felix, who was still perched on the fence, looking like he'd just seen a ghost.
"Did I... miss something?" she asked, slowly lowering the bag of bread.
Felix let out a breath he felt like he'd been holding for a lifetime, sinking deeper into the towel.
"Nothing important."