Arko Cade & The Magic Hunter

The Lioness

Maybe not wiser, though, as it took me a minute to realize what she might've been implying.

"I didn't cheat on you."

"What?"

"Three months, right?" Three months without my contacting her in any capacity — it was enough for her to pay me no mind the evening prior. "I didn't cheat on you, Scar."

The right side of her mouth bundled up into a frustrated smile as she murmured, "Well I have."

"Huh?"

"I've cheated on you, if that's what we're calling separate engagements, now. Or I would've, it's just..."

I took her bishop and she frowned.

"You're not my boyfriend."

I grew flustered — a common occurence, only around her, "Wasn't this... didn't we fix this... months ago?"

New year's eve, twenty-eighteen. Three bottles of cheap champagne between us and an even cheaper hotel room in Sapporo, where her mother's family is from. Hugo and Kitty were downstairs at some nonmagical stranger's party while Beau was in the next room with his fiancée doing God-knows-what.

I caught Scarlett crying on the balcony, with tears glistening down her face, reflecting light from the neon street signs and some premature fireworks. She never cries, ever. Not even when we were children.

But it was the first December she'd spent without Grayson. December's a big month for Scar — her birthday comes, then Christmas, then New Year's. And amidst all of it she feels so lost between the celebrations, so bored of pomp.

She turned eighteen. There was a party. Then another. Then another. There was a series of debutant balls, other initiations into adulthood. So much attention, and yet so much loneliness. She endured it all without her cousin, her best friend.

It was snowing when we kissed. She tasted like strawberry kit-kats and salt and asked me to hold her, in rare vulnerability. We fell asleep together atop dusty sheets with our fingers intertwined and nothing else.

"What on earth could you possibly mean, Arkael?" She asked.

"I thought..." I drifted off, unable to think of an apt explanation. The truth is I'd been under the impression that we'd reached some sort of formal agreement that night, after the years of adults encouraging our match and making such a deal of it. We'd always been...something. Either less or more than friends. Not quite there, but always could be. 

"Nevermind what I thought, then." I cleared my throat, feeling that the sentiment had gone stale.

"So is that what this all was, loulou? An opportunity to impress me... gone awry?"

I missed her smile. It made me feel like I was smiling, too.

As my cheeks went warm, I simply played on in silence.

There's a word for it in Tagalog. One of those culturally significant terms that no one can translate with any real effectiveness. It explains a heart-racing, stomach-churning, extremely uncomfortable sensation. Some people call it butterflies, but that's not quite it. It's what I feel when I'm with her, unceasingly.

"What's loulou in Japanese?" I asked, in a lame attempt to reengage conversation.

"You know Japanese."

"Okay, but what kanji would you use for it?"

"The least affectatious selection. What's loulou in Tagalog?"