Sunset Affairs

Prologue

He spent a lifetime loving the memory of one boy, only to spend one summer torn between him and another.

Felix was a fool. Or at least, that’s what his friend would say, her voice laced with that unique blend of pity and exasperation reserved for a best friend. It was her bluntest way of saying he was smitten. And Felix, a doe that he was, had always been smart in every area of his life except the one that mattered most to his heart.

Such was his luck in love.

It wasn't just bad luck; there was something fundamentally skewed in his conception of love, something born from late nights spent in the glow of his mother’s phone screen. She would watch her telenovelas, escaping into worlds of grand gestures and perfect, all-consuming passion. Felix would stay up with her, in the quiet aftermath of his father's rage—the yelling, the complaining, the occasional shattering of a plate that made them both flinch. He would watch the blankness settle in his mother's eyes, a place where love and hope had been adrift for so long they’d forgotten the way back to shore. It broke him, that emptiness.

He swore he would be everything his father wasn't. But in his desperate flight from that hemisphere of anger, he flew too far to the other side. He became a collector of small kindnesses, getting attached to any boy who showed him a tiny ounce of it. He knew it wasn't a crime to be so starved for affection, but he knew he wouldn't get away with it either. When his father found out, he tried to "fix" him. His spirit, fragile already, sank deeper into an ocean of hopelessness.

Until he met Gray.

Despite being a year older, Gray was a whirlwind. Dreamy, fun, and an unapologetic manchild. He was a free spirit who moved through the world as if it was his playground, a handsome puppy running through the halls of the palengke with a philosopher’s smile. Felix had hopes, and those hopes, watered by proximity and kindness, grew into a fervent, all-consuming passion.

He didn't know when it began, but one day he looked at Gray and realized he was already at his mercy.

For a boy whose life was a quiet routine of academic achievement and familial pain, Gray was a different color. He took Felix by the hand and swooped him into the brighter, more festive side of things. Every moment with him felt like a pause in time, as if the universe itself was holding its breath, watching, smiling at them.

The pain from home would melt away, and Felix clung to him like a moth to the only ember in a cold, dark room. With Gray, the same streets felt new, the same carinderia food tasted like a feast, the same video games were new thrilling adventures.

Gray was his sanctuary. No one else, not even his closest friend, understood him in that specific, enchanting way. Gray would listen, really listen, with a sincerity that made Felix feel seen. It was in the earnest flash of his smile, the focus in his hazel eyes when Felix spoke of his problems. Felix adored him. It was simply hard not to. But he could never say it, not in a way that wouldn't shatter the perfect, fragile paradise they had built. Loving a boy wasn't a crime in his heart, but he knew it was in Gray's world.

So he kept his secret, wise enough to know the pain of exposure. He couldn't afford the courage to confess when it would change nothing but risk everything. Still, the daydreams were a sweet, addictive drug.

There were nights where he couldn't sleep, nights where he thought of things he wanted, desperately wanted to change, and the endless theatre of impossibilities replayed in his head like poetic, repetitive tragedies from the radio. He asked himself things; What if I was a girl? Maybe I could change his mind? The happy memories soured into a new kind of low. He hit rock bottom, praying for something, anything, to happen.