Apartment 3B

17. Reinforcement

Lainey

Luna and I stayed up talking. We sat under the fairy lights on the small sofa in the nook under the window of the party room. Hayley had fallen asleep after binge watching The Handmaid's Tale on her laptop. After Kabir left, Jess told us he's going to meet his sister and he'd be back late. I made a mental note of asking him about Gabriel.

"What are you thinking about?" Luna asked me.

"Jesse and Gabriel." I answered honestly. "What are you thinking about you?"

"Strawberries and lavender," she smiled. I couldn't help but radiate the same warmth and joy as she gave me.

With our backs on either sides of the wall, we sat with our legs intertwined and eyes locked.

"Tell me your patronus memory," she asked. "A happy memory strong enough to create a patronus and fight dementors, y'know."

Taking my while to think about it, I finally answered, "It's too, I don't know, not strong enough. My happiest would be the time when I used to spend my summers at my grandparents' home. They would take me to the beach and we'd spend all day building sandcastles. I'd decorate them with seashells that me and my abuela collected. It was the most-" I searched for words, "-carefree and joyful time of my life. They both passed peacefully not long after a summer like this one. But I missed them dearly."

Strangely enough, it was the easiest thing to spill my guts to her. She gave me the space to just be.

"It's definitely a strong enough memory, Elaine. The bittersweet feeling just makes it so much more powerful. I'm sure they would be so proud of who you are." She leaned closer and patted my knee. Her hand creeped up to my thigh and her fingers made circles on the soft flesh over thin cotton pyjamas. She absentmindedly maintained physical contact and I felt safe beneath her fingertips.

"What's your patronus memory?" I asked her.

"I don't know if I have one," the corner of her lips turned in disappointment, or was it sadness?

"I've loads of happy memories with my family, with Hayles, but I don't know if there's one particular memory that would be strong enough to evoke a full bodied patronus." She explained.

Before I could say anything, her fingers laced with mine and her voice, barely a whisper, "I think you'd grow to be my patronus memory, Elaine."

My words got caught up in my throat and it was like I forgot how to speak. I'd never been loved this way, this naturally.

Loved?

"That's too kind of you to say. I don't think that's true, Luna." I told her after some deliberation.

"Of course, it's true, Elaine." She said it with such confidence and belief that I didn't have the heart to argue with it. Everything in my life would end in disaster, how would this be any different? I'd screw this up too.

I was spiraling down, thinking about everything that could go wrong between us when her voice brought me outside my own head, "You know, I've this theory. I don't know if it already exists out there but I came up with it one night in high school. So, do you know what partial reinforcement is?"

"No," I answered.

"Well, we get rewarded when we do something good, right? Praise, acceptance, money, there's so many kinds of rewards. When you engage in desirable behavior, you get rewarded and you learn to keep engaging in the same behavior."

"Leaving the assumption that people get reinforced about societally undesirable behavior, I think that love works on the system of partial reinforcement."