Breaking Magic

Chapter 27: Felix

I've known I'm bisexual for a lot longer than I've known Adam, even though I've never actually dated another guy before. Due to the fact that I go to such a school with such a small population, the pool of gay candidates is understandably limited. I'm pretty sure that no one in my life really even knows—not because I've been hiding it, but just because the opportunity has never come up, so I never really had to "come out". And it always seemed too weird to just be like "Oh, by the way guys, do you want to talk about our sexual preferences?" over lunch in the quad, so... I just didn't.

I dated a few girls, had a couple of fruitless crushes on straight guys I knew and celebrities I didn't, and that was that.

Until Adam Wolfe came into my life.

When he first showed up in sophomore year, I was interested in him—everyone was. He was new, he was unique, he was what everyone in the magical world was talking about. By the time junior year rolled about, he had gained the infamy that follows him around to this day. I hardly knew him, but I resented him. I saw firsthand how destruction followed him around like a shadow, and that was about the time the Council—and therefore my parents—started wanting to see the back of him. I'm ashamed to admit I wasn't easy on him whenever our paths crossed, and though I was never outright hostile, I was evidently still enough of an ass to make him think I actively hated him.

But in junior year, I had a couple of non-magic classes with him, and without being in constant danger of being accidentally hexed, I started to think that my prejudice may have been slightly misguided.

And then in May last year during lunch period, he blew up the school's gazebo next to the pond. According to mutual friends of people who were there at the time it happened, it had something to do with the birthday of one of Adam's friends. There was a cupcake someone had brought, and a candle for the friend to blow out. At the end of the "Happy Birthday" song, right as the friend blew out his candle, Adam had one of his signature accidents, when a stray thought takes form and becomes an overpowered spell. Instead of the candle being blown out, it erupted into a fireball, blowing the roof right off the gazebo, which fortunately—though not for the fish—landed in the pond.

I was on the other side of the lawn when it happened, and the first I knew about it was when I saw bits of flaming gazebo raining through the air, and the screams of people who were closer to the epicenter of the blast.

Everyone, including me, went running over to see what had happened.

What we saw was four of our classmates crouching on the ground, their arms over their heads, and Adam standing over them, his own arms thrown out as if to shield them, as waves of magic so thick you could feel it in the air rolled off him. They should have been killed, but in the heat of the moment, the instant he realized what he had done, his only thought had been to protect his friends. And with that thought overcoming everything else, his magic obeyed, creating a sort of force field around them that protected them from the explosion.

Magic is, in its purest form, emotions. And for Adam, that's often all it ever is. An errant thought blew up the gazebo, but his emotions, the person he is at his very core, defended the people he cared about. It wasn't something he had to think about, it was an instinctive reaction.

I remember standing there, staring at him through hazy air that rippled with waves of magic, with his hair blown back from his face and his arms and legs spread to shield his friends. I remember suddenly knowing, without a doubt, that Adam Wolfe was someone I could love. Someone that I did love, whether I wanted to or not.

I had a hard time accepting it at first, but after an entire summer of being unable to get thoughts of him out of my head, I had to give up. And then when I saw him again for the first time in months at the picnic breakfast on the first day of school, I knew it was hopeless. My heart had suddenly started pounding in my chest, and I'd had to look away quickly before risking him seeing me blushing. That had been embarrassing. Especially when my mom had asked me why my face was so red.