by M. J. O'Shea
McKenna scowled. “Yes I read too many novels, and I’m a complete idiot so I don’t know the difference between fiction and what’s right in front of my fucking face.”
“Mack.”
“Just watch.”
Gray wanted to protest. He wanted to believe his protest at least, but there was the smell, and the way Arlo’s pastries made him feel, made lots of people feel. And the way that they seemed to fall into each other the second he stopped pretending that was the thing he wanted most. There was something unusual about Arlo and his family. Gray had sensed it right away, but he’d ignored it in the heady rush of feelings.
They needed to talk.
He spent the afternoon thinking, worrying more like it. After McKenna left he did a lot of staring at the wall, trying to catalog all the moments he’d thought that Arlo might be a little different. There were a lot of them. But the biggest thing, the most noticeable was the smell. He’d never forget that first day, before he’d ever seen Arlo’s face, how he smelled heaven on the air. How everyone in town had smelled Arlo’s presence and were drawn to him like some sort of pied piper.
Gray all of a sudden felt sick to his stomach.
What had Arlo done to him? What had he done to everyone? He didn’t want to believe it. He wanted everything to be right. But Gray wasn’t crazy, and Mack was nothing if not observant. He felt panicky.
Gray left his office the moment he could and practically jogged to the café. He needed answers, and the pub would bring Leo, Jake, and Sawyer and too much distraction.
Arlo was just cleaning up when he got there. The store was closed, but Arlo usually left the front door unlocked until he left for the night. Gray walked in, full of purpose. He was half-angry and scared, but so much of it drained from him when he saw Arlo’s happy face.
“Hey, babe. I saved you some apple cake.” Arlo came around from behind the counter and gave Gray a soft kiss. He wound their fingers together and played with the sensitive skin on Gray’s palm like he always did. It was so hard to keep his resolve.
“Where’s Sofia?” Gray asked.
“I think she went to get dinner with Mack,” Arlo told him. “Why?”
Gray decided to ignore the fact that Sofia was out with his impressionable sister. He needed to know what was going on before he dragged her away from her new friend.
“We need to talk.” Gray extricated himself from Arlo’s grasp.
Arlo looked that devastating combination of hurt and worried. “O-okay. Do you want some cake? There’s leftover apple cider too.”
“No. That’s part of what I wanted to talk to you about.”
“What is it?”
“Mack says she thinks your sister can do things.”
“Do things?”
“You know what I mean. The traveling. How she seems to know so much about everyone without people telling her.”
“Oh.” Arlo’s eyebrows squished together. His cheeks went a little flushed. “Okay.” His voice sounded thick and fuck Gray wanted to lean in and wrap his arms around him.
“Is Mckenna right?”
“Yes,” Arlo whispered.
“Yes, she’s right? What can your sister do?”
“She’s good at reading people. And the traveling…” Arlo looked like he had just descended into his worst nightmare.
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on because I’m really starting to freak out,” Gray said.
And that’s when Arlo started to cry.
“I want to, I do,” he said on a sob, “I’m just scared. I don’t want to lose you. I can’t lose all of this.” He hiccupped and sobbed again. “Fuck. I never cry. What’s wrong with me?”
Arlo scrubbed at his eyes. Gray felt his heart breaking just a little.
“C’mon. Let’s get you some tea and dinner and then we’ll finish this.” Part of him wanted to drag the truth out of Arlo, but a bigger part wanted to cradle him in his arms and promise that nothing would change, no matter what he said.
“Okay,” Arlo muttered. He stood and went to get his coat and locked up.
They had finished an uncomfortable dinner and had been sitting in Gray’s living room for about five long silent minutes when Gray finally said something.
“You’re going to have to tell me what’s going on, you know? We can’t sit here all night.”
“Do you have any idea how weird it is to say it out loud? I don’t do that very often.”
“What is it, Arlo?”
“I’m a…” He coughed and then he spit it out. “I’m a witch.”
Gray might have expected something but he sure as hell didn’t expect that. “You can’t be fucking serious.”
“I am.” Arlo felt like he could do about a million years of explaining or he could just show. So he put out his hand, hoped for the best with his whisk back at the kitchen, and he concentrated as hard as he could. When he opened his eyes, one of Gray’s coffee table books was hovering over the table. Arlo let it drop gently and then repeated himself. “I’m a witch.”
“Holy fuck.” Gray backed away. “What else can you do?”
“Not a lot. I’m not a strong witch. Neither is Sof. We can move things, she’s good at reading emotions, she can apparate, you know, jump between places. I’m not very good at that.” He scowled.
“What else? What about the smell?”
“The smell?” Arlo was perplexed.
“You have to know how good you smell. Like everyone’s favorite things. Different to each person. Are you doing that on purpose to con people into liking you?”
Arlo shook his head. He looked confused. “I never knew I did that at all. My mom just told me I smelled really good when I was a baby. I don’t…” He was actually fairly shocked nobody had ever told him that before. Maybe he couldn’t do that before and the smell was part of him getting stronger. It didn’t really matter. What mattered was the way Gray was looking at him like he didn’t really know him.
“And what about the food?” Gray looked incredibly suspicious.
“Oh, that. Yeah, I know I do that.” Shit. Arlo knew he was in trouble.
“What exactly do you do?”
“Just like Sofia is really good at receiving people’s emotions, I’m really good at… giving mine. I was never very skilled at controlling it, and they ended up in my food a lot – and out in the air, in other people. This last summer, my cousin Frankie, he was teaching me how to control it. And how to deliberately add charms to my food – happiness, freedom, joy, just feel good things. Harmless.”
Gray, who’d been looking rather shocked, suddenly turned angry. “You told me you hadn’t done anything to the food. You said it was just sugar.”
“I said never drugged anyone.” Arlo was literally in hell. “I haven’t. I just want to make people happy.”
“You tricked me. You tricked all of us into liking you with your tainted fucking food. What’s wrong with you?”
“It’s not like that. No, Gray. I wouldn’t trick you like that. It doesn’t work that way. I –”
“I don’t believe you.” Gray stood up. “Well, I think I’ve heard what I wanted to hear.”
“You don’t have any other questions?” Arlo felt so very small.
“No. I think you need to go now.”
“O-okay. I’ll give you some time to think it over. I’ll see you at the shop tomorrow?”
He didn’t like the idea of a night without Gray’s arms, but Gray probably needed to think a little.
“No. I mean, you need to go and not come back here.”
Wait. What? Arlo thought he was joking for a moment until he saw the cold resolve on Gray’s face. He couldn’t lose him. He wouldn’t survive it.
“Gray… no.” He felt his entire body ripping into pieces. He looked down and he was still together, not bleeding on the floor. He didn’t know how that was possible with how much he hurt.
“I thought you were someone special, but you’re just… a freak who has to put spells on peo
ple to get them to like him. You were fucking with us. You said you weren’t and you were. You lied to me, and you tricked me. I don’t want anything to do with you.”
“Gray, no. I love you. Please don’t do this. I’m not—”
“You don’t love me. Love is trust. You’d never do that to someone you trust and I can never trust you. Get out.”
Arlo barely remembered getting up and stumbling out of Gray’s place. His mind didn’t clear until he came to hours later on his couch with Clementine looking down at him. He must’ve jumped accidentally. He would’ve remembered running through the streets. It was the furthest he’d ever managed to go.
“Well, at least something’s come of this,” he said to himself. Then he burst into tears.
It had been three weeks since he’d last talked to Gray and Arlo felt, well he felt gray. Ironically. Like all of the color had been leeched out of his world and he barely had the strength to drag himself into work every day. It took all of his concentration not to let his sadness seep into his food and far more concentration than he had to participate in the conversations at the pub. He’d taken to getting his meals to go and eating them with only Clementine for company. Sawyer tried not to let him, but when he slipped away during one of Sawyer’s busy streaks there wasn’t much he could do about it.
Still, Sawyer tried to force his friendship on Arlo. As did Leo and even Jake. Arlo was grateful. Tired, but grateful. He’d thought Gray was it. He thought that dream meant he’d found what he never knew he was looking for. His body felt it, his heart felt it, he still didn’t want to leave Gray’s world. But those words had hurt, and he didn’t know if he could forget them.
There was another little reminder around most days as well. McKenna seemed to be as determined to refuse to let him go as Sawyer and the others were. Arlo had resigned himself to a stubborn tow-headed presence. It wasn’t like she was listening when he told her to go home.
“Are you going to tell me what the hell happened between you and my brother or am I going to have to strangle one of you?” McKenna asked one afternoon when they were loading the trays with the final sugar cookies of the day. Arlo closed his eyes for a moment and tried to sprinkle them with a tiny dash of warmth and coziness to mask the gray chill and his general listlessness.
As much as Arlo had tried to push her away, her and the rest of Gray’s sister posse seemed to stick around like persistent little clingy angels. He tried to pretend it annoyed him, but Arlo had never loved anything so much. He hated himself a little for wanting that connection with Gray after the way Gray had spoken to him the day after Halloween, but he did. He wanted the connection. And he was falling in love with McKenna and Fallon and the mischievous Luna just as much as Gray… well in a brotherly way. He felt like he was meant to be with them. They were meant to be with him too. Still didn’t make McKenna’s question any less awkward. Or Fallon’s knowing stare any less piercing.
“Guys, I’m not going to talk about your brother with you.”
“Yes, you are. You haven’t told Sawyer, he has no fucking clue.”
“McKenna.”
“I’m eighteen. I’m allowed to swear. You didn’t tell Leo or Jake either. What happened?”
Arlo didn’t know how to tell them. What was he supposed to say? Gray didn’t want to be with him anymore because he was a witch? Not exactly pub conversation.
“It’s not really my place to decide what you should know or not.”
“It’s not Gray’s place either. It’s mine. Again. Adult.”
Arlo looked at Fallon. Fallon’s eyes widened. “Just know whatever you tell McKenna is going to go straight to me anyway so you might as well just cut out the middle man.”
Gray’s sisters were a bit too clever for their own good.
“Fine. When I close, okay?”
“We’ll be waiting. Do you need any help?” McKenna asked.
Along with refusing to let him push her away, McKenna had kept helping him in the bakery. She’d graduated from making sales and boxing up treats to staying after and learning how to bake. It was harder and harder to hide what he was with her bugging him in the kitchen. Another thing that had been exhausting him. Arlo was almost relieved at the prospect of lifting that one load.
The afternoon went very quickly, as things tended to go when Arlo was dreading something. And he was vaguely dreading this conversation with the girls. He wanted to get it off his chest but… he’d lived through Gray’s rejection. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to try to live through it again from his sisters.
He took his sweet time cleaning up and closing his register. He was about to start mixing cookie doughs for the next morning when he heard a rather impatient throat clearing noise at the doorway to the kitchen area.
“Good try. Come out and sit. Fallon’s made you a cup of tea.” McKenna obviously noticed that he’d managed to pick up Gray’s tea habit in the short time they were together. It made him a little sad.
“I don’t know what to tell you girls. Your brother just… doesn’t want to be with me anymore.”
“Bullshit.”
“Really, Mack. You need to tone it down. Mom’s going to go nuclear if she hears you swearing again.” Arlo didn’t know when Fallon had decided to be the familial voice of reason, but it was a bit surprising.
“I’m so glad she started caring.” McKenna rolled her eyes. “Listen, if it makes you feel better, I can guess. I have some guesses.”
“No. No.” Arlo didn’t really want to let McKenna and her imagination wild. “Here. Just watch.”
He was nervous, and he’d never performed well under pressure –especially something he’d just been working on. Arlo sent a burst of energy through the air, closed his eyes, and waited for a few moments. The high pitched whine of one of his industrial mixers springing to life filled the room. He concentrated again and it stopped.
“Wait.” Fallon’s mouth dropped open. “Did you just do that?”
“Um. Yeah.”
“Show us something else,” McKenna said. She looked less surprised than Arlo had thought she would. And her reaction was pretty much opposite of Gray’s.
“I’m not very good,” Arlo mumbled. “I’m just starting to mature into my skills.”
“Whatever you can do. I want to see it.”
Neither of them had called him a freak yet, or ran out of the room. Had to be a good sign.
Arlo took a deep breath, reached out and gripped the handle of his whisk to ground himself, and concentrated on the bag of sugar sitting on the counter. Then he lifted his hand slowly and watched as a fine stream of sugar rose from the bag like a swirl of steam. He held it and then dropped his hand and watched the sugar fall. Grains scattered onto the counter, but most of it dropped back into the bag where it belonged. He closed his eyes again and brushed the stray sugar into the sink.
McKenna screeched. “Holy shit that’s so cool. What are you?”
Arlo had learned that he really hated saying the word out loud. “I’m a witch,” he told her.
“Is Sofia?”
“Yes. My whole family is. Most of them are much more powerful than I am.”
“Why didn’t she tell me?”
“We don’t tend to do that until we’ve spent a long time with someone. More than a month or two.” He made a face. “Typically the reaction most of us get is a lot more like your brother’s and a lot less like yours.”
“You do something to the food, don’t you?” Fallon asked abruptly.
Arlo blushed. This was where Gray’s sisters started to hate him too. “Mostly I don’t do it on purpose. I told you I’m not very good. My emotions tend to seep out of me into everything around me. Especially the stuff I bake. I’ve been working on controlling it, but your brother didn’t make that easy.”
“Is that why I’ve wanted to make out with Sawyer half the time when I ate one of your cakes?” McKenna asked.
Fallon snorted. “At least they didn’t make you want to kiss Gray.”
> “Gross,” McKenna muttered.
“It’s never that specific.” Arlo was horrified. “Just a general feeling. And usually I try to add a bit of something else to mask it. Maybe just happiness or warmth.”
“That’s incredible, Arlo. You’ve made so many people here happier. You can feel how different the town is since you’ve arrived.” McKenna brushed her hand down his back. “It’s not harmful, is it?”
“Not at all. Not like drugs or alcohol. Much more fleeting as well. The feeling is usually gone by the time you’ve finished eating.”
“Can you make it stronger?” Fallon asked with a calculating look. “Make it last longer?”
“Yes. Well, probably with a bit of practice. Why?”
“Just asking.”
McKenna chose that moment to wrap him in a huge hug. “I’m sorry my brother’s a dick,” she said. “I’ll fix him.”
“Please don’t.” Arlo really didn’t feel like getting yelled at by Gray for influencing his sisters with his ‘drugged cakes’.
“No. He needs to know he’s wrong. Can you help who you are?” Arlo shook his head. “Would you ever hurt him?”
“Of course not. I love him.”
“Then that’s all I need to know.”
McKenna grabbed her jacket off of the counter.
“Wait. Where are you going?” Arlo asked.
“Home. Fallon and I have some work to do.” She looked awfully determined.
Damn it. I’m screwed. Suddenly solidarity from Gray’s sisters didn’t seem like the gift it had been just a few minutes ago. It seemed like a disaster in the making.
“Gray you utter asshole.”
Gray looked up from where he was barely concentrating on some numbers on his computer. It took more effort than he really had in him just to get through work these days. His sister’s presence was very welcome. The look on her face was not.
“Mack? What are you doing here? And why did you just call me an asshole?”
He decided to ignore the part where she used the word asshole. It was a losing battle. His sister said anything she damn well pleased.
“You dumped Arlo because he’s, like, fucking amazing. How could you?”
