I stopped.
“It doesn’t matter. It’s fine. I got what I needed.” I pulled away from her. “I’m going for a run.”
“Selena—”
I grabbed my sneakers off the rack and sat on the stairs to pull them on. Lupe stood in the doorway with her arms crossed, watching me with a facial expression I knew meant she wasn’t done with me yet.
“So he was good.”
“That’s not important.”
“Your magic says otherwise.”
A pause.
“Are you going to see him again?”
“Bye, Lupe.”
I was out the door before she could respond.
I ransouth along the boardwalk where the boards were uneven and you had to watch your feet, which was the point. Every time my brain tried to go somewhere I didn’t want it to go, I hit a bad patch and had to focus or eat it.
I pushed past comfortable. Past where my lungs were happy about things. Kept going until the burn was big enough to drown everything else out, and then I kept going after that.
The magic moved with me the whole time, warm and buzzing, so close to the surface it kept catching me off guard. I’d reach for it reflexively, like how you reach for something that’s usually just out of range, and it would just—be there.
Right there.
I ran faster, the magic dulling the burn. But I wanted it, that pain, to keep the thoughts of his face as I’d left him in that van away.
The thing was, he hadn’t even been surprised. That made it worse. Like he’d known exactly what I was doing and let me do it anyway, which was somehow more unsettling than if he’d been angry.
The problem wasn’t that I’d used him.
The problem was that he didn’t mind, like he was used to it.
I ran faster. My feet took me to Shark Bites without asking me—muscle memory. I finally stopped moving, hands on my knees as I tried to catch my breath, when I heard the commotion happening around back.
The dumpster, the one I hadn’t closed when I’d ended my shiftunexpectedlyearly, was wide open.
And the seagulls had found it. An entire flock of them, absolutely ravaging the thing.
I glanced up to see El Soldado on the roof of the shack, glaring down with a judgmental expression.
“This is kind of your fault, meddler,” I muttered.
He puffed up indignantly.
I looked at the mess, then out at the beach where, in the distance, I could see the beginnings of massive tent structures being erected, a few people working to prop up am enormous banner.
RipTide’s logo, with a big neon green flag underneath that read NEW BIODEGRADABLE BOTTLES.
I glanced back at the seagulls. One of them had gotten a paper bag stuck on its head and was bumping into the others, another had a whole hot dog bun hanging out of its mouth, and all of them were screeching at each other as they fought over scraps.
“Hey!”
The word came out frustrated, magic crackling beneath it like lightning.
