The Edifice

31. Flying

OLIVIA

Flying is the closest thing to euphoria I've felt in years.

The sheer elation of discovering my own weightlessness makes me giddy. It's exactly as Otis said it would be. Focusing that energy in my bones beneath me, supporting myself.

The initial terror at the prospect of falling made floating instinctual, but after I lose the adrenaline it becomes so much harder to focus. Like I'm retraining what was seconds before muscle memory.

It's not really flying, I should say. Just refusing to fall. Rising any higher causes a strain on the energy so much that it hurts, so I simply lounge mid-air, tilting and spinning until my breakfast threatens to reappear.

Otis leaps off the ground quite easily, insubstantial as he is. He at least appears more in his element as he takes my hand when I begin to droop, pulling me up higher.

"Don't trip," he advises with a huge grin on his face. I fall backwards like a tumbling astronaut until Otis catches me and we slump to the ground in a laughing heap.

"You look like you just discovered fentanyl," Lee remarks from the park bench where he huddles in a crouch, one arm tucked awkwardly around his knees. Had I not spent the night with him, I'd assume he'd just woke up there, given his fingerless gloves and haphazard stack of jackets.

Otis raises his other hand to Lee. "Come on. You know you want to try. I can levitate you."

"I would literally rather tear my own fingernails out, but thank you," Lee replies, laying back down on the bench and closing his eyes. Despite his initial, skeptical curiosity in Otis's 'impossible' magic, his expression had returned to its usual disinterested sneer.

Otis glances at me. "Is this inappropriate? I'm not crossing a line with you guys, am I?"

"Actually, I think this is Lee trying to be nice," I explain, thinking back to when I'd first met the warlock at his father's funeral. "He's usually way grumpier than this."

"I don't want to come between you. You guys are cute together."

The words catch me off guard, the buffeting energy keeping me aloft vanishing with my surprise.

"Ah!"

The grounds hits hard and fast, the woodchips of the playground dig into the palms of my hands. Otis peers down at me from above, lowering himself down elegantly beside me.

"What happened?"

"Uh..." Heat rises in my cheeks as I stammer out my answer, wishing for all the world that I could just act like a normal human being for once. "Nothing. Lee and I aren't together, though. We actually met at his dad's funeral last week so... I don't think it's normal for someone to... hookup after that."

"Well you're in the Edifice. You can't expect the normal rules to apply," says Otis, smiling sweetly. He glances back at Lee, a distant expression on his face. "I can't say I'd blame you for trying. Even if he is an asshole."

"Plus he just wants me to leave here," I add, recalling how close we'd been curled together this morning. Every curve of our bodies slotted together like it was the most natural thing possible. A particular firmness pressed against the back of my thigh that I'd begun to believe I'd never give a man.

Had I really thought I loved him? Don't I still?

I want to hide my face in my hands, remembering the empty condom packets in his wastebin and the ease with which he talks of sexuality. The first man to hold me this close and I've developed a crush as silly as a teenager's. Clearly though, I'm far from a first for him.