"EEEK! You must be Matthew! It's me, your cousin—Amor!"
The voice was a firecracker, and the girl attached to it was the explosion. She rushed towards him with a flurry of colors and sound that felt utterly alien against the dusty, tired backdrop of the road. Her energy was a physical blow, and Matthew, bewildered, felt himself recoiling from a her sheer velocity.
"Mum?" he managed, a single, questioning word as he took an instinctive step back.
Amor, however, operated in a world without personal space.
"Oh my gosh, I can't believe it's you!" She squealed, her voice pitched to a frequency that made his teeth ache. "Tita sent me so many pictures. She told me all these stories—about how you were the quiet one, always with your nose in a sketchbook. I feel like I already know you!"
Matthew's brow furrowed, a thundercloud gathering. He shot a look at his mother, who was watching the scene unfold with the silent amusement of a seasoned diplomat. "You've been sending pictures?"
"Of course," his mother said, a casual shrug that felt like a betrayal. "She always asked."
"Exactly!" Amor beamed, tilting her head to study him as if he were a fascinating, slightly moody sculpture.
"You're just like I imagined. Well, taller maybe. And a little less broody." She paused. "Your mum told me all about the time you got stuck in that tree trying to rescue a kitten."
Heat flooded Matthew's cheeks. "For heaven's sake," he muttered, turning a glare on his mother that could curdle milk.
She just chuckled. "It's a funny story, Matt. Amor loves family."
"See?" Amor's grin widened. "We're practically long lost siblings!"
From the shadowy corner of the tricycle's sidecar, Felix watched. He had tried to make himself small, to dissolve into the worn upholstery, but curiosity was a traitor. He took a small glance. He is… attractive, I'll give them that, he thought, the observation landing with an unwelcome thud in his chest.
The boy—Matthew—had sharp edges, a jawline that looked like it was carefully sculpted, and an aura of profound irritation that was, to Felix's surprise, utterly refreshing.
The longer he looked, the harder it was to look away. Amor, now in full storyteller mode, was recounting another of Matthew's childhood mishaps. In a desperate bid to escape, Matthew's gaze swept the area and, for a fatal second, collided with Felix's. The connection was a physical jolt. Felix flinched, whipping his head away as if someone had slapped him.
"!" he gasped, shrinking further into himself. His cover was blown.
Amor, following Matthew's gaze, jumped in ecstatic glee as if she just remembered where she had placed her favorite toy. "Felix! What are you still doing in there? Get out here and meet everyone!"
Before he could form an objection, she was at the tricycle, tugging on his arm with an excitement that bordered on brute force. "Amor, I—hey, okay, okay! I'm coming!"
He stumbled out into the oppressive heat, awkward and flushed, and was dragged before the newcomers.
"This," Amor declared, throwing her hands up in a grand, theatrical flourish, "is Felix! My best friend. He's a little shy, but he's a riot once you get him talking!"
Felix's eyes faltered, his fingers curling in his pockets. He offered a hesitant nod, his voice barely audible. "Uh, nice to meet you, Aunty… and, uh, Matthew."
Matthew's arms were crossed, one eyebrow arched slightly as his gaze traveled over Felix, a slow, candid appraisal from head to toe, as if he were cataloging a strange new artifact. He seemed to be wondering what kind of person could willingly orbit Amor's chaotic system.
"I've heard a lot about you," Matthew's mother said warmly, but her eyes darted to the drivers, then at the falling sun. "But... Let's head home first. It's getting late."
"Sure, Tita!" Amor chirped, immediately helping with the bags, the small ones that looked like presents specifically, her delight palpable.
"God, she's annoying," Matthew muttered, the words, gravelly rumble, forgetting for a moment that Felix stood just a few feet away.
The sound that escaped Felix was small, involuntary—a puff of air that was almost a laugh. The comment, stripped of any real malice, stayed in the air between them. It was unexpectedly funny.
"Yeah, I mean… she has a… unique way of showing excitement," Felix offered, a nervous smile touching his lips. It was a first bridge, fragile and hastily built.
"Come on you two! Let's go home! I'm starving!" Amor yelled from inside the now-crowded sidecar.
Matthew moved forward, ready to contort himself between the mountain of bags, but the driver stopped him. "Eh, sir, better if you two young men sit behind me."
A flicker of the earlier frustration crossed Matthew's face, but it was exhausted, ember banked. He raised his palms in surrender.
"Tsk. You know what? Fine. I am not going to complain. Just… for fuck's sake, let's get this over with."
He swung a leg over the motorcycle seat as Andi and the other driver crammed a lifetime's worth of extra bags inside, atop, and at the back of the sidecar making it look like one of those traveling merchants that sold random plastic stationery, playing an old tune the previous generation considered a national treasure.
"Alright, Mang Andi! We'll be on our way!" As the motorcycle rose to life, Mang Andi gave an appreciative nod, before Felix hesitantly climbed beside the Englishman.
The awkwardness of their forced proximity was quickly replaced by a cascade of new sensations.
The vibration of the engine through the seat, the rush of warm, salty air against his face, and the solid, of the boy beside him. Felix's mind buzzed with the novelty of it. He was acutely aware of the fabric of the unfamiliar weight and presence of this foreigner. It was strange, but it was actually stimulating, a distraction powerful enough to momentarily drown his sentiments.
But it didn't last long.
He kept his gaze fixed on the horizon, watching the world unspool. But as they rounded the first bend of the coastal road, the sun began its slow, dramatic surrender to the sea. At first, it was just a brilliant gold, a landscape. But then, the colors began to bleed, the sky bruising from a fiery orange into a deep, depressing violet. And in that deepening twilight, the present began to fray.
The whir of the motorcycle faded, replaced by the remembered clicks of bicycle chains and the delusional echo of breathless laughter. The wind on his face was no longer just the wind of this evening; it was the wind of a hundred evenings just like it.
A flash of memory, so vivid it felt like a haunting. Gray, turning back to grin at him, his face flushed with exertion, his hazel eyes brighter than the sunset itself.
"Faster, Felix! The last one to the cottages buys the Cokes!" Another flash: the two of them, collapsed on the sand, laughing about something stupid, something that only they would find funny, their shadows long and intertwined on the shore, the only part of them that intimately touched one another.
Those moments, preserved in the amber of his memory, were perfect. And that was the tragedy. He was remembering a joy so complete and effortless, that its absence now was an injury, an ache carved out of his heart. The laughter he remembered was a sound he was no longer capable of making. The boy whose face was so clear in his mind was now just an imagination, and Felix was just a curator of a museum no one else other than him would ever visit.
A particularly sharp bump in the road startled him, and the illusion shattered. The laughter was gone, overtaken by the drone of the engine. He was back in the present. The sunset, which had been a gateway to a beautiful past, now just looked like a wound in the sky.
"Where are you?" he whispered, the sound stolen by the wind.
He needed a different distraction, a different reality. He risked a glance sideways, a desperate, subconscious attempt to anchor himself to the here and now, but a promise like that didn't exist at the moment, and only a haze of a good memory filled his brain as the tricycle went deeper into the Barangay.