Page 26 of Avelina

It reminded me of the night that Drew and I kissed for the first time. It was our junior year at San Francisco State, and we had been in the living room of our tiny college apartment. I scrolled on my phone while she studied for a test on the American Civil War. I was in the class, too, but had calculated that I only needed a D on the test to keep my A in the class, so I wasn’t about to waste time studying when I could instead watch an endless stream of fifteen-second videos.

She was frustrated at trying to remember dates and names of supposedly important people. I made a joke about where I thought Robert E. Lee could stick his musket. She laughed, and then, in a moment of impulsivity, blurted out that she had something to tell me but she was scared that I wouldn’t want to be her friend anymore.

I told her not to be an idiot and that she could tell me anything. Then she stepped out of the closet right into my arms. I embraced her, then I kissed her, and a thousand near misses culminated in a life-changing blur of revelation and sweat and long-awaited relief. I remembered what the bedsheets smelled like afterward. That was what this scent reminded me of. It was desire, one that had never before had a viable outlet.

My body reacted to it, and Aaron sensed it. His hand tightened on mine, and he struggled to keep himself from pulling me toward him. If I were going to find this ability to reach into someone and heal them in a way that felt like pure pleasure, it would have to be in this realm somewhere.

I braced myself and threw my awareness into his desire as fully as I could, trying to go deeper. There was a barrier that I couldn’t break through, an old wall that had hardened with time and fear. I pushed against it, but it was as solid as the mountain, unbreakable. He truly was protected.

What if it isn’t a wall but a door? One that is barred from within.

Instead of pushing, I knocked. I whispered, both mentally and aloud, “Can I come in?”

The question echoed in both of our minds. Nothing happened for a moment, but I could sense Aaron warring with himself over the answer to that dangerous question.

Yes won, and the door cracked. My awareness flooded into him, and I was assaulted by an explosion of information and sensation. Aaron sucked in a breath, and his eyes flew open to lock with mine. I wobbled on my feet a little and he grabbed my arm with his free hand to steady me.

I had only thought that I could feel him before. Now, I wasn’t just inside him. I was him, and he was me. I felt his lips part as if they were my own lips. I saw his memories, and he saw mine. I felt his desire, and he felt the same from me. I felt him getting an erection as if it were my own. That was an eye-opener, let me tell you. Jesus. I felt a sharp, deeply ingrained shame that the unmasking of those urges caused him to feel.

What is this? I asked. Where is this shame coming from? This doesn’t make any sense.

I forgot about what I was supposed to be doing and swam through his thoughts and memories about where this erroneous belief originated. What I discovered was deeply unsettling. Men in golden capes, a dagger with a golden handle, a council sitting at a high table, burning houses, a room full of students with various injuries, a young girl being dragged away by a man in a black hat, a belt hanging on the back of a door, a secret room filled with banned books. Something called the Ministry.

What is the Ministry? I asked. I had already suspected that this was a conservative society, but this went far beyond that. Every single person was indoctrinated to believe that purity came from pain and that sexual desire was shameful and wrong. They had to get permission to have sex from their Ministry leader, even for the purpose of having children. They literally needed a fucking permit.

Holy shit. This is so much worse than I thought. This entire world is controlled by a cult. The whole godforsaken planet.

I sensed Aaron’s confusion at my certainty in this, and he rejected it at first. He came from one of the more rebellious families in the region, so he wasn’t as anchored in the dogma of the Ministry as some, but when it came down to it, he couldn’t entirely escape the brainwashing of his own culture. But then, just like I had done, he immersed himself in the memories of my life.

My family was the opposite of conservative. We didn’t go to church. My mother educated me about sex at the age of seven. She put me on the pill when I was fifteen and took me to get an IUD when I was seventeen. I had sex for the first time later that year, and my mother bought the condoms. My parents were so open that they hadn’t batted an eye when I had asked if my friends could all stay in the guest rooms together. This was normal and expected. I sometimes underestimate how much their way of thinking influenced me, but my parents, and my mother especially, taught me that absolute freedom of mind and body is the most natural and right way to be.

Talk about seeing things from someone else’s perspective. Imagine believing in something your whole life, with your whole spirit, only to learn beyond a shadow of a doubt that you had been duped. There was something happening in this world that I didn’t understand yet, a force trying to exert control over everything and everyone. It wasn’t right or just. Everything about it was deeply wrong.

It doesn’t have to be this way, he thought.

It’s not this way. Not for me.

I became aware of a pressure that started at the base of Aaron’s spine and pushed upward like a geyser. He grew unnaturally hot and shook violently.

Rage, I thought, watching in spellbound dismay as Aaron’s memory flicked through all the ways the Ministry had ruined his life. They were the real reason his family had left him behind. They were the reason he had to hide in the woods like a criminal. He had always resented the Ministry, but he had also believed them when they called him a traitor. He had spent years running, feeling deeply conflicted about his rebellion.

It had all been a lie.

I thought for a moment that he might accidentally set me on fire. Reluctantly, I withdrew from him again, extinguishing our shared mental experience. I knew I didn’t need to heal his anger and resentment. I only needed to exist there with him in that room. Again, I felt an overwhelming urge to hug him. This time, I gave in. I leaned forward and wrapped my arms around his shoulders.

He returned the embrace, hugging me so hard that I feared being crushed by his unnatural strength. He pulled me onto his lap, and I let him. I held him there until he stopped shaking, soaking up the heat radiating from his body. The intimacy would have frightened me a day ago. Now, it felt completely natural. I had never become so close with someone as quickly as I had with this man over the last day. I knew him now, and he knew me. I felt for him. More than that, I could feel my priorities shifting for him.

Aaron released me from the hug, allowing me to breathe again. Neither of us smiled as we stared at each other, taking in the change to our situation that I knew we both felt. Whatever we were before, whatever we thought we were, that was over now.

His eyes were exceptionally pale, a beautifully bright shade of blue that was almost clear. His pupils were huge. He looked down at my mouth and then back up at my eyes again. I knew I would let him kiss me, but I wasn’t ready yet, mostly because I found the wound above his eyebrow to be revolting and I didn’t want to put my face anywhere near it.

“Can I try one last time?” I asked.

He licked his lips, then nodded. I had my arms around him already, so I reached up with one hand and rested it on the back of his neck, opening up my awareness to him again. He bowed his head a little, his face nearly resting against my own neck. He let me in readily this time, and I closed my eyes to concentrate on finding the wound above his eye with that awareness.

It was all but impossible. Attempting to comprehend the internal mechanisms of his body was like standing in a crowded auditorium, struggling to understand someone shouting from the opposite end in a language I didn’t know. There was so much information to sift through, and I didn’t know what to do with any of it. On top of that, everything was fuzzy, as if I were looking at it through smudged glasses. My heart sank as I grasped that this was beyond me. Aaron sensed my disappointment, and he squeezed me a little, lifting his face away from my neck to look at me.

It’s okay, he thought to me. I jerked in surprise. Unlike a moment ago, when I had gotten emotions, images, and jumbled memories, his thoughts were now spoken words, as clear and loud as his real voice. It was super weird. He laughed inside our minds, and although his face barely registered a smile, I could feel his laughter shaking my bones.

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