Camilo x Reader -Broken Reflection

Chapter 28 (Yellow)

Y/N's POV

"How's it hanging, Señorita?"

Camilo slung his arm around my shoulders while I heaved a basket of clean laundry down the hall. My knuckles gripped the handles so tightly that they were white, and even though he was calm and collected next to me, my frustration wafted off of me in waves so much that he felt it too.

"Whoa, whoa, Orchid, what's got you so twisted?" He asked me. I shrugged his arm off of my shoulders with a grunt.

"Why don't you carry your own damned laundry upstairs?" I snapped at him and he backed off with his hands raised.

I regretted it as soon as I snapped at him, but I couldn't help it. Through the past week, since Mirabel and I had our fight, I could feel my chest tense every time I saw her. I tried to speak to her but it was of no use. She simply stormed out of the room or ignored me.

I didn't know what to do with her, and on top of the stress of my new gift and Abuela's pressure on my job, it was difficult to balance it all. It felt like I was on a tightrope and the Madrigals were sawing on the thin wire with a gleaming metal blade.

I shoved the basket into Camilo's arms and mumbled an apology. I saw his face fall and felt a pang in my chest. Sure, Camilo was a chameleon, but he acted like a puppy sometimes too. When he was rejected, his eyes watered and his tail stopped wagging.

"Hey," he said slowly and I stopped walking. "What's wrong?"

"What isn't?" I asked him, and just then, I heard the front door swing open. We peered over the railing to see Bruno step through the door and Mr. Muñoz pause through the frame. Bruno leaned in close and whispered something in my boss' ear, to which the man blushed like an idiot and nodded eagerly.

Camilo made a gagging noise next to me. "Barf," He bristled. Mr. Muñoz walked off and Bruno closed the door with a satisfied smile.

I turned and made my way to my bedroom where I opened the door with a heavy sigh and let it fall shut behind me. The walls of my bedroom which were usually white glowed bright yellow to match my frustrated mood.

I flopped on my bed just as I heard Camilo clear his throat from behind me.

"What?" I asked him. I was in no mood to deal with his pranks or jokes. I certainly wasn't in the mood to fold his laundry either. I heard rustling sounds as he placed his laundry basket down on the floor near my door, and then the sound of my bed whining under his weight.

He sat cross-legged next to me.

"Wanna go on the balcony?" He asked.

I thought back to the days when he and I would meet there. We'd talk for hours until our eyes started to droop and we felt just a little closer. At first, I thought I was talking to Mirabel, but it was Camilo the entire time. Maybe I needed to talk to him there again.

So I said, "Yeah," and we found ourselves leaning on the railing and breathing in the fresh air. It was a bright and sunny day outside, and there was not a cloud in the sky. It meant that Pepa was in a cheery mood, and I envied that.

Though not much was said, I felt a wave of nostalgia crash over me as pleasant memories of being on the balcony with Camilo came back to me.

"You feel everything everyone else feels?" Camilo asked me after a few minutes. I nodded and then stopped, considering that maybe I just felt people's most prominent emotions. After all, there was no way of truly knowing.

"Do you know what I feel?" He asked. I closed my eyes and inhaled a deep breath. I tried to shut everything out of my mind and focus on one person: Camilo. My eyes searched for light behind the blackness of my eyelids, and for a few moments, there was nothing.

That is- nothing unusual. I could see splashes of blue and pink and the occasional mossy green. Behind that, there were yellow and orange, representing emotions that he never really talked about.

"You feel frustrated but content. Close." My eyes searched more from behind my eyelids. "Confident usually, but not really now... what happened, Camilo?" I turned to him to see him watching me with folded hands.

He shrugged and averted his eyes. "Who knows?" He asked.

"You," I replied. I didn't push him for answers- I wasn't his therapist, but I knew him well enough to know that he was just acting like everything was okay. But everyone- all of the Madrigals do. They all pretend, and it was at that moment that I realized that I did too.

It wouldn't matter how much Camilo smiled and laughed and said that he was okay- I knew that he wasn't. The one question that was left unanswered was, "what can I do to fix it?" But Camilo wasn't a tool. He was a real, living and breathing, and magical person. He was my friend, and I knew that he was as broken as the mirror in his bedroom. But it's not the kind of broken that can be fixed.

I dared to peak at Camilo through the corners of my eyes. I looked at his downcast eyes and the sweat that had developed just above his top lip. I looked at the bags that had developed under his hazel eyes, and the way the skin on his forehead creased as he thought.

I could feel what Camilo felt, but his thoughts were a mystery to me. I wanted to know everything that went on inside his head, but I knew from personal experience that sometimes i's just best to leave the thoughts inside your head right where they are.

Still, I asked him, "What's bothering you?" He glanced at me with a shake of his head. "What's keeping you up at night?" The corner of his mouth turned up in a little smirk.

"I could ask you the same."

And I had to admit that he had a good point, but my answer was as complex as it was simple: Everything.

"Do you know what I'm feeling?" I repeated Camilo's question back to him. He grinned at the irony.

"Of course," he replied. "'Cause I feel it too."

I wrapped my hands around the railing and fell back on my heels, letting the wind catch my hair. And then Camilo asked me a question that I didn't expect: "Do you like Mirabel?"

I only glanced at him and nodded. The tightness in my chest returned as I thought of my dearest friend despite how I felt much calmer than before.

"Of course," I replied. "She's the best." Camilo nodded and looked at his toes.

"I know," he said quietly, and I saw a dark green flash from behind my closed eyelids.