The next morning Belle woke up feeling a lot more refreshed than she had the previous morning, having had a much better sleep than the prior night.
Thankfully her talk with Rush the night before and the subsequent kiss on the cheek hadn’t affected anything and continued to act cordially towards her.
That day she had shown him her process of how she made her potion for Mandy. They continued to talk about how she had come up with the recipe and preparation as they worked, him helping to prepare the ingredients. As before, they worked well together.
The next day when they awoke, there was a letter in the mail letting her know that she had gotten accepted into MIT and was due to start in the upcoming fall only months away. They had celebrated that night by going out for dinner and then coming back home to have a couple drinks, Rush once again showing off his bartending experience. And while nothing romantic had happened that night unlike their last night like that, Belle had still enjoyed herself along with the others.
The next day, Rush observed Belle’s process for applying the potion to Mandy’s limbs -leaving when she required privacy- and returned to help Mary with Mandy’s rehabilitation exercises.
The rest of his visit went well and soon enough it was time for him to head back home which meant it was also time for him to get his memories wiped again.
Sitting on the couch, facing him with her wand in her lap and her homemade pensieve on the coffee table in front of the couch again was a little surreal to her. She felt a sense of déjà vu with the current situation and had to blink back a few tears from an onslaught of old feelings coming back again. One of the main differences between last time and this one was that Mandy and Mary were in the living room with them.
“Alright,” Belle began. “You have to leave to ‘catch your plane’ in about an hour so we don’t have to start right away. But once you’re ready, I want you to get comfortable and let me know when you’re ready for me to start.” She explained to him.
She had been able to tell that he was a little nervous about the memory removal process so to help calm him, she had all four of them sitting in the living room to take an afternoon coffee break.
Rush nodded and turned to Mandy.
“Lacey is going to remove my memories and I’m going to go to sleep. You’ll need to awake me quite late for me to go immediately,” he told them before he froze. “Yes, we’ve been through that already, right ?”
He cleared his throat. For him, it would always be his first time but for them they would gain experience in this activity.
Belle smiled warmly at him and nodded her head a little.
Mandy gave him a similar look.
“While we weren’t here for the actual removal of your memories last time, we were able to successfully get you out of the house quickly last time.” Mandy told reassuringly.
“And since your memories will be removed again, I know you won’t remember this but I wanted to apologize for all the future lies we must tell you.” Mandy told him.
Of course Mandy knew that they would have to lie to him for some things but the amount of deceit they’d had to feed you over the last six months really became apparent to them lately. She knew the three of them felt guilty every once in a while for the amount of lies they’d had to tell him.