(ON HOLD) Spellbound (BxB)

Chapter 4 | Devil

That day went by in a fog. The wings of Logan's breath against his cheekbone, the scrabbling sickness, the mad dash to the restrooms to vomit where no one could see him. He had never asked about the words Logan muttered into his ear that day, but it hadn't mattered, anyway. He was sick with something and whatever it was meant he wouldn't have to attend class until he was better. It meant no therapy sessions, too—or at least he thought, until Lilly Witman appeared in his room one morning with a pad of paper and a folding chair.

Asher didn't mind Lilly as much as he had expected to, but she was a lot of things, if not persistent. She kept two mugs of coffee on her desk at all times and drank them both within the time restraints of a single forty-minute session (today she had brought them in a basket, along with a few other necessities). And atop her tiny, creaky, metal foldout chair, she sat cross-legged to accompany her short pencil skirts. Asher was always distracted by the birthmark on her left leg—or more so, distracted by trying not to be distracted by the birthmark on her left leg.

What he found strangest of all about Dr. Whitman was the way she never expected so much as a word from him and the way she could continue an entire session on her own without needing one.

"I hear you've been volunteered to man the homecomings dance," she said, her notepad set aside and her second mug of coffee clasped in her latticed fingers. "It should be a fun time. Our dances are school-wide events here. Everyone attends. Are you excited?"

Asher—sat up awkwardly stiff in his bed—had no interest in answering and the one thing Lilly had forgotten in that basket of hers was any candy to sway him. What was the point in all of this? What did it matter in the end if he spilled every ounce of his soul out? There was no PHD in the world that could fix him.

"Are you going?" she asked. Then she waited for an answer, but received only silence. A get-out-of-my-room-so-I-can-go-back-to-sleep kind of silence. At his uninterested expression, Dr. Whitman continued, "You should go. Do you have a girlfriend? A crush you could bring?" Again, Asher refused to answer. Again, Dr. Whitman continued, "A boy maybe?"

Asher straightened at that. It was the expectancy that broke him. No one had ever asked about his sexuality, ever guessed about his sexuality, or ever known about his sexuality. And in a matter of days, Lilly Whitman had chiseled his secret from its own dusty decay. Had brushed it. Had put it on display for the world to see.

ASHER GREENLY IS GAY.

She said nothing about his sudden raw and bristled air. "Have you ever been in love?" she asked him. It didn't feel in that moment like a therapy session. Dr. Whitman was gazing off into the shadows. She twisted at a ring on her finger with her mug balanced hazardously on her knee. "Ever think you were?"

Asher had been in love. Again and again and again. So many times, he wondered if it was love at all. If a person was meant to feel it so often with so many people. But love was problematic in that it only moved in one direction, and he found he was never standing in the path of it. It had always been more likely and convenient to die alone, so that was what he expected. To be alone and sad until the next time he was drown dead in a bath tub. He was fine with that. That was easy.

Being unlovable was so easy.

"You should invite someone nevertheless," Lilly said, finding herself suddenly back on track. "As a volunteer, you're expected to attend."

Asher broke his peace. "I have no one to go with."

"But do you have anyone to ask?" said Lilly.

Asher's mind slid shamelessly to the way Logan looked that day in the court yard, the joint burning bright between his fingers, his wild red hair sicking out from beneath his shades. The tenderness around his narrow, stoned gaze. There was always Mimi too, but she was a strange girl with strange habits and something about her made Ash feel restless and leery. Besides, he didn't like girls and what if he gave her the wrong impression? Logan, he decided. He'd ask Logan.