(ON HOLD) Spellbound (BxB)

Chapter 7 | Shrimp

When Asher woke, it was with a thrumming in his skill and the sound of Elton John thundering in his eardrums.

I'm still standing, better than I ever did.

Light glared, pins in the back of his eyes.

Looking like a true survivor, feeling like a little kid.

He sat up and found himself restrained around the chest with rope—no, a belt? A seatbelt, he realized when he made sense of the dash in front of him. Lights glinting, wet against glass. The glossy veneer of a car radio. Muddy boots kicked up on the dash. Cool air against his skull.

Jackal sat beside him, a baseball cap tilted down over his eyes and arms crossed over his chest. His fingers moved to the sound of Elton, tapping, tapping.

I'm still standing, after all this time.

Picking up the pieces of my life without you on my mind.

Distant laughter pulled Asher to his right where a burger menu sign blocked vision to the car beside them. He realized then that they were seated in a convertible with the top drawn down. The cold night air scraped his cheeks, and a second spill of giddy laughter lapped against his skull. He recognized garish mustard-yellow awnings of the Sonic he'd frequented with his father before school began. The scent of French fries, the sound of skates on pavement.

"What happened?" he asked Jackal, touching the spot on his neck where he still felt fingertips press bruise-deep. Mimi. What had he done to her?

Jackal's fingers stopped moving. He stayed where he was but pulled his cap from his head. His long hair disheveled as he did; some remained tucked behind his ears, some curtained messily his face. Some hung over his eyes in a way that made several muscles in Asher's body buck in contraction. "What happened?" Jackal replied. His eyes were somewhere on the burger menu—or maybe just anywhere but Asher. "I came to pick you up and you were sitting at the front steps of the school. Sleepwalking or some shit."

"I was?" Asher asked. He recalled in great detail the look on Mimi's ghastly face. The way the dust tore her to ribbons when Jackal tossed it into the air. Had he imagined it all? Dreamt it?

A woman flashed by the driver side open window with a tray full of food, catching herself on the side mirror with a soft oop. A fry flopped to the pavement. She pulled a thread of hair free from her sticky lipgloss.

"Sorry, babe," she said, finding balance on her skates. "Took me off front counter though they know I can't skate. Still stick me in these things."

Jackal took the food from her, dumping a bag in Asher's lap. "Didn't teach you to roller skate in stripper school?" he said. Then he handed her a twenty, which she deposited into her apron and hunched over the window with a frown.

"Nah, but they taught me how to count money real good. Where's my tip, Jacky?"

"Keep the change."

"A buck-sixty ain't a tip, Jack."

It was then that Asher realized a weight rested on his skull. He reached up and felt the firm fabric of a baseball cap. He didn't own any himself, so it had to of been placed there by Jackal. As he went to remove it, Jackal reached over blindly and clapped a hand down over his head. He didn't explain, didn't look back to Asher. Didn't for a second take his eyes off the waitress. He just held it there with a firmness that said don't take it off. So Asher didn't.

"That's better," the waitress was saying, keen on the cash Jackal flashed between two fingers. "Ah, but who's your friend?"

As she leaned in through the window, Asher went red at the sight of her ample cleavage and the cash tip stuffed between. She was older than the two of them by several years, but still strikingly youthful. Her pale skin and long black hair coupled with a dangerous shade of lipstick, gave Asher a sudden, unexpected jolt. He'd never been sexually attracted to girls, but he knew when they were an unattainable level of pretty. She was the type of girl he saw in music videos. The kind of girl he could imagine in a catholic school uniform, smoking cigarettes behind the chapel.