REED
The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them.
"Go on a date with me tomorrow, Asher Scott."
I heard myself say it and felt no desire to take it back and Asher stopped.
His hand was still on the door handle, his back to me, and the words sat in the air between us like something that had been building pressure for a long time and had finally found a way out. Neither of us moved for a moment that stretched longer than it had any right to.
Then he turned around and the door swung closed behind him.
He looked at me from across the room and for once, for the first time in as long as I could remember, the careful construction was completely gone, no composure and no deliberate blankness. Something underneath all of that had surfaced, something the words had found before he had time to cover it, and I looked at it and felt something in my own chest respond to it with a certainty that arrived without warning and without any intention of leaving.
