Fragile Bones

Chapter Thirty-Two

After an hour and a half, the movie finally came to a close. I pushed back the happy tears at the ending, considering Asher had already made fun of me once for nearly crying when Mufasa died. He was crazy for not crying. It was one of the saddest moments in Disney history. His dumb movie about gangs couldn't even compare.

"Well that was just ridiculous," Asher yawned, stretching his arms above his head as far as they could go.

"If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say it at all," I muttered, picking up the remote and turning off the TV completely. Since Winter was fast approaching, the sun had already begun to set, and the room was enveloped in darkness, save the orange glow from the window.

"Mood lighting?" He asked. I couldn't see his face very well, but I could only imagine it was said with a smirk. I was getting really sick of his repeated innuendos, so I took the pillow next to me and whacked him in the face with it. He toppled over, right off the bed. I calmly walked up and turned on his bedroom light, hoping the pillow to his face said enough about what I thought of his comment.

"Not gonna lie, didn't know you had that in you," he said, right back on his feet a second later. "It's kind of hot."

I let out a frustrated sound while the inside of me was doing somersaults. Leave it to him to say something that made me want to rip my hair out while simultaneously wanting him to say it again. Each time it just sent me snapping back to reality that it was a game to him. He said stuff like this to everyone, because he thought it was funny.

"Not gonna lie, I'm getting really sick of you. Remind me how we started hanging out with each other?" I asked, legitimately wondering how it came to be like this.

"Because you were sitting in my english class, and you looked pretty," came the breezy answer. My mind didn't accept the second compliment, and so I ignored it.

I scoffed. "So I was going to be another one of your little conquests?"

He frowned, something I didn't see him do often. He was always either mad, or nonchalant, or... smirk-y. Rarely did he look troubled by something, as he did now. "Maybe. That's not a bad thing."

I pulled my eyebrows together in confusion, not expecting an actual response. "Are you serious? That's literally disgusting Asher. I would rather you never told me any of that."

He groaned and rolled his eyes. Since he was still standing, he went and sat on the edge of his bed, peering at me with one hand propped up under his chin. "I just said it's not a bad thing. If anything, you should take it as a compliment."

"I'm not going to take it as a compliment. It's insulting that that's all you see in girls when you meet them!" Although, I didn't know why I expected anything more of him.

"That's not all I see in them. You do realize that I have a brain and a heart, right? I don't immediately want to jump on every single person I see, but when there's a pretty girl sitting right next to me, the thought might cross my mind," he retorted.

I crossed my arms over my chest, still standing next to the door, a safe distance away from him. "Do you have a heart? Are you sure about that?"

He stared at me, visibly annoyed at the back and forth. "You wanna know why I started talking to you Madeline? It's because you looked pathetic. I thought it would be fun to mess with you."

Silence filled the air around us.

Sometimes I thought about how different Asher was now compared to when he first came here.  At least, he was different from how he showed himself at school when it was just us. Even when he met Charlie he was nicer than he had been to other students when he started at the high school. Other times, I remembered that he hasn't made some miraculous evolution into a better person.