Dirty. Sexy. Love.[*Complete*]

Chapter Eleven -- Jez

Jez

It's never a good sign when you meet someone's neurologist and the first thing out of their mouths when you're not with the person you came with is...

"Wow, you're real."

"Excuse me?" I quirked a brow.

A week had passed since the Saturday I went out with my friends and Asher and I fell into a good flow with things. He'd not exactly learned to give me enough space, but he endured the spankings well enough when I caught him on my block when he wasn't supposed to be.

"Over the last few years, we've been working under the assumption that he's been hallucinating. So, the fact that you exist is a good thing." The doctor grinned at me. He was middle forties, with a shaved head and deep ebony skin. Also—much to my surprise—he seemed to genuinely care about Asher. The office was nice, large and full of awards that spoke of the man before me as being an overachiever and at the top of his field.

"So how bad is it?" I took a seat at the chair opposite his desk, and he stared at me a moment before sitting in his chair.

"Well..." He drew a breath and pursed his lips. "There's no easy way to say this, but the man who you met, the man who got into that bathtub never got out again." My whole body locked up when he said that, and it physically hurt me. "That Asher died when his body lost the last few ounces before the paramedics got to him. Zach did everything he could short of getting to him three minutes sooner. When your body loses a certain amount of blood, it starts to suffer hypoxia which is what happens when you have an aneurysm or a stroke. But instead of it happening in one localized spot it's all over the brain. He still thinks he's the same person, he knows he suffered brain damage, but he doesn't realize that he's acting any differently than he did before. But his personality has drastically altered."

"How so?"

The doctor turned the white monitor on his desk so I could see it.

"This is a session with his therapist from two weeks before his suicide attempt." The Neurologist opened up a file. The monitor went black for a moment and then...

Asher sat at the grand piano in his music studio playing something I didn't recognize, but there was no sheet music on top of it. A cigarette dangled from his lips.

"So, what are you playing today, Asher?" a graying woman in a beige cardigan asked as she pulled a chair in frame.

"Haydn's Sonata in E-flat, but a little slower. I feel that way today. Slow. Drawn out. Stretched thin."

"It's beautiful all the same. Is there anything that you want to talk about?"

"Nope. You're only here because if you don't sit in that chair for an hour, I can't get my meds refilled and the label will lose their shit."

"Are you sure you don't want to talk about her again?"

He paused playing and flicked the ash from his cigarette at the therapist before restarting the song. The woman jumped and patted her arm, putting out embers.

"No." He then started playing something I did recognize, Moonlight Sonata but it too was a little slower than normal. "Maybe."

"You know, why don't you try to find her?"

"Why? So, she can get sucked into this cesspit too and drown right alongside me. No thank you."

"Maybe if you found her—"