Asher ✓

32 | apathy

DECEMBER 31, 2013 / TIMES SQUARE

If anyone in the crowd had herpes, or some other venereal disease, Asher was sure his proximity to them would have meant he now had it, too. Kerrish probably was giving away a few of his.

The trio was trying to make haste through the masses of Times Square; they were three carbon atoms in a diamond crystal, and moving from their current position would be a defiance of the rules of chemistry. They did, though.

Kerrish was a force of nature of his own, having demands that would bend space and time to be met.

"Out of my way," he told an old lady, not really looking at who he as talking to.

Asher picked up the walking stick she had dropped, placed it back in her hands and whispered to both her and her appalled daughter, "I'm very sorry about him. Happy New Year."

Kerrish kept ploughing through the crowd, tense with anticipation and hope, moving them aside like a chainsaw slashing bamboo. Ryanel sniffled, keeping closely beside Asher. Their noses were red with the cold, and even under the protection of woollen beanies, so were their ears. Kerrish's skin was never anything but smooth bronze, though he claimed he was paler in winter. He wore no coverings for his hands and head, letting his wavy hair dance with the wind.

"Can't you just deal with our position?" Asher asked him, staring at the streak of brown skin, the nape of his neck, that peeked out between his hair and jacket collar.

It didn't seem as if Kerrish had heard him, until, "Nope. I have standards."

"And erectile dysfunction," Ryanel was never one to miss an opening for an insult. Between the cheeky Asian and the fiery Hispanic, that was one of few shared traits.

Asher gave a weak chuckle; he was not feeling particularly festive. Christmas was not a sour affair, but nor did Asher feel any sort of warmth from having Christmas dinner with Vasily, and his cousin, Aria — who'd brought her family to visit. Having her around made the snow blankets seem not so heavy and cold, but the event of it actually being Christmas did nothing. It was the recent apathy he seemed to have for everything that made him question if that was what adulthood felt like; a blurred expanse of grey feelings where sadness couldn't be distinguished from peace. 

If it was, Asher wanted to stay seventeen.

Finally, Kerrish and elbowed and pardoned and flirted his way to the walkway, roped off halfway for the television crews and VIP area. His scoping gaze — sharpened to a point from years of checking out girls — landed on a security guard. Kerrish smirked, scarily reminding Asher of a leopard on the hunt. He slinked out of the crowd smoothly; the leopard leaving the grass. Asher and Ryanel were left to tear their scarves from the people they'd been caught between.

Kerrish was only an inch shorter than the hulking guard, but very skinny compared to the tattooed man. And by default, that meant Ryanel and Asher were even skinnier in contrast. Asher had been going to the gym for six months (more on Travis and Peyton's request than his own) but managed to stay more lean than muscular.

"My good man," Kerrish began, sounding like a man advertising an unwanted product. "How are you tonight?"

The guard, equipped with a baton and taser at his side, did not look like someone to mess with. And here was Kerrish Soto — playboy extraordinaire, and messer of minds. Upon not getting a reply, he dropped the friendly demeanour and leaned even more into the guard's personal space, as if telling a scandalous secret.