Page 30 of The Baller

“Okay, have you been able to put what we talked about last week into practice?”

From the corner of my eye, I saw a dust bunny on the floor and stared at it. I’d been dreading this session because I already knew how it would go. She’d asked me – as she just had – how I was working toward creating as normal a life for myself as I could; building friendships, and exploring what it meant to be a student. Last week she’d set me the task of meeting someone new, and making a friend.

I had. I’d done both those things.

Neither had been intentional, but they’d been done. Twice if you counted that girl, Delaney, from the Shakespeare class.

I counted it.

The one I didn’t want to count was Lux Weston, because… well… it was… or rather it wasn’t a good idea.

“Radley, did you meet anyone new this week?”

I nodded, silently.

“You did. That’s excellent, well done! And how do you feel?”

I shrugged. That was a complicated question.

Sick, probably summed it up most succinctly.

“Okay,” I replied instead.

“Was this a student in your class?”

I shook my head again, once more picturing Lux’s face when we’d been standing at the bar and I’d asked him if he was a student. It was the memory I’d found myself going back to; the way his hazel eyes widened as he blinked in shock, and his full pouty mouth parted, causing the Cupid’s arrow on his top lip to deepen. Then there was the way his head tilted to the left ever so slightly so the curve of his cheekbone had caught the light.

I wish I could stop thinking about his mouth. I wish I could stop thinking abouthim, because every time I did, my entire body clenched tight and heat flickered deep in my core.

“Would you like to tell me what happened?”

I placed my feet flat on the floor, tucked my hands underneath me, and took a deep breath. My teeth sank into my bottom lip as I peered up at the screen.

“It wasn’t a student. It was a guy.”

Since I’d been seeing Doctor Jessops, I’d come to know her expressions well. There was the sad face – the one she pulled whenever I sobbed my way through a session, pointing to the ever-present box of tissues on the end table next to me. There was the proud face, accompanied by her gentle nod. The surprised face, whenever I’d done something unexpected, and her encouraging face, when she wanted me to keep talking.

Or the one she was wearing now – one I’m not sure I’dever seen – because her eyes were so wide, I thought they might pop out of the sockets any second.

“Oh…” she replied after she’d recovered herself. “A guy, as in…”

I waited like she always did, as she found the word.

“… a guy you had an attraction to?”

I nodded, letting out a little sigh. An attraction? Yeah, that’s what we could call it.

Attraction would explain why my mind flitted to him every ninety seconds whether I wanted it to or not. Yeah. Lux Weston was all kinds of attractive.

Hot. Smoking. Fantasy inducing.

The whole package.

“Can you tell me what happened?”

She sat back in her chair. From the way she shifted, I knew she’d crossed her legs and put her notepad down. It was a move I’d become so familiar with when I used to see her in person.

She was preparing to set herself in for the long haul.

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