Page 7 of Lust

As I resume my back and forth, my mind’s all over the place. I’m a fucking wreck since my interaction with Luke this morning at breakfast.

“What the hell is going on?” Seth asks, trying to get it out of me after I finished rubbing one out in a restroom stall and grabbed him when he got out of his next class.

“We need to have a meeting. Later. With Cody.”

“You can’t give me more than that?”

“It’s about Luke Waters, and I just want to wait, okay? Back off, and we’ll talk about it later.”

That whole discussion in the kitchen fucked with my head.

That Luke remembered what Seth did to him.

Then how he started to take off his fucking shirt…and I about lost my fucking mind…well, my load, really.

Yesterday in the showers, after our fight on the field, my physical reaction to him was intense but only showed with a semi. This time it was overwhelming.

And excruciating.

Something’s wrong. Very wrong.

Which is why I called the meeting at the old church this evening.

I check my phone. We said eight, and it’s 7:56 now. Seth is punctual. He’ll be here soon.

Cody, sitting at an old desk—one of many around this cellar—folds his arms, nestling his face in them like a pillow. Despite what we’ve done to straighten the cellar out, it’s still just a bunch of junk—old boards and furniture—that we’ve rearranged so we can have our meetings.

A familiar sound comes from upstairs, and a few moments later Seth comes through the door at the top of the stairs. “So what the hell is this about?” He heads down, slinging his backpack around to his front.

I spit it out. “Luke knows what you did yesterday.”

“What?” Seth reaches the bottom of the steps and sets his backpack on the floor.

“Wait, what did Seth do yesterday?” Cody asks, pushing to his feet.

“Don’t make this a huge thing,” Seth says. “Sometimes they feel like something was a bit off, or like something happened in the conversation they can’t remember. That’s not weird. It’s happened before. You both know this.”

“He said he thought you might have hypnotized him.”

“The fuck?” Cody says. “Seth, you used your fucking powers on him? You didn’t tell me that.” He sounds hurt, and I’m not surprised since they tell each other pretty much everything.

“I didn’t want to worry you while you were still recovering,” Seth tells him, referring to the spell we performed last weekend here in the church cellar, during which Cody received a name: Luke Waters. The one the Guides warned us about.

Seth goes on, “And Mr. Bright Idea over here was about to get into a fistfight with the guy.”

“I was getting the ball rolling,” I say, “to make his stay here hell enough for him to want to leave.”

After discovering Luke was the one we needed to get rid of, we agreed we would fuck with him enough to get him to drop out. I would start being an ass to him, and Seth and Cody would use their powers gradually to make his stay as unpleasant as possible.

I’m quickly realizing it won’t be that simple.

“It was a little over-the-top,” Seth says, “and you nearly provoked him into a fight that might’ve gotten you both expelled.”

“Maybe that would have been for the best,” I say.

“You don’t mean that, Brad,” Cody says. “We want to save him, not ruin his chances of getting an education. He needs to leave here on good terms so he can enroll somewhere else. And just because he’s gone doesn’t mean we’re in the clear. We need your powers here at St. Lawrence.”

“No, I didn’t really want that,” I say. “I just…”

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