Page 46 of Psync
Chapter Seventeen
Eli
He had to skid to a stop to keep from crashing into Ash, who was in the middle of sorting through papers and books in front of the elevator. Eli crouched down to help.
“Hey man, that was one hell of an entrance. You coming to my rescue, or something?” Ash reached out for the book Eli held out.
Ash’s fingers brushed his, and a resoundingwrongwrongwrongrippled through Eli’s skin. He suppressed a shudder and stood up. “No, just trying to catch the elevator before someone calls it away.” He hit the up button, and the doors opened. Score.
“Too lazy to take two flights of stairs?”
“Way too lazy. This muscle mass wasn’t made for hard labor.” Eli pointed at his body.
:Heknows?:
Eli’s head snapped up as the Voice startled him, and he saw a glimpse of Haruka’s shoulder as he went back into his room. The door closed with a bang.
The Voice had never been so loud before . . . Eli narrowed his eyes, taking in Ash where he kneeled in front of him. “Knows what?”
Ash paused, hand lingering over the last piece of paper on the floor and said slowly, “I know lots of things. You’re going to have to be more specific.”
When he’d realized the Voice wasn’t planning on going away anytime soon, Eli had begun compiling a mental list of everything it said. If there was a real person behind the Voice, he needed to find them. Otherwise, he was going to have to invest in a new therapist.
Ash had mentioned getting his shoes wet every morning because of the Bubble Tea Girls. The Voice had said something about wet feet, hadn’t it?
Eli frowned and chewed on his bottom lip. Was the voice Ash?
He shook his head and laughed at himself. What was he going to do? Ask him if he heard voices in his head? That was a great way to send him running for the hills.
“Nothing. Just wondering if you knew a way to help me get more muscles.”
Ash sat back on his heels. “Sure, if that’s what you’re looking for. Meet me at the gym tomorrow at six, and I’ll come up with a program for you.” He looked Eli up and down and winked. “Personally, I wouldn’t change a thing.”
If Ash hadn’t said he wasn’t into guys, it would have seemed like flirting, but Eli was starting to see that it was just Ash’s default setting. Charming, all the freaking time.
Great. Now he had to exercise instead of sleeping in. Eli backed into the elevator and summoned a smile. “Th-thanks. I’ll be there.” Crying internally the whole time . . .
Ash’s eyes met his as the door began to close. “See you then.”
He leaned against the elevator wall as it began its journey to his floor. Maybe he could spend the time with Ash finding out if he was the Voice.
There was a ding and the doors of the elevator started to close. Eli darted through them, realizing he’d spaced out and nearly missed his floor. He made it, but his bag didn’t. The doors bounced back open when he tugged on it.
Eli ran his hands over his backpack to make sure it had escaped unscathed, and his fingers closed over something odd. A closer inspection showed him that, at some point, someone had attached a tiny, gray stuffed cat to the zipper.
His finger stroked the soft fur.
For a second—just the tiniest, briefest little moment—he allowed himself to entertain the idea that Haruka could be the Voice.
But that would be even crazier than the idea that the Voice was anything more than a loose wire in Eli’s brain. Haruka had given Eli no reason to think it was him, and he’d rather run naked through the quad than ask.
No, Ash was a far more likely candidate at the moment. Tomorrow, he would see if he could find a way to collect more clues without getting thrown into a psych ward.
???
Hell. Eli was in the deepest and darkest of hells. There was no other way to describe what it felt like to force his body to do grueling work while his brain struggled to process its surroundings first thing in the morning.
And Eli was positive it was making sure to punish him extra right now. It wasn’t a fan of how little sleep he’d been getting. After he got a shower, he was going to sleep in the library so hard his desk was going to get a dent.
