Breathing Him In

Chapter five.

Michael's P.O.V

I walk into my first class and see Asher sitting at the back of the class. She usually sits at the front. She is hanging her head low. I go sit beside her. When I pull the chair out and sit down, she doesn't even look up at me. I decide to get her attention by nudging her chair with my foot. She looks up at me.

"Hiya" I say, smiling wide. She doesn't answer me. "What's wrong?" I ask her. She looks sadly at me.

"Look Michael. I'm really sorry about your face. You didn;t do anything to deserve it. I feel so fucking bad." She says really fast.

"It's not your fault, Asher. You can't help the fact that your boyfriend's an asshole." I laugh, trying to lighten the mood.

"Ex." She says really low, probably not meaning for me to hear.

"Huh?" I know what she said, but I just want to make sure that's what she said.

"He's not my boyfriend anymore. I broke up with him. And you're right. He's an asshole." She lets out a breathy laugh and looks down at her hands.

"Im glad you broke up with him" I say. She looks sharply at me and the teacher starts class. I keep stealing glances at her while she pays attention to the teacher. She is really pretty. She may be pretty, but she is a popular girl and people like me don't socialize with people like her. The bell dings and she maneuvers out of the classroom before I even stand up. She sits really far away from me in the next period, but she keeps looking over at me. We make awkward eye contact several times and look away. She seems really upset about her breakup with Seth. I can't understand why though, he's a complete asshole.

I hurry to Chemistry because I know I'll be sitting by Asher. I walk into Mrs. Chayse's room and I see Seth at my lab table. He is in Asher's face. She looks pissed and so does he. I bolt over to them.

"Is there a problem?" I growl.

"Nothing that concerns you," He spits and takes his hands off of her shoulders, walking over to his own lab table.

"You okay?" I ask Asher when I sit down. She nods and looks down at her hands.

"Okay, kids. We're going to do a project. You pick and element and you make a presentation about it. You have to teach the other students about that element. You're going to do it with your lab partner." She pauses and looks around the room. "One person from your table will come up to my desk and draw a piece of paper from the green bin. That piece of paper will have you element on it. Get started!" She says and goes back to sit at her desk and watch the bin that sits upon it. I look over at Asher and the look in her eyes tells me that she doesn't want to get up, so I walk to Mrs. Chayse's desk, shoulder checking Seth on the way.

"We got Carbon," I tell Asher as I sit back down at the lab table. She nods her head slowly, not looking at me. "We're going to have to work on this outside of class," I speak again, she still just nods her head. "How about we go to my flat after school?" I ask her, she finally looks up at me.

"Yeah, sure. That sounds good," she smiles for what seems like the first time today.

In the remainder of the class, we get the basic concept of what we're going to do for the project. The rest of the day flies by. I meet Asher at her locker at the end of the day.

"Do you just want to walk with me to my house? It's like right down the road," I ask when I reach her locker.

"Sure, Clifford." she smiles and shuts her locker, turning on her heel and walking before me out the doors.